According to Martino, if Donaghy mentioned out-of-state Johnny's name, the pick was for the visiting team. ", Mark Fainaru-Wada on how broadcasting icon Bob Costas was yanked from the Super Bowl. (Through the NBA, Stern declined an interview request for this story.) Thats when Battista started calling Donaghy Elvis, The King of prognosticating NBA games including his own, Battista told Griffin. ", 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. Griffin has dogged determination. A few years ago, he bought its rights and original digital files. 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 it wasn't basketball season, he had a lot of time on his hands," says one of Donaghy's friends. Tommy, Tim, and James "Jimmy" "Baba" Battista had attended the same Cardinal O'Hara High School, but the former was the only mutual link a few years later since he was friends with both. Joe Vito cannot speak to that today; he was busted in 2012 at age 63 for illegal bookmaking in an unrelated federal case. Embarrassing, Griffin said. Battista envisioned the arrangement lasting for 20 years. 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. Typically. 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. Gaming the Game is definitive, vital to comprehending the NBA scandal and how sports-betting money zips around the world. 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. High school friend of Donaghy and Battista who served as the go-between in the betting scheme during the 2006-2007 NBA season. Seth Wickersham on the Cleveland Browns' front office -- and where hope and history collide. It hadn't taken long to deduce. They were the real moneymakers of the Donaghy scheme. I accepted because Im an academic; we argue for a living. So where to begin? But Warren Flagg, a private investigator and former FBI agent who worked with Donaghy's attorney during the case, will. He started a gambling group called "The Animals." Place fifty thousand dollar bets and get a massive returnif you won. I was told, 'They're the kind of people who will do anything they can to protect themselves and the game.'". 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. That never really flew with us." Its absurd. 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.. That relationship would eventually turn acrimonious, winding up in court, with Donaghy successfully suing Vercher in 2010 and accusing her of stealing his book proceeds. They knew all about what he'd done, they told him; he was looking at 20 years. Battista demanded that Donaghy never bet with Concannon again, and in exchange for providing Battista with his betting "picks," Donaghy would receive $2,000 per game -- but only if the pick won. (When I contacted Weiss, who now works as a producer for CBS News' 48 Hours, he said he didn't recall this conversation.) Donaghy worked the game. 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. LAS VEGAS By January 2007, Jimmy Battistas NBA bets had attracted the attention of the worlds heavyweight gamblers, who had connected referee Tim Donaghy to that action. Battista "was just ruining something that was totally quiet, that nobody knew about," said one of the Animals. When I asked, she said she never counted the money, never confronted him about its existence. Can I maybe even invest in this thing? "You've got to arrange a meeting with Donaghy," Battista said. "But you know what? Donaghy rose from the table. One more incident, and Stern would sack Donaghy. It took a second for me to comprehend what Martino was telling me. The FBI started trying . "And it's too obvious.". 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. And then, twisting the knife, Battista told him how much Concannon was winning. Just before entering rehab, according to Martino and law enforcement documents, Battista had handed over the reins of the operation to Rhino Ruggieri. It stuns Griffin how media, especially sports-talk radio, has provided Donaghy with a platform for his sensational fodder. [3] 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. Their sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. Popeye's real name was Taylor Breton, and he was the great-great-grandson of Marcus Goldman, the founder, in 1869, of Goldman Sachs. When Donaghy reffed and Concannon bet, the side he bet was covering the spread between 60 and 70 percent of the time. What did he see? Scala's squad went to work. So when Gaming appeared at No. Since moving to Sarasota in 2005, Donaghy had often volunteered for the local youth sports leagues that Kulle ran out of a community center. His body turned numb. 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. 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. The notes taken by the agents during these interviews have a mantra-like similarity: "recalled feeling 'shocked' when he learned about Donaghy did not discuss this matter with other referees" "described his initial reaction as 'surprised' and 'shocked,' and stated that he did not discuss this matter with any other referees" "described Donaghy as a very accurate referee with few missed calls" "did not hear other refs discuss TD thought he was a good ref. Only this time, Rush viewed these calls with suspicion. He then did the same set of calculations for the other two referees on the floor in each of Donaghy's games. But the gig is well-paid -- even rookies in 2007 could make six figures. 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. 