Moose, the Money and a Garbage-Time God: A PTFO Investigation

Summary

Pablo Torre Finds Out – "Moose, the Money and a Garbage-Time God: A PTFO Investigation"

Date: July 15, 2025
Host: Pablo Torre
Guests/Reporters: Tom Haberstroh, Amin El Hassan
Main Focus: Unraveling the intertwined mysteries of NBA gambling scandals, Malik Beasley’s alleged involvement, the enigmatic Moose NBA Twitter account, and the surprising evidence trail surrounding them all.

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Overview

In this sprawling investigative "talkumentary," Pablo Torre and his collaborators embark on a wild journey through the evolving saga of NBA gambling scandals—centering on Malik Beasley’s federal investigation, the prophecy of an anonymous NBA Twitter user, and their tangled links to banned NBA player Jontay Porter. The episode covers high-stakes sports betting, the blurring of online and offline drama, and the sometimes shadowy characters who populate both realms. With equal parts seriousness and absurdity, the team sifts through evidence, digital breadcrumbs, and personal stories, aiming to answer: Who is Moose? How did he know? And what does this say about the age of legalized gambling and NBA Twitter?

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Key Themes & Breakdown

1. Setting the Stage: The Malik Beasley Gambling Allegations

• [02:51] Tom Haberstroh reveals: The U.S. Attorney is investigating Detroit Pistons guard Malik Beasley for alleged betting on NBA games and prop bets during the 2023–24 season.
• [03:27] Amin El Hassan comments: "Source told me this situation is worse than the Porter situation."
• The timing of the investigation leaks is deliberate—meant to bring maximum attention.
• Beasley was reportedly on the verge of signing a $42M contract with Detroit before the news broke.

2. What Makes Beasley Different

• [05:59] Tom Haberstroh: Beasley is "one of the greatest... three-point shooters in NBA history," second only to Steph Curry in three-pointers per minute.
• Despite career momentum, the investigation vaporizes Beasley’s potential deal and possibly his NBA future.

3. Suspicious Betting, Viral Clips & Garbage-Time God

• A surge in bets for Beasley’s "under" on rebounds in a specific Bucks-Blazers game triggers a sportsbook alert.
• Viral internet clips resurface—particularly a Minnesota Timberwolves play where Beasley’s garbage-time dunk covers the spread, causing widespread speculation.
• [09:07] Amin El Hassan: Cautions against knee-jerk conclusions: "You're basically accusing someone of the ultimate crime within this profession... It's just wildly irresponsible."

4. Introducing Moose: The Twitter Oracle

• [09:37] Pablo Torre: Introduces the user @FreeMoose_NBA, who appeared to prophetically name Beasley as the next player under investigation, months before news broke.
• [12:39] Pablo Torre: "This is the first documented mention by anyone anywhere that Malik Beasley was going to come up as part of this investigation."
• Moose had previously predicted the Jontay Porter case and flagged Terry Rozier just as news broke on him.

5. Chasing Moose: The Digital Breadcrumbs

• [32:11] Amin El Hassan: Evidence threads lead from Moose's now-deleted Twitter, to a prior handle (@Oosenba), to a semi-anonymous account full of Knicks content.
• The trail points to a real person: Mustafa Omar, a Knicks superfan, meme coin hustler, and operator of paywalled Discords for gambling advice.
• [35:56] Tom Haberstroh: "We had traced Free moosenba, the account that prophesied... Malik Beasley... to a government name: Mustafa Omar."

6. Inside Moose’s World: Gambling Communities, Pump and Dumps, and Crypto

• Moose ran sports betting Discord channels and meme coin projects, often overpromising and underdelivering.
• [38:22] Tom Haberstroh: "He was trying to drum up business for his next meme coin... 'Some names that I can't even legally mention because they made so much money off a certain NBA gambling incident last season.'"
• His claims to inside betting knowledge increased his credibility with followers—possibly to encourage sales.

7. The Amar Connection and Expanding the Web

• Moose is connected via Facebook to Amar Awade, central figure in the Jontay Porter federal case and previous city scandals.
• [54:52] Tom Haberstroh: Directly confronts Moose about friendship with Amar (Moose flatly denies: "No.").
• Further sleuthing reveals they’re not just friends, but relatives ("cousin") and appear together in Facebook photos.

8. Larger Implications and Evidence Gaps

• Beasley's flagged game film, after review, shows him hustling for rebounds ("He looks like Charles Barkley out there" [28:28]).
• Betting activity didn't mirror on-court evidence, contrasting with Porter's clear tanking.
• The lines between suspicious bets, viral speculation, and actual proof remain blurry.

9. Key Quotes & Notable Moments

• [01:04] Pablo Torre: "We continue to live inside a rabbit hole that can only be described also as dank."
• [04:58] Amin El Hasan: "You're not digging deep for Malik Beasley rebounds."
• [13:41] Amin El Hasan: "Maybe you think, oh, he's just throwing in the wall and tries to see what sticks, right? ... Then he quote tweets that tweet with a screenshot of a betting slip from January 22, 2024."
• [25:56] Tom Haberstroh (on garbage-time stats): "Malik Beasley is a garbage time god."
• [28:28] Amin El Hasan: "[In the alleged throw game] he looks like Charles Barkley out there."
• [44:49] Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA): "Yeah, I mean, I go by Moose. I know a bunch of people involved in the NBA space... I just do good research as well. I'm a stats guy."
• [45:59] Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA): "I know a lot of people in the basketball, in the gambling space, so, you know, work does get around."
• [52:07] Pablo Torre (after Facebook confirmation of family tie): "Yes, a certain NBA gambling incident. There, in fact, is a connection. We have just verified that they are literal Facebook friends."
• [61:15] Pablo Torre: "Moose, NBA Twitter's Malik Beasley prophet, was more than just Facebook friends with alleged Jaunte Porter co conspirator Amar Awade. Moose was his relative, his cousin, meaning we had literally gone from Medea's Family Reunion to Mustafa's."
• [67:42] Tom Haberstroh (Malik Beasley’s attorney): "Presuming someone is guilty when they haven't been charged with the crime, let alone convicted, is a dangerous narrative. The mere allegations have caused irreparable harm to Malik's image, reputation and career."
• [71:15] Amin El Hasan: "NBA Twitter, the Godfather 3: every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in."

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Timeline of Events (with Timestamps)

• [02:51] — News of Malik Beasley’s federal investigation breaks, allegedly for betting on NBA games during the 2023–24 season.
• [04:25] — Sportsbooks flag "unusual" betting on Beasley’s rebound under in a Bucks-Blazers game (Jan 31, 2024).
• [09:37] — Pablo introduces "Free Moose NBA" as a mysterious Twitter prophet with inside scoop on NBA gambling cases.
• [12:39] — Moose makes his famous "rule of three" prophecy tweet, predicting Beasley would be next after Porter and Rozier.
• [25:56] — Deep dive into Beasley’s career, stats, and garbage time behaviors.
• [32:11] — Investigative trail leads from now-deleted Moose Twitter accounts to real-life identity: Mustafa Omar.
• [35:56] — Tom details concrete evidence linking tweets, Discords, and social accounts to Omar.
• [38:22] — Exposes Moose's Discord and meme coin schemes; posts teasing “unnamable” contacts in NBA gambling.
• [52:07] — Facebook friend connection between Moose and Amar Awade confirmed.
• [61:15] — Revelation: Moose (Omar) is Amar Awade’s cousin; legal documents cite "family" involvement in Porter’s betting scandal.
• [67:42] — Statement from Malik Beasley’s attorney delivered and read on air.
• [71:15] — Amin (joking): "NBA Twitter, the Godfather 3: every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in."

