LA Weekly reporter Gene Maddaus starts off his crackerjack expose of con man Dodgers bidder Josh Macciello with a dozen or so paragraphs about the duped January 2012 reporting efforts of ESPN journalists Steve Mason, John Ireland and Ramona Shelburne. To make a long story short, all three stumped for a guy eight zeroes short of any real shot at the MLB team.

Surprisingly, at least to FishbowlLA, there was no addressing of this issue at the top of this afternoon’s “Mason & Ireland” broadcast on 710 ESPN Radio. Separately, our efforts to get comment from Bristol, CT HQ generated an email response that “the network and hosts will be making no statement about this matter.”

As Kevin Roderick noted in a blog post late last night, several other LA journalists got the Macciello story wrong. But it all started with the January introduction and recall on ESPN of this individual as a vetted entity.

We urge you to bookmark and fully read Maddaus’ LA Weekly cover story; it’s likely to earn the reporter an LA Press Club Award or two. As far as ESPN’s decision – after being contacted – to not immediately address this quagmire, that seems like the wrong move. Even on a day when Mason and Ireland were knee-deep in exciting Lakers trade deadline news.