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- Jonathan Pippin tracked four NFL players into investing in race horses then ran off with the money
- Gambling911 and other reputable websites picked up references to Pippin as having ties to a prized race horse that was planted elsewhere on the Net by the fraudster
- Pippin used the Gambling911 article and others that appeared high in search engines like Google to convince people he was a horseracing big shot
- A prison sentence of between 21 and 27 months was handed down in the case
An Ohio man who disseminated wrongful and embellished information about himself across the Net in a convoluted scheme to defraud four NFL players pleaded guilty this past week.
Jonathan Pippin, a 29-year-old grifter from Logan, OH, tricked the four men into investing in what they believed to be race horses, but instead he used the money at casinos and strip clubs.
Information carried on reputable sites painted Pippin as someone with deep connections to the horse racing industry.
Only problem: That information was planted by Pippin himself and it turns out he had no such connections.
Gambling911.com was one of the websites that made mention of Pippin as having ties to Bob Baffert-trained two-time champion Lookin At Lucky back in 2010, information it turns out that was planted by the fraudster on other lower profile websites he either created or shared. Said information eventually spread to larger sites such as the Examiner and ultimately Gambling911.com, which at the time ranked number one in search for that particular article.
Pippin used the Gambling911 article and others that appeared high in search engines like Google to convince people he was a horseracing big shot who rubbed elbows with Baffert, a man he had yet to meet.
“We never corresponded with Pippen,” Gambling911.com Senior Editor Payton O’Brien acknowledged. “The article in question made mention of Looking for Lucky’s supposed ownership by scouring information from the Internet as part of a preview for that upcoming Kentucky Derby race. There is no telling where this story originated.
"Unless you are intimately knowledgable of every horse and its ownership structure there is no way to accurately determine whether this type of information is real or fake or even suspect that it might have been planted," O'Brien added. "All we can do is reference what is out there."
The four NFL players defrauded by Pippin were; Danny Woodhead of the San Diego Chargers (pictured above), Chansi Stuckey and Reggie Hodges of the Cleveland Browns, and Jordan Norwood of the Denver Broncos.
Pippin is set to spend between 21 and 27 months behind bars.
The Pippin scheme is detailed on the Paulick Report here
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