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Memorable Moments & Color

• Pablo’s recurring astonishment at the "rabbit hole" and tangential weirdness.
• The comedic tension of Tom awkwardly interviewing Moose, trying to authenticate his story ("How are you doing on this fine Tuesday?" [41:10]).
• Amin’s running commentary and asides, adding skepticism, humor, and skepticism to every major twist.
• The trio’s surprise as legal documents, social media, and public records compound to reveal a familial link.
• Moose’s repeated denials, reliance on "Reddit posts" as origin for information, and immediate shutdown of social accounts after the PTFO team calls his connections out.

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Conclusions & Takeaways

• Evidence tying Beasley himself to intentional game manipulation is weak; his flagged behavior on court contradicts the suspicious betting trends.
• Moose (Mustafa Omar) gained credibility by "predicting" federal targets, while simultaneously running gambling pick discords and touting inside knowledge—his familial relationship to a central figure in the Jontay Porter scandal raises eyebrows.
• New media, gambling, and fandom have made information murky, with digital hearsay and inside-joke braggadocio distorting truth and fact.
• Legalized gambling’s mainstreaming creates both new opportunities and vulnerabilities, with federal investigators often playing catchup to online communities.
• NBA Twitter’s blend of insight, bravado, and misinformation is both entertaining and at times, genuinely consequential—"The Godfather 3: every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in."

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Final Words

As Pablo notes:

"We have reason to believe that these are not coincidences, that these are connections."
— [68:00], Pablo Torre

But as always, the true story of sports, gambling, and the Internet remains unfinished—and for the PTFO team, the investigation continues.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Paul. I'm Pablo Torre. And this episode of Pablo Torre Finds out is brought to you by Remy Martin. 1738 Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly because today we're going to find out what this sound is.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people in the basketball in the gambling space, so, you know, work does get around. Eventually it gets to me from people.

[Pablo Torre]

That I know right after this ad. I have slept for like four hours. We have been reporting this up till this second. We're still reporting it as we're recording this. We don't have time to waste, unfortunately. This is a very serious story, a very stupid story, and I think an almost shockingly smart story.

[Amin El Hasan]

Comedy comes in threes. It's a funny story.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I feel like we're going to get another revelation based on how this morning and this past couple weeks have gone. We're going to get something else here, Pablo. So just stand by as we're taping this.

[Pablo Torre]

We continue to live the three of us. Rule of three. Continue to live inside a rabbit hole that can only be described also as dank. It stinks of all sorts of things, including, literally, weed. So thank you to Tom Haberstro and Amin El Hasan for reprising your roles as PTFO correspondents. It is great to have you here.

[Tom Haberstroh]

It's great to be here.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so the reason I am voltron ing here with my friends Tom and Amin, the Internet brain co hosts of Basketball Illuminati, is because this episode is going to be an investigation, an investigation into the newest and quite possibly weirdest mystery in the era of legalized gambling on professional sports. And this investigation required not only a dozen sources, as well as the kind of statistical insight you can only [e-mail], but also in Amin, a former Phoenix Suns exec who loves Nicholas Cage movies, as you will see, because in April of 2024, as you might recall, an obscure Toronto raptor named Jontay Porter got banned for life from the NBA for betting on and tanking games with allegedly as early as January 2024, Porter ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a deli owner named Amar Awadeh and a few other gamblers. And on our YouTube channel, by the way, you can now see a photo of these co conspirators from the federal complaint. Amar Awadeh is the guy in the top left in the red hoodie. But that was then, a couple weeks ago, on the eve of NBA free agency. The spotlight turned to someone new. This is a serious development for one.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Of the NBA's top free agents right now. Sources tell me the U.S. district Attorney's office is investigating Detroit Pistons guard Malik Beasley on allegations of gambling on NBA games and prop bets. I'm told it was during, allegedly the 2023, 2024 season, Beasley and the Pistons were in serious talks on finalizing a three year, $42 million contract that would have brought Beasley back back to Detroit.

[Pablo Torre]

The Pistons have added Duncan Robinson. They added him because Malik Beasley has some financial problems. He's got a federal investigation.

[Amin El Hasan]

Source told me this situation is worse than the Porter situation.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Oh, they released the information for a reason. The timing of the release is for a reason. The government wants to get as much attention as possible.

[Pablo Torre]

Our. Oh, this is FBI.

[Tom Haberstroh]

This isn't local.

[Pablo Torre]

This is FBI. Yeah, this is under federal investigation.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Oh, listen, brother, look, I know one thing for certain. Two things for sure. If it's local police, you've got a.

[Pablo Torre]

50, 50 chance against the government. And if this scandal is the first you have ever really thought about Malik Beasley, perhaps because you're not addicted to NBA Twitter as the three of us are, then I get it. Malik Beasley is not super famous. He's played for six different teams. In fact, aggressively gambling on Malik Beasley was itself a red flag. According to espn. What one US Sportsbook detected was, quote.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Unusually heavy betting interest on Beasley's statistics beginning around January 2024. This was when Malik Beasley was actually with the Milwaukee Bucks. And that was one game, 1-31-24, the sportsbook reported something very suspicious happened. Quote, the odds on Malik Beasley recording fewer than two and a half rebounds moved significantly at sportsbooks before the game due to a surge of action on the under.

[Amin El Hasan]

Not a common gambling subject. Right. Like people are betting on LeBron's points plus rebounds plus assists or Giannis over under on dunks or three pointers made by Steph Curry. You're not digging deep for Malik Beasley rebounds.

[Pablo Torre]

And so on the eve of free agency, we are told when news of the resultant federal investigation broke, the Detroit Pistons were staggered.

[Tom Haberstroh]

They had met with Malik Beasley. According to sources that I talked to Malik Beasley and his agent and were basically ironing out the markings of a $42 million contract. Three years, 42 million, which if you look at the capology, that's basically the full mid level exception which Malik Beasley.

[Pablo Torre]

Was so, so, so close to getting. In fact, if there's One more thing to know about Malik Beasley right now, it is that as a basketball player he is radically different from Jontay Porter.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Malik Beasley is one of the greatest full stop greatest three point shooters in NBA history. He had the Minnesota Timberwolves single season, three point field goals made record. And then a couple years later he did the same thing with the Detroit Pistons.

[Pablo Torre]

The list this past season it was Anthony Edwards very narrowly just ahead of Malik Beasley, who was ahead of Steph Curry.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Malik Beasley statistically has scored more three pointers per minute than any player in NBA history except for Steph Curry. Think about that. We are talking about in a three point era, Malik Beasley does more of these things than anybody who played at least 500 games in their NBA career. Except for Stephen Wardell Curry.

[Pablo Torre]

The reason why Malik Beasley that number, that money vaporized, by the way, possibly Malik Beasley's career now has vaporized at age 28. Right? And this led us to then try and monitor as much activity as we could ourselves by grinding tape what's publicly accessible. And so what do we do? We looked for every piece of evidence we could find in the public record. And this happens to also be how we found this clip which was buried inside a vlog on Malik Beasley's YouTube channel from six months ago during the best NBA season of Malik Beasley's career when he was with the Detroit Pistons. And Malik Beasley is pushing a shopping cart through a Target in Detroit and he suddenly gets spotted by by an employee at the store. Nice to meet you, bro. What up though? Oh, what's going on?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

That's crazy.

[Amin El Hasan]

I need a monitor, but it's all good.

[Pablo Torre]

I got to go practice. I can't hear that. I can't hear that. Malik Beasley holding his hands up in the air and saying, Whoa, whoa, whoa. FanDuel. I can't talk about that.

