Catfish Bend Casino Hunt

Sam Rattner tells a story about how he tracked down a missing casino riverboat through creative investigation.

"I was talking with a buddy after leaving Fubo, and he showed me this picture of his grandfather in Atlantic City with riverboats in the background. He asked what happens to these boats when they're done with them. I got curious and emailed the general counsel of a casino company we'd done a license deal with in Iowa.

I asked what they do with old cruise ships when they're done with them. He said nowadays no one wants them, they just end up in junkyards. Then, almost like a movie, as I'm hanging up the phone, he goes 'Hey Sam, we don't know where it is, but we think somebody somewhere in Iowa has the Catfish Bend.'

I was unemployed and had nothing to do, so I gave myself two hours to try to find this boat. First, I called every junkyard in the tri-state area. Then I found this fishing and hunting ticketing site - I remembered it from getting a ticket on my uncle's boat once. I figured whoever had this cruise ship probably got a moving violation.

I sat there clicking through hundreds of pages of tickets until I found this acronym that could match Catfish Bend. Clicked it - boom, big vessel moving violation, $22,000 ticket. Through court filings, I learned it was bought at auction by a marina construction company in northern Iowa.

I called a buddy who knew the company - they fix everyone's yachts. Called their office, asked for the oldest person there. This 90-year-old man gets on the phone, and before I could finish my question, he cuts me off and says 'Tell me you're looking for the Catfish Baby.'

Turns out he had it sitting in a quarry for 20 years. He'd planned to use it for parts but it became too costly to get the engines out. I ended up persuading myself to buy it."