The referee's life has its contradictions. Stern's conclusion that Donaghy did not fix games would be validated by the federal investigation. The gambler described the conversation with Donaghy to me on the condition that I not use his name in the story. . ", The gambler added, "He also told me they were betting millions and he was an idiot not to ask for more.". They're a species of broker that provides services to sports bettors, laying down wagers on their clients' behalf with bookmakers of various types around the world, legal and not. (This notion even found its way into the Pedowitz report itself.) How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? By most accounts, Tony "Tiger" Rufo is no longer a gambler. ", In the early 2000s, Rush went on to explain, the NBA undertook a wholesale revision of its refereeing guidelines, changes that would naturally lead to the entire NBA referee corps calling a greater volume of fouls, at least initially. The closing line: Dallas by 8 Donaghy on New Year's Day in Charlotte calling 14 fouls against the Bobcats, five against the Timberwolves; the Wolves covering Battista usually watched these games at home, but sometimes not. He said his old squad had received the initial ref-in-the-pocket tip in October 2006 -- almost two months before Battista had made his marriage with Donaghy. Nunn, then the director of NBA officials, was in town for the NBA summer league games held annually among the casinos, where referee candidates from the minors are assessed for possible promotion to the Show. "But they all had a piece of the pizza." To control for bias, he performed what's called a hypothesis test on these numbers, which would produce a P value, or a probability, for Donaghy's calls in each game in the 2006-07 season. Print length 320 pages Language English Publisher UNKNO There was golfing but also drinking and gambling. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. The main problem now was keeping a lid on the thing. Thats because this Netflix original documentary features first-hand accounts to elucidate precisely how and why once-renowned NBA referee Timothy Tim Donaghy staked on his own games. Dear Abby: Is it cheating if nothing physical ever happened? 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. One of Rufo's business partners in the gyms was his old Animals colleague Rhino Ruggieri. By June 15, Donaghy was sitting inside the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York in downtown Brooklyn, naming names and making a statement. Short, squat, thick-necked, Ruggieri was built, some thought, like a small rhinoceros. A high roller named Mike Rinnier, who'd made his fortune in Delaware County supermarkets, decided to bankroll a small sports-betting syndicate in the 1980s. And: You don't want the NBA to find out about what you've been doing with Concannon. Frequent excursions were made to the Borgata, a casino in Atlantic City. It is normal, of course, for a referee to call more fouls against one team than the other. He was [expletive] shrewd and believed everyone owed him the world.. The ESPN Article attempts to revive this old story. In 2007, NBA referee Tim Donaghy was arrested for betting on games he officiated. The NBA employees "examined every play and determined whether, in their view, Donaghy's calls (or absence of calls) were correct." Battista and Martino were tight, and they drove to the Marriott at Philadelphia International Airport for an exploratory meeting with Donaghy on Dec. 12, 2006. ACCORDING TO SCALA, the truncated probe meant the Feds left several lines of inquiry hanging. 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 started a gambling group called "The Animals." Place fifty thousand dollar bets and get a massive returnif you won. Battista was positioned well enough in that world that, without Donaghy's knowledge but based on Donaghy's picks, he'd helped set up a kind of loose, disorderly hedge fund. "Someone in the NBA notified the press [in order] to stop this investigation, in my opinion. They'd studied his wagers. In other words, Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4. Then people settle in. In this game, the second after the marriage with Battista, Donaghy called five straight fouls on New Jersey in the fourth quarter when the spread was in doubt. He was 27 years old. By this point, the latter was an NBA official, whereas the former had established himself as a professional gambler under several nicknames, including Bah-Bah (or Baba) and The Sheep. It was actually allegedly his extremely strict, god-fearing family that drove him to rebel a little in his younger days, only for him to end up getting mixed with the wrong crowd, as per the production. It's possible, through Don Best Sports, a betting information service, to pull the line-movement data for individual NBA games going back years. Martino would receive a year and Donaghy and Battista 15 months each in federal prison. It was like: Why would you do that?". Yeah, I did. 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)." When Donaghy had finished, Kulle leaned back in his chair. ", "These analyses," the NBA told ESPN, "did not support your finding that an unbiased official would not have made the calls that Donaghy did.". Jimmy "the Sheep" Battista & NBA Revelations In "Gaming The Game". One, Johnny, lived in Jersey. . By Donaghy's own admission in his memoir, so much cash started rolling in that he had problems knowing physically where to stash it so his wife wouldn't start asking questions. 