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. Rush recalls watching maybe 10 such games. As economist Wladimir Andreff of the University of Paris has written: "All economic analyses conclude that the more money there is inflowing to sport, the greater the sport corruption.". [3] The whole thing had been merely insinuated, a matter of strong innuendo. 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. 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. A few weeks later, four days after the Post story broke, David Stern gave his first news conference. He started small. "His father is an outstanding man," Rush, now retired, says today. I can imagine TV producers were looking for an on-air mix-up. 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. And so nothing about any of this would end up in Pedowitz's final report. But Battista refused to squeal on Donaghy. In high school, during a trip to the Jersey Shore, Donaghy got drunk and scavenged through neighbors homes, stealing items. Then people settle in. Holy s---! Martino said Donaghy cheated on tests, too, at Villanova. I refuse to talk about him." 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. Tim Donaghy Normally this meant making a few "head fake" bets. Battista had since decided to set up shop on his own as a bet broker. According to multiple sources, Battista first began moving bets for Athanas in 2005. The next night, the trio convened at Martinos house to set terms. He documented a 78% Donaghy win rate and paying him $201,000 for his tips, just a cog in Battistas tentacles, which reached Asia, Europe and Vegas. Another moneymaker -- according to people with knowledge of the events -- was a man named Spiros Athanas. 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. For slipping him winning football picks, Donaghy had sent to Battista a Kobe Bryant-signed Lakers jersey. 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 . 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. Reportedly born in 1966, Jimmy Battista is 56 years old in 2022. It would have been great for me, great for sales, just for selfish reasons, Griffin said. Taylor "Popeye" Breton But we also found that in 10 games during that 40-game span, one team was defeating the other team to such a degree that the spread was rarely in doubt. The Animals went so far as to study the box scores after each of Donaghy's outings. 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. 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. After it hit the fan and the legal process dragged on, Battista hoped to expose Donaghys mountain of lies by testifying. they thought. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. 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. "He said, 'I can't tell you. One expert offers tips to brew the perfect cup at home. Now there's a Netflix documentary on the subject, . He works seven days every week. That was obvious. 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. But this referee didn't lose much. Word about Donaghy had permeated the market, followers following followers. After the scandal, Rush was among those NBA personnel tasked by Pedowitz with reviewing a set of Donaghy games for evidence of game-fixing. Twenty months later, all three had avoided trials and awaited sentencing, by U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon, in Brooklyn. His messaging was clear: Donaghy was a rogue. Wife of Tim Donaghy at the time of the scandal. Conspiracy theories about corrupted refs have dogged the league for decades. But he'd remained close friends after high school with both Donaghy and Battista, who, in turn, were never that close with each other. Donaghy, Griffin said, distracts and diverts. Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul is available to stream now exclusively on Netflix. They are a form of broker that helps sports bettors by placing wagers on their client's behalf. Griffin documented how Donaghy admitted to getting into Villanova, in part, by having someone take his SAT for him. In 2014, commissioner Adam Silver penned an op-ed in The New York Times advocating for legalization. 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 . "David Stern and I had never interacted much, and when we did it was not positive," McMorris told me. Yet the number of games reviewed by Pedowitz's group of NBA employees was only 17. July 9 is the anniversary of Donaghy's resignation from the NBA. But he has kept the investigative notes he took on his FBI cases, including the Donaghy case. According to a court document, Donaghy and Concannon placed their first bet on a game Donaghy was refereeing in March 2003 -- more than four years and four NBA seasons before he was caught. It was like: Why would you do that?". According to a breakdown from NBC Sports, NBA referees earn an estimated salary of anywhere between $150,000 and $550,000 every year. I didn't find it.". Ideally, Donaghy should make his pick as early as possible, preferably the night before his games, or at least the morning of. Both times, however, Donaghy didnt show. About a month after the meeting with Stern, however, the New York Post blared news of the FBI investigation across its front page. (Rufo declined to comment for this story.) Joseph "Joe Vito" Mastronardo He gives the media a press packet, and they read him the questions from it, like its a PR campaign, Griffin said. That way, the gambler said, Donaghy could force the side he'd picked against to play a little less aggressively on defense. With her thumbs and forefingers, she made an "O" the diameter of an orange. Barricade Books, his publisher, had issues. 