The Son Also Disguises: How a Kid Reporter Conned the Sports World

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

As I got older, I'm like, well, you're putting so much effort into these lies.

You could have done that in an honest way too, and still been successful.

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Okay, so at the risk of stating the very obvious, pro-athletes don't really love being interviewed by journalists these days.

They find the questions exhausting and or clickbaity, and they also all have their own podcast now anyway, and so having to deal with a reporter like me

is

annoying.

But there is one exception.

Finally, tonight, one of the young stars of Super Bowl Week isn't a player, but he is America Strong.

What's up, dude?

My name is Jeremiah.

11-year-old Jeremiah Finnell stealing the show during Super Bowl Week.

I'm a big fan.

Selected by the NFL network as their youth sportscaster.

What is the offensive game plan?

What is the hardest part about going going against the Chiefs?

I started to do this at the age of seven years old because I wasn't able to play sports due to some medical issues, but I still liked the sports environment, so I decided to hone my craft in journalism at the age of seven.

Oh, my goodness, amazing.

Jeremiah Finnell got into sports reporting at age seven.

And you know him because he goes viral all the time, like at the Super Bowl earlier this year, because he has exhaustive research and wildly precocious questions.

And so all of his athletes and celebrities are impressed.

But the thing about Jeremiah is that he's also not alone anymore.

Because yes, adult reporters are getting boxed out of locker rooms and are only vaguely tolerated at pressers at this point.

But we have been witnessing what I call a golden generation of kid reporters.

Kid reporters who are everywhere.

What's the most expensive gift you ever bought?

I bought my girl Louis Vuitton bag.

That's probably the most expensive thing I bought.

Did she like it?

Uh, yeah, she better have.

She didn't have a choice.

She didn't have a choice.

She better have liked it.

I can rub on command, can you?

No.

You don't need to show me either.

Sometimes I don't like cake.

But you said you have a party.

What is a party without a cake?

Um, we would have ice cream.

And all this made me wonder how long the occupation of kid reporter has even been a thing.

And it does seem to be a thing specifically in sports.

Kid reporters aren't getting credentialed at like, you know, trials and senate hearings.

They're going to games.

All of which is how I eventually stumbled across the story of a child, a truly adorable, unassuming child, who I now consider to be a pioneer in the field of kid reporting.

And this child's name is Gary Veter.

Gary is now an adult, obviously, in his early 40s.

You might actually recognize him as an accomplished stand-up comic.

But in order to understand how this whole thing started, how this whole occupation really began,

what I first needed to do was ask Gary Veter about his father, an accomplished con artist named Manny Veter.

And so Manny Veter looks like what, carries himself how?

Carries himself very confidently.

You know, he walks into a room and he can make people laugh.

He is very trusting when you talk to him.

When was the first time your dad used your harmlessness, your seeming innocuousness to his personal advantage?

The first time that I remember is when we would go to the movie theater.

We'd see the movie for free because he would have me sneak in under the ropes and then he'd tell the usher, hey, my son is down over there

by the theater doors and he has our tickets.

And it was a plan that my dad devised.

I mean, it's simple, you know, sneaking into movie theaters, people do it all the time.

But this was just at five years old.

My dad was teaching me, all right, this is how we have to do things.

And by the way, we weren't seeing any movies that I wanted to see.

I was going to ask.

Yeah, they were all his.

I mean, I saw Rambo one, two, and three when I was like, you know, between the ages of like five to like eight with my dad.

I saw Child's Play when I was like, you know, like six or seven.

So I remember seeing that in the theater with my dad.

So it was all movies that he was like, really wanted to see.

And I was like, oh, all right,

I'll go along.

This is what my dad wants to do, you know, this bonding moment with my father.

Yeah.

And what was he like, I mean, did you do like Little League stuff together?

Oh, yeah.

So Little League, first of all, I wasn't a good Little League player, but I was on every all-star team because of my father.

So there wasn't an all-star team I wasn't on.

How does one con Little League in Long Island?

In that way, it was just, you know, he would be familiar with all the coaches.

So, you know, being friendly

with them is like, that's how you get your kid on.

And I mean, a lot of people could do that.

But eventually, when I didn't have the skills, my dad became the coach.

And that's how it would get on.

So he was coaching the Little League.

And there came a time where there was a theft in the Little League for sports equipment.

And there was a bunch of missing bats, missing gloves, and things like that.

And I never thought anything of it.

But then maybe it was, I want to say a few months to maybe a year later, we were over visiting my cousin in Maryland.

And for a gift, my dad gave him this

bat.

And the bat was from the Half Hollow Hills Little League.

