To Martino, Battista seemed desperate, even frightened. Twenty months later, all three had avoided trials and awaited sentencing, by U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon, in Brooklyn. Today, Scala considers that meeting a mistake. You want to get paid, you gotta cover the spread, Battista had told Donaghy. Suburban Philadelphia insurance salesman and friend of Donaghy who, in spring 2003, partnered with Donaghy to bet on NBA games that the referee was working. Battista was a creature of that world. It matters all the more now. But at the time the scandal broke, the NBA closed ranks. Only this time, Rush viewed these calls with suspicion. That way, Battista could begin to prepare the markets, to manipulate the prices in their favor. But before Donaghy even got out of prison, an imprint of Random House was reportedly set to publish his memoir. Much later on he would come to call this meeting "the marriage.". If there is a cradle of basketball refereeing, it is here. Once we completed all of that, what we uncovered was that Donaghy's foul calls favored the team that received the heavier betting 70 percent of the time. By now the spreads were moving violently. He goes: 'Do you believe it?' The Celtics, favored by 2.5 points, went on to win in a blowout. The FBI had discovered that Donaghy had wagered on as many as 40 of his own games with Concannon during each of the three seasons between 2004 and 2006. Then later in the day, with the price right, you gobble up all the Boston you can. Scala's squad went to work. Murray Weiss The effort to hide it was in vain. He has given up making betting picks for a tout service, which he did for a time after his release from prison. (When I contacted Weiss, who now works as a producer for CBS News' 48 Hours, he said he didn't recall this conversation.) Toronto, favored by 10.5, covering Money now pouring into games Donaghy is refereeing, the lines during trading sessions swinging violently, like stocks beset by takeover rumors-widening and narrowing by 1.5, 3, 4.5, even 5 points, unheard of in the NBA except in the case of significant player injuries Battista popping pills, Vicodin and OxyContin, sometimes falling asleep at the dinner table at restaurants, sometimes vomiting blood. Rather, the investigation found no basis to disagree with the finding of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office that "[t]here is no evidence that Donaghy ever intentionally made a particular ruling during a game in order to increase the likelihood that his gambling pick would be correct." Over the course of the past decade, he's built a company that has become one of the biggest Planet Fitness franchisees in the nation, with more than 30 locations and exclusive rights to the regions of Philadelphia and Chicago. Per an account in New York magazine in 2015, the NBA somehow persuaded Random House to kill the book. Girlfriend insists her secret visits and conversations with another man dont count as an affair. Their sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. Still, as Rush explained to me over the phone, these were just "trends," not "red flags," and the NBA and the Pedowitz people were interested only in red flags. The next night, the trio convened at Martinos house to set terms. In 1998, Donaghy joined a country club in West Chester, Pennsylvania, called Radley Run, along whose fairways the Donaghys built a spacious home. "I refuse to comment on him. Nothing to see here. Huge bets on Boston in the middle of the trading session, between 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., drove the spread from 2.5 to 3 to 4. ", "I didn't touch it 10 years ago, and I'm not touching it now. The next season, though, the volume rose sharply -- he made between 30 and 40 wagers on games he worked. Born in Greece in 1960, a Boston street bookie in the 1980s, Athanas by the late 1990s had moved to Jamaica, where he turned himself into a sharp bettor and bookmaker on a global scale. In that first March, he bet on only two or three games. I believe this guy was almost soulless.. If youre in a pinch and lack a coffee machine and a grinder, you can try making whats called cowboy coffee. This might not be the tastiest cup of joe, but itll certainly get the job done. Rhino Ruggieri was booking bets made by an acquaintance from back home, a guy he knew from the golf course named Jack Concannon. [3] In the NBA markets, betting experts say, any move of 1.5 points or more is considered unusually severe -- the result of millions of dollars pouring in. TIM DONAGHY HAS always publicly denied that he deliberately manipulated games so as to win bets, arguing that he based his picks on insider information. '", Back at the table, Martino and Donaghy told Battista that they needed to drive to a nearby gas station. "Tim