Welcome back to another exclusive sneak preview of the Hue Jackson School of Scam Artistry!

The NFL Draft is coming up soon, of course, but for others, April means the return of baseball and start of playoffs in the NHL and NBA. It’s a weird year thanks to the fallout of all this pandemic nonsense, but the sports books are booming all the same. I still haven’t found anyone who’s willing to take bets on how people are going to bet… but I’m working on it. In the meantime, I’m learning about some ways I can scam tight-knit organizations – while many scammers find success working to part individuals from their money, it can be much more difficult to try and take down large corporations… or, in this week’s audio cassette lesson, an entire sports league. Let’s listen on!

JOHN SPANO: SPORTS OWNER BIGSHOT?

BORN: May 31st, 1964

Even in the middle of a global pandemic, pro sports teams’ values continue to climb, even in the face of mounting losses (in some leagues, at least). While the NFL, NBA and MLB continue to be far out in front for franchise values, the NHL has come a long way to closing the gap in the last 30-odd years. Excluding Detroit, each of the Original Six teams are worth a billion dollars or more, and even some recent Sun Belt Expansion-era teams are over half a billion now.

Enter the lonely red-headed stepchild of the NY pro sports market. Unlike the Rangers or New Jersey Devils, who have a combined four Stanley Cup wins since 1994, the Islanders haven’t won squat since 1983. In that time, their value has increased to roughly $520 million, though without an arena of their own, it likely won’t move much more… at least until the UBS Arena at Belmont Park is completed later this year.

John Spano, Jr. was born in Greenwich Village, but grew up in suburban Cleveland. He lived and worked in Pittsburgh after graduating from Duquesne, and later on moved to Dallas, where he founded the Bison Group, a company that leased planes to executives.

Spano was a sports fan growing up – especially hockey. While living in Dallas in September 1995, he tried to make a bid for joint ownership in the recently-relocated Dallas Stars franchise, but the deal fell through. Later that year, he also made a bid to buy the Florida Panthers, but fell short on that one as well. Undeterred by his failures in procuring an NHL team of his own, he refocused on the lowly Islanders – one of the most hapless teams in the entire league back in the late ’90s.

The ’96-’97 Isles were in rough shape both on and off the ice. Don Maloney, the longtime GM, had recently been fired, and head coach Mike Milbury resigned his role to become the team’s new manager, promoting Rick Bowness to take his place. They hadn’t made the playoffs since 1994, and the roster was in shambles. Fans complained about everything related to the team, including the new “fisherman” logo the team had introduced in 1995 (which they were DEAD fucking wrong about, as that jersey remains an absolute classic of ’90s NHL fits). Worse off, the Nassau Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum, which was owned by Nassau County, was crumbling into disrepair, as neither the team nor the county wanted to spend the necessary money on maintenance and upgrades. Longtime owner Tom Pickett wanted to get the team off his hands, and let someone who was willing to take bold action return the team to competitiveness.

 

As such, John Spano seemed like a perfect fit for a new owner. A “local” boy of sorts thanks to his Manhattan birthplace, he presented himself as a bigshot everywhere he went. There were some wild claims: he was worth $230 million thanks to an inheritance from a wealthy grandfather, he owned his $3 million Dallas mansion mortgage-free, and that he’d built the Bison Group up from one company with four employees to ten companies employing 6000 – in just six years. All of this, naturally, was complete horseshit, but like all talented scammers, Spano dressed it up extremely well.

While the Islanders floundered their way through another losing season, featuring dumbass Milbury returning to double-duty as coach and GM thanks to firing Bowness, the paperwork for the team’s sale was drawn up. In February, the sale was ratified by the NHL’s Board of Governors – $165 million in all. $80 million of that was for the team itself, while the remainder was for the TV contract rights the team had with SportsChannel New York, which were worth about $13 million a year. The payments to Pickett were to be paid in installments, with the first one, for $16.5 million, due on April 7th. Papers were signed, press conferences staged, photos taken – all seemed well. Spano even forced Milbury to give up his coaching position and return to the press box as GM thanks to another lousy on-ice year for the Isles, while providing fans some hope by stating he hoped the team would be active in free agency, giving them permission to spend as needed.