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. They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme -- what you might call a sustained period of time. "Donaghy says he never threw a game," Scala told me. And so their syndicate came to be known by some as the Animals. But Crank didn't stop there. A few weeks later, four days after the Post story broke, David Stern gave his first news conference. Mendy Rudolph, Yogi Strom, Jake O'Donnell, Billy Oakes, Ed. The big problem, Battista said, was that the betting markets appeared to be getting wise to the emergence of an astonishingly accurate NBA handicapper. "Nobody picked winners . In early 2017, inspired by the 10th anniversary of the scandal, ESPN set out to reinvestigate it. Ensuing betting-scandal headlines jolted the NBA. Phil Scala And: You don't want the NBA to find out about what you've been doing with Concannon. -- wins and wins and wins and wins, his picks almost 100 percent wins. "No way Battista kept this quiet from Tiger," another told me. Everything from drugs to money to gambling was prevalent in the area he served, which ultimately kickstarted his love affair with the latter as well he actually grew into a thriving bookmaker. Infrequently, Donaghy was at home. "When did he tell you this?" FBI special agent and head of the investigative unit focused on the Gambino crime family at the time of the investigation. Veteran reporter who broke the Donaghy story for the New York Post. 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. To answer those questions, Pedowitz convened a group of NBA basketball operations personnel to watch games worked by Donaghy during the 2006-07 season -- but the ensuing report did not fully explain the limited number of games they decided to review. And it was there, in the otherwise vacant dining area, seated around a table, that Battista and Donaghy, with Martino witnessing, consummated their deal. It's impossible,'" Scala says. It was January 2007. Dear Abby: Is it cheating if nothing physical ever happened? They had to get back to it. Donaghy was horrible betting every other sport. Battista would cut a deal, pleading guilty in April 2008 only to the charge of transmission of gambling information. Gambler, bookmaker and the boss of the Animals betting office when it first deduced that Concannon and Donaghy were betting on Donaghy's game together; now the owner of Planet Fitness franchises. Blowouts would be included. He told the gambler about other tactics as well. 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. 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. 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. In spheres other than the country-club set, he went by the nickname Rhino. And how, in turn, could you uncover evidence of it years, even a decade, later? That way, Battista could begin to prepare the markets, to manipulate the prices in their favor. For that reason, the NBA is particularly wary of any hint of the fix. It would have been great for me, great for sales, just for selfish reasons, Griffin said. James "Jimmy" Ba . After the scandal, Rush was among those NBA personnel tasked by Pedowitz with reviewing a set of Donaghy games for evidence of game-fixing. The Heat covering Donaghy in Toronto calling four fouls against the visiting Nets' top scorer, Vince Carter, forcing him to the bench, the last one called by Donaghy when the ref was on the opposite side of the floor with the Raptors leading by three. For slipping him winning football picks, Donaghy had sent to Battista a Kobe Bryant-signed Lakers jersey. They checked the games. What is his Net Worth? 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. Kulle got up, crossed the room and closed the blinds. What Battista, Ruggieri and the rest did was follow the Concannon-Donaghy bets with bets of their own -- $30,000, $50,000, $100,000 a game, according to a person familiar with the betting. 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. According to multiple sources, Battista first began moving bets for Athanas in 2005. Another moneymaker -- according to people with knowledge of the events -- was a man named Spiros Athanas. THERE ARE MANY misconceptions about the Tim Donaghy scandal. But the genesis of their falling-out occurred when Donaghy was still making the rounds to promote the book, according to documents filed in court as part of the lawsuit. "Someone in the NBA notified the press [in order] to stop this investigation, in my opinion. Freedom of Information Act requests were filed. THEY CALLED IT The Office. They came out of the station bearing a packet of rolling papers, and right there inside the car, under the fluorescent gas station lights, in the rental-return sprawl adjacent to the Philadelphia International Airport runway, Martino rolled a joint. Whether Donaghy was using his whistle to fix games was beside the point. 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. I have incredibly low expectations for whatever they produce, Griffin said by phone from Charleston, South Carolina. I was just researching it. We had a big bet on every f---ing game.". 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." 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. Several people from the sports-betting underworld had, in effect, staked Battista a bankroll -- a fund he was now using to bet on games officiated by this one NBA referee. The NBA did too. 