was very, very secretive. [3] During his career in the NBA, Donaghy officiated in 772 regular season games and 20 playoff games. Battista had since decided to set up shop on his own as a bet broker. Oakes was Tim Donaghy's uncle. In 2008, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison. It is likely Tim did not know just how influential Jimmy had become, or how Battistas words and deeds now affected bettors and bookies worldwide.. For 11 years, the official plotline has been that Donaghy was a rogue, gambling-addicted ref who made some bets on his own games -- and nothing more. "Tiger was the brains behind that group," says one gambler who knew them well. "I think there's enough that's been written about Tim Donaghy. In high school, during a trip to the Jersey Shore, Donaghy got drunk and scavenged through neighbors homes, stealing items. He'd acted alone. Three. There had to be a pattern. Martino said Donaghy cheated on tests, too, at Villanova. "Say hello to Johnny for me ". Or even put him in any kind of limelight at all. (The Feds never said which 16 games they were, so Pedowitz's team had to deduce them from court documents and FBI requests for game videos, and the set of possible games it came up with was 17.). White-collar criminal defense attorney who led the NBA-commissioned outside investigation into the Donaghy affair. The one thing we do know for sure, though, is he has a family and children, so he might just be focusing on caring for and spending quality time with them these days. These games would be mostly winners, so Popeye should feel free to move them -- and copy them too. But while Donaghy would admit to betting on his own games in his plea agreement, he would not admit to fixing games. In his book, Donaghy wrote, I knew I was screwed and in a tight spot . Whenever Scala's special agents interviewed NBA executives for the case, they heard a refrain: "They told us, 'You can't fix a game in the NBA. And normally this guy lost. Several sports-betting experts -- two former underground movers and a longtime professional NBA gambler -- agreed that global markets contained enough liquidity in 2007 for an in-the-know bettor to win as much as $100 million. How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? "I was like a pot smoker moving up to cocaine.". [But] nothings there.. Jimmy Battista, to participate in the betting. There was, after all, that definitive frame within the 2006-07 season: the 40 games between the beginning of the marriage and the end of Battista's involvement. Donaghy, Griffin said, distracts and diverts. His income now reportedly comes from rental properties he owns. It was only later, in 2007, after Donaghy had been exposed, that Donaghy's letter-of-the-law foul-calling acquired a darker hue. In the car at the gas station, according to Gaming the Game, Donaghy had said: Bet the Celtics. That's what they were looking for. Why? For all their desire to ply their trade in secrecy, sophisticated gambling syndicates often leave traces. He had an unhappy marriage, four daughters and a $260,000 salary. Editor's note: This two-year investigation, which revealed how disgraced referee Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA games, whom he did it with and the millions of dollars that flowed from the conspiracy, was originally published on Feb. 19, 2019. The Philly ref blood runs deep. They now had one job: Do not lose the edge by letting the information leak. Who Is Jimmy Battista? "Maybe the company never sat at a table together," he says. Donaghy worked the game. Gambler, bookmaker and sometime partner of Battista and the Animals betting office who took over the Donaghy scheme after Battista went to rehab but quickly ended the operation. Popeye's real name was Taylor Breton, and he was the great-great-grandson of Marcus Goldman, the founder, in 1869, of Goldman Sachs. If the spread widens during the trading session, then you know that demand among gamblers for betting on the favorite has intensified. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. Since moving to Sarasota in 2005, Donaghy had often volunteered for the local youth sports leagues that Kulle ran out of a community center. The scandal architect, Battista was addicted to various pills and cocaine, yet he was the straight-shooter, as reams of evidence and others corroborated his most-minute details. IN A STATEMENT to ESPN at the end of January, the NBA said: "To be clear, the Pedowitz team and the NBA performed substantial statistical and data-based analyses to determine whether Donaghy attempted to manipulate games he officiated. According to Martino and Battista, after such wagering was complete, Battista, via Martino, would then inform Donaghy of the spread he needed to cover. I asked. "Indeed," Stern assured the assembled media, "as