Happy Retirement, Vegas Dave: A History of the “World’s Best” Birkin-Obsessed Sports Betting Consultant

He’s graced the cover of GQ and Rolling Stone Magazine (albeit in photoshopped images posted on his Instagram) and is frequently spotted in his G.O.A.T baseball cap. Instead of girlfriends, he dates Birkin bags, bringing at least one to every basketball game and often reserving them a courtside seat.

He boasts over an 80% chance of winning with his homemade sports betting packages, yet can’t provide evidence of his own success percentages. In other words, Vegas Dave is an enigma.

From his federal indictment and subsequent three-year Vegas sportsbook ban to his record-breaking baseball card sale, we’ve covered several of the biggest headlines in Vegas Dave’s meteoric gambling career.

Now, Vegas Dave has announced that he will retire from sports betting consulting after the current NFL season.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at the life, business, and general reputation of Vegas Dave ahead of his retirement next year.

Who is Vegas Dave?

Vegas Dave, whose real name is David Oancea, first rose to global sports betting fame in 2015 when he won $2.5 million on a bet that the Kansas City Royals would take home the Commissioner’s Trophy. More recently, he made history by selling the world’s most valuable baseball card at a cool $3.9 million, beating the previous record by over $700,000. 

However, his reputation is far more complex than just a man who takes big gambles. Vegas Dave is famous for flaunting his wealth, but the means with which he achieved it are notoriously shady. 

Despite considering himself the “#1 sports consultant in the world”, Vegas Dave’s sports picks have no mathematical algorithms behind them and are largely unsuccessful. More of a “whale” than a wunderkind, Oancea bets big and encourages his customers to do so too. Yet, he rarely shows evidence of his own success rate (other than debuting a new Birkin or two).

Vegas Dave isn’t just fanatical about sports betting. From attempting to predict the next major crypto crash to “dreaming about a recession” every night, Oancea presents himself as both a finance and a crypto “bro”.

If his money-making passions were put into a Venn diagram, the intersection would create a distinct new category: “betting bro”.

Image Credit: Instagram/itsvegasdave

Vegas Dave has a rise-and-grind approach to sports betting, claiming he wakes every day at 3am, sleeps at 10pm, and has not had a day off in six years. He’s constantly investing in the latest craze, whether that’s NFTs, cryptocurrencies, virtual plots of land in the Metaverse, or, most recently, baseball cards.

Determined to influence not just the wallets but the minds of his followers, Oancea regularly posts inspirational (and often sexist) quotes and photos to his Instagram.

In a reel posted on September 25, he describes how men only build an empire if they eschew girlfriends in favor of dogs. “If you’re bored and lonely and miss your girlfriend, get a dog…a dog doesn’t talk back, a dog doesn’t cheat on you, and to feed your dog, you don’t have to take him to Del Frisco’s.”

His attitude towards women is just one of Vegas Dave’s many Trump-esque qualities.

Whether it’s the “Art of Winning” he mentions in his fake Rolling Stone cover (a not-so-subtle nod to Trump’s “Art of the Deal”) or his his stubborn insistence that his domestic battery charge in 2016 was “all false, ” his explanation about why he doesn’t bother using math for his picks – “I just have a good vision and gut…it’s not teachable, I could never teach you what I do” – it’s impossible not to draw illusions between Dave and The Don. Including their penchant for high profile financial failures.

Where did Vegas Dave get his money?

Oancea’s first foray into the world of gambling is the stuff of legends. He began to dabble in sports betting when he moved to Hawaii in 1997, but it wasn’t until 2001 that he made his first life-changing gamble.

Oancea’s parents wanted him to go to college, but he had other plans. Registering at the University of Nevada, Oancea took out a $10,000 student loan and immediately put it all on red. Fortunately, his risk paid off, and thus, his life as Vegas Dave began. 

Unfortunately, his luck in Sin City didn’t last long. By 2002, he filed a voluntary petition for personal bankruptcy, and by 2010, he had his home foreclosed. His parents had to cover thousands of dollars worth of losses throughout his unsuccessful gambling career.