And I was like, I mean, it's clear, it's literally, it said, it's printed on there.

It seems like that's something that he would have done.

So I stopped playing baseball.

Basically, my dad was just too much.

So I'm like, I started playing hockey and I found a passion for hockey.

And my mom, she would take me to early morning practices.

And I started getting a coach.

And I joined some teams.

And then when my dad saw that I was decent at hockey, hockey was the sport that I was the best at.

And he then came on board.

And this, he kind of turned my my hockey career into a business because he started recruiting players from different cities and different states, the best players.

So he would have us go to different tournaments.

And his scam in this was, I mean, yes, he was putting it together, but he was completely overcharging these parents to a point where, you know, a hotel is $150 a night, but, you know, he's charging them $350.

And it's like he's making money off of this.

And then I would watch parents get very angry at my father.

And here I am, just a kid who's 11, 12 years old.

I want to play hockey, but I'm seeing my dad get getting yelled at by parents whose kid I'm friends with.

And you're like, oh, God.

And I could only imagine the things that they were saying in their car rides home about my father.

And it just like, you know, it gives you a bad look.

And these are the things where I'm like, I just want my dad to be a regular parent.

And also, as you might imagine, Gary still feels this way.

He still wants his dad to be a regular parent.

It's a fundamental desire that has only grown over time to the point where Gary recently started his own podcast called Number One Dad, in which he tries to resolve this specific issue.

It is also the thing which inspired him to come to terms with the whole reason I wanted to talk to Gary in the first place,

which was to relive the true story.

of their biggest scam yet.

He saw an opportunity to take me to games by calling up Madison Square Garden, saying that we work for Sports Illustrated for Kids, that a photographer and a reporter would be going.

He would act as the photographer with a nice camera.

I would go with a pad and a pen as a reporter.

And he arranged where we would have press passes waiting for us when we arrived to Madison Square Garden.

And they opened up the doors for us.

So my dad and I, first game we ever went to was a Knicks vs.

Bucks game.

And

we tried it there and got into the the locker room, and then never looked back after that.

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So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

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Please drink responsibly.

Okay, so something you should know up top here is that Sports Illustrated for Kids was an actual magazine that was staffed by actual

adults.

I know, a little disappointing, pretty crazy, but you know, issues had these perforated trading cards, cartoon characters, and stuff.

Shout out to Buzz Beamer.

All of it was put there by grown-ups.

And I, occasionally, was one of them.

You see, back in my 20s, I worked at Sports Illustrated, the grown-ups version, and we shared an office with SI for kids.

And so they would occasionally send me on assignments.

I once interviewed Ken Griffith Jr.

and his son, Trey, for instance.

And that was really fun because it was always fun.

These interviews always felt easier than they should have been because all these athletes loved talking to an audience of kids.

And so on this level, I could actually understand the logic of Manny Veter's plan for his son Gary, as insane as it was.

Because yeah, SI for kids could just cut out the middleman in these interviews.

Essentially,

me.

Do you remember that day when this is proposed?

Like, what happens?

How does this all originate?

I remember, like, you know, we were going to that this Knicks vs.

Bucks game back in the 92, 93 season.

And we've gone to games before at this point, whether it would be a New York Islanders game, because I grew up on Long Island, but my dad,

he didn't have tickets this time.

So

we'd drive to Madison Square Garden.

I didn't necessarily know what was happening.

I knew that we didn't have tickets and that my dad said to you, it's like, you know, if you want to meet the players, this is what we're going to be doing.

We're going to be going in as sports illustrator for kids.

Just follow my lead.

So he comes to you with this fully formed strategy.

You guys aren't like workshop, obviously, you're a kid, but he's not like sort of thinking out loud about this.

He comes to you, he's like, This is what we're about to do.

Right.

Like, as a comic, I, you know, I'll think about my set all the time.

It seemed like he didn't even think about it.

He was just ready to go.

Like, if you put him in front of, you know, somebody and he had a lie, he could lie right away.

He could make up anything about anything.

Describe you.

What are you like in 92?

So in 92, I was about to be in fifth fifth grade and I had a bowl haircut.

I wore turtlenecks.

I wore, you know, baggy clothes.

I had a look where people would be like, oh, this is somebody I would, I would just help out, especially like an adult.

And that's kind of like something my dad used to his advantage.

And so for people who have not even been, let's say, in, you know, the bowels of a basketball arena, again, you're a kid.

And now you're, what are you seeing?

Like, can you describe the feeling of like what's happening on this first time?

