Craig Carton has been a gambling enthusiast since he was a kid, according to Craig Carton.
In the wake of the WFAN host being arrested Wednesday morning in a concert-ticket Ponzi scheme, in which he allegedly ripped off millions from investors after accruing millions in gambling debts, a new light has been shined on his betting habits, about which he has been open in the past.
Carton, the shock-jock half of “Boomer and Carton,” has been a big-time gambling fan since his high school years in New Rochelle.
“I had run my own gambling den from my parents’ living room when I was in junior high school,” Carton wrote in “Loudmouth: Tales (and Fantasies) of Sports, Sex, and Salvation from Behind the Microphone,” his 2016 autobiography, as unearthed by The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis.
“After much nagging on my part, they bought me a video game console called Intellivision. It came loaded with a casino game, and I began playing roulette, craps, and blackjack. Soon I figured out that gambling was not only fun, but could also be an easy way to make money. I was a latchkey kid, so I started having my friends come over and play with me, betting with baseball cards, gum, anything on hand.”
The operation kept getting bigger.
“[K]ids I’d never even met started showing up at my house to gamble,” he wrote. “I ran the casino for almost a full year. I was making serious money for a kid, and acquiring more sporting goods than I knew what to do with. When kids couldn’t pay me in cash, they paid in tangible goods. I could have started my own shop.”
The enterprise got shut down when Mom and Dad found out.
“One of the kids wagered a brand-new baseball glove, and he lost, so he left me the glove,” Carton wrote. “A few days later his dad wanted to have a catch, and when his son couldn’t find the glove, the dad went ballistic. The kid started to cry and ratted me out. His dad showed up at my house and told my parents what was going on. I returned the glove to the kid and then took the belt whooping of a lifetime.”
Carton, 48, was arrested by feds before Wednesday’s show. According to the complaint, Carton said in a 2016 email that he was “around $3 M in the whole [sic].”