But, even as Heath closed in on Pughsley, he had his sights set on one more target: Tommy Hunt. During his investigation, Heath had learned about Hunt’s computer servers in Costa Rica, and wondered how many more Tim Pughsleys were out there. “I wanted to get Tommy Hunt so we could get everybody,” Heath said. “Tommy Hunt had the key.”
On the morning of the raid, Heath, Gurley, and other agents disguised themselves as power-company workers to get into the gated community without creating a stir, knocked on Pughsley’s door, and identified themselves as law enforcement. Soon, they were standing in the foyer with a stunned Tim Pughsley, and, a short time later, at the kitchen table, Heath laid out his plan to Pughsley. The Red44 website would keep running, and the money would keep flowing, in order to draw out Hunt. Pughsley called his attorney, Tommy Spina, who advised Pughsley to coöperate. But at some point that morning Pughsley used his cellphone to alert Hunt, and the Red44 website was taken down.
Burdette was playing golf with a couple of other bookies when the website went dark. He knew right away that there was a problem. On the sixteenth tee, he learned that the feds had raided Pughsley’s house. “And so I just get in the cart and immediately ride home,” Burdette said. Haley, his wife, told him that the police would probably come to their house next, and her prediction came true. Early the next morning, the authorities were at Burdette’s door, this time without a ruse. Police lights flickered in the dark.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Birmingham charged eleven men in the top echelons of Red44, including Pughsley, Donaldson, Rapp, Giaquinto, Voorhees, the two Burdette brothers, and four others, with a raft of charges that varied from man to man: excise-tax evasion, money laundering, and operating an illegal sports-gambling enterprise. Hunt escaped charges; Hunt’s attorney did not return calls for comment, and in an e-mail the I.R.S. declined to say whether Hunt remains under investigation. The defendants all eventually pleaded guilty, and, according to the I.R.S., the government recouped more than fourteen million dollars in restitution and additional millions in penalties and back taxes. Pughsley himself agreed to pay more than thirteen million—a figure that hinted at the size of the organization he had built. At his sentencing, last October, Catherine Crosby, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, called Red44 “the largest sports-betting organization that’s ever been indicted by the Department of Justice.”
But Crosby also admitted that bookies continue to prosper in Alabama. “It’s like whack-a-mole,” she said. “You stop one, then another pops up.” According to Burdette and Pughsley, some of the men who worked at Red44—and dodged indictment—are still taking wagers today, on different websites. And this landscape extends well beyond Alabama. Since the raid at Pughsley’s house, even as legalized gambling continues to take over American culture, illegal sports gambling has grown by twenty-two per cent. Last year, the American Gaming Association reported that U.S. sports fans wagered eighty-four billion dollars with illegal bookies and offshore websites, leading to an estimated billion dollars in tax losses.