From 2013 to 2017, Vegas Dave managed to hit a series of impressive win streaks, peaking with $2.5 million and $2.3 million in sports betting payouts in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

However, Oancea’s eye-watering sports bets were brought to an abrupt halt in 2017 after he was indicted on 19 federal charges. This included nine counts of Social Security number misuse (during which he wagered an estimated $3.5 million at Westgate SuperBook and Wynn Las Vegas) and ten counts of causing false reports.

During the case, Vegas Dave admitted to having a gambling addiction and losing all of his winnings over a five-to-eight-year period.

Image Credit: Bizuayehu Tesfaye/LVRJ

Almost two years later, US District Judge Jennifer Dorsey accepted Oancea’s guilty plea for a single misdemeanor of causing Vegas’ casinos to produce false reports.

Though he faced up to 95 years in prison (a five-year prison term per charge), Vegas Dave was let off with a five-year probation, a civil forfeiture of $550,000, and a three-year ban from Nevada’s sportsbooks.

Despite an irreparable blow to his reputation, Oancea’s felony indictments and subsequent sportsbook ban actually worked in his favor. After all, they led to the creation of his shady (but ultimately very lucrative) picks flogging business.

Vegas Dave agrees, taking to Instagram to tell his followers: “The Feds and the casinos banning and greed was a blessing in disguise. Since that time, my life has changed tremendously, and I am now running an 8 figure business from home. The key thing I did was PIVOT. I pivoted from being a professional sports bettor to the #1 sports betting consultant in the world.”

Oancea’s various dealings as a sports betting consultant, gambling influencer, baseball card trader, and – most recently – a property owner have amassed him a net worth of over $20 million.

All things considered, a $550,000 fine back in 2019 was a small price to pay for the life he now lives.

What does Vegas Dave do?

Sports consulting

Vegas Dave runs a sports betting consulting business. According to his official website, he is the “GOAT of sports betting” and the “#1 sports consultant in the world”. He also claims to have been featured on ESPN, Fox Sports, and USA Today, though whether that’s for his large sports bets or his various felonies is unclear.

Oancea started up his consultancy business, Vegas Dave Consulting LLC, while awaiting trial for his betting felonies.

“I became a sports consultant, where I provide people information on what to bet on,” Oancea told the Las Vegas Sun when he received his three-year sportsbook ban in 2019. “They don’t want me betting at all, which is fine with me because I’m making more money now as a consultant.”

Though retired from placing bets himself, Oancea offers various sports pick packages for bettors to buy, including a $199 Daily Card package, a $495 Super Goat package, and a $995-$1,495 NFL Season package.

Despite regularly warning his followers of economic collapse as a result of crypto crashes, cryptocurrency is the only method of payment that Vegas Dave accepts for his pick packages.

Here are some examples of his full-season betting packages, as advertised on his website:

Option 1: NFL Season Package

• Receive both NFL straight bets + NFL parlays weekly for the season.
• Expect to make an extra $2,000-5,000 a week with this package.

Option 2: College Football Season Package

• Receive both college football straight bets + college football parlays weekly for the college season.
• Expect to make an extra $2,000-5,000 a week with this package.

Option 3: NFL + College Football Bundle

• Receive it all: NFL straight bets, NFL parlays, college football straight bets, college football parlays.
• Expect to make an extra $5,000-10,000 a week with this package.

Baseball card touting

Alongside his sports picks packages, Vegas Dave supplements his income by buying and selling rare baseball cards.

While his consulting business began after his 2017 indictments, his baseball trading career was a result of his 2019 convictions. “When they banned me”, Oancea says, “my vision was clear: sports cards”. Surprisingly, trading bits of old cardboard has earned him more than any of his biggest sports bets. 

In 2020, Oancea made history when he sold the world’s most expensive baseball card for $3.9 million. The card in question was a signed Mike Trout rookie card, which he bought from a Taiwanese seller on eBay for $400,000 two years prior. The sale beat the previous record holder – a 1901 T206 Honus Wagner that went for $3.1 million in 2016 – by over $700,000.

