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

Summary

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

Release Date: July 18, 2025
Podcast: The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hosts: Dan Le Batard, Stugotz

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1. Introduction to the Investigation (00:00 - 02:34)

The episode kicks off with the hosts, Dan Le Batard and his crew, setting the stage for a deep dive into one of the NBA's most perplexing gambling scandals. They introduce the core subject: Malik Beasley, a Detroit Pistons guard embroiled in allegations of betting on NBA games during the 2023-2024 season, mirroring the earlier scandal involving Jontay Porter.

Notable Quote:
"This is the place for original content from Le Batard and Stugotz, including the daily 'Local Hour' generally focusing on the South Florida scene."
— Dan Le Batard [00:28]

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2. Background on Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier (02:34 - 05:29)

The hosts recount the infamous case of Jontay Porter, a Toronto Raptor who was banned for life from the NBA for conspiring to commit wire fraud alongside deli owner Amar Awadeh and other gamblers. They then shift focus to Terry Rozier, a Detroit Pistons guard, who became the second player under federal investigation for similar gambling activities.

Notable Quote:
"Malik Beasley is one of the greatest... in NBA history except for Steph Curry."
— Unnamed Correspondent [07:29]

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3. The Mysterious "Free Moose_NBA" (05:29 - 16:56)

A significant portion of the episode delves into the enigmatic Twitter user "Free Moose_NBA," who reportedly predicted Malik Beasley's involvement in the gambling scandal months before it became public knowledge. The hosts explore the timeline of tweets, the disappearance of the account, and attempts to trace the individual's identity, uncovering connections to Mustafa Omar, a Knicks superfan with ties to Amar Awadeh.

Notable Quote:
"If it's local police, you've got a... 50, 50 chance against the government."
— Pablo Torre [05:25]

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4. Malik Beasley's Personal History and Legal Troubles (16:56 - 26:46)

The discussion shifts to Malik Beasley's background, highlighting his Hollywood lineage—his parents are actors, and his grandfather appeared in notable films like Some of All Fears and The Mighty Ducks. The hosts recount a critical incident from 2020 when Beasley threatened a visiting crowd with a rifle, leading to a police search of his home where multiple weapons and a significant amount of marijuana were found. Despite signing a lucrative contract shortly after, Beasley's career began to unravel amidst legal troubles and mounting lawsuits.

Notable Quote:
"Sometimes Malik wants what we have, and so he's in a rush to get it."
— Michael Beasley (Pablo's account of Malik's father) [21:49]

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5. Unveiling the Betting Activity (26:46 - 31:38)

The hosts analyze a specific game on January 31, 2024, where unusual betting activity was detected on Malik Beasley's rebounds. Contrary to the bets predicting poor performance, Beasley excelled, outperforming expectations. This paradox raises questions about the legitimacy of the betting patterns and suggests possible manipulation.

Notable Quote:
"Malik Beasley shot 62% effective field goal percentage... in garbage time situations."
— Unnamed Correspondent [27:26]

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6. Connecting the Dots: Free Moose and Amar Awadeh (31:38 - 42:38)

Through meticulous investigation, the hosts uncover that "Free Moose_NBA" is linked to Mustafa Omar, who is Facebook friends with Amar Awadeh. Omar, a passionate Knicks fan, operates under multiple aliases and is heavily involved in sports betting communities, including promoting meme coins and sports betting picks. The investigation reveals that Omar and Amar have deep ties to the gambling ring implicated in the NBA scandals.

Notable Quote:
"You have to be the guy who was ahead on the Jontay Porter news, ahead of the Malik Beasley news."
— Pablo Torre [33:30]

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7. The Expanded Scope of the Investigation (42:38 - 73:23)

The episode culminates in connecting multiple facets of the scandal, including gambling activities, social media manipulation, and financial transactions. The hosts emphasize the complexity of investigating such cases in the era of legalized sports gambling, highlighting the conflicting incentives and vulnerabilities that arise. They also discuss the implications of their findings on the integrity of the NBA and the broader sports community.