I mean, right away, it's like we're greeted at the garden because you know you're you're pressed so you get you get your press pass and were you going as Gary Veter I was going as Gary Veter and my dad I don't know why he would just use an alias and say that he wasn't my father so I and that's the part that always like in the beginning I was like okay whatever I mean if this is how it works but eventually I was like can you just say that you're my dad I mean I think it's weirder to say that you're not my dad but it's like but I get he just loved lying and he had several different I was gonna say do you remember the aliases?

He changed his name from Manny, Manny Vita to Manny Wolf, or Michael, Michael Wolf, or who would change his name to Emmanuel Wolf.

It was just like things like that where it's just constantly switching around.

And Wolf was my mother's maiden name.

So it's like just these like catchy things where you're like, oh, I guess that's how you make an alias, but that's how he did it.

Okay, so just another thing you should know, I think, about this whole scheme is that I do find it terrifying.

Because while it's true that Madison Square Garden in the 90s didn't have its current AI-driven facial recognition surveillance system, this was still akin to trying to infiltrate the sports Death Star.

There were security guards everywhere.

There were cameras everywhere.

There were paranoid PR stormtroopers everywhere.

And their entire job was to follow reporters around.

But Manny Veter slash Manny Wolf was a professional.

Clearly, he had a protocol.

He would buy whatever electronic camera equipment that he needed from B ⁇ H Photo Video, which was a store right near the garden.

And he would go up and deliberately charm the phalanx of security guards.

But most crucial of all, Manny Wolf always made sure that he, the adult photographer, and little Gary Veter, the kid reporter, always split up once the game started, never once sitting together.

Because this wasn't a father and a son situation.

No.

These were working journalists.

We started just going to games and constantly meeting the team.

And then I would go and become very familiar with like the security guards and everything.

And by the time like we got to like the, I would say the 93, 94 season, the Knicks and the Rangers were

at their height.

I mean, it was the best teams that, you know, both of those franchises have had in years up to that point.

And I mean, even still.

And I would just go and meet like Ewing and Oakley and Jon Stark.

What are those interactions like?

I mean, a lot of it was like.

I would interview them, but it would also be, I was there to get autographs.

So, I mean, the goal was to get autographs.

Like, I mean, that was everything.

Like acting like a Sports Illustrated for Kids reporter was to get us in the door, but the whole point was to get autographs, which is what you're not supposed to do.

I was going to say, the number one rule of journalism, I suppose, would be you're not there to get autographs.

Yeah, which I think you guys should get autographs.

But yeah, that was my whole goal.

And as a kid, you could get away with it.

And the other key part of this, right, is that your dad is there, not saying he's your dad, but he has a camera.

He was just there to take pictures and like he would he would kind of point me in the right direction and make sure that I was going to get to meet the people people that I wanted to meet and everything yeah which is to say though that not only do you have autographs you have photographic evidence oh yeah of all of this happening some of them like when I met Shaq I didn't even interview him, but I came with a, I had a goal of getting a basketball sign and a card sign.

And when I gave Shaq the card, that was the second thing I asked him to sign.

And he was like, please don't ask me to sign anything else after this.

He was a nice guy, like he signed two things, but it's like, yeah, to a point, it's like, you got two things.

Like, enough is enough.

Right.

It's like, I get get the sense that you're running now a memorabilia, yeah, yeah, yeah, card shop ring, yeah.

But I'm looking at uh, some of these photos, like the Mario Lemieux one, yeah.

So, the Mario Lemieux one, that was a Celebrity Golf Association back in the day, I don't think they have it anymore, but they had a tournament on Long Island, and all these athletes, my dad found out that they were staying at this Marriott Hotel that I think it was right across from where Nassau Coliseum was.

The Celebrity Golf Association's first ever Long Island event has drawn a number of top performers from the world of sports and entertainment, both past and present.

They aren't just named swinging golf sticks.

We're all players.

And my dad, he knew that I wanted to meet Mary Lemieux, and he called up the hotel to say that he was Mary Lemieux's chauffeur just to confirm the time that he was going to come down.

And once he had that time, he then reserved this banquet hall that was in the hotel.

So he knew Mary Lou was coming down, knew,

had this banquet hall secured.

And then he called Mary Lemieux to say that Sports Illustrated for Kids was there and said the time that was just convenient, what he thought would be convenient for Mario Lemieux to now do an interview before his tea time.

And I was able to interview Mario Lemieux just one-on-one.

Right.

And I see you in this photograph.

You're wearing a white, it says CGA, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Well, so he called the CGA and told him Sports Illustrated for Kids was coming.

So they rolled out the red carpet as well.

Yeah, you have the white CGA t-shirt.

You have the CGA cap.