Image Credit: Al Munroe/Shutterstock

When faced with criticism over spending almost half a million on a baseball card, Oancea responded matter-of-factly: “I relate it to art—like the Mona Lisa or a Picasso. There’s only one in the world.”

While it sounds like an innocent enough hobby (if something with such a high price tag can be considered a hobby), even baseball cards don’t escape the toxic touch of Vegas Dave.

In 2017, Oancea got caught out for selling a counterfeit 1986 Fleer #57 Michael Jordan rookie card to a buyer at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago.

Though Oancea claims he didn’t know the card was fake, multiple followers identified the card as a fake when he posted a photo bragging about his purchase ahead of the convention.

Despite the President of the PSA confirming that the card was not an authentic PSA-graded item, Vegas Dave refused to issue the buyer a refund.

Villa Vegas Dave

Oancea’s latest project is a portfolio of three luxury Cabo villa rentals, aptly named Villa Vegas Dave. The first property starts at $3,495 per night, while the third charges a whopping $12,500 per night.

According to the official site, the villas have attracted celebrities like Ja Morant, Ezekiel Elliott, Matt Stafford, Marcedes Lewis, Bradley Beal, Luka Doncic, and Tyga.

As smooth as his Instagram paints the project to be, Vegas Dave has been embroiled in a legal battle with his property rental company, Cabo Platinum, over claims of business disparagement and misappropriation of trade secrets.

Oancea lodged a complaint that Cabo Platinum had committed fraud, which he lost. The following day, Cabo Platinum lodged a counter-complaint against Oancea, winning each one of the nine motions filed since (including four challenges from Oancea’s legal team).

The lawsuit is ongoing, and it doesn’t look good for Dave.

Vegas Dave’s biggest bets, deals, and purchases

Biggest bets

• 2001: Won $20,000 after betting his entire $10,000 student loan on roulette, kickstarting his gambling career.
• 2013: Won $208,000 on an $8,000 bet that the Baltimore Ravens would win the Super Bowl.
• 2013: Won $340,000 on a $30,000 bet that the Boston Red Sox would win the World Series.
• 2015: Won $2.5 million on a $140,000 bet that the Kansas City Royals would win the World Series.
• 2015: Won $240,000 on a $20,000 bet that Holly Holm would beat Ronda Rousey at UFC 193.
• 2016: Won $2.3 million across various bets that the Denver Broncos would win the Super Bowl.
• 2016: Won $223,000 on a 77,000 bet that Miesha Tate would beat Holly Holm at UFC 196.
• 2016: Lost $1 million after Miesha Tate lost to Amanda Nunes at UFC 200 (after which he was charged with domestic battery against his girlfriend).
• 2017: Won $2 million after the Falcons won the NFC Championships; also lost out on $3 million after his $45,000 wager on the Falcons to win the UFC didn’t pay out.

Though he scored more than $2 million during Super Bowl 50, Oancea didn’t receive the full amount due to ongoing federal investigations. His sports betting career ended abruptly in 2017 when he was indicted for 19 gambling-related felonies.

Notable deals and purchases

• 2019: Bought an Hermès Birkin for $500,000, breaking the world record for the most expensive Birkin bag (three months after his guilty plea).
• 2020: Sold a rare Mike Trout baseball card for $922,000.
• 2020: Sold the world’s most expensive baseball card (another Trout) for $3.9 million.
• 2022: Literally burnt through $250,000 when he set fire to a Michael Jordan Rookie card (trying to prove the card industry would soon crash).

If there’s one thing Vegas Dave loves more than swindling rookie bettors for cash, it’s his Birkin collection. In 2019, he posted a video to his YouTube account giving viewers a tour of his Birkin Himalayan collection, which includes a 35-diamond, a 30-diamond, and two 25-diamond bags totaling almost $2 million.

When sealing the deal on the $500,000 Birkin, Oancea eagerly asked the seller: “Do you think Kim Kardashian is going to hear about this?”.