Notable Quote:
"Malik Beasley's attorney, Steve Haney, stated... 'Presuming someone is guilty when they haven't been charged with the crime... is a dangerous narrative.'"
— Unnamed Correspondent [72:05]

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8. Conclusion and Ongoing Investigation (73:23 - End)

In wrapping up, the hosts reflect on the intricate web of relationships and actions that have led to the current state of the scandal. They acknowledge that their investigation has revealed deeper connections than initially apparent, suggesting a need for ongoing scrutiny into the intersection of sports, gambling, and online communities.

Notable Quote:
"Legalized sports gambling... has spawned a wave of conflicting incentives and new vulnerabilities."
— Pablo Torre [72:23]

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Key Insights & Takeaways

• Complex Web of Connections: The Malik Beasley gambling scandal is intricately linked to previous cases involving Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier, with key figures like Amar Awadeh playing pivotal roles.

• Role of Social Media: The mysterious "Free Moose_NBA" account serves as a critical node in the dissemination of insider information, raising concerns about the role of social platforms in facilitating illegal activities.

• Impact of Legalized Gambling: While legalized sports gambling has increased oversight and detection of suspicious activities, it has also introduced new avenues for manipulation and illicit behavior.

• Media Responsibility: The episode underscores the importance of responsible reporting and the dangers of presuming guilt based on allegations, highlighting statements from legal representatives advocating for due process.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz offers a comprehensive and investigative look into a major NBA gambling scandal, blending detailed research with engaging storytelling. The hosts effectively unravel complex connections, providing listeners with a nuanced understanding of the events shaping the sports gambling landscape.

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.

[Tom Haberstroh]

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 that.

[Pablo Torre]

I know right after this ad on WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. My name is Happy Gilmore. I haven't swung a club in years. You know what you gotta do?

[Amin El Hasan]

Grip it and rip it or.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, now that is some Happy Gilmore. Everyone is talking about the comeback kid. Happy Gilmore. Happy name. Yeah baby. Abby Gilmore the second of only on Netflix July 25th rated PT13 may be inappropriate for children under 13. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for a 3 month plan equivalent to 15 doll required. New customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed slow after 35gb of network's busy taxes and fees extra c mint mobile.com I have slept for like 4 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

It's great to be here.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so the reason I am voltroning 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, 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 from one of the NBA's top free agents.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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]

Oh, this is FBI. This isn't local.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

This is FBI.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, this is under federal investigation. Oh, listen, brother, look, I know one.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Thing for certain, two things for sure. If it's local police, you've got a.

[Amin El Hasan]

50, 50 chance against the government.

[Pablo Torre]

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, 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, unusually heavy betting interest.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

On Beasley statistics beginning around January 2024. This was when Malik Beasley was actually with the Milwaukee Bucks. And that was one game. January 31, 2024, 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Pablo Torre]

Which Malik Beasley 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Right?

[Pablo Torre]

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 an employee at the store. Nice to meet you, bro. What up, though?

[Amin El Hasan]

Oh, what's going on, bro?

[Tom Haberstroh]

That's crazy. What you looking for?

[Amin El Hasan]

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

[Pablo Torre]

You got time, huh?

[Tom Haberstroh]

Turn the up.

[Pablo Torre]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Pablo Torre]

And that's 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 Clipper, 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

You might remember that on January 30, 2025, a few months ago, this news broke. Now to a developing story. The NBA confirmed Thursday that suspicious gambling.

[Pablo Torre]

Activity surrounding guard Terry Rozier in a.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Game nearly two years ago is now.

[Pablo Torre]

Being investigated by federal prosecutors as a.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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. 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 3.

[Pablo Torre]

Jonte Rozier M stars, B stars.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 rule of.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 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. Fifteen views on that.

[Pablo Torre]

It's incredible. I mean, this. This time capsule, which is almost six. Six months before the news breaks, right? On the eve of reagency, 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 shit 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 John Tay 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 Johnte 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 moosenba? How did a random Twitter user on NBA Twitter know about both John 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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. That Was good. That was good, papa.

[Pablo Torre]

I just need people to know this is a story involves not just removes 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.

[Amin El Hasan]

Bertenstein gets it out to Anunoby DiVincenzo at three.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Bang bang.

[Pablo Torre]

Knicks take a one point lead with 13 seconds remaining.

[Amin El Hasan]

The Garden is shaking right now and none of you will ever look at that play the same way again.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Foreign.