And yeah, Lemieux's large hand is on your very small right shoulder yeah and i was so pumped to meet him and uh yeah i got two cards signed by him so uh yeah everything that i wanted it to be what were you asking i mean again you were a reporter ostensibly right so what were you asking though i mean so i read sports illustrated for kids so it's like what what's your you know best advice i mean these interviews would be you know two three minutes long so it's like what's your you know best advice that you could give to a kid what's uh you know what's your favorite food and um you know if you you favorite childhood memories, things like that.

Those are like the things that I would stick to that

was familiar to like the magazine itself.

So nothing like groundbreaking at all.

Right.

So wait a minute.

So I'm looking at the photographic library that you have thanks to your dad and running this scam.

And it takes you far more than just a couple of places.

I mean, you're going seemingly everywhere doing this stuff.

Yeah, we went to CGA.

We went to, there was a time where I met Nancy Kerrigan, and that was at Chelsea Piers.

He knew that she was there for like some event.

He picked me up early from school.

That was another thing.

My dad, I mean, he didn't care about school.

School was being with him.

That was the learning experience.

So he'd pick me up early from school, you know, and

I'd leave and we'd drive.

It was about a 45-minute drive from our house to

wherever we go into Manhattan.

And he...

secured this basically the ice for me to skate with Nancy Kerrigan after he made her hold up one of my hockey jerseys to take like a picture and everything.

So this is right after the Olympics incident.

And the photo of this is just like, again, like, look at this.

Holding up my jersey.

Yeah, my dad had no shame.

So, yeah, so I had my skates on in that picture, too.

Yeah, just like, again, jeans, big red sort of like sweater, and an ecstatic Nancy Kerrigan holding up the Viter number 13.

Yeah.

White, black, and gray hockey jersey.

So the other thing was, these are memories that I couldn't share when I was a kid.

I was going to ask, like, are you bragging to all your friends that this is all happening?

He wanted to keep it in-house.

So it's like, you know, if you wanted to keep doing this, you can't really reveal how we're doing it.

And that's a lot because I'm going to all these games, having these, these cool memories.

It sounds like the hardest part is to not tell anybody.

Not to tell.

And then, you know, your friends, you know, you want to brag because it's like, you know, your friends might have an autograph or something or they met somebody.

I'm like, well, I met even cooler people than that.

And I was, you know, and I'm in the locker rooms and I'm like, you know, I'm doing, I'm doing really neat stuff, but it was stuff that I couldn't share and I didn't share until

now, really.

Right, right.

I mean, some of these photos, man.

I mean, there's John Elway just like his hand engulfing your hand on the couch at the, I guess.

That's a powerful man.

Yeah.

His hand almost crushed my hand.

You know, you shake someone's hand, you obviously have a, you should have a firm handshake.

That's what you got.

That's what my dad taught me as well.

But his was too firm, where it's like, dude, you're like crushing my hand.

And so that I'll never, like, I'm like, this is like insane out of any i'm like this is too much you have a photo here um where it's you and richard gere and he is like he's looking like he's playing your dad in the movie

like he's he has like his arm around you like cradling you i you know i look back at these pictures and there's some with like some other celebrities as well as like rich yeah richard gere they were like i i was they were just very warm to me and it was it's it's it's it's interesting because i'm like I'm sure that happens now where like certain athletes and certain celebrities, they do that with kids that they're just meeting.

But whatever it was,

whatever my dad was spewing or whatever my look was, it just warmed people to both of us.

He looks thrilled.

Richard Gill looks thrilled.

And right next to that photo, I presume

in the chronological order here is Cindy Crawford.

Yeah, they were dating at the time.

Do you have a favorite of these encounters where Bill Murray?

Because Space Jam just came out.

i also knew him from like what about bob and and ghostbusters so i don't know why i didn't say ghostbusters first but i was gonna say oh what about

that's a real thing i found out today gary voice what about i think it's hilarious why'd you need to kick bob out of the house you think he's gone he's not gone that's the whole point he's never gone is this some radical new therapy you see

I was like, oh my God, Bill Murray.

And then, I mean, I love comedy back then.

I didn't realize how much as a kid, but um, I love comedy and I knew like SNL and things like that.

So seeing Bill Murray, like he was iconic back then.

And that was, I was pumped for that one.

I mean, you, you're kind of like living, again, as a kid, I grew up in, I was born in 85.

So this is my wheelhouse.

Like, this is, you're living my dream.

Like, this is the mid-night.

Like,

not that I dreamed about this part, but like, you're sitting next to Tom Broca in this photo.

So that's the thing.

Yeah, I mean, I was meeting newscasters and like Tom Brokaw.

And then there's there's Diane Sawyer and I met Maury Povich.