a matter of his on-court performance, he's in the top tier of accuracy.". Each of the city's famous Five Families -- Genovese, Lucchese, Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino -- has a dedicated FBI unit investigating it full time, and Scala was the boss of the one focused on the Gambinos. His brief was to audit the entire NBA referee program for corruption, but he also had a narrower goal: figuring out whether Donaghy had indeed fixed games. Seated around a table at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott's Riverbend Bar and Grille, Jimmy Battista, Tommy Martino and Tim Donaghy made their deal: Donaghy would get $2,000 per game -- but only . Word about Donaghy had permeated the market, followers following followers. Ensuing betting-scandal headlines jolted the NBA. The data chronicle price fluctuations. But this referee didn't lose much. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. In July of 2018, he announced a multiyear deal for MGM Resorts to be the "official gaming partner of the NBA.". And so, controlling for blowouts by removing those games from the ledger, what we ultimately found was this: Donaghy favored the side that attracted more betting dollars in 23 of those 30 competitive games, or 77 percent of the time. Tim Donaghy was unwittingly placing himself in harms way, Griffin wrote. One of the three was always him. It means you've found something. From here on out, Battista said, he and Donaghy would never communicate directly. From 2003 to 2007, we didn't miss a game. One member of the group called it "the ticket" and "the company.". One of Rufo's business partners in the gyms was his old Animals colleague Rhino Ruggieri. Lawyer, Battista replied. "No way Battista kept this quiet from Tiger," another told me. James "Jimmy" "Bah-Bah" "The Sheep" Battista was a stressed-out, overweight, Oxy-addicted 41-year-old, in the hole to some underground gamblers for sums he'd sort of lost track of, when he settled in to watch an NBA game for which he believed he'd just put in the fix. Kulle got up, crossed the room and closed the blinds. It wasn't long before people wanted in on the action. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. story youve been telling for the past 10 years.. Phil Scala had been investigating organized crime in New York City for almost 30 years when his squad received the tip. And if a ref were to target one particular team with fouls, he could push the score for the opposing side higher than it otherwise would be. Black-market street bookies from all over the U.S., sharp pro gamblers and digital-savvy entrepreneurs with coding skills were all setting up online sportsbooks, often establishing themselves in places with little regulatory oversight, like Costa Rica, Antigua, Jamaica and Curaao. He had many lucrative gambling-related businesses. With a team of four young lawyers, Pedowitz took a little over a year to conduct the probe and write up the findings in a 133-page report. Normally this meant making a few "head fake" bets. Popeye, who died of heart disease in 2014 at age 61, was born in Manhattan and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, but remained estranged from most of his family for most of the rest of his life. Dallas making both free throws, increasing its lead to eight. And Battista, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not smartly, gave him the truth. Martino would then relay the pick to Battista. Griffins three-year descent into offshore betting was triggered by his curiosity about the mafias involvement with sports wagering, stemming from an FBI wiretap of the Gambino crime family. And so their syndicate came to be known by some as the Animals. White Sox win! Thousands of pages of court documents and investigative records were scrutinized. Underground bet broker, or mover, who was at the center of the Tim Donaghy betting scheme. Battista had such a network. The Feds wanted to talk to me and go against him, but I wouldnt, Battista told Griffin. But Battista never used the word "fix." It stuns Griffin how media, especially sports-talk radio, has provided Donaghy with a platform for his sensational fodder. He thought he was having a heart attack. Instead, Martino would be in the middle. But examine that imbalance against the financial imbalances discovered in the trading histories-which side received the heavier betting -- and the important comparison isn't between Donaghy's foul calls and the team that won the game. And he could have been.". Mendy Rudolph, Yogi Strom, Jake O'Donnell, Billy Oakes, Ed. Battista hiking Donaghy's fee to $5,000 for each correct pick -- minuscule compared to the amounts Battista was now wagering Battista bowing his head to his desk and snorting a line of coke to stay alert, to stay awake. It was his