Ashton Kutcher’s surprising claim he fronted a large sports-betting syndicate appeared Thursday as part of an Esquire article about the actor. The noted Iowa Hawkeyes fan describes a sophisticated operation that was clearing hundreds of thousands of dollars per week during college football season.

“The hypothesis had been that the house would just assume that I was a dumb actor with a lot of money who liked football,” he told the magazine.

Kutcher describes the system they employed in specific detail and comes off as a man who knows what he’s talking about. And some gambling insiders say that his story checks out in Las Vegas.

A former Las Vegas sports book manager told The Linemakers on Sporting News that he was very familiar with Kutcher’s sports betting in the early 2000s, the same time frame chronicled by author Michael Konik in “The Smart Money: How the World’s Best Sports Bettors Beat the Bookies out of Millions.”

“They thought they had a sucker on the hook, then he won $800,000 in four weeks,” said the ex-bookie, who asked to remain anonymous. “They had to shut him down.”

Many believe Kutcher is one of the characters in Konik’s highly-acclaimed book that details the author’s time working for Rick “Big Daddy” Matthews, a gambler described as, “the world’s smartest sports bettor and the mastermind behind the Brain Trust, a shadowy group of gamblers known for their expertise in beating the Vegas line.”

Perhaps we’ve underestimated Kelso all along.

[Photo via USA Today Sports]