The Dual Threat Fishing League Might Be the Biggest Scam in the History of Bass Tournaments

Initially, the league asked the selected teams to pay $5,000 in entry fees for all six tournaments up front. The league would later shift to a no-entry fee policy, which added to the excitement. According to Martin, though, around six to 10 of the anglers had already sent in deposits. It’s unclear what those deposit amounts were, but at this point, none of the anglers have been reimbursed.

Martin explains in his recent video his own theories around the scam he thinks Phillips was trying to run. Phillips had told the anglers he had investors, and he even mentioned having the tournaments streamed on Netflix. All anyone knows for sure at this point is that the anglers were the ones left holding the bag after DTF’s first two tournaments in Florida, which were held on Lake Okeechobee and the St. Johns River on back-to-back weeks.

The tourney on “the Big O” took place Jan. 21 to Jan. 23, and the first-place team, Matt and Lafe Messer, were supposed to win $50,000 apiece. The brothers received the big novelty checks at the event. They say their actual checks never cleared, however, and Lafe is one of several anglers who claims to have been ghosted by Phillips.

DTF’s second tournament took place the following weekend on the St. Johns River in Palatka. Jace Lindsay and Fisher Anaya won that tourney with a three-day total of 76.71 pounds. Just like the Messer brothers, they were declared the winners and given large novelty checks at the event. And just like everyone else who finished “in the money” at the two events, they still haven’t been paid. 

“He was pretty responsive for a little while after the second event,” Lafe tells Outdoor Life. But sometime last week, he says, “he cut off all contact [with] everybody.”

In the weeks leading up to Phillips’ disappearance, Lafe says that he, Matt, and others received a series of excuses from Phillips that grew more complicated over time.

“Initially, we were told that his investor had gotten on him for not having [W-9] tax forms. When the first tournament was over, he wrote us the checks and was like, ‘Don’t cash them yet until I can get those tax forms done.’ And that seemed reasonable,” Lafe says. “Then it turned into this explanation that there were some disqualifications, and he was going to have to change the payouts. So he said he was putting a hold on the account to keep the disqualified boats from cashing their checks.”

Lafe still doesn’t know who was supposedly DQ’d on Okeechobee. The story Phillips gave was that some anglers were fishing in closed areas, so he was keeping a hold on the account until he got to the bottom of it. Lafe now thinks this was just another lie to buy time.

“The next excuse was that his investor was out of the country, and he couldn’t re-open the account without him, so [Phillips] was waiting for him to get back,” Lafe says. “That was pretty much the last lie, I guess … because then communication quit.” 

He explains that before Phillips asked them not to cash their checks, and even during the two DTF events, there were no red flags that he and Matt noticed. In hindsight, though, Lafe thinks it’s odd that when the two brothers tried to pay their $5,000 entry fees early on, Phillips had no interest in taking their money. While initially perplexing to the Messers and other anglers, some now believe this was part of Phillips’ long con.

“I’ll say this,” Martin says in his video. “He was a fantastic liar.”

“I mean, the two weeks we spent down there, it was a lot of fun,” Lafe adds. “It seemed like all the anglers were having a good time, and it felt like this was gonna be a good thing.”

Still, Lafe estimates that during the two weeks they were down in Florida, they spent at least $2,500 on fuel, lodging, and tackle. This is a common complaint among the anglers who missed work or other tournaments to fish the DTF events. One affected angler claims that if you were to add up all the checks that have bounced, the sum would be around $700,000.

Read Next: Tournament Anglers Say Their Checks Keep Bouncing. Now They’re Suing

Lafe confirms that under the contract the anglers signed with DTF, the league has 30 calendar days to pay out the tournament winnings. That timeline would expire this Sunday for the Okeechobee tournament, and on March 1 for the St. Johns event. 

Who Is Ethan Phillips and Where Is He Now?

Some of the more startling allegations around DTF have been made in recent days by two bass-fishing content creators: Steve Chapman of Get Ur Fish On and Dwayne Shamburger of Cerebral Tackle. They have done some extensive digging into DTF and the man behind it, and they are still investigating the alleged scam as more information comes to light.  

In a series of videos he’s shared over the last several days, Chapman has come out strongly against DTF’s owner and founder, Ethan Phillips. Chapman says he had been advising Phillips and helping promote the league over the last year, but that Phillips cut contact with him over the weekend.

BIGGEST Bass Fishing CHEATER and SCAM of All Time

“Nobody has been paid, no deposits were returned. And now I’ve been blocked, or Ethan’s phone number has been turned off,” Chapman explains in another recent video. “There’s no communication at all.”

A video that Shamburger shared Sunday (below) includes the allegations that Ethan Phillips is actually a man named Timothy Lynn. As evidence, he points to the internet sleuthing done by Skeeter Crosby, another disenfranchised angler whose team finished in 9th place at Okeechobee. They received a check from the event, but Crosby, like many others, has said the check never cleared.

Who Really IS Ethan Phillips? | Dual Threat Fishing

Crosby recently made a post with a photograph of Ethan Phillips in a Monroe County TN Facebook group, where he asked for information about the man in the photo. He was told by another social-media user that the person pictured is actually a man named Tim Lynn from East Tennessee. 

Shamburger claims in his video that a source at the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office told him they have someone by that name in their system, and that Lynn had three active warrants out for this arrest.

The MCSO’s public information officer, Sue Pettingill, tells Outdoor Life, however, that they have neither a Timothy Lynn nor an Ethan Phillips in their booking system. 

“Now if there’s a warrant out for his arrest that’s different. He may not [have been] arrested yet,” Pettingill says. “But if he’s been booked into the system or if he’s actually incarcerated, he would be in our computer [database].”