first pick for Battista. A decade later, in the break room of the hair salon he worked in, Martino told me how it had gone: Martino had already known that their mutual buddy Tim Donaghy had been betting on his own NBA games with Concannon, and winning those bets. IT WAS DEC. 12, 2006, a Tuesday, an hour before midnight, at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott, inside that hotel's primary restaurant, called at the time the Riverbend Bar & Grille. He was a man who was, as they say, connected; a man from whose open hotel room window once dangled a person in debt to a Bonanno crime family member; a man whose clients included Hollywood celebrities; and a man who, back in June of 2006, had sat with Battista in a VIP box at Citizens Bank Park for an interleague Phillies-Yankees game. And at some point, per a person close to the situation, Battista had to tell Athanas, a heavy NBA bettor, that Battista believed he had a profitable edge; a different person close to Athanas' syndicate a decade ago told me that Athanas bet more heavily on Donaghy's games in the 2006-07 season than he did on other NBA games. Battista, who'd drifted as a bartender, restaurant manager and small-time hustler after high school, was in his early 20s when, according to Gaming the Game, a book about the Donaghy scandal by former Philly police detective Sean Patrick Griffin, Rinnier recruited him to join the group. At the Marriott, Battista thanked Donaghy for the gift. It was Donaghys 13th NBA season. Both Battista and Martino have said that there were no threats, that everyone was nervous but the situation seemed copacetic, and that what sold Donaghy on the deal was Battista saying to him: We know you're giving the games to Jack Concannon. You know what he says? AND THEN THERE was a former friend of Donaghy's named Aron Kulle, who recalled the time Donaghy came to his office in Sarasota in a state of high anxiety. The finest information Jimmy Battista received in his years as a full-time professional gambler, he says now, came from former NBA referee Tim Donaghy. Thats when Battista started calling Donaghy Elvis, The King of prognosticating NBA games including his own, Battista told Griffin. "He knew what the spreads were going to be. July 9 is the anniversary of Donaghy's resignation from the NBA. "No one wants to talk about that. After learning about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the leak of the original Donaghy story and Jimmy Battista's plea deal, the crew investigates the most controversial game in . But Battista refused to squeal on Donaghy. What is his Net Worth? He knew how to get into other referees' heads too, about different players because [the other refs] would follow him. Short, squat, thick-necked, Ruggieri was built, some thought, like a small rhinoceros. Netflix's Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul revisits . "We all had expectations that Tim was going to be really, really good. But soon enough, Martino says, Rhino learned about the nature of Battista's deal with Donaghy. Who besides Donaghy, Battista and Martino was in on it? They passed it back and forth -- Battista, who'd snorted some coke earlier, demurred -- and as the car filled with smoke, they made, Martino told me, "a pact." The research entailed interviews with more than 100 people, including current and former NBA referees, current and former NBA staff, gamblers, bookmakers, lawyers, law enforcement officials and friends and relatives of Donaghy. This was a clear violation of NBA rules, but Donaghy got over it. If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing; Battista would eat the loss. This was an episode of gambling, yes, but almost assuredly not match-fixing. In Donaghy's many conversations with the Feds through these weeks, he had begun pointing fingers and making allegations about other referees -- other refs who may have been corrupt. It was January 2007. NBA commissioner at the time of the scandal. And now, Scala would later tell me, one of the squad's snitches had divulged this new tip, too delicious to be ignored. A few years ago, he bought its rights and original digital files. . Next, we pulled game videos for all 40 games and employed a researcher with an extensive background in officiating to watch them closely, logging all of Donaghy's and his fellow referees' foul calls. Crank's method boasted a certain elegance: It would capture any bias a ref might display in as simple a way as possible. That's when Donaghy "laid everything out" and "spilled everything," Kulle said. The Timmy Elvis Donaghy thing was only a small part of everything I had going on, and I didnt want anyone to find out. Sure enough, there he was. Because you're betting on the game, your judgment is off -- and you threw the game.'". One more incident, and Stern