So it's like people that like

at this time, I mean, they're huge in the media world, but, you know, kids don't like, I didn't, I didn't care much about it, but it was like, I knew that they were important,

especially at the time.

So I'm like, these are, these are photos that you should have.

And I'm, yeah, I'm sitting and just sitting down with them and they're very warm to me.

I mean, the idea of you being a hockey fan, by the way, and you being around for 94, and the Rangers win the Stanley Cup in seven games.

That was the most important thing for us.

We didn't wind up going to any other playoff games because I think because I had like conflicts with sports and hockey and Little League.

But when they made it to the finals, my dad made it a point to make sure that we were going to those games.

And we went to game one, game five, and game seven, all without a ticket.

For game one, I sat in the press area.

Game five, it was an open seat like that was kind of like center ice-ish.

And then game seven, I sat glass.

And I'm in so many Getty images, and also I'm in the Rangers like Stanley Cup video where I was able to like own in on myself.

And like, I see the shirt that I'm wearing, but it was incredible.

And my dad and I, again, not sitting together at all during these games.

I'm with random, I'm with a random family.

The idea that you're like

you're living your own version of home alone, yeah, just like in Madison Square Garden is ridiculous for sure.

I never went to another championship game since, but it was the most electric thing that I've ever experienced in my entire life, being in the garden, Rangers clinching after not, you know, not winning it for 54 years and finally doing it.

And after the game, I went into a locker room and I interviewed players on the Canucks, the losing team, and then I went right into the Rangers' locker room and watched them celebrate the Cup.

I know he made, my dad made me go in there first to see the losers that is cruel yeah to the canucks i know i know i know and they had and they had to put on a happy face right as this kid comes around is like what's your favorite food and he's like i just lost yeah cup right

games yeah yeah yeah these guys were just like standing there all depressed and then and my dad's just snapping photos like he loved it but uh but then we go into the rangers locker room and you know they're just it's so joyous and they're drinking from the cup and i remember alexei kovalov who was a great player and I think he was a rookie that season, but he was just wasted.

And I'm just seeing, I'm 11 years old and I'm like, just seeing this, I'm like, this is just an experience that no other kid has ever had of going, not only both locker rooms, but of course, sneaking in and being somewhere where you're not supposed to be.

And then after that game,

after being in the locker room, the Rangers go up to celebrate in the garden for their after party.

And my dad and I, we shuffle our way there.

And this is the first time he was ever stopped.

He was, they told him that we couldn't couldn't go in because we just had press passes.

And it was just

so far, I should establish that like normal sports illustrated, like adult version of sports illustrated reporters, they're not necessarily getting the access that you have gotten so far.

Right.

Let alone like.

to where you're trying to go next.

Yeah, and now we're trying to get into this after party and they're not letting us in.

And

my dad's like trying to figure out a way to

get us in.

And this guy comes up to him and he asks me, he goes, do you have a role of film?

And my dad goes yeah i have a roll of film if you get my son into the after party so then my dad gives him the role of film this guy takes my hand and walks me into this after party and my dad somehow gets in maybe like 10 minutes later somehow i don't know how but he figures out a way to get in and uh he says my son has my tickets he's yeah i go in there and i had a hat that i wanted signed by the four all-stars of the rangers that year is adam grease mike richter uh brian leech and mark messier of course so i got i got them all signed, and then I left them.

I probably went home that morning at like four or five in the morning.

And then I had school the next day.

So I go in and can't say anything to anybody.

What is it like to be in class having just done that?

I assume you've like, you're on very little sleep and you're still high off of

the secondhand alcoholism that's going on in the locker room.

Well, I can't say a thing to anybody, but yet I'm living this life, you know, the teacher's saying whatever, but I remember I'm just having kind of like this outer body experience where it was like, I was just in the most amazing setting I've ever experienced in my entire life, watching like the energy of the garden, of the Rangers winning the cup, going to the locker room, seeing this thing, one that I can't share, but like, I'm like, the world, to me, the world was like a different thing.

I'm like, you could get places by doing the things that my dad and I did.

I guess a question that I should have asked already, but is seemingly important to how this all goes.

Did you ever run into the actual Sports Illustrated for Kids reporters?

So it was at the Jordan game.

That's where it happened.

So when Jordan, the game that I met Michael Jordan at, it was in 1995, and it was his fifth game back in the NBA after he retired to play baseball and then came back.

So, right after his first comeback.

And

everybody wanted to be at this game.

This was the biggest, this was

as big as the Stanley Cup, really.

Oh, yeah, it was the resurrection.

And that day has arrived.

21 months have passed since Michael Jordan last played competitive basketball.

