Kriti Mehrotra
With Amazon Prime Video’s ‘Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel’ delving into the unbelievable life and crimes of Owen Hanson, we get a documentary series unlike any other. It actually incorporates not only archival footage but also exclusive interviews with those involved to really underscore how the once-University of Southern California football athlete evolved into a drug kingpin. Amongst those to thus feature in this three-part original is Daniel Portley-Hanks, better known as just Dan Hanks or Danno, the private investigator whose past is as intriguing as his work.
Dan “Danno” Hanks Has an Extensive Criminal History
It was on July 13, 1946, that Dan “Danno” Hanks was born in Oakland, California, to Cheerful Louise Kappes and Daniel “Dan” Joseph Portley III as the youngest of their ten adorable children. Unfortunately, as per his biography, his early years were far from comfortable or happy since his father sadly died by suicide when he was less than a year old, and he was allegedly sexually abused by his stepfather. He has long asserted that he willingly took to the streets as a teenager to hopefully avoid the advances of the latter, resulting in him falling into a bad crowd as well as a life of petty crime.
According to records, Danno has an extensive rap sheet filled with over 50 arrests and four terms in state or federal prisons, dating all the way back to the 1960s. He reportedly started out with petty theft and burglary before evolving into fraudulent bank deposits, grand larceny, car or property theft, extortion, and much more. However, he has always maintained that his motivation for engaging in such crimes was not his personal financial benefit but an adrenaline rush to make him feel alive. One of his first prison stints was at the maximum-security San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in Marin County, California, where he allegedly witnessed a fatal stabbing.
Therefore, upon Danno’s release, he decided to turn over a new leaf, realizing he could not only stay out of jail but also earn more by working on the other side. He thus took the necessary steps to become a confidential informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Yet, because he was still dabbling in a few illegal activities during this time, he ended up at the co-ed Federal Correctional Facility in Pleasanton, California, for a while. It was upon his release from here that he wholly embraced life as a private investigator by establishing Backstreet Investigations alongside a long-time associate named Fred Valis.
Dan “Danno” Hanks Has Been Involved in Several High-Profile Cases Over the Years
While it’s true that Danno has served the DEA and the FBI several times during his youth, his work as a private investigator is what garnered him significant notoriety. As per his accounts in the aforementioned show, he played a key role in helping the authorities ultimately capture infamous New York mobster John Gotti in 1990. Moreover, he claimed to have identified/approached Jeffrey Epstein’s first victim, broken the news on Heidi Fleiss being “Hollywood Madam,” and looked into the Playboy Mansion. However, his most talked-about cases have been in the 2010s, including his involvement with Owen Hanson and his investigation into Meghan Markle for The Sun.
According to records, Owen had hired Danno to look up Robin Hood 702, resulting in him uncovering the so-called high-stakes gambler’s real identity as Robert “RJ” Cipriani. He found a lot of personal details about his family too, which were forwarded to the drug kingpin and then allegedly used to extort the gambler and threaten his loved ones’ safety. Arguably the worst part, though, is that Owen later paid the investigator extra to visit RJ’s mother’s grave in Pennsylvania, desecrate it with red paint, and take an image of it. The “cocaine quarterback” even asked to be photoshopped into the picture while wearing a mask and holding a shovel, as a result of which Danno was also convicted of extortion in 2017.
As for Danno’s investigation into Meghan Markle as well as her family, he has asserted he was paid $1 million by The Sun to dig deep into them during the early days of her romance with Prince Harry. The licensed private investigator thus made a report that included her social security number, their phone numbers, their addresses, and details on her ex-husband and an ex-boyfriend. When the former royals later sued the publication for violating their privacy, Danno fully cooperated with the investigation, admitting that “from around 1999 onwards, most of the stuff that I did was illegal.” He claimed he had been doing research for British newspapers for over two decades and had long been abusing social security databases to obtain people’s personal details. Yet, he added, journalists had known about it and were still publishing the findings.
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Dan “Danno” Hanks is Retired and Focused on Other Avenues Today
Danno’s work as a private investigator seemingly did harm to quite a few people, but it also reportedly helped solve thousands of thefts, frauds, and drug cases. So, after garnering over 25 years of experience, he obtained a certificate of Rehabilitation to earn his own independent private investigator’s license. This enabled him to carry on Backstreet Investigations after his long-time partner sadly passed away, that is, until he ultimately chose to retire after nearly 5 decades of hard work. During this period, he apologized to both the former royals and RJ Cipriani for his actions but maintained that he mostly did good.
Since then, from what we can tell, Danno has seemingly been focused on serving as a contributor and story consultant on different entertainment productions. He already had credits in originals such as ‘It Takes a Thief’ (1968), ‘Hard Copy’ (1999), ‘American Journal’ (1993), ‘The Mole’ (2001), ‘The Client List’ (2010), and ‘Alexandra Shipp in Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B’ (2014). So, since the mid-2010s and his reactivation of his SAG-AFTRA card, he has featured in ‘The Jury Speaks’ (2017) and is also set to appear in the upcoming film ‘The Comeback Trail.’ It’s also imperative to note that California native Danno is a musician, having worked alongside several renowned rock artists/bands such as Journey and Starship.
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