Stevens has a business where he sells sports betting picks called VIP Sports Las Vegas.
The CNBC press release for the show calls him "a well-known handicapper," and a promo video on his company's website claims he has a winning percentage of 71.5%. The show is a "docu-soap," and it's set to air Sept. 10.
But apparently no one in Vegas has heard of Stevens, and his 70% winning percentage is considered impossible.
Todd Fuhrman, a former oddsmaker at Caesar's Palace, wrote in a blog post yesterday, "No one, and I mean no one, in the sports betting community I speak with daily knows who this guy is."
Bob Voulgaris, a popular sharp NBA bettor, said he'd never heard of Stevens either on Twitter last night, calling him "a complete scam artist" for the 70% claim.
WagerMinds — a sports betting website that is focused on transparency in the taut industry — also said they've never heard of him in their article.
The 70% claim was a red flag for a lot of sports betting folks. Voulgaris, who Nate Silver called the best sports bettor in the world, only wins about 57% of his NBA bets. SportsInsights ran the numbers in June and found that your chances of winning 70% of bets against the spread are about one in one trillion.
It's basically impossible to win 70%, but the VIP Sports Las Vegas website is using that claim to sell its picks to customers. Here's the promo video from the website (with NSFW language):
We've reached out to CNBC for comment and are awaiting their official statement.
Before we jump on CNBC, there's a big difference between Stevens being a fraud and the show itself being a fraud. We'll have to wait until Sept. 10 to see how he is portrayed.
But that's not all.
This morning WagerMinds reported that the domain name for Stevens' business VIP Sports Las Vegas was only registered eight months ago. It was registered under the name Darin Notaro.
According to WagerMinds, Notaro has been arrested and convicted in telemarketing scams going back to 1999. He was sentenced to a year in prison at age 25 for a scheme that "bilked elderly citizens across the nation out of at least $234,000," according to the Las Vegas Sun.
Judging by this screenshot from WagerMinds, they look alike:
According to WagerMinds, it appears that Notaro also rents the office space where VIP Sports Las Vegas is housed.
Again, we'll have to wait until the show airs to see if he is portrayed as what he claims to be (a big-shot sports bettor) or what many in the betting community see him as (a shady figure).