would sack Donaghy. Privately, however, he has at times taken a different position. I'm thinking he's going to say: Oh s---! In the casino, Donaghy wore a baseball cap low to hide his eyes; everyone knows about the cameras in casinos, and the NBA forbade any gambling by its refs (with the exception, oddly, of horse racing). He had the f---ing whistle.". (Donaghy himself declined repeated requests for an interview.) Gambler, bookmaker and opener of offshore sportsbooks. Now there's a Netflix documentary on the subject, . "If I thought we were going to get caught, then I'd like to think I wouldn't have ever done it," Donaghy said. David Anders, an attorney who helped Pedowitz run the investigation, declined to comment.) He'd been raptly listening to the referee's story -- the gambling, the cash, the secrecy, the corruption, the endless search by human beings to gain an edge, the gross opportunism that seemed almost contagious, the almost shockingly easy fixing of a major American sport -- but now there was one big thing on Kulle's mind, and it wasn't the moral of the story. "If what you're telling me is true," Kulle said he told Donaghy, "you're gonna be rich.". IT REMAINS ONE of the most tantalizing questions in all of American professional sport: Does game-fixing still exist? An intervention Battista two days later wearing a bathrobe in rehab. Yet the number of games reviewed by Pedowitz's group of NBA employees was only 17. "You wanna get paid?" They were the gamblers and bookmakers closest to Battista. (Ruggieri did not respond to requests for comment.) "During all this s---," he said. They were an organized crime squad, dealing with murder and mayhem. So the FBI had worked out a plan. The FBI started trying . IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. He gives the media a press packet, and they read him the questions from it, like its a PR campaign, Griffin said. NBA commissioner David Stern kept Donaghy from working the second round of the 2005 playoffs because of the sheer volume (Sterns words) of such reports. The NBA did too. It got out to Battista that I'm giving games to Jack! I was told, 'They're the kind of people who will do anything they can to protect themselves and the game.'". The informant didn't know any names, and the people with the ref in their pocket did not appear to be made members of the Gambino crime family. In 2015, Mastronardo had a stroke and died in prison. When they departed, Battista asked Donaghy whom he liked the next night, when the 76ers were playing host to the Celtics in a game Donaghy would officiate. If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. "It's called literal interpretation. Twice, Griffin said, he appeared in a television studio to partake in documentaries in which Donaghy was supposed to appear. The Sun-Times Patrick Finley answers the biggest questions facing the Bears after the draft: On this International Workers Day, were committed to fighting for a better future for all workers in our city and state, two labor leaders write. Among those to share their tale is thus his co-conspirator James Jimmy Battista so now, if you wish to learn more about him as well as his current standing, weve got all the details for you. Accusations, innuendo and lies come from a cast of lawyers and characters, including Donaghy's co-conspirators Tommy Martino and Jimmy Battista, telling a story that many have long ago wanted to . Two years of reporting later, the story can now be told: This is the definitive account of how Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA games -- and how, in so doing, he unwittingly enriched an array of gamblers to the tune of likely hundreds of millions of dollars. Tommy Martino "I said to him, 'Listen, don't tell me that you have some independent, decision-making ability in your mind's computer that's going to be unbiased, because that's not going to f---ing happen. Still, in Scala's telling, the FBI eventually just had to move on. Once I realized that Id be dealing with these offshore guys who may as well be your next-door neighbors, I was overwhelmed with that entire sociology.. Unfortunately, it is replete with errors, beginning with its statement that the Pedowitz Report "concluded that Donaghy, in fact, did not fix games." Only a fool, Dr. Sean Patrick Griffin wrote, would have ignored Battistas ridiculously obvious wagering success.. However, Griffin details why Battista, the professors main Gaming rudder, opted for a plea. Whether or not Battista made them explicitly aware of his agreement with Donaghy, their money was used to make one very specific genre of bet: games refereed by Tim Donaghy. Whatever his issue was, Battista said he couldn't talk about it over the phone. Donaghy was horrible betting every other sport. The final game, Martino remembers, was