Some years back, a now-infamous television commercial began with a man declaring, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV."
The man, a real-life soap opera actor, then absurdly proceeded to praise the merits of a particular brand of cough syrup.
Gambling news website operator Ken "The Shrink" Weitzner, who died last week, wasn't a doctor, but he played one on the Internet.
Weitzner, 54, of Chesapeake, Virginia, USA, ran the website Eye on Gambling (www.eog.com) and before that a similar website called The Prescription (www.therx.com).
He called himself "The Shrink" and often referred to himself as either a psychiatrist or a former psychiatrist.
He was neither.
And he once had to admit it, under oath in a court of law.
In 1998, Weitzner was sued for libel by Dennis Atiyeh of Whitehall, Pennsylvania, USA, after Weitzner wrote on The Prescription that Jamaican offshore sportsbook English Sports Betting (ESB), owned by Atiyeh, was about to go out of business.
Weitzner made the erroneous claim after Lynda Collins, a reporter for the Las Vegas Sporting News (also owned by Atiyeh), told Weitzner in a webcast interview that her most recent paycheck had bounced.
Weitzner then put a scanned image of the bounced check, which was marked "Returned for insufficient funds," on The Prescription and leapt to the false conclusion that because one Atiyeh employee got one bounced check on one occasion, all Atiyeh-owned businesses must be in financial trouble.
Weitzner advised readers of The Prescription who were ESB customers to pull the funds from their ESB accounts immediately, lest they be stiffed when the sportsbook went under.
Some ESB customers did.
Atiyeh was furious and sued Weitzner for $5 million.
During the libel trial in a Virginia courtroom, Weitzner was cross-examined under oath by Atiyeh's attorney.
In an effort to show that Weitzner had a history of lying, the attorney asked Weitzner if he was or ever had been a psychiatrist or a doctor of any kind.
Weitzner was forced to admit that he wasn't and hadn't.
Under questioning, Weitzner admitted that he had attended and graduated from medical school, where he studied psychiatry, but that he had flunked--twice--the medical boards exam one needed to pass to be officially certified and licensed as a psychiatrist.
Just as a would-be attorney needs to graduate from law school and pass the bar exam to practice law, a doctor must graduate from medical school and pass a medical equivalent of the bar exam to practice medicine.
Weitzner never passed the exam, never was a "shrink" and was exposed in court as a fraud.
As Paul Harvey used to say, "Now you know the REST of the story."
(The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court before the trial went to verdict.)
By Tom Somach
Gambling911.com Staff Writer
tomsomach@yahoo.com
