Confessions of a lifetime gambler-retiring after 50 years

The case began with the Miami scumbag laying out all the dirty laundry and of course he received immunity for his testimony. 

If ever I wanted some guy to drop dead it was this son of a biitch. 

Coins was gift wrapped by his testimony and received 18 months for money laundering and was also indicted for failing to disclose his client's...us.He was also  disbarred in Massachusetts for his involvement. 

We feel into a deep funk for months afterwards as  the reality set in that we were now starting to play a very dangerous game.

How much money is enough. We all had enough for a nice start in life if we could stay out of the can. We discussed  continuing after this setback  and agreed it seemed foolish to take any further risks.

The feds were kicking into high gear with the use of the Ricco act. Trying to prove on going criminal enterprises for all pot guys and they were falling all over the country and falling with lots of time. 

We decided to suspend our importations for awhile and let things settle down.The good guys were all getting out of the game and were being replaced with guys that sold all kinds of crap that we didn't want to have anything to do with.

We set up a fund for Coins and made sure all his people were taken care of.

Julie didn't want to take any breaks.He was the one dissenter in the group and we tried to placate him as best we could and keep him in the family but it seemed like it would be only a matter of time before he went his own way.

I again returned to California. 

Jenna had moved back to Bolinas and the Russian river cabin was peaceful. 

I spent the next few months messing with the farm in Mendocino. Trask and I had become good friends and we pulled 50 trees of a center parcel of the land and built a 2 bedroom redwood cabin.A couple I knew from Calistoga  had lost their house in a fire and they helped us  build while camping on the land.Red and Marty, had owned a farm in Calistoga and had grown organic Vegetables and herbs mostly while they spent 10 years building the house which eventually burned in a suspicious fire. They were great people and would eventually move into the cabin and begin to clear about 5 acres to farm.

The think tank continued through the summer of 83 working together we had a nice summer with a few huge hits our book covering action in golf and baseball mostly also had a good summer.

In the fall of 1983 we opened up with football and action flowed in stronger than ever. We now had four locations in Boston and the surrounding area and had offices in Colorado,California,Arizona and Florida.

We focused on our customers in Boston area but more and more action came in from the west and we were bailing most of it off in Vegas. We had a broker now in Vegas who had a group of runners to spread out the action.

In the winter of 83/84 Julie was the only one still working the other business he had a half dozen committed guys that continued to supply the market but as a group we were totally out of the action and had no intentions of getting back in.

I started a new company in California and began to focus on the fish business we exported and imported from East to West and business was booming. 

I continued to gamble and take action every day. The think tank was so successful that it was becoming more difficult to spread the action. As a group in 1984 we banked millions in successful wagers and were becoming known by this time as the Boston boys in betting circles the word was out on us in Vegas.

In Cambridge the advent of the computing age was starting to become a reality our connection at IBM and M.I.T.were telling us that we soon could set up databases on disks. 

It was 1984 when we bought our first computer an Apple and with the help of the Cambridge techs we started to transfer our records from paper to floppy disks.

The world wide web had not been invented yet but we purchased time from IBM they had giant storefront off Newbury St.filled with huge black boxes that glowed day and night.

We really had no idea how this was to play out in the future but our tech guys were talking about a bold new age and that we would be in on the ground floor.