But at the NHL’s Board of Governors meeting in June, John Spano was nowhere to be found. Instead, two reps of former owner Tom Pickett were representing the team – behind the scenes, everything had fallen to shit. The deal was off – and Spano was a fraud. He’d never come even remotely close to having the money to buy the team in the first place.

As it turns out, John Spano completely bullshitted his way to success. He’d only ever been worth about $5 million in all… the Bison Group of 6000 employees was only 22. He owed $85,000 in back taxes on his house in Dallas. And all of the documentation he’d provided to prove his assets had been completely fabricated. In July 1997, Spano was arrested for multiple counts of bank fraud, wire fraud, and forgery. Investigators got evidence for charges thanks to analysis of a letter allegedly sent from Comerica to Tom Pickett after Spano had bounced a $17 million cheque, which (falsely) stated he had the funds to cover the amount. (The executive whose signature appeared on the letter denies ever writing or sending it in the first place). Additionally, a fax record from another company claiming Spano owned $27 million in Treasury bonds was also discovered to be a forgery – sent from the exact same fax machine owned by the Bison Group.

In this investigation, evidence came out that Spano bilked Fleet Bank out of an $80 million loan thanks to additional forged documents, which got a senior executive fired and saw multiple US banks change their verification practises permanently. Last but not least, the NHL was revealed to have spent less than $1000 of their own money on an investigation into Spano’s finances in the lead-up to approving the sale of the Islanders – a black eye on the league, which was also forced to change its financial verification practises.

John Spano was found guilty of all counts, and in January 2000 was sentenced to 71 months in federal prison, as well as restitution of $11.9 million to all of his victims, including the Islanders, several Dallas-area businessmen, as well as Penguins captain and majority owner Mario Lemieux. He was released in June 2004 on five years’ supervised sentence and moved to suburban Cleveland to start again.

Like all good scammers… John Spano just couldn’t give up the lifestyle. In 2005, he was arrested again for a scheme involving a finance company charging clients thousands of dollars for services that were never delivered. He got 51 months in prison for this scam, and was released in April 2009. And he STILL wasn’t done after that. In 2011, Spano was hired as a driver by Image First Laundry Healthcare Specialists, a company that delivered linens to hospitals in the Cleveland area. The company was impressed by his work ethic and elected to promote him to a sales position. Three years later, Spano was arrested AGAIN, for sixteen counts of forgery. As a sales rep, he’d created fake accounts to sell to in order to collect commissions for the sales off of his work. He got ten years of prison time for the latest scam, and is scheduled to be released in 2025.

All in all, the story of John Spano is that of a trailblazer. Despite being a major embarrassment for the NHL, they still didn’t learn their lesson – despite having apparently improved their vetting practises for new ownership groups, in 1997 John Rigas, head of legendary sham company Adelphia Communications, was allowed to purchase the Buffalo Sabres. In 2002, he was arrested for bank, wire and securities fraud thanks to billions in unreported loans, and sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2005 – though he only served eleven years of that sentence due to his advanced age. Later, in 2007, the NHL agreed to William “Boots” Del Biaggio III purchasing a minority ownership stake in the Nashville Predators, though by June 2008, del Biaggio would be arrested for fraud due to a number of unpaid loans to buy his stake in the team; he received a 97-month sentence for his misdeeds. Would such brashness for financial crimes and hockey team ownership even be possible without the misdeeds of John Spano, Junior? It’s hard to say – but the man is an inspiration for sports-minded schemers and dreamers everywhere. Check out the 30-for-30 titled Big Shot if you want more info on the story – it’s a great watch.

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Oh, yeah. That’s the shit I like. No feeling like it – it’s there in your hands one moment, gone the next – snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, just like the Cleveland Browns. You might think that’s a terrible thing – but with every failure comes an opportunity for success down the line. As for the prison sentences, they’re no biggie – after all, I’m going to live forever, thanks to this magic elixir I’ve come up with. I can wait decades to strike again, if need be. And so can you… if you call 1-900-FAST-BUX now, you’ll get 20% off an order when you bundle a case of twelve 12-ounce bottles with an audio cassette subscription – the deal to last a lifetime*!

*Not recommended for those who are allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, soybeans, wheat, eggs, dairy, fish, chicken, beef, pork, tofu, corn, sugar, plants, water, sunlight, and air.

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Information from this article taken from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Banner image by The Maestro.