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On Monday Gambling911.com first reported that one-time drug kingpin and bookmaker Owen Hanson had been released early from prison after R.J. Cipriani announced the news via his Twitter account.
Hanson, a former USC football standout, was sentenced to prison for 21 years and three months back in 2017. He served just a quarter of that term.
Hanson was among 22 charged as part of the investigation into a sprawling international drug-trafficking and offshore gambling ring which ran out of the US and Peru.
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.
Among those charged, Daniel Portley-Hanks, 71 at the time, pleaded guilty to extortion. He was accused of driving from Los Angeles to a Pennsylvania cemetery where the family burial plot of an individual who owed Hanson’s organization money was located. Portley-Hanks then splattered red paint over the tombstone, took photos of the grave desecration, then altered the photos to include the targeted individual’s name and words “very soon” as the date of death. Another photo was altered to show a masked Hanson holding a shovel over the grave.
As if things could not get any worse, Portley-Hanks not only mailed the photos to the alleged deadbeat, he also included videotapes of two beheadings.
R.J. Cipriani, aka Robin Hood 702, was the Philadelphia area high stakes gambler targeted with the threats and it was his mother's tombstone that had been defaced. He was tasked by the drug lord to gamble $2.5 million in a laundering scheme. Cipriani would go on to act as an FBI confidential source.
Commenting on the news of Hanson’s release, Cipriani told Deadline, “In order for Mr. Hanson to assimilate back into society, and to help him get back on his feet, I’m offering a beautiful one-bedroom apartment for six months, all expenses paid at Park Place Apartments in Irvine, CA. This is so that Mr. Hanson is close to his family. From the last person that he’d ever expect to help in life, I wanted to be that person. I wanted to ‘Pray It Up’ as Mark Wahlberg has suggested. ”
Cipriani is currently executive producing a scripted series about his involvement 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, EPing.
- Nagesh Rath, Gambling911.com