For 21 months, the NBA was without its supreme artist.

There may be many interesting peripheral aspects to both his departure and return, but at the heart of it is simply this.

The best in the world is back.

And in a sports world.

People thought Jordan was done and that we're never going to see Jordan play again.

And he comes back to the garden wearing number 45.

And, you know, my dad,

he didn't love sports as much as I did.

He wasn't keeping in touch with what was going on in the news.

And I saw that.

The Knicks were playing the Bulls.

I would read the newspaper every day and I saw the Knicks were playing the Bulls.

And then I asked my dad, I'm like, can we go to this game?

And the day of, he makes arrangements for us to get press passed.

And I can only imagine how difficult that must have been because so much press was there.

Yes.

We arrived that day at the garden.

And this is the first time ever this happened, but the real Sports Illustrator for Kids was there to interview Michael Jordan, you know, Scotty, you know, Phil Jackson.

Of course.

And

they were there, and my dad made it a point for us to talk to them.

He knew that they were there, and he didn't lead on to say that we were sports illustrated for kids, but he wanted to get their information, learn a little bit more about what they were doing.

So you guys go up to the people that most other scammers would studiously try to avoid.

Yep.

Yeah, he had no fear and he used their, you know, got their information, maybe got a couple names from them.

I don't remember the exact conversation, but I know he got a business card from them and we walk away.

And, you know, when you talk to sports illustrator kids, I'm just standing there.

I'm like, I don't want to give up the fact that like I could, I'm not as good of a liar as my dad, but he's talking.

He has, he has no worries that I could say something that that's not, you know, corroborating his story.

Yeah.

But he's just, he has no problem, talks to them.

Then we walk away.

And, you know, game goes on.

And Jordan puts up, it's his famous double nickel game.

Gotta witness.

Gotta witness history.

Jordan.

Working on Starks.

Got him in the air.

Michael Jordan.

That's 55.

He had to work for the movie.

He did start to play them as well as he could.

I can't, I mean, that's unbelievable.

It was unbelievable.

I still remember images from that game, and I'm, you know, I'm 11, 12 years old at that time.

And then

the game ends, and everybody bum rushes to the press bum rushes to get into that locker room.

And one of the things my dad always did was he took pictures of the security guards, and he took pictures of me with the security guards.

So they knew who we were because we've been at this point, we've probably been to over 30, 30, 40 games uh at the garden wait wait wait so your dad this whole time had also been charming the security oh completely yeah because you never know when you're gonna need someone's help bro so they warmed up to him just like everybody else did and when they saw us uh they weren't gonna be the the ones to say no to us because they've been friendly with us the entire time they gave us the go-ahead to to go through to the bulls locker room where everybody wanted to go and the sports illustrator uh for kids guys and again they're adults, right?

By the way,

the grown-ups.

Yeah, they're grown-ups.

So they are at the back of the line with everybody else, just not able to get in.

And my dad and I, we go in and we're waiting around, trying to, you know, see who we could get, you know, autographs from, interviews from.

And I met Scotty, I met Phil Jackson.

And my dad, I don't know who he talked to, but he talked to somebody.

And that person led us into a private room where Michael was.

So I walk into this room.

It's my dad and Michael Jordan just sitting down.

And I sit right next to Michael Jordan and I ask him my questions.

And your pivotal remember one.

Yeah.

Your pivotal question, which was.

Yeah.

What's your favorite food?

And he said, yeah, and he said, and he goes, steak.

And I'm like, boom, nailed it.

And got the autograph card.

And I was wearing Felix sneakers for some reason.

Big mistake.

And he goes,

you know,

you should be wearing Nikes.

At that moment, I was like, I think back to I could have said, which would have been like, can you give me a pair?

That would have been like the ideal thing, but I didn't.

Because you have journalistic ethics.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And then my dad snapped those photos and we walked out.

And as we're walking out and leaving the garden, we see the sports illustrator for kids guys, and they were still trying to get in.

Yeah, I realize now suddenly that I should not be laughing because I'm really laughing at myself as someone who did the job of Sports Illustrator for Kids, grown-up reporter at one point.

Yeah, yeah.

But the access, just for people who don't understand this, being in the private backback room with Michael Jordan after he drops 55 in his first game back is not a place that normal reporters, veteran reporters are getting access to.

It's unbelievable how this thing, I mean, it sounds like the one night where it seems like, oh, shit, we might be going to prison

because we've run into the people we're impersonating actually results in like the greatest scam that you guys pulled off in this.

Yeah.

And not only that, the coolest thing that I realized was, and it wasn't until later, I interviewed a sports editor from SI, this guy Mark Bechtel.

