But before Donaghy even got out of prison, an imprint of Random House was reportedly set to publish his memoir. Probably Donaghy's closest friend in this crowd was a man named Jack Concannon. According to the FBI's investigation files, obtained in an FOIA request, some referees had to be served with subpoenas before they would talk to the Feds. In that first March, he bet on only two or three games. A few weeks later, four days after the Post story broke, David Stern gave his first news conference. ", To this day, what amounts to something like a self-imposed gag order on the subject of Donaghy persists, even among those refs who no longer work for the league. And, if he did, what was his method? James "Bah-Bah" "Sheep" Battista Getty Images LAS VEGAS By January 2007, Jimmy Battista's NBA bets had attracted the attention of the world's heavyweight gamblers, who had connected referee Tim Donaghy to that action. but my gambling instincts were taking over, and I was perversely excited.. In April 2007, a few days after Battista checked out of rehab for drug abuse, FBI special agents Paul Harris and Gerard Conrad knocked for the first time on Battista's door. Netflix's Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul revisits . But for many in and around the league, suspicions have remained that the full story has not been told, that what really happened has been suppressed. He was ready to face trial for up to 25 years in prison in the hopes of having the most severe charges against him dropped, but the prosecutors eventually came through with a deal. Battista would cut a deal, pleading guilty in April 2008 only to the charge of transmission of gambling information. He'd acted alone. The Defense of Tim Donaghy - Whistleblower - Podcast IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. NBA director of officials at the time of the scandal. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. Whether Donaghy was using his whistle to fix games was beside the point. I have incredibly low expectations for whatever they produce, Griffin said by phone from Charleston, South Carolina. He entered a conspiracy only when Battista and Thomas Martino, the go . "If what you're telling me is true," Kulle said he told Donaghy, "you're gonna be rich.". Not exactly the Enigma cipher but better than yapping about specific teams and risking someone overhearing. "Based on our review, and with the information we have available, we are unable to contradict the government's conclusion. In that moment -- like the many people before him who'd expanded and abetted the scheme and profited from it -- Aron Kulle sensed opportunity. Battista called him a strange, mean-spirited guy.. It hadn't taken long to deduce. Filed for divorce immediately after the investigation became public. Lamell McMorris served as the lead negotiator for the referees' union in its collective bargaining with the league. For our new partnership. Battista told Donaghy. Had Battista gone to trial, Donaghys character would have come under immense scrutiny. Had he heard about Donaghy's gambling "issues" -- about what he had done? 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. "Tiger was his boss." Martino couldn't remember, not exactly. However, Griffin details why Battista, the professors main Gaming rudder, opted for a plea. ], Griffin, 52, said. Yeah, I did. Barricade Books, his publisher, had issues. In four games, he called the game neutrally, 50-50. 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. He goes: 'Do you believe it?' Donaghy was mentioned on those tapes. According to Scala, his and the FBI's position has always been that Donaghy's deals with Concannon and Battista irrevocably "tainted" his capacity for officiating, even if only subconsciously. A referee wishing to manipulate game scores on these occasions would likely find he lacked much ability to sway the matter -- or the need to do so, if the score was already in his favor. In Martino's words, "Blowouts, he can't control." Their sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. The dubious mafia threat. Watching would give him agita, he's said, at which point he'd have to turn off the TV: "I remember being like, 'Oh s---, he's getting out of hand.' Three. No line-movement data would be required. According to the report, only one of those 17 games, Pistons at Nets on Dec. 16, 2006, "raised concerns that Donaghy's calls and substantial errors might have been aimed at favoring Detroit (which covered the point spread)." You don't want anyone "from New York" coming to your house, Battista told him. "He said, 'I can't tell you. (Of those calls, 2.6 percent could not conclusively be attributed to a referee and were excluded from the study.). Powered by WordPress.com VIP. Donaghy, in August 2007, and Martino, in April 2008, would plead guilty to two charges: conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to transmit gambling information. He was [expletive] shrewd and believed everyone owed him the world.. One of Rufo's business partners in the gyms was his old Animals colleague Rhino Ruggieri. 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. Embarrassing, Griffin said. 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 . The commissioner promised the league's full cooperation. Oakes was Tim Donaghy's uncle. That clip has Donaghy saying "Tommy was one of those guys all the girls loved, athletic, funny, good-looking kid that everybody liked." It then has Battista saying "He had good street smarts,. NBA betting scandal of 2007 - The Brown and White But suddenly this recreational dumb-money insurance salesman was putting five dimes each on select NBA games and beating the bookies? He was thus sentenced to 15 months in a federal facility. If you think the Celtics are the side that's likely to cover, then you go to market as early in the trading session as possible and put some money on Philly. "He can influence a game six points either way -- that's what he told me," Tommy Martino said as we sat in the break room of his family's hair salon, where he's worked since he got out of prison in August 2009 after serving 10 months. But no. 