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). Their sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. 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. Pete "Rhino" Ruggieri 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. 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. I asked. Martino also penned a book in 2019. In-season, it is demanding, tiring, high stress. In July of 2018, he announced a multiyear deal for MGM Resorts to be the "official gaming partner of the NBA.". In spheres other than the country-club set, he went by the nickname Rhino. -- wins and wins and wins and wins, his picks almost 100 percent wins. 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. Joe Vito cannot speak to that today; he was busted in 2012 at age 63 for illegal bookmaking in an unrelated federal case. "Uh, no.") 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. Normally this guy was a $100 or $200 or maybe $500 bettor. It's like looking at a stock chart. The other, Chuck, lived in Delco. That way, Battista could begin to prepare the markets, to manipulate the prices in their favor. Jack Concannon Dont forget that I got involved with this not realizing Donaghys story is [b.s. And now, back to your regularly scheduled chants, Kahleah Copper is more than comfortable in the drivers seat for the Sky, Andrew Vaughn, White Sox end 10-game skid with 12-9 comeback win over Rays, What the Cubs April performance says about their identity, Shoplifter stabs Loop Target employee, leading to temporary store closure, The Edgar haircut is one more thing kids, parents can disagree on, Dear Abby: When I travel, friend checking my home also snoops through my things, Coffee machine broken? 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. "In the bathroom, Donaghy is like, 'Tom, you f---ing believe it?' According to Martino, if Donaghy mentioned out-of-state Johnny's name, the pick was for the visiting team. All of our efforts were focused on understanding precisely what he did and how he did it so we would be best equipped to protect the integrity of our games going forward. "You've got to arrange a meeting with Donaghy," Battista said. Close friends with the referee since they were kids, Martino had a day job as an IT guy at JPMorgan. He staffed it with working-class Delco kids ambitious to earn. Thats when Battista started calling Donaghy Elvis, The King of prognosticating NBA games including his own, Battista told Griffin. "No way Battista kept this quiet from Tiger," another told me. The main problem now was keeping a lid on the thing. Agents monitoring organized crime figures in the Gambino family. 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. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. "I refuse to comment on him. Blowouts would be included. It is normal, of course, for a referee to call more fouls against one team than the other. "The only mechanics, he had in his hand. A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER once confronted Donaghy about the scandal. It was Donaghys 13th NBA season. I'm thinking he's going to say: Oh s---! Don't be fishing, because you ain't getting anything out of me." It was January 2007. Because you're betting on the game, your judgment is off -- and you threw the game.'". 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. According to statements Donaghy made to federal law enforcement, Battista's deal was effectively an act of extortion. Battista envisioned the arrangement lasting for 20 years. Im one of the idiots who bought Donaghys book. Scala recalls that he and Donaghy went around and around on the issue. On May 14 of last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that had forbidden states from legalizing sports gambling within their own borders. Through them, we deduced which side Donaghy had picked for Battista to bet on. He goes: 'Do you believe it?' At the Marriott, Battista thanked Donaghy for the gift. Donaghy rose from the table. At the club he developed a circle of golfing pals. And so it is that May's Supreme Court decision demands a review of the Donaghy affair. James "Jimmy" Ba . And so, in the end, on the question of whether Donaghy fixed, Pedowitz upheld the findings of the U.S. Attorney's Office -- which never charged him with such crimes. 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. I was told, 'They're the kind of people who will do anything they can to protect themselves and the game.'". If Donaghy talked about Chuck, bet the home side. Kim Donaghy Favored by 6, the visiting Wizards covering Battista on March 15 confessing to his wife that he'd lost $7 million of his clients' money Battista on March 16 strung out and sleepless at Martino's house and surrounded suddenly by almost his entire immediate family. This was a clear violation of NBA rules, but Donaghy got over it. Battista would cut a deal, pleading guilty in April 2008 only to the charge of transmission of gambling information. Martino was not a gambler, had hardly ever placed a bet in his life. There's a defined trading session. They were the gamblers and bookmakers closest to Battista. THERE ARE MANY misconceptions about the Tim Donaghy scandal. A close observer of basketball, the gambler had become acutely curious after suffering losses