Do Vegas Dave’s betting picks work?

As every bettor knows, it is impossible to ever guarantee a win. Even predictions from data-driven prediction engineers like Dan Gamble AI cannot guarantee success in sports betting. Still, Vegas Dave insists that his picks are certain to pay out.

His claims to offer an 85% success rate are wholly inaccurate. Billy Walters, the most successful sports gambler in history, had an approximate win rate of only 57%.

Even if Vegas Dave’s predictions turn out to be correct, by the time you pay for the privilege of his picks, your profits will be pretty much depleted (and that’s before the sportsbook takes its cut).

You’d need to win 52.38% of all your bets to break even, and judging from the reactions of numerous unhappy clients in interviews, Reddit threads, and Oancea’s own Instagram comments, this is not what really plays out.

In 2019, Vegas Dave featured in the four-part docu-series Action, which takes a closer look at the impact that the overturning of PASPA had on the sports betting industry.

For his part, the self-proclaimed “#1 sports consultant in the world” lost three back-to-back bets for his customers, which included an unsuccessful wager on the Rams to beat the Patriots in Super Bowl LIII.

Even his predictions outside of sports betting have proved untrue. In 2021, a year after selling his record-breaking baseball card, Vegas Dave predicted that the market would take a sharp U-turn. “I am the first person in the world to predict the sports card market will collapse by the end of 2024,” Oancea claimed in a YouTube video.

Fast forward to the year in question, and the sports card market is booming. The Global Sports Trading Card Market was valued at $8.58 billion in 2022 and is projected to increase to $39.53 billion by 2031.

What’s more, four more basketball cards have beaten Vegas Dave’s historic $3.9 million sale in 2020. The record now sits at a staggering $12.6 million for a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, sold in 2022.

Can Vegas Dave be trusted?

Vegas Dave has been accused of being a “fraudster”, a “parasite”, a “black eye”, and a “scamdicapper”.

There are entire Twitter accounts dedicated to highlighting the supposed frauds committed by his his consultancy business and Instagram accounts claiming that his luxury Cabo property complex, Villa Vegas Dave, is just a timeshare that anyone can rent.

There is even a website detailing Oancea’s complex legal battle with property rental company Cabo Platinum.

He sold a counterfeit trading card for thousands of dollars, placed millions of dollars worth of illegal wagers under false Social Security Numbers, and enticed unwitting and inexperienced bettors into parting ways with hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on his faulty sports picks packages.

Vegas Dave Consulting LLC is not even BBB certified. And yet, people keep buying.

He’s not the first person to sell picks, and he definitely won’t be the last. But with more handicappers leveraging AI algorithms to cast increasingly accurate predictions, why are bettors continuing to trust in his Vegas Dave, splashing large amounts of cash on predictions that have no statistical rhyme or reason?

The answer most likely lies in his marketing. The majority of his followers are inexperienced sports bettors looking for guidance and, naively, a guaranteed win.

Vegas Dave uses telemarketer tactics to present himself as a veritable Prophet of Picks, yelling vague and inflated success statistics through the screen at newbie bettors and posing courtside with his garish pink Birkin.

Despite the cheesy photoshops and cliche quotes he posts on Instagram, Vegas Dave is an undeniable success story. Though he did it with dishonorable means, David Oancea has the money, the cars, the villas, and the Birkins to prove that he has, in fact, made himself a millionaire.

And when he pushes the narrative that gambling with his picks is a promise of easy money, it’s not entirely surprising that impressionable gamblers want to get in on the action.

Is Vegas Dave retiring?

Vegas Dave has publicly announced that he will be retiring after the current NFL season. However, his website features the following statement:

“If we don’t make money on the package, next year’s same exact package is completely free. That’s how confident I am this year on football, we are going to make a lot of money.”

This promise to roll over any unsuccessful clients to the following season doesn’t exactly look like a man giving up on the sports betting game. Whether or not Vegas Dave commits to his retirement plans will only become clear when the curtain closes on Super Bowl LVIX.

Title Image Credit: Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images