LOS ANGELES (CBS) — A regular dude, a no-name competing with the likes of Magic Johnson, Steve Garvey, Orel Hershiser, Mark Cuban and Joe Torre for ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers? Sounds too good to be true and it turns out, it was.

Joshua Macciello fooled the entire sport media world with his claims of having big money, big enough to bid on one of the most storied sports franchises in the nation. Macciello turned out to be a fraud who was never a real contender for the team and is actually a convicted drug dealer, the LA Weekly reports.

Macciello, 36, CEO of Armital Sports and Entertainment, told countless print and broadcast journalists that his company was taking in billions of dollars and it put him in a position to take over and run the Dodgers. Macciello interviewed with ESPN Radio’s Steve Mason and John Ireland and spoke to ESPN reporter Ramona Shelburne, who said she spent more than a month vetting Macciello.

“You hear all the tweets and all the things, ‘oh, this guy’s a hoax’ you know,” Macciello told CBS2/KCAL9’s Louisa Hodge in January. “I would probably be saying the same thing to if somebody came out of nowhere, too.”

According to the LA Weekly, Macciello arrived in Los Angeles about 15 years ago and attended valley College. He was pulled over and arrested for possessing 3,000 Vicodin tablets for sale in 2002, the paper reported. Macciello told the Weekly he was driving someone else’s car and illegally searched.