on Donaghy-reffed games during that season. All those gray-area decisions you have to make, Tim? Battista was a creature of that world. That, though, represented only one knot of the tangled webs. He'd acted alone. So I didnt really have time to focus on it, let alone enjoy it., I dont want to say the NBA scandal was easy, he said, but once I got access to personnel in the U.S. attorneys offices and FBI agents, they were not only confirming what Battista said but were elaborating.. "Tim was very, very secretive. Moreover, it was indicated he made $20 to $30 million in total for the mob families. "He knew what the spreads were going to be. The final game, Martino remembers, was a loss. Popeye's real name was Taylor Breton, and he was the great-great-grandson of Marcus Goldman, the founder, in 1869, of Goldman Sachs. Just money, just business. Battista told Griffin. According to what we've observed after being released from Metropolitan Detention Center-Brooklyn, New York, James "Jimmy" Battista has returned home to the state of Pennsylvania and lives an extremely private life. There is a footnote buried deep in Gaming the Game that refers to someone taking home in excess of $200 million. It was 0.232. Ensuing betting-scandal headlines jolted the NBA. The Timmy Elvis Donaghy thing was only a small part of everything I had going on, and I didnt want anyone to find out. "But they all had a piece of the pizza." Watching games for Pedowitz, Rush noticed the same propensity to call "literally interpreted" fouls in situations where they were not warranted -- ones that ran counter to the flow of the game. It's widely believed that the ruling will lead to a lifting of the interstate prohibition on sports betting, which, in turn, would give rise to a massive increase in the money wagered on American sports. Today, Scala considers that meeting a mistake. "He played golf and gambled.". 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. Its not like I was laughing at his calls if they helped us, or pissed at his calls if they hurt us. Donaghy was mentioned on those tapes. Three. But Weiss, a veteran newsman, protected his source. That is incorrect. It came from above,' " Scala recalls. Griffin, a criminal justice professor at The Citadel and former Philadelphia cop, untangled much of that mess in his best-selling 2011 book, Gaming the Game.. That couldve helped me and absolutely would have hurt Timmy, [but] I wasnt a rat.. FAQ: How will legal gambling change the NBA and the way we watch it? Ever since Donaghy emerged from prison in 2009, he has lived in the same unit in a town house apartment complex in Sarasota. 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. 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 . 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. "Say hello to Johnny for me ". Battista said Donaghy and Martino were close in high school because both liked to smoke pot. 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. Things may have been different. 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. Scala reached the FBI's mandatory retirement age in 2008 and is now a private detective based on Long Island. There's also Scala, who told me he heard from his informants that underground gamblers "could have been making over a hundred million dollars" on Donaghy's games. Instead, he surprised me. 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. Back in Philly, Ruggieri had noticed that Concannon's bet sizes were an order of magnitude higher on certain NBA games. "If what you're telling me is true," Kulle said he told Donaghy, "you're gonna be rich.". "He gets so pale sometimes, he turns yellow, I swear to god," Martino told me. And how, in turn, could you uncover evidence of it years, even a decade, later? 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. But the crucial betting information -- which sides of which games the ref favored -- had been seeping into the black-market gambling business. Today, Kim Donaghy lives in Sarasota, Florida, where she and her then-husband and four daughters moved in 2005. He was always locked in a room, on the phone.". 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. 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. 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. The next documentary in the series, The Race of the Century, hits Netflix on September 6. Battista had such a network. Tim Donaghy Worked In Pro Wrestling After His NBA Betting Scandal. Another man who profited off Donaghy was a well-known New York and South Florida bookie and whale who sometimes went by the nickname Popeye on account of his oversize forearms. But suddenly this recreational dumb-money insurance salesman was putting five dimes each on select NBA games and beating the bookies? Griffins impressive work is again relevant because on Aug. 30, Netflix is scheduled to air Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, about 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. When Donaghy became an NBA ref, that continued, sometimes with hookers. 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. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. Now sitting bolt upright, Nunn answered "no" to all the questions. He felt the trends were embodied in the stats: The volume of Donaghy's calls was noticeable; it must be obvious to all. There will almost always be an imbalance of calls. 