Former USC Player Owen Hanson Released From Jail? Convicted of Running Sportsbook, Violent Drug Ring
The man at the center of a violent international drug and sports betting ring has reportedly been released from prison.
Former USC football player Owen Hanson was sentenced in 2017 in a San Diego federal court for his role as ring leader of the operation, which ran out of the US and Peru.
R.J. Cipriani, aka Robin Hood 702, was tasked by the drug lord to gamble $2.5 million in a laundering scheme.
Robin Hood 702 lost the money in blackjack, which provoked Hanson to make death threats, including sending Cipriani photos of his deceased mother’s defaced headstone and a video showing beheadings.
It was Cipriani who announced Hanson's release Monday via Twitter.
BREAKING NEWS!
— Robin Hood 702 (@robinhood702) March 18, 2024
OWEN HANSON IS OUT OF JAIL!
WELCOME HOME OWEN!
I hope you'll be on the straight and narrow.
If you want to write to him, here's his address@markwahlberg
Owen Hanson
Register #
50825-298
RRM Long Beach
RESIDENTIAL RE-ENTRY OFFICE
P.O. BOX 323
SAN PEDRO, CA 90733 pic.twitter.com/xz36ASHGt6
Hanson was among 22 charged as part of the investigation with nearly half already pleading guilty. He played for USC during the years Pete Carroll coached the team as a walk-on tight end, including the 2004 national championship team.
Hanson was initially charged only with coordinating a drug transaction before authorities later learned he had been running the elaborate online gambling enterprise, Macho Sports.
Prosecutors also allege that Hanson trafficked “well over a ton” of cocaine, methamphetamine and Ecstasy in the U.S. and Australia. He was also implicated in an Australian case tied to a mysterious suitcase filled with $702,000 in cash in 2011.
Court documents showed that the enterprise routinely "used threats and violence against its gambling and drug customers to force compliance”.
The Unrealistic Ideas documentary about the FBI’s takedown is currently filming as a docuseries for Amazon Sports. Jody McVeigh-Schultz is directing and Adam Ridley is producing for Mark Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson and Archie Gips production.
Cipriani told Deadbeat he opted not to participate in The Unrealistic Ideas docuseries and instead is involved in the development the scripted series about his role in the Hanson arrest, Jackpot, at Sony Pictures Television with Nicholas Stoller and his Stoller Global Solutions partner Conor Welch, as well as Jamie Canniffe, executive producing with Cipriani.
“As great a docuseries that this will be, unfortunately I can’t participate without an executive producer credit and fee, and I’m already partnered with my dream collaborator Sony Pictures Television and Nic Stoller and company to propel this story as a scripted series instead of a docuseries," Cipriani told Deadbeat.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
