Former USC tight end Owen Hanson was charged along with 21 others for running a multimillion-dollar operation called ODOG Enterprise, an international drug and gambling ring. The operation allegedly stretched from LA to Brooklyn, and to Australia, according to the New York Post.
Hanson was friends with Jeremy Shockey, and former college teammate Reggie Bush.
A contact list that belonged to Hanson shows that he associated with a number of professional athletes, some allegedly in the NFL, MLB, and NBA. Some were even police detectives.
Three FBI agents went to Shockey’s home in Miami to discuss his relationship with Hanson, where the two allegedly traveled together to Costa Rica in 2010 and flew back and forth between Miami and Los Angeles.
Shockey told The Post he didn’t know what Hanson was up to. “I thought he was in the real-estate business like me,” Shockey told The Post. “I’m a straight businessman. I don’t hang out with drug dealers or prostitutes. I’m here with my girlfriend making out, and I get a knock on my door from these agents. I said to them, ‘Come on in. I got nothing to hide.'”
The investigators allegedly did not have a search warrant. They questioned Shockey about how he met Hanson. “We met when I passed out at a pool party in Vegas – from dehydration. He came to Miami all the time. I treated him like a friend. I let him stay at my house. He loved to surf. We’d go to the gym together. We went to the same parties together,” Shockey told The Post.
Shockey continued by saying that Hanson knew a lot of people, including Pete Carroll and Reggie Bush, and that he had cash on him all the time. He claims to not have known what Hanson was up to.
The feds showed Shockey a photo of two men, one of which he knew. The one guy he recognized was Giovanni “Tank” Brandolino, who was one of the accused leaders of ODOG Enterprise.
The FBI claims that Tank sent five grams of cocaine and 15 capsules of ecstasy to a pro football player located in Nashville the same day that the Steelers beat the Titans on Monday Night Football. The Post reached out to the US Attorney’s Office in San Diego, as well as to the FBI and the NFL but could not identify the player.
Shockey added that Hanson had a wide range of other friends that included basketball and baseball players. Based on what he said in regards to his relationship with Hanson, it seems Shockey really didn’t know. He gave some details that sound like you wouldn’t give up if you were really involved in something as crazy as that.
At the same time, it’s kind of interesting to claim to have assumed that Hanson got all of his money in real estate like Shockey did himself, unless Hanson hid it that well. People’s occupations are a pretty normal topic of discussion, and if Shockey was around him enough, he surely had to have caught some type of hint.
It’s entirely possible that Shockey did know, and he just looked the other way, and that he also didn’t know all of the details, some of which might have turned him away from being friends with Hanson.
This probably one-ups the story of Peyton Manning hiring private investigators showing up at Charles Sly’s door to talk to him in regards to the Al-Jazeera report on HGH being delivered to his house as the weirdest story in the NFL this season.
