When you look at football superfans Joseph Ruback, the Giants “License Plate Guy,” you gotta wonder how someone like him ends up with the kind of money to sit so close to the field for every single game. As it turns out with Ruback, the answer is probably “illegally.”

Ruback was arrested and charged this morning with “running a loan-sharking ring,” after a 16-month undercover investigation into a gambling syndicate in New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida. According to District Attorney Thomas Zugibe, “(Ruback) used threats, intimidation and even physical force to collect debts and charged usurious interest rates on outstanding debts.”

The investigation (beautifully called Operation Rock Bottom) also led to several other arrests, but none so schadenfreude-inducing than Ruback’s.

[via Bob’s Blitz]