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. He started a gambling group called "The Animals." Place fifty thousand dollar bets and get a massive returnif you won. Battista said that if Donaghy could keep games close or far enough to cover the spread, he'd give him $2,000 a game to do so. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the gambling ring. Battista called him a strange, mean-spirited guy.. Girlfriend insists her secret visits and conversations with another man dont count as an affair. "During all this s---," he said. Veteran reporter who broke the Donaghy story for the New York Post. The Feds' job, on this one, was done. Martino, in that way, was about to become the unlikely bridge upon which the conspiracy would travel. They played 18 holes four or five days a week. 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. The FBI investigated the disgraced refs claims of other NBA officials involvement, with negative results. He and the other Animals who'd been following the bets were not happy. Or, actually, it was the moral of this story. To help get his clients' bets down, Battista as a bet broker needed Joe Vito. By now the spreads were moving violently. (Concannon declined comment for this story.) "My life is ruined," Kulle recalled Donaghy saying. (Through the NBA, Stern declined an interview request for this story.) Everyone at the Curaao office, therefore, had access to Concannon's gambling account. (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.). Read more in the source You may also like: " 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. It matters all the more now. Served as one of Battista's biggest "outs" for bets on Donaghy games. Thats not the [b.s.] And so their syndicate came to be known by some as the Animals. It was January 2007. "We were prepared to do some undercover things to corroborate Donaghy's story," Scala says. Griffin already had published a bestseller in 2005 with Black Brothers, Inc. about the violent rise and fall of Philadelphias black mafia. 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. It was the biggest scandal in American sports history, but it quickly faded from the headlines. In our case, it means there's just a 4.1 percent chance that an unbiased ref would have randomly made the calls that Tim Donaghy did during his crooked run. He gained notoriety as a mover who is neither a gambler nor a bookmaker. Donaghy had Martino arrange the Marriott rendezvous. It was too obvious. story youve been telling for the past 10 years.. One member of the group called it "the ticket" and "the company.". Jimmy Battista's NBA bets drew the attention of the world's largest gamblers, who attributed his actions to referee Tim Donaghy, a professional NBA official who was charged in 2007 with participating in a large gambling syndicate. Unlikely but not outrageously so. 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. That's the bottom line. Premier underground bookmaker, now deceased, who, according to sources, profited from the scheme. Freedom of Information Act requests were filed. It cost Griffin to produce that book. It's despicable." Im not nave, Griffin said. In total, according to a person with knowledge of their operation, he hoped to get down about $1 million of his investors' money in each of Donaghy's games. Crank then calculated the P value for just Donaghy's calls for the entirety of the season in question. Do it right and you can drive down the price of Boston. For that reason, he had a lot of cash on hand. He goes, 'Concannon was making all that money and not giving me anything! He was already thinking, How can I get a piece of this action? 2 on a Nielsen list in the middle of September 2011, he knew something was up when his royalty checks were a pittance. . Instead, Martino would be in the middle. Married to the daughter of powerful Philly mayor Frank Rizzo, who held office in the 1970s, Mastronardo was well-connected. "It's called literal interpretation. 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. Donaghy in Toronto calling four fouls against the visiting Nets' top scorer, Bob Costas was yanked from the Super Bowl, Deland McCullough's search for his biological parents. 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. One of them was the man that his ex-wife Kim Donaghy described as his forever "partner in crime" -Thomas "Tommy" Martino. Donaghy then found another publisher: a small, independent, newly established outfit -- so new that Personal Foul would be its inaugural volume -- based in Tampa, Florida, and operated by a political consultant and publicist named Shawna Vercher. Ronnie Nunn The NBA did too. There was golfing but also drinking and gambling. ", Said another: "Did I assume he was fixing the games? I just focus on evidence, his betting records, any number of things I can quantify, the ridiculous things he says in his book, like, I agree with everything Judge Amon said., Really? And it was there, in the otherwise vacant dining area, seated around a table, that Battista and Donaghy, with Martino witnessing, consummated their deal. A few years ago, he bought its rights and original digital files. Netflix, to me, is the next iteration of that., Donaghy published a book in June 2010, nine months before Gaming.. But there is much evidence to suggest the opposite. Then, at some point in 2003, Donaghy and Concannon crossed the Rubicon. 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.
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