[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 both actors. His mom has had small roles in Tyler Perry movies, in the Hunger Games, in Bad Lieutenant Portal, with the aforementioned Nicholas Cage.

[Pablo Torre]

When was the last time you saw her?

[Amin El Hasan]

I see her that morning. I go by in case she need anything.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

But that morning she said she needs.

[Amin El Hasan]

Something from the grocery and she called there and had it delivered by a.

[Pablo Torre]

Boy to her home.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Help me, please.

[Amin El Hasan]

Please help my family. Kill her for my family.

[Pablo Torre]

Please, sir.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Help me. Help.

[Amin El Hasan]

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 Atlanta. And he and Denzel were together in the Great Debaters and Flight and Two Guns. Tell us about your trip, lawyer.

[Pablo Torre]

What's the big deal? Lawyer.

[Amin El Hasan]

You were down in Sonora, weren't you? You don't think Agent Jessup and the DA know about you and Poppy Boy?

[Pablo Torre]

Lawyer. Lawyer.

[Amin El Hasan]

You know, you were at his ranch.

[Pablo Torre]

I know. I need a lawyer.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Pablo Torre]

My job is to basically beat the out of you for the next five days. And whoever is still standing at the end, maybe we'll use for our scout teams. 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.

[Amin El Hasan]

Honestly. If you want to see me in.

[Pablo Torre]

The background, I'm an extra. Look in Madea's family reunion. What are 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.

[Amin El Hasan]

Dancing with my mom.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't think any show has ever investigated Madea's family reunion more thoroughly than 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. And we regret to report that we could not find this. We found no evidence of it. We are 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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. Now, if you're looking for something to.

[Pablo Torre]

Do this weekend that doesn't include large groups of people, how about taking a.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Drive to explore some of the beautiful.

[Pablo Torre]

Homes on the spring Parade of Holmes tour?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Yeah, there's 434 houses open noon to.

[Pablo Torre]

6 today and tomorrow.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 parade is not welcome. Here is the implication exactly Move along.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

And go, that was a mistake.

[Amin El Hasan]

Why do you think you didn't see it when I saw it?

[Pablo Torre]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Let me come see you.

[Pablo Torre]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 Madea'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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Right. 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, yeah, 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. It 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

This is the crazy part of this story is even the betting activity on Jontay 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 printer defending his man. The shot goes up and he sprints from across the floor, 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 or was not going to come from the bucks. It was going to have to come.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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[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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

And the only way we could do that is to go on a moose hunt. Going on a moose hunt.

[Pablo Torre]

Not a silly goose hunt. 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 handlenba. 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.

[Pablo Torre]

Going up and then deep Inside a haystack of hundreds upon hundreds of truly useless tweets that tagged moosenba, Tom found a needle. A needle posted by a self described LeBron fan account.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Amin El Hasan]

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 NBA heartbreak emoji.

[Pablo Torre]

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 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 123-747-484849, 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 tweets 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 1-237-474849, 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 Moosemba, 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

How about that, 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 underscore 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 Knicks 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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 moosenba in the bio. The header photo is just piles of cash, piles and piles. 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 ish 2024 when this account posted, quote join the discord and forever be etched in the most transparent and successful sports betting discord there is.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

And so we're trying to follow the money, and when you follow that money and you follow that 1-23-747-484849A account. And look at the replies. The artist formerly known as Mustafa Omar is repeatedly bragging and sending people the screenshot of. 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. 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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

What's going on?

[Tom Haberstroh]

Nothing much, my man.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

How we doing on this fine Tuesday?

[Tom Haberstroh]

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

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Tom Haberstroh]

I am a manager at an auto collision shop.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Okay.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Well, cool.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, bunch of times.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Tom Haberstroh]

Gotta be mellow.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Carmelo Anthony.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, it's got to be mellow.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, I mean, I go by Moose. I know a bunch of people involved in the NBA space. So if I grab any questions, I'm 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. 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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Well, he says he doesn't know.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I wasn't like the most family friendly account either. I'm sure I said some things that people are going to 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Tom Haberstroh]

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

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Tom Haberstroh]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Tom Haberstroh]

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 Army Robinson, who's not even close to the caliber player that I thought Malik Beasley was this year.

[Pablo Torre]

Damn.