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. Popeye's real name was Taylor Breton, and he was the great-great-grandson of Marcus Goldman, the founder, in 1869, of Goldman Sachs. In his memoir, Donaghy writes that he was standing on the first tee at his home golf club in Sarasota with a driver in his hands when he took the call from Martino. Donaghy worked the game. They were also brothers-in-law; the women they'd married were sisters. His income now reportedly comes from rental properties he owns. Who were the referees? . At the same time, the NBA -- which once balked at gambling -- has now openly embraced legalized sports betting more than any other U.S. pro sports league. "I refuse to comment on him. But Battista refused to squeal on Donaghy. He thought he was having a heart attack. From here on out, Battista said, he and Donaghy would never communicate directly. It was his first pick for Battista. Not exactly the Enigma cipher but better than yapping about specific teams and risking someone overhearing. But that was the company line.". The next documentary in the series, The Race of the Century, hits Netflix on September 6. Donaghy and Concannon are betting on Donaghy's games -- and making a goddamn killing. [3] During his career in the NBA, Donaghy officiated in 772 regular season games and 20 playoff games. "The only mechanics, he had in his hand. Hours later, he called up Donaghy to tell him. FAQ: How will legal gambling change the NBA and the way we watch it? They were the real moneymakers of the Donaghy scheme. They had to get back to it. Battista wired and staying up all night and obsessively, blank-mindedly playing online blackjack and poker and even putting bets down on sports for which he had no special insight or inside information, and losing, losing, losing And then Donaghy whistling fouls on the visiting Heat 12 times in Madison Square Garden compared to four against the Knicks; the Knicks covering Martino flying to Toronto to pay Donaghy and to party, ordering prostitutes from a website Donaghy on March 14 in Indianapolis calling four straight fouls in the fourth against the underdog Pacers when they were losing by six to the visiting Wizards. Phil Scala had been investigating organized crime in New York City for almost 30 years when his squad received the tip. The new material that ESPN has assembled to support its own conclusion that Donaghy manipulated games is not strong and adds little to the existing record. The dubious mafia threat. They'd known each other since high school. In the early 2000s, the sports-betting world was undergoing its own equivalent of a dot-com boom. From what we can tell, since his release from the Metropolitan Detention Center-Brooklyn in New York, James "Jimmy" Battista has returned to his home state of Pennsylvania, where he leads a relatively private life. But as Scala put it, "When someone tells you something's impossible, you know they're full of s---, because nothing's impossible. To help get his clients' bets down, Battista as a bet broker needed Joe Vito. 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." Oakes was Tim Donaghy's uncle. What does it mean to "fix" a game? 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. (When I asked if I could see the notes myself, he laughed. story youve been telling for the past 10 years.. 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 started thinking -- or should I say, rationalizing: S---, everyone on the staff bets," he wrote. They knew all about what he'd done, they told him; he was looking at 20 years. 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. Tim Donaghy was unwittingly placing himself in harms way, Griffin wrote. In 2014, commissioner Adam Silver penned an op-ed in The New York Times advocating for legalization. One of its officials is dirty, film at 11. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. Or, actually, it was the moral of this story. Now he feared the scheme had become too obvious. Reportedly born in 1966, Jimmy Battista is 56 years old in 2022. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. The best sports gamblers win about 60% of bets, Battista says in the book, but. The Celtics were favored by 1.5 points. Vercher told me that, in December 2009, after questioning from reporters, including ones from ESPN, she had wanted Donaghy to take a polygraph that asked point-blank whether he'd fixed games. Because he was a sometime member of the same golfing circle back home, Ruggieri knew that Concannon and NBA ref Tim Donaghy were friends. For slipping him winning football picks, Donaghy had sent to Battista a Kobe Bryant-signed Lakers jersey. It was 0.232. Martino would then relay the pick to Battista. In-season, it is demanding, tiring, high stress. They now had one job: Do not lose the edge by letting the information leak. Married to the daughter of powerful Philly mayor Frank Rizzo, who held office in the 1970s, Mastronardo was well-connected. Murray Weiss 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,. To Scala, Stern seemed mostly upset that the NBA's in-house security people had failed to discover Donaghy's wrongdoing before the FBI. Martino did recall Donaghy telling him that certain games would be unfixable. Move along. They produce whatever theyre going to produce, independent of the evidence. Girlfriend insists her secret visits and conversations with another man dont count as an affair. His messaging was clear: Donaghy was a rogue. " And still it went on Donaghy