Oh, I know Bechtel.

Yeah, good.

He's one of my editors.

Oh, yeah, great guy.

And we were trying to get a timeframe of like,

so I told him, you know, when I met Michael, and he says,

so you met him in 1995.

Well, back in 94, he stopped taking interviews with Sports Illustrated because of

Baggett Michael.

So for people who don't remember this part, Sports Illustrated put Michael Jordan on the cover when he was playing for the Birmingham Barons in Minor League Baseball and it said, Baggett, Michael.

Like give up.

Yeah, completely crapped on him.

And he took such offense to that that he said that he would never take another interview with Sports Illustrated again.

And he kept his word up until I met him.

So

I was technically the last person to ever interview Michael Jordan for Sports Illustrated, but it wasn't even really for Sports Illustrated.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

I was going to ask, and I should have asked this question too earlier, probably.

What was your mom thinking throughout all of this?

I mean, she sees the joy that it's bringing me.

And that's a tough thing to be in a position of where she knows her husband is being dishonest.

And she knows that it's definitely teaching her son some unethical things, but it's bringing me happiness.

I'm getting to meet people that I wouldn't get to normally meet.

My dad didn't, from what I saw, he didn't have the means to buy these tickets.

He didn't have the means to pay for an autograph for, you know, Michael Jordan.

He had to figure out a way to do it.

And it really put me around people that were successful that kids don't really get to see.

So I saw, you know, you're meeting Shaq, you're meeting,

you know, Cindy Crawford, Richard Gere, you're meeting really people at the height of their careers.

You're crawling inside of a television in an era when television, seeing these people, it was not like it is now.

you don't have access to people on social media like this was like truly meeting uh

real life superheroes yeah and you yeah you don't think that you'll ever have a chance to be side by side with them and then you do and it kind of gives you like this special feeling that maybe you're different maybe you could accomplish things and and be like them But, you know, I'm around all these people.

I'm like, I'm also around my dad, who's also great, but for different reasons of being great at something that I wasn't necessarily proud of, but he was, you you know, someone that really was spectacular what he was doing.

Yeah.

When I hear you remember this stuff, I see the entanglement of all of it.

The idea that like, I love this.

This was like the truly like a child's dream to do everything you did.

And at the same time, feeling like

I shouldn't be proud of this on some level.

That it

that the access you got was born of a

an obvious now in retrospect lie.

Yeah.

And I'm watching my dad do all this stuff.

And

as I got older, I'm like, well, you're putting so much effort into these lies.

You could have done that in an honest way too and still been successful.

All the smarts that it took to come up with these schemes, you could have used that to your advantage to really become something positive.

But this is what, you know, he got joy in these lies.

It wasn't until I wound up having a son of my own.

And it just so happened to be that the last dance documentary came out at the same time where I'm like, you know, I have my son.

The last day, I'm like, maybe I should just like, it's been 24 years, maybe I should just like tell people like this experience that I had and see their reaction.

And I just posted some of the pictures that I was able to dig up.

And it just like, it really got like a positive response.

And it started making me think about like, what is my dad doing now?

When did you stop doing the Sports Illustrated for Kids scams?

Yeah.

Well, I stopped doing it when the last time I did it, I was about to be

close to 15.

So it was.

Oh, wow.

You were pushing the envelope.

I know.

Well, so fortunately for me, I looked pretty young when I was

going into my teenage years.

So that definitely helped to extend it a little bit.

But yeah, it stopped because you just want to stop lying.

You want to meet, you really want to meet people

for the person that you are instead of posing as something else.

So you feel, you know, you started feeling like, oh, it's cool.

But then as time went on, oh, I'm an imposter.

And that doesn't feel great.

Yeah.

When did it sort of dawn on you that you were also being used?

Because of course, as you're feeling all of these like joyous, euphoric feelings, there's also the reality that like oh right i'm also um i'm also getting my dad something here and maybe that's the point

when we're going to all these games and you know i go back to him saying that he wasn't my dad it's like i you want to have some sort of bond with him when you're having these experiences and where he's not saying he's my father we're not sitting together and we're we're not talking about how great the game was either we're talking about how great the con was so it's like, these were the things that, that he loved and it seemed to override really what

the experience should be with like a father and son at one of these sporting events.

And yeah, that kind of just, you know, takes a toll on you.

When was the last time you guys had spoken?

24 years.

So no, no contact, no text or emails or anything like that.

I made the decision that, you know, the lies and the cons became like too much that it was just never ending and I couldn't be around them anymore.

And it wasn't just me.

It was, you know, definitely my mom and my sisters too.