[Tom Haberstroh]

That's right. And as we will find out in this story, everything is so complicated. Like even that little clip, and that's.

[Pablo Torre]

Not even clip that's been circulating on Twitter or Reddit or TikTok. We found that one buried. But the stuff that's been going viral, there's one in particular, right, that is back to his days in Minnesota.

[Tom Haberstroh]

This Minnesota one viewed 14 million times. And everyone that I talked to in reporting out this story, they had all seen this clip and they'd all laughed at this clip in ways that everybody where it's just like, I mean, come on. What this clip is showing us is a very Alert Malik Beasley with five seconds left in the game, waiting for a free throw to be attempted by the Clippers, who are up big in this game. The Timberwolves are going to lose this game. But Malik Beasley doesn't just get the ball and let the clock run out. He gets the ball and sprints all the way down the floor.

[Pablo Torre]

Beasley's gonna get it off one last shot.

[Tom Haberstroh]

How about Beasley 21 points and then does a two handed dunk right before the buzzer. And what's interesting is that that cut the Clippers lead from nine to seven. The spread on that game, guys, was eight and a half. So went from the Clippers covering to the Minnesota Timberwolves covering after that play.

[Amin El Hasan]

The thing I'm fascinated by is the amount of people saying, there it is. Proof. Oh, that's proof. You see, you see how he looked over there on the bench and then he looked up at the score? That's proof that these guys are gambling. I'm like, you're basically accusing someone of the ultimate crime within this profession. And so you get viral tweets with someone saying, oh, Malik Beasley's 100% going to jail or, yeah, he's done, he's finished. It's just wildly irresponsible.

[Pablo Torre]

Here's the complexity, though, that Tom is alluding to. Malik Beasley has already been to jail. Separate story. We're going to get there, Amin. We're going to get there. We'll explain that in a bit. But one source I spoke to, who was close to several of Malik Beasley's current and former NBA teammates, immediately told me when I asked if he had heard anything about the gambling issues, quote, he's a dumbass. I believe everything. End quote. So that's not enough. We had to keep digging. The thing that we got to, guys, the real story inside the story that no one else is really talking about is this mystery. It is an online mystery that I believe that we all now believe is the key to understanding the story of Malik Beasley as well as this era, the era of legalized gambling in sports in general. And this mystery started in January of this year with a Twitter user who goes by the name of free moose, underscore NBA.

[Tom Haberstroh]

You might remember that on January 30, 2025, a few months ago, this news broke.

[Pablo Torre]

Now to a developing story. The NBA confirmed Thursday that suspicious gambling.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Activity surrounding guard Terry Rozier in a game nearly two years ago is now.

[Pablo Torre]

Being investigated by federal prosecutors as a part of the same probe that led to the lifetime ban of former Raptors player Jontay Porter. Now, at the time, Rozier was playing for the Hornets.

[Tom Haberstroh]

So Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, who's under contract with the Heat as we speak, he became the second player after John Tay Porter to be publicly identified as a part of this federal investigation into sports betting. And what I'm told is contrary to Shams Charania's reporting is that Terry Rozier has not been cleared of any wrongdoing, only that his name came up in the existing federal investigation.

[Pablo Torre]

And this relates directly to why Moose is this character that we're focusing on, because Free Moose underscore MBA tomorrow speaks to the federal investigation, which clearly is also still ongoing.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Right on that day, the same day that Terry Rozier news drops, this guy, Free Moose underscore NBA tweeted something that was even more provocative because on that day, he posted, quote, first was Jonte, then was Rozier. Next you'll hear about capital M, 4/isks, capital B, and then 6/isks.

[Amin El Hasan]

The symmetry of the rule of three.

[Pablo Torre]

Jonte Rozier, M stars. B stars.

[Tom Haberstroh]

This guy, Free Moose NBA posted another tweet right after that one and said there's another current player who's gonna have a report come out about them next. Won't say the name, but. But they play on the Pistons right now.

[Pablo Torre]

What this is is the first documented mention by anyone anywhere that Malik Beasley was going to come up as part of this investigation. This is how this news actually breaks. Free Moose NBA has it in that.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Rule of three tweet and in this reporting, I determined this guy, at the time of this tweet had something like 10,000 followers. And a lot of them were like, huh? Like what? One of them later that night in a tweet exchange with a P. Pistons fan, because Malik Beasley at this point is playing for the Pistons and being awesome. He tells Moose, you're lying, bro. Show me any amount of proof, bro. You don't know what he means to us. And Moose says, quote, I can't yet. I'm sorry, but gotta protect myself. 15 views on that.

[Pablo Torre]

It's incredible. I mean, this 15, this time capsule, which is almost six months before the news breaks, right? On the eve of reagency. 6. Six months before it happens. It's happening in the mentions of this thing.

[Amin El Hasan]

So that's the crazy thing about this is maybe you think, oh, he's just. He's just throwing in the wall and tries to see what sticks, right? Shot in the dark. Then he Quote tweets that tweet with a screenshot of a betting slip from January 22, 2024. That betting slip is Jonte Porter. Unders under on points, five and a half and under on rebounds, three and a half. Now, I know what you're thinking. Oh yeah, that's the game, right? No, the game that was in the court filings under investigation was for the first time was January 26th.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Amin El Hasan]

Meaning whoever placed the slip had the in on the johntay Porter action months before the investigation was announced.

[Pablo Torre]

The question here is now very simple, right? On some level, because the entire Internet, the entire NBA, we can now confirm this, right? Everybody begins to ask Tom, who the is moose underscore NBA? How did a random Twitter user on NBA Twitter know about both Dante Porter and also Malik Beasley on the day that Terry Rozier's name was included for the first time? The second of the three guys before any of this was breaking.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Making things way more complicated is that Free Moose underscore NBA deleted his account and then disappeared off the Internet. Nobody to this day has been able to solve the mystery of who is Free Moose underscore NBA until now.

[Pablo Torre]

That was good.

[Tom Haberstroh]

That was good, Papa.

[Pablo Torre]

I just need people to know this is a story involves that not just three moves NBA and not just Nick Cage, but also a legless woman, Carmelo Anthony meme coins, my old friend Larsa Pippen and arguably guys, arguably the greatest play in modern Knicks history. Bernstein gets it out to Anunoby DiVincenzo at three. Bang bang.

[Amin El Hasan]

Knicks take a one point lead with 13 seconds remaining.

[Pablo Torre]

The Garden is shaking right now and.

[Amin El Hasan]

None of you will ever look at that play the same way again.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so before we get back to the mystery of free Moose underscore mba, we need to also very quickly explain here as much as we can where Malik Beasley himself actually comes from. And I did not fully appreciate this until we again we got into the rabbit hole on him.

[Amin El Hasan]

I did not know this at all until we started digging into all of this. Malik Beasley comes from Hollywood, right? His parents are born, both actors. His mom has had small roles in Tyler Perry movies, in the Hunger Games, in Bad Lieutenant Portal, with the aformentioned Nicholas Cage.

[Pablo Torre]

When was the last time you saw her?

[Tom Haberstroh]

I see her that morning. I go by in case she need anything. But that morning she said she needs something from the grocery and she called there and had it delivered by a boy to her home. Help me, please. Please help my finding killer for my family.

[Pablo Torre]

Please sir. Help me.

[Amin El Hasan]

Help it's not just Dina Beasley, the mom. It's also his father, Michael Beasley. Not that Michael Beasley. Different Michael Beasley, he's got over 80 acting credits on IMDb. Denzel Washington is friends with him. He calls him the king of the Hollywood south because Michael Beasley has appeared in so many movies and TV shows. Living in Atlantic. And he and Denzel were together in the Great Debaters and Flight and Two Guns. Tell us about your trip.