in Dallas on Jan. 30 calling one foul against the home team and 12 against Seattle, including six straight against the Sonics when the margin was 13 or fewer. Sure enough, there he was. If the score in a game widened too far beyond the betting line, Donaghy told Martino, Donaghy would be powerless to rein it back in. Namely, they were going to wire up Donaghy so he could get other allegedly corrupted NBA referees to incriminate themselves. And so nothing about any of this would end up in Pedowitz's final report. But stomping out a Mafia profit center was. Supervisor of the FBI probe. Phone records of gamblers said to have connections with the Gambino crime family were obtained and analyzed, phone numbers traced back to names. ", The Celtics played the 76ers the night after the Marriott meeting. If one assumes there should be no correlation between wagers and the calls made by a referee, the odds of that disparity* might seem unlikely. But Battista never used the word "fix." "Then you gotta cover the f---ing spread." Tim Donaghy Worked In Pro Wrestling After His NBA Betting Scandal. This was an episode of gambling, yes, but almost assuredly not match-fixing. David Anders, an attorney who helped Pedowitz run the investigation, declined to comment.) But no. She struggled to recall exactly when, but she told me she probably started finding the cash in 2004, during the season. Instead of fraud, wire fraud, and illegal gambling, Jimmy was only convicted of the latter; one count of conspiracy to transmit wagering, following a guilty plea. I'm thinking he's going to say: Oh s---! 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. Ill never understand that., Battista, who called Donaghy a pathological liar with bottomless greed, told Griffin, I knew that Timmys demand for money far exceeded his ability to get it. He told the gambler about other tactics as well. They checked the games. IT REMAINS ONE of the most tantalizing questions in all of American professional sport: Does game-fixing still exist? Battista "was just ruining something that was totally quiet, that nobody knew about," said one of the Animals. They had possibly just stumbled on the ultimate edge. Around the same time as Stern's news conference, the NBA also commissioned an investigation, to be led by Larry Pedowitz, a partner with the elite New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Guess which one contains footnotes, source notes, cross-referenced facts from many officials and resources and exhaustive due diligence conducted by a forensic expert with a Ph.D. in Administration of Justice from Penn State? In the 100 years since 1919, when gamblers blackened the Chicago White Sox, only the Tim Donaghy scandal has offered the hint of an answer -- but also a repudiation. Joe Vito cannot speak to that today; he was busted in 2012 at age 63 for illegal bookmaking in an unrelated federal case. Barricade Books, his publisher, had issues. F---ing Donaghy. Or even put him in any kind of limelight at all. Embarrassing, Griffin said. These games would be mostly winners, so Popeye should feel free to move them -- and copy them too. They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme -- what you might call a sustained period of time. FBI special agent and head of the investigative unit focused on the Gambino crime family at the time of the investigation. That way, the gambler said, Donaghy could force the side he'd picked against to play a little less aggressively on defense. Only this time, Rush viewed these calls with suspicion. 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. And so their syndicate came to be known by some as the Animals. The other, Chuck, lived in Delco. In four games, he called the game neutrally, 50-50. Hes publishing it independently. (When I contacted Weiss, who now works as a producer for CBS News' 48 Hours, he said he didn't recall this conversation.) At the Marriott, Battista thanked Donaghy for the gift. "If you're going to ask me if I would do it differently now, the answer is yes. Donaghy's story is that he bet on all kinds of things for years with his buddy, including NBA games. Even if it made them strange bedfellows, then, Donaghy's denials of match-fixing guilt were, in the end, a gift. A few weeks later, four days after the Post story broke, David Stern gave his first news conference. 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. Im one of the idiots who bought Donaghys book. According to a breakdown from NBC Sports, NBA referees earn an estimated salary of anywhere between $150,000 and $550,000 every year. 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. they thought. Donaghy had Martino arrange the Marriott rendezvous. SIX DAYS LATER, on June 21, Scala, Harris and their boss, Special Agent in Charge Kevin Hallinan, traveled to the NBA offices in midtown Manhattan and sat down with commissioner David Stern and three other league executives: deputy commissioner Adam Silver, president Joel Litvin and senior vice president of security Bernie Tolbert, a former FBI agent. The pact was: "Don't tell anybody. In 2008, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison. "When did he tell you this?" Through them, we deduced which side Donaghy had picked for Battista to bet on. "Donaghy says he never threw a game," Scala told me. One expert offers tips to brew the perfect cup at home. He works seven days every week. He felt the trends were embodied in the stats: The volume of Donaghy's calls was noticeable; it must be obvious to all.
