Taylor "Popeye" Breton He thought he was having a heart attack. 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. Kim filed for divorce in late 2007, a few months after the scandal became public. Donaghy, Griffin said, distracts and diverts. And I said, 'What?' It came from above,' " Scala recalls. Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul is available to stream now exclusively on Netflix. And those bets won -- won like Concannon had never won before. He told the gambler about other tactics as well. Griffin documented how Donaghy admitted to getting into Villanova, in part, by having someone take his SAT for him. And how, in turn, could you uncover evidence of it years, even a decade, later? Netflix's Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul revisits . In other words, there was a 23.2 percent chance these foul calls would happen randomly. Our experts predict every series, 2023 NBA playoffs: Second-round series, Finals, MVP odds, 'He looks better than ever': Why the Orlando bubble was 'just the beginning' for Jamal Murray, Pregame chats, language arts and 'a lot of fines': Inside NBA player-ref dynamics, United States of sports betting: An updated map of where every state stands. If there is a cradle of basketball refereeing, it is here. Griffins impressive work is again relevant because on Aug. 30, Netflix is scheduled to air Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, about the scandal. 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. But Battista refused to squeal on Donaghy. "It's called literal interpretation. Just before entering rehab, according to Martino and law enforcement documents, Battista had handed over the reins of the operation to Rhino Ruggieri. He had to use the bathroom, he said, and motioned for Martino to please come along. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. Tommy Martino was tight with both Donaghy and Battista. Their sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. Married to the daughter of powerful Philly mayor Frank Rizzo, who held office in the 1970s, Mastronardo was well-connected. James "Bah-Bah" "Sheep" Battista He was thus sentenced to 15 months in a federal facility. 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. The person wanted to deliver a message about Weiss' more critical reporting on 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 ref, on the other hand, can effectively add points -- calling fouls that result in free throws. In-season, it is demanding, tiring, high stress. He started a gambling group called "The Animals." Place fifty thousand dollar bets and get a massive returnif you won. 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. He was already thinking, How can I get a piece of this action? 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. And it was there, in the otherwise vacant dining area, seated around a table, that Battista and Donaghy, with Martino witnessing, consummated their deal. 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. So when Gaming appeared at No. (This notion even found its way into the Pedowitz report itself.) Powered by WordPress.com VIP. Accounts of the meeting differ. The whole thing had been merely insinuated, a matter of strong innuendo. 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. 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. Why? 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. That's what they were looking for. Spiros "The Greek" Athanas He was thus sentenced to 15 months in a federal facility. 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." There had to be a pattern. 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. Ensuing betting-scandal headlines jolted the NBA. 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.. They would use, per Martino's statement to the FBI, a code. James "Jimmy" Ba . "Uh, no.") Since he was now affiliated with PlayASAP, Ruggieri was running all the bets that he booked back home, including Concannon's, through the PlayASAP website. But he'd remained close friends after high school with both Donaghy and Battista, who, in turn, were never that close with each other. When I visited her in Sarasota not long ago, at the office where she works, she made it clear the divorce was a long time coming. Ronnie Nunn 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. Battista said Donaghy and Martino were close in high school because both liked to smoke pot. (Through the NBA, Stern declined an interview request for this story.) He has given up making betting picks for a tout service, which he did for a time after his release from prison. 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. The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game -- an outrageous bargain. Had Nunn heard anything about Donaghy's resignation? Griffin already had published a bestseller in 2005 with Black Brothers, Inc. about the violent rise and fall of Philadelphias black mafia. "I think there's enough that's been written about Tim Donaghy. Illegal sports gambling was not Scala's focus. Who besides Donaghy, Battista and Martino was in on it? According to statements Donaghy made to federal law enforcement, Battista's deal was effectively an act of extortion. Nothing to see here. F---ing Donaghy. Scala won't say whether he believes the NBA leaked the story. White-collar criminal defense attorney who led the NBA-commissioned outside investigation into the Donaghy affair. "Nobody picked winners . 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. What did he see? When Donaghy reffed and Concannon bet, the side he bet was covering the spread between 60 and 70 percent of the time. They were the real moneymakers of the Donaghy scheme. 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. The Animals landed in Curaao, where they helped launch an online sportsbook known as PlayASAP. His body turned numb. The Celtics won 101-81. 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. Tim Donaghy, NBA Ref and Convicted Gambler - The Sports Column | Sports When I asked, she said she never counted the money, never confronted him about its existence. 