They had to, they had to break apart too.

Right.

And it sounds like in the years since, of course, now 24 years later, you haven't spoken to your dad, as you said,

you've been trying to piece together who your dad actually was.

Yeah, like, you know, did I remember everything the way I

think I remember it?

And the sports stuff definitely is

at the forefront of my memory.

And those things I remember very clearly.

But the photographs too.

Yeah, yeah, the photographs too.

And, you know, we did it so many times.

But yeah, like the other things about learning the cons that he pulled that I heard about.

I remember people saying like, my dad had a, had a furniture scam going on.

And I'm like, well, what was it?

Like, let me learn more about what he did.

You know, what's the background?

Who was he involved with?

You know, he was involved with definitely some like shady people.

And

he definitely treads the water of like being around like, you know, mafia style people.

And he did a lot of these illegal businesses that

also would help benefit other people too.

Right.

Was there one question that you were most

invested in having answered?

Yeah.

So my dad was

involved in this

payphone business and back in the early 90s.

It's a very 90s.

Yeah, yeah, it's so 90s.

But he was involved in a payphone business.

So he had different payphones in

various locations throughout Long Island and New York City.

And he'd travel and he'd collect money out of the payphones and he had people that work for him.

And he'd also like repair phone lines and everything.

But his catch was his scam in this situation was he was posing as AT ⁇ T.

That's how he was getting all these locations.

So every location, if you're a Toys R Us, you're putting the phone in.

Because my father's saying he works for AT ⁇ T and he's collecting on these payments.

So AT ⁇ T eventually gets wind of this and they have to tell him to shut down his business.

He doesn't want to do it.

Marshals eventually eventually storm and raid my home.

This is the U.S.

Marshals, not the department store.

Which he also had payphones in, by the way.

Not making that up.

He really did.

So

that's funny they brought up.

But yeah, the U.S.

Marshals raid our house and they take a whole bunch of things and they have a whole bunch of evidence.

And eventually,

my dad's back is against the wall.

And this place where they're keeping all the evidence magically just gets broken into and

evidence goes missing.

Like little league equipment.

Exactly.

Like little league equipment and nobody knows what happened to it.

Did he do it?

The problem when you're dealing with somebody who's lied so much in their life is that so many mistruths have been told along the way.

So you're trying to figure out, even, you know, from somebody else's experience, did this actually take place?

Gary, what I'm left realizing that I have found out today is that you started your career with your dad as a fake journalist.

Yeah, yeah.

And he has turned you over two decades later into a real one.

Somewhat, yeah.

Actually reporting a story.

I appreciate you calling me a journalist.

I'm definitely, there's investigative reporting and I'm like very sloppy in doing it, but I feel like I, yeah, I try my best in a, in a fun way to, to get out the story.

That was a very, in a way, fun and tragic time at the same point of going back to my childhood.

Right, but you're, you're searching for the truth.

Right.

Searching for the truth, trying to get a better understanding of my father.

And learning that the goal is to track my dad down and find out what he's been up to after all this time, after 24 years, to hear his side of these things.

And is he going to be that person, be the same person that he was 24 years ago?

Or has he, has he changed?

Right.

Right.

At the end here,

what are you left thinking about?

You mentioned that

you're a dad now.

What are you left thinking about how you want to be a parent to your son as sports at least is concerned?

The experiences that I had with my dad, I think that they're very memorable,

the sports stuff.

So I look at it as like, if I could do the things with my son, but take out the negative parts that I didn't like with my dad, that'd be great.

If we could go to the game, if we could sit, you know, if we could sit together, if we could watch the game, if we could, if he could just have a love for it without me being so involved and my dad, you know, was very over the top.

If he, you know, not be a coach, but just watch from the sidelines, but be supportive.

These are the things that I would want to have my son experience, just because that's what I wanted.

And, you know, but also listen to him, listen to what he actually wants.

You know, maybe he doesn't want to play sports, and that's fine too.

But either way, I would really listen to him, listen to what he wants, because I didn't feel like my dad was always listening to my needs.

Gary Viter, it was really good to listen to you.

Thank you.

Thank you for doing this.

Thanks for having me, Pablo.

And for more on Gary Veter's ongoing investigation into his own father and thus himself, you can go listen to his new podcast series, Number One Dad,

which just came out this week.

But as for us,

Any good episode is like a good con.

It requires a team.

And Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Michael Antonucci, Walter Avaroma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller-Howard, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren.

Our studio engineering by RG Systems.

Our sound design by NGW Post.

Our theme song by John Bravo.

And I am going on an international mission next week.

But stay tuned.

We'll have something for you on Tuesday.