[Amin El Hasan]

Damn.

[Pablo Torre]

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, oh, a new episode of Pablo. Tory finds out, Let me watch. And he hears that. Like, what I do, I get.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Tom Haberstroh]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Yeah, it's fair point.

[Pablo Torre]

Fair 1% seeded doubt to put into this.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Tom Haberstroh]

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

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 Jonte 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

This is as dark as it gets. 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

God damn it, that was good.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Unnamed Correspondent]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Pablo Torre]

You know that one friend who somehow knows everything about money? Yeah. Now imagine they live in your phone. Say hey to Experian, your big financial friend. It's the app that helps you check your FICO score, find ways to save, and basically feel like a financial genius. And guess what? It's totally free. So go on, download the Experian app. Trust me, having a BFF like this is a total game changer.

[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 the 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 Dante 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.

[Tom Haberstroh]

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

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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?

[Tom Haberstroh]

No.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

No.

[Tom Haberstroh]

No.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Tom Haberstroh]

No.

[Pablo Torre]

That'S it.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 Amara 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.

[Amin El Hasan]

Hartenstein gets it out to Anunoby DiVincenzo at three.

[Pablo Torre]

Bang, bang. Knicks take a one point lead with 13 seconds remaining.

[Tom Haberstroh]

The Garden is shaking right now.

[Amin El Hasan]

What an incredible season.

[Pablo Torre]

Rule of three, rule of three. So I just gotta jump in here to point out that this game at Madison Square Garden happened five days after Jontay Porter got banned for life from the NBA, which means that it also happened while the feds were actively investigating. Amar Awade 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, the same one 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

He looks jubilant.

[Tom Haberstroh]

He couldn't.

[Pablo Torre]

He looks like he's the happiest day of his. I mean, look, you can really appreciate, by the way, that just the 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 moosenba. 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 moosenba.

[Amin El Hasan]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 search, 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.

[Amin El Hasan]

What's up, everybody?

[Tom Haberstroh]

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

[Amin El Hasan]

On my way to the Knicks game.

[Tom Haberstroh]

You see me decked out in the super.

[Amin El Hasan]

Well, I had to do it to him.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Magic is in town, just smoked him.

[Amin El Hasan]

By 30, about to smoke him by another 30, and I'm on the way. Come run with me.

[Pablo Torre]

At which point it became clear that Moosemba, Twitter's Malik Beasley prophet, was more than just Facebook friends with alleged Johnte 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 J. 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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?

[Tom Haberstroh]

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

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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

[Tom Haberstroh]

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

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

[Tom Haberstroh]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 DM'd him back. A reminder being like, hey, yeah, if you can just grab that Reddit post and send it back to me. Bloop. 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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[Pablo Torre]

Each year, thousands of adults lose their shred. It's an epidemic simply known as shred loss. But it doesn't have to be this way. Cause rekindling your shred is as easy as playing the new Tony hawk's Pro.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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[Pablo Torre]

Sick new game modes, we can put an end to shred loss everywhere. Hit the new Tony hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and show the world that the shred's not dead. Get Tony hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 available now.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Mornings can be a beast. But with Kodiak, you can tame your mornings and fuel your wild ones with.

[Pablo Torre]

A real quick breakfast.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

One that's wildly delicious, wildly nutritious and and wildly easy. No more waking up early to make stuff the kids won't eat. Instead, pop some waffles in the toaster.

[Pablo Torre]

Or heat up oatmeal.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

They'll devour on the spot.

[Pablo Torre]

They won't even realize they're eating protein and whole grains.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

Keep your wild ones going with protein packed granola bars too.

[Pablo Torre]

Find Kodiak at your local store. We're the ones with the bear on the box. So 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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

The betting slip, if you look at it closely, it says January 22, 2024. Okay. The game one in the Johntay Porter case came four days later, January 26. 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.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 sportsbook 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're 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?

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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.

[Amin El Hasan]

Tell us about your trip.

[Pablo Torre]

Lawyer. What's the big deal? Lawyer.

[Amin El Hasan]

The DA know about you and Poppy?

[Pablo Torre]

Lawyer. Lawyer.

[Amin El Hasan]

They know you were at his ranch.

[Unnamed Correspondent]

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 Johntay 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. Sa.