[Pablo Torre]

Lawyer. What's the big deal? Lawyer. You were down in Sonora, weren't you? You don't think Agent Jessup and the.

[Amin El Hasan]

DA know about you and Poppy?

[Pablo Torre]

Lawyer. Lawyer.

[Amin El Hasan]

They know you were at his ranch.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I know I need a lawyer. The fact of the matter is that the actual famous actor that started this all was Malik Beasley's grandfather, John Beasley. He's the most famous one. He was in Some of All Fears. He was also in the Mighty Ducks. And the thing that I just could not believe is that he is the assistant coach that you might remember from Rudy. My job is to basically beat the shit out of you for the next five days. And whoever is still standing at the end, maybe we'll use for our scout teams.

[Pablo Torre]

Malik Beasley, if you're wondering, got drafted 19th overall by the Denver Nuggets out of Florida State. But he also likes to say, if you, if you get him one on one, that he was a bit of a child actor himself. Honestly.

[Amin El Hasan]

If you want to see me in.

[Pablo Torre]

The background, I'm an extra. Look in Madea's Family Reunion. What were you doing as an extra, bro?

[Amin El Hasan]

I was an extra in Madea's Family Reunion.

[Pablo Torre]

If you want to see, I was dancing with my mom. I don't think any show has ever investigated Madea's Family Reunion more thoroughly. Then Pablo Torre finds out. We assigned a certain fact checker producer to go through the film a total of five times. We're looking for young Malik Beasley dancing with Dina, right? We're looking for this scene that he describes on that YouTube live stream with neon. And we regret to report that we could not find this. We found no evidence of it. We're fact checking every element of this story, as you will see, as much as we can. But something we did find instead is a quote that Malik's parents gave to an outlet called Noiseomaha.com in 2022. According to Michael, his dad, quote, sometimes Malik wants what we have, and so he's in a rush to get it. People think because these guys have a lot of money they're mature, end quote. Dina, the mom adds that making millions of dollars at a young age, quote, does not equate to knowledge or experience, end quote. Which I think naturally does bring us to the time we mentioned before where Malik Beasley in real life did go to jail.

[Tom Haberstroh]

What you should know about that incident was it came in the spring of 2020 when Malik was with the Minnesota Timberwolves. He got married to a woman named Montana Yao. And by the fall of that year, his house had been mistakenly added to what is known as the Parade of Homes tour, which in the Minneapolis area is not just a big event. This is one of the biggest home tours across the country.

[Pablo Torre]

Now, if you're looking for something to do this weekend that doesn't include large groups of people, how about taking a drive to explore some of the beautiful homes on the spring Parade of Homes tour?

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, there's 434 houses open noon to 6 today and tomorrow. This is when a car full of people pull up to Malik Beasley's house. And apparently in the court records of this incident, he had roped off the.

[Pablo Torre]

Driveway that you're allowed to parade is not welcome. Here is the implication exactly.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Move along. And so this car pulls up to the side of the road, not in his driveway, to the side of the road, to figure out, what are we going to do next? And that's when they turn and they hear a knock on the window. And Malik Beasley came out. He pointed a rifle at the car, and that incident was reported to the police. The police come to the property, Malik Beasley's house, and they search his house.

[Pablo Torre]

And this criminal complaint, I mean, which we pulled on this, you learn that the officers found multiple guns, almost two pounds of weed. A note. This is my favorite detail. A notebook that had written across the COVID in all caps, the word trap with two exclamation points. And the notebook contained, in case you were, of course, wondering, quote, rules for smoking marijuana in the home. And one of the rules, quote, only spend $2,500 a month on weed. End quote only.

[Amin El Hasan]

Are you sure that notebook isn't also in Pablo Torre's house?

[Tom Haberstroh]

Two months after this incident comes to light, right? He signs a four year, $60 million extension. His big payday. Like he did it. He not just made it to the NBA, but he was able to get that big second contract that every NBA player wants.

[Pablo Torre]

And what an awesome week for him and his wife, Montana Yao, right. Just imagine, $60 million comes in, except three days after that deal gets signed. And this is also while Malik is simultaneously awaiting sentencing for the gun incident, he is photographed holding hands at a mall in Miami with a masked but unmistakable former PTFO guest. Like the two of you by the name of Larsa Pippen, the ex wife of Scotty Pippen, future ex girlfriend of Marcus Jordan, and also, crucially, a recent guest on the Jason Lee podcast. When you look back on a Malik and go, that was a mistake, why.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Do you think you didn't see it.

[Pablo Torre]

When I saw it? Because I had Covid brain. I had just had Covid. I was stuck in my house. I hadn't gone anywhere. And he was there and he was like, on me, you know, like, let me see you. Let me come see you. Let me come see you. And I thought, okay, come see me.

[Amin El Hasan]

It should come as no surprise to everyone that Malik's wife, Montana Yao, filed for divorce.

[Pablo Torre]

And so I just gotta jump in here to point out that, yes, all roads do lead to Larsa Pippin, because of course, they do. And from there, Malik Beasley's road gets a lot rockier. He proceeds to plead guilty to a single felony charge of threats of violence because of the whole Parade of Homes incident, telling a courtroom in Minnesota, quote, I'm not that person. End quote. But then that person gets sued repeatedly over approximately $8 million in total. And some of this has since been settled. But the list of creditors includes a Maryland firm that specializes in loaning money to pro athletes, his own apartment building in Detroit, his former agent in New York, his barber shop in Milwaukee, and.

[Amin El Hasan]

Not to be outdone, his dentist in Minnesota is also suing him, Dr. Hassan Al Shahabi.

[Pablo Torre]

And by the way, Minnesota proceeds to trade Malik Beasley to the Jazz, which trades him to the Lakers, who don't renew his contract. And so he winds up in Milwaukee that way, playing in that game on January 31, 2024, that got flagged for suspicious betting activity. The season before that, Malik Beasley had been making about $16 million.

[Tom Haberstroh]

But Malik Beasley, in the season where all of this stuff is happening, he has dropped his salary 90%.

[Pablo Torre]

A 90% pay cut. All of which makes the story of Malik Beasley look as simple as that wildly viral clip of him going coast to coast and covering the spread in Minnesota. But in the course of fact checking, we wound up giving that clip, that same clip, the Medea's family reunion treatment, as it were. We watched the film over and over and over again before ultimately calling for a deeper statistical analysis. And we discovered something shocking about its alleged simplicity.

[Tom Haberstroh]

It is not simple. I talked to Mike Bouie for this story. Like, he is this analytics guru, this mastermind behind this amazing, indispensable site called inpredictable.com and most of the stats on his site are about clutch with respect to the score of the game. Meaning, you know, game within five final five minutes. That's typically what we know as clutch.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Tom Haberstroh]

But there's this other piece that until we were reporting this story, I don't think anyone's really kind of done a research project like this, which is what if we were looking at clutch in terms of the spread. And according to Mike Bowie's numbers, he looked at this since 2021. So the last five seasons. Here are the numbers. Garbage time. So when the game is out of reach. But Vegas clutch situations, the spread is still in play. Malik Beasley shot 62% effective field goal percentage, which is weighted for three pointers on 147 attempts. Garbage time. And Vegas garbage time situations, which means both the game is out of reach and the spread is not in play. Malik Beasley goes from 62% of field goal percentage up to 64% of field goal percentage. So what this says is when the game is meaningless in both the score and the Vegas spread, he gets even better. Malik Beasley is a garbage time. God, that Minnesota Timberwolves clip, that's just Malik Beasley all the time.

