Background
Marisa Lankester was born in Rome, and raised in Westchester County, New York by an English father who worked at the United Nations and German mother, and attended the all-girls Catholic independent Ursuline School.
Marisa Lankester was born in Rome, and raised in Westchester County, New York by an English father who worked at the United Nations and German mother, and attended the all-girls Catholic independent Ursuline School.
She attended Marymount Manhattan College before moving to Vancouver, British Columbia, and later Los Angeles, California.
In January 2015 there were discussions about making a movie based on the book starring Margot Robbie as Lankester. In June 1987, Lankester was arrested on charges of bookmaking, along with six other employees, after Los Angeles sheriffs, aided by information by two Federal Bureau of Investigation informants, raided the office where she worked as a clerk for Ron (the Cigar) Sacco, operator of a sophisticated horse racing and sports betting operation that processed “at least $40 million” in bets in 1986 and considered the biggest bookmaker in American history. Lankester married Sacco"s right-hand man, Tony Ballestrasse, in 1987 and gave birth to a daughter before locating with Sacco"s operation to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic where gambling was legal.
Although a top model on the Island, she was jailed twice and endured repeated rapes after the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police raided Sacco’s headquarters in January 1992 (at the time the operation was taking in $100 million/month in bets and considered the “nerve center of American sports betting”)
Retiring permanently from bookmaking in 1994, she moved back to New York in 1996 to attend college in Manhattan.
She currently resides in Zürich, Switzerland with her family. Lankester has been interviewed for input into the debate surrounding United States gambling laws (refer “” below).
She published her memoirs, Dangerous Odds, with the book rights optioned in 2015 by Warner Bros to become a major motion picture starring Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wallstreet) and screenplay by Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton).