FBI Releases Documents on Pete Rose and His Sports Betting
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released a series of documents related to Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader in Major League Baseball, who was banned from baseball and the Hall of Fame.
The documents, which consist of 130 pages, focus on Ronald Peters, the deceased bookmaker from Rose, and a mid-1980s investigation into drug trafficking and gambling operations that Peters ran.
Part of the information contained in Rose’s files had already been covered in the 1989 Dowd Report, commissioned by Major League Baseball.
Rose was banned from baseball in 1989 after an investigation revealed that he bet on baseball games. In May, he was removed from the permanently ineligible list, allowing him to be eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame.
The documents released by the FBI do not specifically mention Rose’s bets on baseball, something he himself later acknowledged.
The file includes a 1987 memo requesting an FBI investigation. The memo cites a cooperating witness who stated that “at one point, Rose owed Peters $90,000 in sports betting losses.” In the same memo, it is stated that police officers from Franklin, Ohio, saw Rose often entering Peters’ establishment, called Jonathan’s, “through its private entrance.” The same memo alleged that Rose was a “silent partner in a bar that Peters operated in Cincinnati before [Peters] moved to Franklin.”
A November 1987 interview with a person whose name was redacted revealed that Rose bet on 10 American football games every weekend in 1986, generally between $1,000 and $2,000 per game, and that at one point Rose owed Peters $80,000. The person also “believes that Rose only bet on American football, basketball, and horse racing; he never saw Rose place a bet on a baseball game.” The report also said that the person believed that another person “stole $3,500 from Rose’s money” and that that person then left town.
The same person also told the FBI that Rose “sometimes makes bets with a person known only as [redacted] in New York when Peters doesn’t accept Rose’s bets.” In a summary of an interview with a redacted person in March 1988, the person said that someone made phone bets for Rose, but that “if I had made phone bets for Pete, or if I knew if [redacted] did, I wouldn’t say. I don’t want to implicate a baseball player.”
A summary of a July 1987 interview with a redacted person stated that this person was in a business partnership with Rose until Rose’s “gambling debts created a financial problem for him.” The person ended the partnership with Rose, but remained in contact with him and Peters, according to the summary.
Most of the file focuses on the FBI’s request for subpoenas for telephone records and surveillance recordings related to Peters. It is unclear whether any of those subpoena requests were also related to Rose or her involvement with Peters.