[Pablo Torre]

And so I do want to just now focus, though, on the most compelling piece of evidence that has been reported, Right, which is that there was Tom. This unusual betting activity, this spike in betting activity. This is the seemingly the one and only identifiable example so far that we have. And it's this flurry of bets on the under for Malik Beasley. Rebounds again, a prop bet in that Bucks Blazers game on January 31, 2024. So what is the real story with that particular example then? Right.

[Tom Haberstroh]

The key thing here is that the line was at two and a half rebounds in that game where all this unusual betting activity is coming in on the under. Guess what happens? Malik Beasley gets six rebounds.

[Pablo Torre]

So the bet is Malik Beasley is going to tank. This very tankable category. Just not going to try. I mean, and instead, he has one of the better rebounding games of his season.

[Amin El Hasan]

He's busting his ass. You look at the film, he's busting his ass trying to get every rebound imaginable. He looks like Charles Barkley out there.

[Pablo Torre]

Again on our YouTube channel, which you should be at already. Like, we're going through the video here. You can see it this is the.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Crazy part of this story is even the betting activity on johntay Porter, those cashed because he left the games early, right? And all the alleged co conspirators were betting the Unders, and John Tay Porter was taking himself out of these games, effectively clinching the Unders, and those bets were cashing. The opposite happened. And Malik Beasley, he's out on the perimeter defending his man. The shot goes up and he sprints from across the floor to go haul in a rebound on the other side of the floor over Deandre Ayton, who's 7ft tall, and he's making multiple efforts trying to get these rebounds. You would have thought that the betting activity was on the other side based on what Malik Beasley's behaviors in this game is. It is so contradictory to the betting activity, to what he actually did in the game.

[Amin El Hasan]

If the guy was on the take, he was awful at being on the take.

[Pablo Torre]

And the through line here when it comes to this part of the story, right, is that it's actually Tom, really hard to find evidence in this category, at least of malfeasance in Milwaukee, right? His buck's tenure on tape, when he. When you grind all of it, you don't see the giant smoking gun. It kind of becomes clear, actually that at this point in our journey, the. The most important publicly accessible evidence available to us was not going to come from the Bucks. It was going to have to come.

[Tom Haberstroh]

From a moose.

[Pablo Torre]

So the mystery, right, the mystery we've been teasing of how in the hell some random Twitter user had predicted six months before the Malik Beasley news broke that Malik Beasley was going to become the third NBA player investigated for gambling. This brings us to, I would say, one immediate problem when it comes to contacting an account whose avatar happens to be a stuffed toy moose wearing a little blue sweater with an NBA logo on the front that is also trapped behind bars, like in a jail cell, right? This is Free Moose, underscore NBA Tom.

[Tom Haberstroh]

And the only way we could do that is to go on a moose hunt. Going on a moose hunt. Not a silly goose hunt.

[Pablo Torre]

Every parent knows I don't know that song. But speaking of stuff that gets stuck in your head, as we had established, Free moosenva deleted his Twitter account and disappeared entirely, which is a problem here. But here's the thing. The tweets that tagged Free moosenba are still around. And after scrolling through a thousand orphaned replies and direct messaging a few of those posters, it became clear that Free Moosemba used to go by Another handle Oosenba. But Oosenba got suspended by Twitter at one point. Hence the call for freedom.

[Amin El Hasan]

This is the original Moose NBA account. And the bio says NBA takes you can get behind Meme coin expert. And then my favorite emoji stock chart going up.

[Pablo Torre]

And then deep inside a haystack of hundreds upon hundreds of truly useless tweets that tagged moosemba, Tom found a needle. A needle posted by a self described LeBron fan account.

[Tom Haberstroh]

This one caught my eye because it not only tagged and at Moose underscore NBA, but it also tagged a second.

[Amin El Hasan]

Account, underscore Mustafa, underscore Omar. So he says, yo underscore Mustafa, underscore Omar your got suspended wtf Question mark, question mark no. And then he tags at Moose underscore.

[Pablo Torre]

NBA heartbreak emoji, which I think takes us to what Moose might actually be referring to as a mean is again nailing the pronunciation, because I suppose it means that some Mustafas also might go by Moose.

[Amin El Hasan]

The most common nickname of anybody with an Arabic name is if your name's Muhammad, probably people are going to call you Mo. If your name's Mustafa, probably people are going to call you Moose. Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

But the problem with underscore Mustafa, underscore Omar, as you can tell, is that this account didn't exist anymore either. But when you searched for that specific handle, MustafaOmar on Elon Musk's deeply broken platform, something interesting happened. An even weirder account kept popping up, and this one was actively tweeting about the Knicks. This was at 1-237-474-84849 lowercase A.

[Amin El Hasan]

This is the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible latex mask of Twitter, right? We're just like numbers. They'll never guess who it is.

[Pablo Torre]

But if you obsessively scroll through the tweet sent by at 123-747-4849 lowercase A. Long enough, it turns out, you can stumble across another clue, another needle. And this one was a reply to another former PTFO guest, WorldWideWab Rob Perez, a crucial node on the Knicks social graph on Twitter because Rob was running a promo where the prize was assigned Jalen Brunson Jersey. And when 123-747-4849 lowercase A replied to wob and included the screenshot of his personal account on a fantasy sports crypto platform as proof. There it was in full clarity. For the first time. We had traced Free moosenba, the account that prophesied that Malik Beasley would be the next player named as part of a federal sports gambling investigation to a government name Mustafa Omar. But now we needed a face. What we then did was we found the same Mustafa Omar account on Facebook and also on Instagram and the latter two, Facebook and Instagram. You see young man, trimmed beard, blue top that happens to be a Carmelo Anthony Knicks jersey.

[Amin El Hasan]

How about that?

[Tom Haberstroh]

One of the DMS that I sent in the past couple weeks, I was trying to get to the bottom of this story and one of the sources sent us a screenshot of a since deleted post from Moose NBA himself, which showed the same exact young man with a trim beard posting a selfie video while trying on a Knicks varsity jacket at a store. And the caption says here Nick's jacket, do we like or nah, only $75 lol.

[Amin El Hasan]

But Tom, why would someone save a screenshot of a deleted selfie video about a jacket, should he buy it or not for 75 bucks?

[Tom Haberstroh]

Because a lot of people do not like Moose NBA because of what happened next. This brings us back to the original bio of Moose, NBA meme coin expert. But there was this other thing. We found another Twitter account which tagged Moose underscore NBA in the bio. The header photo is just piles of cash, piles and piles, like a cartoonish amount of cash just as the banner photo. So this account is called Moose and Boulders Picks and this account sells, you guessed it, sports betting picks.

[Pablo Torre]

Which takes us to a tweet again dated Thanksgiving is 2024 when this account posted, quote, join the discord and forever be etched in the most transparent and successful sports betting discord there is.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Turns out Pablo, that at least a couple of people who had been in this sports betting discord, they were not thrilled with its level of transparency or by the way, how good it was.

[Amin El Hasan]

So you're saying they didn't make a huge pile of money like the banner would indicated?

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, in fact, what happens next is that we obtained another screenshot from yet another member of this discord, which again is basically like a paywalled group chat. And this screenshot shows our guy Moose also using the Discord to convince people to buy a meme coin that he calls the nca. The NCA stands for National Coin Association.

[Tom Haberstroh]

According to one screenshot, Moose had tweeted again around Thanksgiving 2024 quote, I had an idea recently to make an NBA branded crypto coin. The idea was to make a discord community incentivized around the coin, have a nice GC like group chat to talk hoops, gambling and crypto. The coin was dumped out by bots I went down with the ship. This account says sacrificed $6,700.

