So maybe Mazi embellishes his record a bit. Isn’t that what salespeople do? Isn’t that what Americans do?

Mazi isn’t shy about defending his reputation in public — if anything, he’s a bit too easy to provoke — but he also has a tendency to undermine his own credibility. I had to pester him three times to connect me with clients who could vouch for his performance. Finally, he gave me two phone numbers. The first client, a man named Kendrick Muldrew, who told me he started his own private security business with the winnings from his bets with Mazi, turned out to be Mazi’s former bodyguard. The second client, a locally successful Memphis-based rap producer, Lody Lucci, told me he hooked up with Mazi through X last year and hung out with him in Las Vegas, where he watched with admiration as Mazi laid down big bets on his own picks. That sold him. Lucci told me he spends $10,000 to $20,000 per week buying picks from Mazi and $30,000 more on wagers, and he claims the relationship has made him “a lot of money, a lot of money.” A couple of months later, though, Lucci revealed that he’s not a client of Mazi’s, never has been and only pretended to be at Mazi’s behest.

It’s also worth noting that every sharp and every oddsmaker I spoke with for this article pointed out that if Mazi really wins at the rate he claims, most of the sportsbooks he bets at would never take his action. “You kind of tell on yourself when you show big tickets constantly,” Gadoon Kyrollos, a much-admired pro gambler, known as Spanky, who co-founded the Sports Gambling Hall of Fame two years ago, told me. “You’re trying to say, ‘Look — I’m a big winner.’ But for anybody that has a clue, we know the reality is that you’re fundamentally a loser.” Casinos also keep close tabs on the betting patterns of their regular customers, especially the winners. “The folks I know on, let’s say, both the light and dark sides of the street — we know who’s out there,” Brennan told me. “We know who’s for real and who isn’t, and I can tell you for a fact, Mazi isn’t anywhere near that list, isn’t in consideration, an honorable mention, any of that.”

OK, so maybe Mazi embellishes his record a bit. Isn’t that what salespeople do? Isn’t that what Americans do? Here we are, in Sin City, at the restaurant and bar of the Trump International — “the best dining in Las Vegas,” according to the hotel website, where the seasonal breakfast fruit plate costs $21 — and we’re getting all high and mighty about truth in marketing? Noel calls Mazi’s prices “absolutely absurd” but notes that “he wouldn’t be selling at that price if people weren’t buying.” He particularly respects Mazi’s willingness to bet big himself. Plenty of cappers don’t risk their own money, while Mazi claims to have won so many million-dollar bets on the Kansas City Chiefs in recent years that he got a tattoo of the quarterback Patrick Mahomes on his thigh. “Those bets — they’re definitely real,” Noel says, and win or lose, “it’s incredible marketing.”

By the time the bartender and three other co-workers managed to find the Purdue game, the Boilermakers had a healthy lead and Mazi’s big parlay was nearly two-thirds of the way home. As we left, the bartender put our coffee orders on the house to atone for the debacle with the TVs, and then a valet brought around Mazi’s two-toned white-and-black Maybach, which is a high-end brand of Mercedes-Benz for people who think only poor people drive Mercedes-Benzes. Lots of sports fans consider today — Day 1 of Round 1 of March Madness — to be their favorite day of the year, but Mazi seemed uninterested. Instead, he drove us to a luxury shopping mall and made a beeline for the Louis Vuitton store, where a clerk recognized him and greeted him warmly. While I watched basketball on my phone, Mazi bought a $2,200 pair of black pants and a $3,800 black jacket.