Friday, Jan. 16, 2004 | 11:21 a.m.
Among the more curious aspects of the federal investigation into allegations of fixed boxing matches is Joey Torres, a one-time amateur boxing champion who served 23 years in prison for murder.
The colorful Torres, who is in a Los Angeles County jail waiting to return to prison, spent two years out ingratiating himself with respected promoter Top Rank Inc., which was raided by FBI agents earlier this month as part of the investigation.
Torres was reportedly the link that brought an undercover agent into the boxing world and their presence has shaken the Las Vegas boxing community.
The former two-time Amateur Athletic Union champion pleaded guilty to a 1979 killing of a gasoline station manager who doubled as Torres' boxing manager. Torres was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
A judge overturned his plea on Jan. 6, 2002, and while prosecutors worked to reinstate the conviction, which they would eventually do, Torres lived a lifetime: He got baseball Hall of Fame inductee Paul Molitor to post his bail, and then he came to Las Vegas.
Torres signed with Bob Arum's Top Rank, fought in a professional bout and reportedly helped federal officials with their investigation.
Torres, 42, also tried his hand at other things, such as an aborted attempt to patent a method of advertising on boxing trunks.
A California court reinstated Torres' conviction in May, but he remained free on bond until Sept. 1 when he failed to show up for a court hearing in the middle of the federal investigation. He was caught in Las Vegas and returned to jail, but not before leaving a wake through Las Vegas.
Torres reportedly teamed up with an undercover New York City cop who went by the name "Big Frankie" Manzione, while the FBI looked at the sale of stolen property and liquor in Las Vegas as well as allegations of fight fixing.
The undercover officer posed as a mob associate fencing stolen goods in Las Vegas, law enforcement sources have said.
Verna Wefald, a Pasadena, Calif., criminal defense lawyer who represented Torres for about 18 months until last September, said she believes Manzione came to see her last summer inquiring about the fighter's murder case.
Wefald said a man identifying himself as "Frankie," a cousin of Torres, telephoned her to say he was on his way to some boxing matches in Anaheim, Calif., and wanted to stop by her Pasadena office to talk about the case. He later showed up with Bruce Trampler, a longtime Top Rank official, she said.
Frankie offered whatever help he could, she said.
"He wanted to know the status of the case," Wefald said. "He told me Joey was very worried about having to go back to prison."
She said she knew that Trampler had taken Torres under his wing, even claiming to have written a movie script on his life.
"Joey told people he was like a father to him," she said.
Trampler, Top Rank's chief matchmaker, has worked for Arum since 1980. He moved to Las Vegas in 1987 when Top Rank relocated its offices here from New York.
Lee Samuels, a Top Rank spokesman, said Trampler and all Top Rank employees are under orders from attorneys not to comment on the FBI investigation.
Trampler is the second Top Rank official who reportedly had contact with Manzione. The other one, Sean Gibbons, a matchmaker who worked under Trampler, was fired several days after FBI agents executed a search warrant at Top Rank's office on Howard Hughes Parkway. Both Gibbons and his lawyer, David Chesnoff, have declined comment.
Wefald, meanwhile, said she was upset to learn that in the entire time she was representing Torres, he might have been working with the FBI.
She said it was "real sleazy" for federal authorities to go behind her back.
"I had no idea that any of this was going on," she said. "I'm doing all of this work, worrying about the case, without any knowledge of this."
A California prosecutor who worked to put Torres back in prison says she was advised that Torres was working with federal investigators.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Pamela Frohreich said she cannot comment on the FBI probe, she said her office never offered Torres a deal and that no federal authorities asked L.A. prosecutors for leniency for Torres.
"The only thing (the federal agents) asked was that if he went back into custody to let them know," Frohreich said, noting federal authorities told L.A. county prosecutors to go ahead with their efforts through the judicial system.
Wefald said she worries that Torres now has no legal representation at all and might also be in danger in jail if it is true he was helping the FBI.
Frohreich said Torres has learned to manipulate the system, including securing a transfer to a Southern Nevada facility that enabled him to rub elbows with sports celebrities.
"He knows how to work the system," Frohreich said. "He's a character."
Frohreich believes Torres is trying to get special treatment by playing up his alleged involvement in the investigation.
"He has done this before -- tried to get special treatment and protection," she said, noting that one incident he used to his advantage got him into the now-closed lower security prison in Jean in the 1980s.
Torres has said in a number of news accounts that he rescued a female guard from a group of inmates at a medical prison in Vacaville, Calif., as they beat and attempted to rape her. Frohreich describes it more as his intervening in an attack by an inmate on a new prison worker.
Torres, she said, was able to convince prison officials that his life was in danger from other inmates in the California system because he acted on behalf of a prison official.
That, Frohreich said, was Torres' first big break. After moving around California, he was sent to Jean and a prison in New Mexico.
The Albuquerque Journal, in an Aug. 8 story on Torres, wrote: "While incarcerated in Nevada, he founded a chapter of Boxers Against Drugs.
"Through sheer persistence, he became a successful sports promoter from behind bars -- arranging benefit sports card shows involving big names such as football star Emmitt Smith, baseball stars Eric Davis, Darryl Strawberry, Paul Molitor and former world boxing champion Carlos Palomino."