[Pablo Torre]

And to all of this, one account replies, quote, it's called a pump and dump, my guy. You knew what was going on here, end quote. This thing that we're looking at is the sort of business that would theoretically incentivize its owner to prove that he somehow has access to money, to inside information when it comes to sports betting picks, which he's selling. On this side hustle thing, it would help if you were running such a business to be the guy who was, let's say, ahead on the Johnte Porter news, ahead of the Malik Beasley news, and maybe even ahead of both of those things before, not just the Internet or the media, but again, the Detroit Pistons themselves, right?

[Tom Haberstroh]

And so we're trying to follow the money. And when you follow that money and you follow that one, 237-47-484849A account. And look at the replies. The artist formerly known as Mustafa Omar is repeatedly bragging and sending people the screenshot of Free Moose himself predicting the prophecy. The Malik Beasley News. So he's out here in this anonymous account saying, hey, hey, hey, don't forget about this thing.

[Amin El Hasan]

This is insane. You guys understand that? It's like he, like, like, like. Let me. Let me see if I can follow the logic here. He's like, hey, you should trust me because I have the inside scoop on what bets are going to hit.

[Pablo Torre]

What?

[Amin El Hasan]

Well, how do you have that? Well, because I know they're cheating. The whole point is. Oh, I know not. I know because they're fixing it.

[Pablo Torre]

And so as we're scrolling through these brags, right? This is the reporting process. We're scrolling through these brags. Brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag. I had a question that occurs to me as I'm just seeing this happen over and over again. And the question for Tom was, if you were to slide into those dms, Tom, do you think Mustafa Omar might actually want to talk?

[Tom Haberstroh]

What's going on?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Nothing much, my man.

[Tom Haberstroh]

How we doing on this fine Tuesday?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Not too bad. I'm. I'm busy at work, but not too bad. I took a little time off.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Oh, yeah? What's. What's work for you?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

I am a manager at an auto collision shop.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Okay, very cool. And where's that at? In New York somewhere.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Well, cool. So thanks for getting back to me. We're doing, like this story on Malik Beasley and your moose stuff came across when we were like, going into the story and so finally connecting with you is great. And so thank you for, for picking up.

[Pablo Torre]

I love Tom's. Just like, what level of bro am I doing here with crypto gambler guy?

[Tom Haberstroh]

You can hear like, my. My throat is getting dry. Like, I can't believe this guy is talking.

[Pablo Torre]

It's incredible. I mean, it's just. I mean, what are you.

[Tom Haberstroh]

How are you doing on this fine Tuesday? Like, what are you talking?

[Pablo Torre]

The most journalistic, tried and true method of knocking on the front door.

[Tom Haberstroh]

So what I find out is that he's in his 20s, he is a Knicks fan. Not just a Knicks fan. He is a Knicks super fan. And he goes to Madison Square Garden and everything.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Yeah, a bunch of times.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Who would you say is your favorite Knicks player of all time?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Gotta be mellow.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Carmelo Anthony.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Yeah, he's got to be mellow.

[Tom Haberstroh]

But even more than that, when it comes to NBA Twitter, this guy says he's very well connected.

[Pablo Torre]

Mustafa Omar likes finding out stuff too.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Yeah, I mean, I go by Moose. I know a bunch of people involved in the NBA space. So if I ever have any questions, I'll be able to eventually get them answered. The way that, like, you're a reporter and you go and you ask your questions to everybody and you try to get whatever. I kind of do the same. I just do just good research as well. I'm a stats guy. I was giving out stats and stuff that people wouldn't normally think of. My first ever post was a playoff scenario chart. Very similar to the one that NBA PR account on Twitter posted, but mine was a day before. And then theirs looked identical to mine, which was very funny. So everybody kind of called out the fact that the NBA PR account basically ripped off my scenario chart and I started growing my account relatively quickly. Got suspended, not sure why till this day. Made a second account. That one also got suspended. And now I'm kind of just off the grid of it because my accounts keep getting suspended.

[Amin El Hasan]

Did he ever find out why he was getting suspended?

[Tom Haberstroh]

Well, he says he doesn't know I.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Was asked, like, the most family friendly account either. I'm sure I said some things that people are gonna take to liking sometimes. I'm sure that's possible.

[Pablo Torre]

I do like at this point how this guy is kind of all three of us in one person. He loves finding stuff out. He loves stats. He loves talking on Twitter unapologetically like a bean.

[Tom Haberstroh]

And he is the sort of guy, again, who wants people to know that he knows things, including a forthcoming report about Malik BEASLEY. So on January 30, 2025, the same day that the federal investigation into Terry Rozier was announced, he tweets that thing out, the prophecy of Malik Beasley.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

I mean, I. I just did it to be a little cryptic. I. I knew nobody would believe it, but obviously it's fine. I. I just put it out there just to be a little, like, cryptic from when it did come out, people could look back at it the way that they did when the news that came out.

[Tom Haberstroh]

But how did you come across the. The Malik Beasley info?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people in the. In the basketball, in the gambling space. So, you know, work does get around. Eventually it gets to me from people that I know, obviously, people I'm not gonna, like, sit here and name. But I do have people that. That do know a lot about, you know, the gambling ring and NBA and stuff. And I didn't know about Beasley during when he was actually doing it.

[Tom Haberstroh]

And just to be clear here, that's Moose talking, right? He's saying Malik Beasley did it. That's not us saying that.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

I found out this past January 2025, and obviously now they are suffering having to let him walk in free agency and replace him with somebody like Duncan Rock Robinson, who's not even close to the caliber player that I thought Malik Beasley was this year.

[Pablo Torre]

Damn. Whoa.

[Amin El Hasan]

Yo, this is one of my favorite things. Whenever we're doing content Pablo, in my mind, Duncan Robinson sitting back like, huh? A new episode of Pablo. Tory finds out. Let me watch. And he hears that. Like, what I do, I get on.

[Tom Haberstroh]

So when I asked Mustafa Omar, who told him about Malik Beasley specifically, he kept claiming that this was something he saw on Reddit, which was kind of strange.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

This is something that was dug up from Reddit. I mean, everything that I found and I tweet about, I only tweet about it because I find it publicly first.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I know people, I know things. But also, I saw this on Reddit again.

[Pablo Torre]

Of course, we Madea's family reunion. This. We scanned through everything we could find on Reddit looking for a hidden Malik Beasley. Where is Malik Beasley? Here? We could find nothing resembling this prediction. And of course, by the way, to state the obvious again, if this was publicly noted anywhere, then we would have probably heard about it in the way that we heard about this tweet. It would have gone viral. It would have been surfaced. The prophecy would have been someone else's and not Moose's.

[Amin El Hasan]

Can I play Devil's advocate and say none of us knew Malik Beasley's dad and his mom and his grandfather were all actors.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, it's fair point.

[Pablo Torre]

Fair 1% seeded doubt to put into this.

[Tom Haberstroh]

So then I started asking Mustafa Omar moose about the Johntay Porter FanDuel betting slip that he posted, which again was placed on January 22, 2020, four months before the Johnta Porter investigation was ever public. Now, when I asked him about this, he became casier than he'd been at any point in our conversation.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

I said I don't know much about the slip. Like I said, it was just sent to me from someone.

[Tom Haberstroh]

But he said it was sent to him from someone else. It wasn't his betting slip. He just happened to get it and then post it onto his account. And this is where we should mention something we have not yet told Moose, which is that deep in our reporting, we found yet another screenshot. Yes, another one from Moose's private paywall discord, where he was trying to drum up business for his next meme, Coin, the sequel, not just National Coin association, which he apparently, you know, lost his shirt on the goal, this time, a quote, over 100 million market cap, end quote. And on November 27, 2024, he wrote explicitly, quote, this next project is going to have people involved that no other project would even be able to get their hands on. Some names that I can't even legally mention because they made so much money off a certain NBA gambling incident last season and are facing trials, but they will be involved in this.

