![]() ![]() He phoned illegal bookmakers in front of his ABC-TV colleagues, made wagers from the football production truck, even instructed network employees to place bets on his behalf when he was overseas.įorte, who left ABC in early 1987, said he lost upward of $4 million as a sports and casino gambler, betting on as many as 70 college and pro games in a single day. "My life," he said, "has become a horror story."įorte said his downfall is the result of an illness he did not recognize until he could no longer make payments on his million-dollar house: compulsive gambling.įrom 1960 to 1988, Forte said, there were days that he wagered as much as $100,000 on football, basketball, baseball and hockey as well as boxing and horse racing. Today, Forte - the national collegiate basketball player of the year in 1957, when he was known as "Chet the Jet" - is $1.5 million in debt, shunned by the TV industry and facing a possible prison term for federal fraud and tax offenses. He won nine Emmy awards, earned a salary that reached $900,000 a year, lived in a six-bedroom, seven-bathroom house in fashionable Saddle River, N.J., and rarely left home without that chauffeur-driven limo. He was the director of ABC television's "Monday Night Football" as it became an American institution. For more than two decades, Chet Forte's life was a stretch limousine.
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