Torres even started while behind bars his own sports memorabilia company, Joey's OG Collectibles.
The Nevada Department of Prisons was not able to immediately confirm all of that.
In 1990, Torres was transferred to the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas, where he spent eight years. Frohreich said during that period he ran a program where inmates spoke to youths about the dangers of drugs.
Torres got out of jail several months before the probe reportedly began. He hooked up with Arum, who according to news accounts wanted to give the hard-luck Torres a chance.
Torres trained for a while at Johnny Tocco's gym in Las Vegas and made his long-awaited pro debut on April 27, 2002, in Anaheim.
Torres' opponent Perry Williams went down in the second round on a blow by the 5-foot-6, 180-pound Torres. According to news reports, the crowd booed. Torres' purse initially was withheld, but state boxing officials found no evidence that the fight had been fixed. Torres retired after the bout.
"I don't think it was fixed," said trainer Kenny Adams, who worked Torres' corner. "Of course, maybe I wouldn't have known if it was fixed or not, but I know at the time it didn't even cross my mind.
"It looked to me as if Joey simply worked the belly of this guy and came back and won."
Torres retired after the fight but reportedly stayed close to Top Rank and introduced Manzione to Top Rank employees.
Longtime political strategist Sig Rogich, whose communications firm is on the same floor as Top Rank, said he couldn't recall ever seeing Manzione.
But Rogich, a former chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which oversees boxing, said he ran into Torres a couple of times within the past 18 months.
Rogich described Torres as a "nice guy," who was loaded with tattoos, on his arms, back and neck.
On one occasion, Rogich said, Torres pitched him an idea he had for layered boxing shorts that could be used for advertisements in the ring.
Draped over a fighter's regular shorts, Torres explained to Rogich, would be 10-12 thin layers, each with different advertisements for every round of a fight. A boxer could rip off each layer as the rounds progressed.
Rogich said Torres wanted a patent on the trunks, so he referred Torres to attorney Mark Tratos, who does patent work.
"I know Tratos sent him a bill for $5,000, but that was the last I heard of it," Rogich said. "I don't think it went anywhere."
Tratos said his firm did all of the legal paperwork for Torres, but Torres never paid for the work, so the firm dropped him as a client.
"We just never heard from him again," Tratos said.
FBI agents searched the offices of Top Rank on Jan. 6. Computers, documents, financial records and boxing tapes reportedly were confiscated during the raid.
Torres reportedly worked as an event coordinator and boxing talent scout for Top Rank.
Much of Torres' early life -- as with much of his later years -- reads like a movie script.
Torres' family moved to Southern California when he was eight months old, according to his biography from Top Rank.
"I grew up in Panorama City," Torres said in that bio. "When I was 9, 10 years old, I fought on Frankie Goodman's Kid Gloves program. I started getting into that.
"My father had the mentality that if you get into a fight and get your ass kicked, you get your ass kicked twice as much at home."
Torres said he was shunned by white kids for being Hispanic and rejected by Hispanics for looking like a white guy. "I was like an outcast," he said in the bio.
Torres' early mentors were world boxing champions Bobby "Schoolboy" Chacon and Carlos Palomino and world kickboxing champ Benny "The Jet" Urquidez. Also as a boy, Torres met and befriended future baseball stars Davis and Strawberry.
"Joey had raw talent," Palomino said of Torres in the Top Rank bio. "(He) was very strong and mentally tough. He had the potential to be a world champion."
In 1976, Torres won the AAU national lightweight crown. A year later, he won the AAU national welterweight title.
"I got blinded by early fame," Torres said in the Top Rank bio. "I got hooked by people always patting me on the back. ... People wanted to exploit me because God gave me a knockout punch and a solid chin."
In 1979, as Torres tells it, he got into an argument with his manager, Jose Ramirez, at an East Los Angeles gas station, Ramirez pulled a gun, the two struggled and the weapon discharged, killing Ramirez.
Frohreich said while that is a nice account the news media has told and retold, "it's a made-up story."
She said the police investigation found that the gas station's safe was broken into and that Torres admitted he killed the man because he needed money.
Torres' original plea bargain was that he would agree to the first-degree murder charge and that the robbery and firearm charges would be dropped.
Frohreich said Torres apparently understood he would be going to the California Youth Authority facility until he was 25 years old and then would be released. But when he was freed from that place he was sent to the state prison to serve the rest of his life term. There, she said, he filed appeals.
After reading law books, Torres filed an appeal and prevailed in Los Angeles County Superior Court as his guilty plea was tossed out.
Molitor, who had met Torres through Torres' prison-run card shows and youth anti-drug program, and initially through Torres' childhood friend Davis, posted Torres' bail.
"He (Torres) just needed some help getting started," Molitor told the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press in an April 24, 2002, story. "He just needed some resources."
Molitor also bought Torres a car, The Pioneer Press said.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office filed an appeal to the court ruling that freed Torres and prevailed on May 19, 2003. Torres was given a Sept. 1 date to report back to court for another bail hearing because the case would be going through an appeals process.
Instead, Torres ran.
He was arrested in Las Vegas in early December. He was back before a Los Angeles judge on Dec. 9 and now sits in a Los Angeles jail awaiting his fate.
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