[Amin El Hasan]

So hold on, at this point in time, November 2024, the only gambling incident known confirmed in the NBA is John Tay Porter.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes, in the Dante Porter story, the feds found this deeply sloppy private telegram chat. And the most memorable character in Jontay Porter's group chats was the owner of a deli, I mean, on Roosevelt island here in our city of New York. And this deli owner, who I mentioned at the top of the episode, was not merely a person that Jonte Porter owed, quote, significant gambling debts to, according to federal prosecutors. I also remember this deli owner as a New Yorker because he had been previously embroiled in a scandal of a different kind. And this is the scandal that involved an unhoused woman who fell into the subway tracks as the F train was approaching. And as a result, she lost both of her legs. This woman sued, wound up settling with the MTA, which runs the New York City subway, for $4 million. The person that she trusted to cash one of her final settlement checks for around $800,000, according to these legal documents, happens to be this same deli owner, what the. By the name of Amar Awade. And Amar allegedly took that check, the city's payback, to again, a homeless, legless, wheelchair bound woman who was also suffering from mental illness. He took that check to his friend who was a bank manager, and then they got the $800,000 deposited into the account of his deli, which Amar denied in court in a case that was eventually dismissed, although he did admit that $80,000 did wind up in his personal account. So prosecutors, for the record here, alleged that he spent the woman's money on, quote, gambling trips and wedding expenses, including a bachelor party in Las Vegas and honeymooning in Turks and Caicos.

[Tom Haberstroh]

This is as dark as it gets.

[Pablo Torre]

This story.

[Amin El Hasan]

I missed the part where we were talking about Larsa Pippen. Things. Things were so light hearted back then.

[Pablo Torre]

What I want our audience to know is that what I started doing at this point was comb through every publicly accessible social media profile we had ever found for our guy Moose. And while looking through the names of the people that Mustafa Omar is friends with on Facebook, I found one extremely familiar name.

[Amin El Hasan]

Let me guess, Ammar Awadeh.

[Pablo Torre]

Nailing this pronunciation.

[Tom Haberstroh]

God damn it, that was good.

[Amin El Hasan]

So he's not lying when he says, I'm connected with a guy who's involved in the NBA's gambling incident.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes, a certain NBA gambling incident. There, in fact, is a connection. We have just verified that they are literal Facebook friends. And furthermore, what I did with my life was I naturally plunged further into the Amar Awade rabbit hole. And this one brought me to a source that I encountered here in New York City who knew him from back when they were both frequenting these allegedly illegal private poker games in Manhattan around five to eight years ago. And my source says that this game that they were playing in actually took place in a private apartment. This is how this worked. Residential building, top floor, just blocks away from Madison Square Garden. Actually, it has since moved, but that's where it was at the time. And it's a sort of game where the minimum buy in is $2,500, aka the monthly allotment for weed, according to the trap rules that we encountered before. There is no maximum, it turns out, and it's otherwise full of lawyers and doctors and hedge fund managers and also, according to my source, several of the names on those Jonte Porter Group chats who also wound up getting arrested. One of those Porter associates who got arrested was a dealer at this poker game. I am told another dealer who went by the name Bruce, and both of those guys obviously also got arrested, ensnared in this probe. Anyhow, when I showed my source to again fact check this profile, this Facebook profile of Amar Awade, what he immediately said without any knowledge of any of this episode. I didn't mention Mustafa Omar and how they're friends or anything. I showed him this photo and my source just immediately laughs over the phone and he identifies him as. Oh yeah, I. I have stories about this guy. And what my source told me is that even after Amar was identified as being involved in the Johnte Porter investigation, remember Dante Porter was banned for Life from the NBA. As of April 2024, Amar was still texting people trying to set up poker games. Quote from my source, I do remember thinking, is he so arrogant that he thinks he's above this? End quote. This takes us directly back to the phone call that Tom was having with the guy who loves Carmelo Anthony, who is Facebook friends with Amar, who had also just been telling you, Tom, I believe the following about the Jontay Porter betting slip screenshot that he tweeted out back in January of 2024.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

I said I don't know much about the slip. Like I said, it was just sent to me from someone.

[Tom Haberstroh]

But so here I had to do the most important thing in this conversation. I had to ask Moose about his connection to Amar directly. Are you friends with or do you know Amar Awade?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

No.

[Tom Haberstroh]

No.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Okay.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Because I saw that your Facebook friends with Amar, and so I figured maybe that was somehow you could. You were associated with him.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

No.

[Pablo Torre]

That's it.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Just no. Like, this guy's been super chatty this whole time. And when I bring up Amar Awade. Just one word. No. Which brings us back to the Facebook profile of Omar. Another photo that you can see on it at the top, the banner photo. It's a bit blurry. It's like someone is taking the photo from way back in the 300 section and it's kind of zoomed in. At the center of this photo is a guy who looks like Amar standing courtside on the baseline at Madison Square Garden. And what's important here is that in this moment, this person is also dapping up a tall black dude dressed in all yellow, a yellow sweater with matching yellow shorts, wearing a baseball cap. The photo was uploaded. You can see it on the Facebook profile. The photo was uploaded on April 23, 2024. So this is during the 2024 NBA playoffs. So what do you do? You go to the game logs, you go to Basketball reference schedule and results. You click just to see if the Knicks were playing anytime around that date on April 23, 2024. And you can see on that date in the Knicks schedule, April 22, they beat the Philadelphia 76ers in an extremely dramatic game at the Garden.

[Pablo Torre]

Bernstein gets it out to Anunoby DiVincenzo at three. Bang, bang.

[Amin El Hasan]

Knicks take a one point lead with 13 seconds remaining.

[Pablo Torre]

The Garden is shaking right now. What an incredible sequence. Rule of three, Rule of three. So I just got to jump in here to point out that this game at Madison Square Garden happened five days after Jonte Porter got banned for life from the NBA, which means that it also happened while the feds were actively investigating Amar Awade, who was standing right there courtside for his role in that same historic gambling scandal. And now, when you pull multiple angles on this specific play, what you can clearly see in retrospect is the identity of the tall black dude in all yellow, his name, when Amar Awade is dapping up in his Facebook banner photo after arguably the greatest play in modern Knicks history. Because, of course, it's Moose's goat, Carmelo Anthony.

[Amin El Hasan]

Amazing.

[Pablo Torre]

He looks jubilant. He couldn't. It looks like he's the happiest day of his. I mean, look, you can really appreciate, by the way, that just a thread count on this yellow sweater in this photograph, and even on the broadcast, you can tell this is, I mean, looking great. All of which reminded us of something, something we had found pretty early on in our search for any tweet that had tagged Moosemba. We had found an angle of this play of the three from the baseline shot off a cell phone. And the video credit was, quote, courtesy Moose.

[Amin El Hasan]

NBA, get the out of here.

[Pablo Torre]

It's right there. Right there on the right side of your screen. This is the thing that hit us literally as we were sitting down to tape today.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Now, let's watch this same play from the Madison Square Garden camera that's looking straight out at the basket. So you can see the full baseline. And let's zoom in.

[Amin El Hasan]

Enhance. Give me a little bit more. Can we get a little. A little bit more of a zoom there?

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, my.

[Amin El Hasan]

You see that? See the guy in blue right there?