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. That, though, represented only one knot of the tangled webs. They'd studied his wagers. When I asked, I expected Rush to answer much the same as Nunn had to me: Nothing out of the ordinary. In the early 2000s, the sports-betting world was undergoing its own equivalent of a dot-com boom. The NBA conducted its own investigation and concluded that Donaghy, in fact, did not fix games. There have been hints and suggestions. It got out to Battista that I'm giving games to Jack! Donaghy and Concannon are betting on Donaghy's games -- and making a goddamn killing. White-collar criminal defense attorney who led the NBA-commissioned outside investigation into the Donaghy affair. You want to get paid, you gotta cover the spread, Battista had told Donaghy. "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. That's why, according to someone close to both men, Battista had no choice but to apprise Mastronardo of the Donaghy situation, to tell Joe Vito that this ref was picking sides in his own games-and, most likely, using his whistle to help the bet win. And those bets won -- won like Concannon had never won before. But it wasn't just the NBA; according to court documents, they decided to bet on Donaghy's own games. Griffins impressive work is again relevant because on Aug. 30, Netflix is scheduled to air Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, about the scandal. Money drops and cash settlements in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania; in New York City; in Las Vegas; in San Francisco. They are a form of broker that helps sports bettors by placing wagers on their client's behalf. 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. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. In other words, Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4. If the spread widens during the trading session, then you know that demand among gamblers for betting on the favorite has intensified. 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. A ref, on the other hand, can effectively add points -- calling fouls that result in free throws. By most accounts, Tony "Tiger" Rufo is no longer a gambler. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. Namely, they were going to wire up Donaghy so he could get other allegedly corrupted NBA referees to incriminate themselves. Hundred-dollar bills in $10,000 packs, bound in rubber bands and delivered by trusted gofers. He was always locked in a room, on the phone.". For all their desire to ply their trade in secrecy, sophisticated gambling syndicates often leave traces. The next night, the trio convened at Martinos house to set terms. Every foul call was logged, the resulting data analyzed, along with betting-market line-movement histories for every game Donaghy reffed that season. It's despicable." He had many lucrative gambling-related businesses. A grand jury in the case had been convened as early as February, according to FBI documents, and on May 30, Tommy Martino testified before it. 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. Kulle's eyes were practically dollar signs. 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. Short of an outright confession, how could you prove that Donaghy had fixed the games anyway? They had possibly just stumbled on the ultimate edge. That couldve helped me and absolutely would have hurt Timmy, [but] I wasnt a rat.. Battista, after discovering this, had been following those bets for the better part of the past four years. The Animals went so far as to study the box scores after each of Donaghy's outings. An NBA referee, according to the informant, was "in the pocket" of some people in the sports-gambling underworld. To Scala, Stern seemed mostly upset that the NBA's in-house security people had failed to discover Donaghy's wrongdoing before the FBI. Then people settle in. One of its officials is dirty, film at 11. James "Bah-Bah" "Sheep" Battista But there is much evidence to suggest the opposite. If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing; Battista would eat the loss. In Sarasota, Kim Donaghy printed out for me the first 98 pages of her unfinished and unpublished memoir, The Ref's Wife. Martino would receive a year and Donaghy and Battista 15 months each in federal prison. He was 27 years old. The guy's career was ruined and his life in shambles. [But] nothings there.. He had to use the bathroom, he said, and motioned for Martino to please come along. "Tim was very, very secretive. He had the artwork. Jimmy Battista, also known by the monikers "The Sheep" and "Bah-Bah," was a 41-year-old man who struggled with stress, obesity, and an OxyContin addiction. They just march on, say whatever they want, anyway. Better to cooperate. However, when Jimmy had a falling out with the betting institution around 2006, he decided to approach Tim through their mutual school friend Thomas Tommy Martino with a lucrative idea. And, if he did, what was his method? IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. There had to be a pattern. "We were prepared to do some undercover things to corroborate Donaghy's story," Scala says. He details the genesis of the scheme involving Donaghy, Battista and Tommy Martino, onetime classmates at Cardinal OHara High in Springfield, Pennsylvania, and how Battista manipulated global-betting markets. "There were lots of whistles in the game, by him, that did not fit the game," he says. The methods of fixing are rather straightforward. 