Great story, and I suggest everyone read it (and click on the links of evidence that the article provides).
I was pretty shocked to find that Sarah Phillips was a real person. That came at the end of the article, and up until that point, all of the evidence seemed to strongly point to "Sarah" actually being a dude named Nilesh Prasad (with help from his brother Navin Prasad).
However, she posted this video:
... and the article points to a connection between Sarah Phillips and Nilesh Prasad, so it appears Sarah isn't just made up. The girl in the video is probably her.
HOWEVER...
I am pretty sure that this was similar to the Girah/Dogishead situation on 2+2.
Dogishead was a very good poker player, but was generally uncharismatic and blended in with all of the other young poker nerds. For reasons unknown (perhaps to set up a long con), he created the character of "Girah" -- a supposed poker prodigy that quickly rises through the ranks and becomes a huge deal in online poker.
Dogishead likely did a lot of the high limit play from the Girah account and wrote some of Girah's 2+2 posts. He also dumped money to him to win that Lock contest. Basically, Girah appears to be a real guy named Jose Macedo, but he was a puppet, carefully controlled by the guy (Dogishead) who created his image.
I think that's what happened here. Nilesh Prasad was probably a good sportsbettor and was an avid poster on covers.com. At some point, for whatever reason, he came up with the idea to masquerade as his female friend (or girlfriend) Sarah Phillips, figuring his postings would get a lot more attention that way. After all, what is more intriguing -- an Indian dude named Nilesh making good and informed sports picks, or a smoking hot chick named Sarah doing it?
He had Sarah on hand to make "female" appearances whenever necessary, which is probably how she got the job at ESPN.
Nilesh probably kept the bulk of the money made, and gave some of the proceeds to Navin and Sarah.
The Youtube I posted seems very rehearsed, and you can tell that it was scripted for her. Sarah doesn't seem to be expressing her true thoughts.
Not sure why they used so many different pictures of her. Perhaps the real Sarah felt uncomfortable with attaching her real picture to the scam, so she asked Nilesh to post pics of some other hot chick in her place. It's also possible that Nilesh wanted pictures of a girl even hotter than Sarah, so as to attract even more attention.
The threats in this chat seem very much like they're coming from a guy.
Surprising that ESPN took this long to dismiss her. I guess everyone was too afraid to complain and blow their great "chance" at working for ESPN.