a loss. He served, for example, as a kind of shadow bank for the global underground gambling industry. And it was there, in fall 2003 -- between beers under palms at the Mambo Beach tiki bar, between rounds of golf and late-night poker sessions at the Holiday Beach hotel's casino -- that the Animals began to cash in on one brilliant discovery. To Scala, Stern seemed mostly upset that the NBA's in-house security people had failed to discover Donaghy's wrongdoing before the FBI. This report was based on an extensive review of game data and video as well as approximately 200 interviews, thousands of pages of documents, and consultation with various gambling and data experts. The NBA employees "examined every play and determined whether, in their view, Donaghy's calls (or absence of calls) were correct." "But you know what? Tim Donaghy's downfall began in 2007 when former classmate Jimmy Battista asked Donaghy if he wanted to earn some extra money while he was still an official in the NBA. -- wins and wins and wins and wins, his picks almost 100 percent wins. Donaghy and Concannon are betting on Donaghy's games -- and making a goddamn killing. Not long ago, he brought them out, looked at them and told me about them over the phone. Print length 320 pages Language English Publisher UNKNO On Feb. 22, 2019, the NBA issued a statement in response to the ESPN story on the Donaghy scandal: "The Tim Donaghy matter concluded over a decade ago with a full investigation by the federal government, Donaghy's termination from the NBA, and his conviction for criminal acts. It was too obvious. Scala recalls that he and Donaghy went around and around on the issue. The commissioner promised the league's full cooperation. An attorney for Athanas wrote to ESPN that Athanas never "received information that Tim Donaghy was making wagers on games in which he was the referee," and so never made any bets based on any knowledge of the scheme. Filed for divorce immediately after the investigation became public. Based on information from Tommy Martino, among others, there were reasons to suspect Donaghy had money on the vast majority of his games during the fateful 2006-07 season, from the very beginning until as late as April 11 -- 65 games in all. "Donaghy says he never threw a game," Scala told me. Donaghy said Boston is gonna kill the Sixers. Furthermore, exceedingly large price jumps or plunges, or even the timing of certain price moves, could signal the trading strategies of a gambling syndicate. In other words, Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4. The other, Chuck, lived in Delco. In 2014, commissioner Adam Silver penned an op-ed in The New York Times advocating for legalization. He started a gambling group called "The Animals." Place fifty thousand dollar bets and get a massive returnif you won. With her thumbs and forefingers, she made an "O" the diameter of an orange. And they are. The ESPN Article attempts to revive this old story. If it were shown that Donaghy had indeed fixed the games he reffed, it would reveal an uncomfortable truth, one that almost everyone -- leagues, teams, fans, gamblers -- would prefer to ignore: just how easy and profitable it is to fix an American sport. Or "influence" or "manipulate" or in any way discussed the mechanics of fixing. Nobody wanted to golf with him, Minutella said. Along with the rest of the Animals, Battista had returned from Curaao in 2004 after PlayASAP had gone belly-up. But the crucial betting information -- which sides of which games the ref favored -- had been seeping into the black-market gambling business. Freedom of Information Act requests were filed. It opens in the morning and closes right before tip-off. It was 0.232. And then one afternoon the case agent came into my office. I cant say one nice thing about him. It touts interviews with Donaghy, Battista and Martino not Griffin. There is, for one, Ed T. Rush, former NBA director of officials, a Philadelphia native and, for 32 years, a referee at the highest level, starting in 1966. They are a form of broker that helps sports bettors by placing wagers on their client's behalf. In 2013, Athanas was indicted as part of a federal sports-betting case that was unrelated to Donaghy. I have incredibly low expectations for whatever they produce, Griffin said by phone from Charleston, South Carolina. But at the time of the visit, in late 2007, Kulle said, the men were close. But he'd remained close friends after high school with both Donaghy and Battista, who, in turn, were never that close with each other. He was already thinking, How can I get a piece of this action? Do it right and you can drive down the price of Boston. "My life is ruined," Kulle recalled Donaghy saying. "He played golf and gambled.".
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