[Pablo Torre]

And after countless more hours of Twitter and Facebook searching, we realized something. The guy sitting next to Amar Awade, who's pictured holding his cell phone, which I can only assume is the cell phone he used to shoot the video of that Dante DiVincenzo3 had actually identified himself on Twitter by name as the guy who taped it and sent it to moosenba. And we saw this because Cell Phone guy, it turns out, was beefing with Barstool Sports, which had aggregated the video without giving either of them credit. And by now, as a student of the rule of three, Tom easily recognized Cell Phone Guy. He was a third person. We had noticed while combing through various Facebook albums, a person better known as Amar's brother, Omar Awade. And even though Moose denied even knowing Amar to Tom, we found more pictures, pictures of all three of these guys. Graduations, parties, weddings. We even found a video of Omar wearing a Sprewell jersey going to a Knicks game with Moose, who was wearing a Carmelo Anthony jersey that by now all of us had seen a lot. What's up, everybody?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

It's your boy Omar, the newest member of spectators.

[Amin El Hasan]

On my way to the Knicks game.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

You see me decked out in this?

[Pablo Torre]

Pretty well. Had to do it to him. Magic is in town.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

Just smoked him by 30, about to smoke him by another 30.

[Pablo Torre]

And I'm on the way. Come run with me. At which point it became clear that Moose, NBA Twitter's Malik Beasley prophet, was more than just Facebook friends with alleged Jaunte Porter co conspirator Amar Awade. Moose was his relative, his cousin, meaning we had literally gone from Medea's family reunion to Mustafa's. This is where it takes us back now to the legal documents as we try to connect all the dots here. Right, so generally observing the following in the John Tay Porter legal documents, quote, a relative of the defendant, Amar Awade, whose identity is known to me, placed a $10,000 parlay bet through betting company One on the under for player ones, three pointers, assists and steals. It goes on to talk about how the relative won $85,000, netting a profit of $75,000. And so just saying that Amar Awade, in terms of the information he was sharing, who he was bringing in to the thing he was already caught up in. We don't know which family member it is. They're anonymous, according to federal prosecutors. But family is literally mentioned in the federal investigation a number of times.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I had to follow up with Mustafa to make sure he had his story straight on this. So I asked him again, you did not get information on Malik Beasley from Amar Awade, who is part of the Porter case?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

No, like I said, I got it off of Reddit.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Do you have that Reddit forum that you got it from that you could show me?

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

I could probably find it, yeah. Would you be fine with me searching it and then getting it to you on Twitter?

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great.

[Mustafa Omar (Moose NBA)]

All right, let's do that song.

[Amin El Hasan]

Despite the preponderance of evidence from his own posts and his own brags to having a connection to someone in this, he claims zero knowledge and that he got it from. He got it from Reddit.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, he said he got it from Reddit and it was public. And after I hung up with Mustafa Omar, who promised me to hit me back on Twitter and send that Reddit post that would clear him of all of this and just say, hey, they had it. It wasn't me. What happened next was I logged back into my Twitter account and I DMed him back a reminder being like, hey, yeah, if you can just grab that Reddit post and send it back to me.

[Pablo Torre]

Bloop.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I got an error message. Net error message said, message not sent. Sending direct message failed. I thought my Internet was down. Or that he turned off his DMs, but nope, nope, guys, he had shut.

[Pablo Torre]

Down his account at 123-747-4849, lowercase A. We hardly knew ye.

[Tom Haberstroh]

And so I was like, you know what? I'm gonna check his Facebook profile, and guess what? That two guys was taken down seconds after we got off that phone. All of it gone.

[Pablo Torre]

Unfortunately for Moose, we also love screenshots. So this is. This is the part where we need to just sort of, like, take a step back, maybe breathe, just think about what it is that we're finding out here today. Because the timeline has the Jontay Porter betting slip, right? This is now what Moose had posted. That was dated what, Tom?

[Tom Haberstroh]

The betting slip. If you look at it closely, it says January 22, 2024. Okay. The game won in the Johnte porter case came four days later, January 26th. So that's important here, because this actually predates that game one.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is to say, I mean, that what we are circling here, what we've been exhaustively reporting here actually is ostensibly an expansion of the scope that the Eastern District of New York, the U.S. attorney's office, had published, which started four days after this. But here we have all of these connections to indicate that actually the dude who's ensnared in that thing, Amar, is connected to the dude who posted this thing from four days before that.

[Tom Haberstroh]

So, remember, we have the betting slip January 22nd. We have game one of this inquiry with the feds on January 26th. Then five days later, we get a flurry of unusual betting activity on Malik Beasley's unders for his two and a half rebounds at a. At a sports book that flagged this to ESPN. So we have within less than 10 days, the betting slip, the first Johnte Porter game, and the Malik Beasley game. We have to note the timeline here that this January 31st game is. It's not like a random game in terms of the timeline of things. It puts it within basically a week.

[Pablo Torre]

It's all when this stuff was happening. In our example, again, of the rule of three, this is how this all was unfolding. What we've established in that timeline is that there are some things that are documented and undeniable and confirmed in terms of, yes, connecting or at the very least, moving the dots close together. They are all conspicuously proximate to each other. And by the way, we've also been making calls about Malik Beasley. Malik Beasley's attorney, Steve Haney. Tom, he did send us a statement. Right.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Here's the statement from Steve Haney. Presuming someone is guilty when they haven't been charged with the crime, let alone convicted, is a dangerous narrative. The mere allegations have caused irreparable harm to Malik's image, reputation and career.

[Pablo Torre]

The note I want to get to at the end here, by the way, is that when it comes to. So what explains all of this? Right. Our investigation continues. It does. It continues because we have reason to believe that these are not coincidences, that these are connections. We have reason to believe that when it comes to unusual betting action coming in on an under, Malik Beasley winds up hitting the over pretty hard through his level of hunger and play. But you also have moose and Amar and this Facebook friendship and these details and these pictures courtside, that we should not say what we are tempted to, but we should present, in the words of Denzel Washington in two guns. One thing might be important for everybody going forward. Tell us about your trip. Lawyer. What's the big deal? Lawyer.

[Amin El Hasan]

Then the DA know about you and Papi Glover?

[Pablo Torre]

Lawyer. Lawyer.

[Amin El Hasan]

They know you were at his ranch.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I know I need a lawyer.

[Pablo Torre]

And on that note, this is where I should probably mention that the lawyer for Amar Awade, who is currently on house arrest, declined comment to PTFO, as did the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York, which is an entity that I now wonder about, too. Because what I found out today is that our moose hunt has actually expanded the FBI's scope of the Johnte Porter scandal, the betting scandal, beyond what the government itself has been able to publicly establish at least. And we have connected it now to the prophecy of the Malik Beasley investigation. If not Malik Beasley noted, garbage time, God himself. But maybe my biggest takeaway here as we try to square that particular circle concerns what it really takes to investigate a scandal like this in the age of legalized sports gambling. And legalized sports gambling is obviously everywhere now. DraftKings was the sponsor of this show for the first year and a half of our existence. They remain the major partner to Meadowlark Media, and to their credit, by the way, they want to catch bad actors. They are incentivized to try and flag those suspicious bits of betting activity. That's how a lot of this stuff is being caught in real time. And yet this age has spawned a wave of conflicting incentives and new vulnerabilities. And this general confluence, in the words of Moose's discord of hoops, gambling and crypto. Which means that I am left here at the end, presenting my Internet brained, exhausted friends Tom and Amin with a disturbing truth about ourselves, the characters everybody needed to study this entire time. We're on the place that we all say we want to leave but clearly haven't.

[Amin El Hasan]

NBA, Twitter, the Godfather 3 every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in.

[Pablo Torre]

The rule of the Godfather 3 this has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Sa.