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. 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? The accounts of their actual meeting vary, yet the one thing Jimmy did not shy away from conceding was that while Tim made $2,000 per successful bet initially, he made at least $2 million. (The last time he was arrested, the police dug up his yard and found sections of PVC pipe buried there. Because that's how you get in trouble. I'm thinking he's going to say: Oh s---! In his endeavors, Battista had a sometime assistant, another high school chum, Tommy Martino, who acted as a liaison in the Donaghy scheme. Griffin said, While it, too, is lacking, nothing can compare to Donaghys book for comic relief. None of them says anymore that Donaghy "was a good ref. 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. Donaghy didnt like betting through former St. Josephs hoopster Jack Concannon, but he couldnt have known Battista had been tracking his NBA wagers with Concannon since 2003, when Battista was in Curacao. 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. Who were the referees? . When Donaghy became an NBA ref, that continued, sometimes with hookers. And Battista, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not smartly, gave him the truth. We began by obtaining the trading histories for those games and through those determined which team was the more heavily bet upon. The Timmy Elvis Donaghy thing was only a small part of everything I had going on, and I didnt want anyone to find out. His income now reportedly comes from rental properties he owns. 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. Ruggieri was to play the same role Battista had -- mover, fund manager. 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. And so it is that May's Supreme Court decision demands a review of the Donaghy affair. He knew how to get into other referees' heads too, about different players because [the other refs] would follow him. Donaghy had Martino arrange the Marriott rendezvous. To professional statisticians, any P value of less than 5 percent constitutes a signal that is "significant." The FBI started trying to determine who the crooked referee was, and they built a "spiderweb" of Gambino connections that eventually led them to Donaghy, per ESPN. You don't want anyone "from New York" coming to your house, Battista told him. Sometimes, Battista told Griffin, Donaghy would ring Martino from an NBA locker room to know the spread of a game he was moments from starting. Back in Philly, Ruggieri had noticed that Concannon's bet sizes were an order of magnitude higher on certain NBA games. In four games, he called the game neutrally, 50-50. "He said, 'I can't tell you. Hours later, he called up Donaghy to tell him. In the end, Rush felt there was no need to relay his observations to the Pedowitz people. Veteran NBA referee who wagered on his own games but was never charged with manipulating them. Instead, Martino would be in the middle. 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. Illegal sports gambling was not Scala's focus. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. But that was the company line.". It is normal, of course, for a referee to call more fouls against one team than the other. One of the three was always him. And they are. 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. "His father is an outstanding man," Rush, now retired, says today. Before joining the NBA, he worked as a referee for high school basketball games and for the minor league CBA. "If I thought we were going to get caught, then I'd like to think I wouldn't have ever done it," Donaghy said. With Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul delving deep into the way the 2007 NBA betting scandal played out, we get an insight into not just the individuals involved but also gambling as a concept. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the gambling ring. In his book, Donaghy wrote, I knew I was screwed and in a tight spot . There was golfing but also drinking and gambling. Because this edge, this treasure, was in danger of evaporating, Battista had decided that he needed to assume direct control over the referee. Griffin became so acutely and repeatedly aware that the former ref was full of fabrication and fiction that hed relegate Donaghy to the disingenuous shadows of his own imagination. It came from above,' " Scala recalls. That was when he told Popeye that, come the 2006-07 NBA season, Battista would need to increase the size of some of his NBA wagers. Or, actually, it was the moral of this story. . Filed for divorce immediately after the investigation became public. "In the bathroom, Donaghy is like, 'Tom, you f---ing believe it?' It's possible, through Don Best Sports, a betting information service, to pull the line-movement data for individual NBA games going back years. "But they all had a piece of the pizza." Not exactly the Enigma cipher but better than yapping about specific teams and risking someone overhearing. Donaghy said Boston is gonna kill the Sixers. I was like, 'If anyone's watching this, we've got a problem.' Battista rolled $7,000 in a rubber band two for the Celtics tip, five as a signing bonus at the edge of Martinos couch for Donaghy. Underground bet broker, or mover, who was at the center of the Tim Donaghy betting scheme. He did well. It's possible, in effect, to buy and sell bets, to go long or go short, to hedge.
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