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 . She describes the moment she picked up his official NBA jacket to put it in the wash and found in the pocket "a huge wad of $100 bills rolled in a rubber band." The agents informed Stern that it had come to their attention that one of their veteran refs, Tim Donaghy, had been betting on his own games and giving inside information to a gambling ring, for a fee. He knew how to get into other referees' heads too, about different players because [the other refs] would follow him. 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. Tim Donaghy returns to spotlight in Netflix documentary but something David Anders, an attorney who helped Pedowitz run the investigation, declined to comment.) "We all had expectations that Tim was going to be really, really good. But as Scala put it, "When someone tells you something's impossible, you know they're full of s---, because nothing's impossible. Dust-ups with neighbors (one who called Donaghy a flaming maniac), an assault on a mail carrier and the West Chester, Pennsylvania, mayor noting Donaghys very aggressive personality also were filed. I'm thinking he's going to say: Oh s---! These games would be mostly winners, so Popeye should feel free to move them -- and copy them too. He told me Monday that those producers called him, they talked for maybe 90 minutes and Griffin provided relevant notes and potential lines of inquiry. The office's windows looked out onto a basketball court, where children on youth teams were just then practicing. After the scandal, Rush was among those NBA personnel tasked by Pedowitz with reviewing a set of Donaghy games for evidence of game-fixing. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the gambling ring. "How's Chuck doing?" Then, at some point in 2003, Donaghy and Concannon crossed the Rubicon. Don't be fishing, because you ain't getting anything out of me." (Concannon declined comment for this story.) (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.). And I said, 'What?' ", Said another: "Did I assume he was fixing the games? Making bets at the highest levels of sports gambling is akin to the trading of any financial instrument. He admitted to fixing the games.". Donaghy, Griffin said, distracts and diverts. "No way Battista kept this quiet from Tiger," another told me. "But you know what? The effort to hide it was in vain. And then, twisting the knife, Battista told him how much Concannon was winning. But there is much evidence to suggest the opposite. Premier underground bookmaker, now deceased, who, according to sources, profited from the scheme. James Battista, who was charged as a co-conspirator in the 2007 case, told HBO's "Real Sports" that he and Donaghy bet on 47 games over four months and won 37 times. Like so many others in Donaghy's life, Kulle and the referee would eventually have a vitriolic falling-out; at one point, Donaghy won a stalking injunction against Kulle. And now, Scala would later tell me, one of the squad's snitches had divulged this new tip, too delicious to be ignored. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. The Feds wanted to talk to me and go against him, but I wouldnt, Battista told Griffin. So when Gaming appeared at No. Timothy Francis Donaghy ( / dni /; born January 7, 1967) [2] is a former professional basketball referee who worked in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 13 seasons from 1994 to 2007 until he was caught in a gambling scandal. The night after the Boston victory, according to all parties, the conspirators met once more, at Martino's house in the Philly suburb of Boothwyn. The Hero of Goodall Park: A true-crime drama 50 years in the making. "His father is an outstanding man," Rush, now retired, says today. According to a breakdown from NBC Sports, NBA referees earn an estimated salary of anywhere between $150,000 and $550,000 every year. But at the time of the visit, in late 2007, Kulle said, the men were close. Another key figure was Joseph "Joe Vito" Mastronardo, a major black-market bookie who served as Battista's most significant out. [But] nothings there.. "If you're going to ask me if I would do it differently now, the answer is yes. The Philly ref blood runs deep. And if you exclude two split-foul calls -- the same foul called by two refs simultaneously and credited to both -- the P value for Donaghy's calls in that set of games was 0.041, or 4.1 percent. "I think there's enough that's been written about Tim Donaghy. 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. Tony "Tiger" Rufo They were also brothers-in-law; the women they'd married were sisters. Battista, after discovering this, had been following those bets for the better part of the past four years. Battista arrived with a thick stack of $100 bills bound in a rubber band -- $2,000 for the agreed-upon fee and $3,000 as a sweetener. Once Tim, Jimmy, and Tommys betting scheme came to light in 2007, the professional gambler was the only one who refused to speak or cooperate with the FBI in any way, shape, or form. Perhaps this is why the men who formed Battista's loose, disorderly investor group, the men who were "on the ticket," have, for all these years, remained in the shadows. Tim sits down with Jimmy Battista and Tommy Martino hoping to find out new information about the relationship between referees Tim Donaghy and Scott Foster. Served as one of Battista's biggest "outs" for bets on Donaghy games. The guy's career was ruined and his life in shambles. Tim Donaghy Worked In Pro Wrestling After His NBA Betting Scandal. Litvin then filled him in on the worst of it and told him there was an ongoing investigation, instructing him to say nothing about any of it to anyone. Normally this guy was a $100 or $200 or maybe $500 bettor. He felt the trends were embodied in the stats: The volume of Donaghy's calls was noticeable; it must be obvious to all. Jimmy Battista, nickname "The Sheep," is a professional gambler. Too many invested observers -- referee supervisors, coaches, players, owners, media, fans -- would be too quick to complain if they saw something fishy, the NBA argued. 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. So the FBI had worked out a plan. Donaghy officiated in 40 games between the marriage on Dec. 12, 2006, and March 21, 2007, which according to one source is likely the last game before Ruggieri took control of the scheme. 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.
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