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. In 2008, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Normally this guy was a $100 or $200 or maybe $500 bettor. 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. One expert offers tips to brew the perfect cup at home. Battista had since decided to set up shop on his own as a bet broker. "If you're going to ask me if I would do it differently now, the answer is yes. 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.' Im one of the idiots who bought Donaghys book. 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. Strictly speaking, movers are neither gamblers nor bookmakers. Battista, after discovering this, had been following those bets for the better part of the past four years. We Finally Have Details On How Exactly Disgraced Ref Tim Donaghy Fixed Donaghy had Martino arrange the Marriott rendezvous. Because you're betting on the game, your judgment is off -- and you threw the game.'". Simply put, to show that Donaghy fixed games would suggest that it's easier for gamblers to manipulate games than any sports league would want to admit. The effort to hide it was in vain. Donaghy said Boston is gonna kill the Sixers. 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. After Donaghy, the NBA put into place a host of new measures designed to detect any nascent game-fixing schemes. 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. ", 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. I accepted because Im an academic; we argue for a living. Gaming the Game: The Story Behind the NBA Betting Scandal and the 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. In 2015, Mastronardo had a stroke and died in prison. Because he was a sometime member of the same golfing circle back home, Ruggieri knew that Concannon and NBA ref Tim Donaghy were friends. 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. These games would be mostly winners, so Popeye should feel free to move them -- and copy them too. 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. But she would keep finding such rolls in his pockets as the years went on. "He was a single man, married with four kids," says Kim Donaghy, his ex-wife. About a month after the meeting with Stern, however, the New York Post blared news of the FBI investigation across its front page. Gambler, bookmaker and great-great grandson of the founder of Goldman Sachs, now deceased. 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. And he could have been.". Sarah Spain on Chiefs running backs coach Deland McCullough's search for his biological parents, When the FBI began interviewing Donaghy's referee colleagues, the agents, according to Scala, eventually spoke to perhaps 10 of them. How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? Same with the season after that and the season after that. He was what's known as a mover. It stuns Griffin how media, especially sports-talk radio, has provided Donaghy with a platform for his sensational fodder. " 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. Tim Donaghy returns to spotlight in Netflix documentary but something Gambler, bookmaker and opener of offshore sportsbooks. 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 . His attorneys, he told her, had advised him not to. 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. Dallas making both free throws, increasing its lead to eight. As Scala told me, "If you can envision a spiderweb -- it might not be directly, but one or two or three spheres out, you find a name. Donaghy faced 25 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. Its absurd. But soon enough, Martino says, Rhino learned about the nature of Battista's deal with Donaghy. (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.). . The ESPN Article attempts to revive this old story. Still, in Scala's telling, the FBI eventually just had to move on. Battista heard Donaghy make racist NBA comments. 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. In that moment -- like the many people before him who'd expanded and abetted the scheme and profited from it -- Aron Kulle sensed opportunity. THEY CALLED IT The Office. At the club he developed a circle of golfing pals. "He said he'd pick on the big center, or the most valuable player of each team, and he'd try to get them in foul trouble. A few years ago, he bought its rights and original digital files. They had to get back to it. 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)." "But you know what? And then one afternoon the case agent came into my office. 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. 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. Jimmy Battista: Who is he? Where is Tim Donaghys partner Jimmy Battista Infrequently, Donaghy was at home. Frequent excursions were made to the Borgata, a casino in Atlantic City. 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. 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. No line-movement data would be required. If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. The important comparison is to the team that received the greater amount of betting dollars. It was too obvious. But he has kept the investigative notes he took on his FBI cases, including the Donaghy case. (When I contacted Weiss, who now works as a producer for CBS News' 48 Hours, he said he didn't recall this conversation.) Now there's a Netflix documentary on the subject, . And normally this guy lost. In other words, Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4. 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. Tony "Tiger" Rufo Hours later, he called up Donaghy to tell him. Joe Vito cannot speak to that today; he was busted in 2012 at age 63 for illegal bookmaking in an unrelated federal case. 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. Battista "was just ruining something that was totally quiet, that nobody knew about," said one of the Animals. But the gig is well-paid -- even rookies in 2007 could make six figures. Every foul call was logged, the resulting data analyzed, along with betting-market line-movement histories for every game Donaghy reffed that season. 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.
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