Underground bet broker, or mover, who was at the center of the Tim Donaghy betting scheme. Because that's how you get in trouble. A month or so back, not long before Christmas, he'd done something audacious: He'd sat down and cut a deal with an NBA referee. 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. How Tim Donaghy's NBA Betting Antics Made Him A Target Of The Mob THERE ARE MANY misconceptions about the Tim Donaghy scandal. A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER once confronted Donaghy about the scandal. . Gaming the Game is definitive, vital to comprehending the NBA scandal and how sports-betting money zips around the world. Same with the season after that and the season after that. If the spread widens during the trading session, then you know that demand among gamblers for betting on the favorite has intensified. 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. Making bets at the highest levels of sports gambling is akin to the trading of any financial instrument. His attorneys, he told her, had advised him not to. IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. Today, Kim Donaghy lives in Sarasota, Florida, where she and her then-husband and four daughters moved in 2005. He was what's known as a mover. How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? Read more in the source You may also like: For that reason, the NBA is particularly wary of any hint of the fix. 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. Who were the referees? 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. Netflix, to me, is the next iteration of that., Donaghy published a book in June 2010, nine months before Gaming.. 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. If Donaghy talked about Chuck, bet the home side. "If you're going to ask me if I would do it differently now, the answer is yes. Veteran reporter who broke the Donaghy story for the New York Post. 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. David Stern Holy s---! Gambler, bookmaker and opener of offshore sportsbooks. It took a second for me to comprehend what Martino was telling me. Had Battista gone to trial, Donaghys character would have come under immense scrutiny. If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing; Battista would eat the loss. Then people settle in. It was only later, in 2007, after Donaghy had been exposed, that Donaghy's letter-of-the-law foul-calling acquired a darker hue. Donaghy's story is that he bet on all kinds of things for years with his buddy, including NBA games. "You've got to arrange a meeting with Donaghy," Battista said. In his endeavors, Battista had a sometime assistant, another high school chum, Tommy Martino, who acted as a liaison in the Donaghy scheme. How Tim Donaghy's NBA Betting Antics Made Him A Target Of The Mob Only this time, Rush viewed these calls with suspicion. According to Scala, his and the FBI's position has always been that Donaghy's deals with Concannon and Battista irrevocably "tainted" his capacity for officiating, even if only subconsciously. All those gray-area decisions you have to make, Tim? Lawyer, Battista replied. We Finally Have Details On How Exactly Disgraced Ref Tim Donaghy Fixed 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. Spiros "The Greek" Athanas An old classmate, Jimmy Battista, had extorted him into making NBA betting picks for him by saying, "You don't want anyone 'from New York' coming to your house" (via ESPN). He would start before dawn with the enormously liquid Asian betting markets, an amorphous group of black- and gray-market internet sportsbooks based in places like Manila and Kuala Lumpur. That's when Donaghy "laid everything out" and "spilled everything," Kulle said. So the FBI had worked out a plan. Martino would then relay the pick to Battista. Filed for divorce immediately after the investigation became public. 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. It stuns Griffin how media, especially sports-talk radio, has provided Donaghy with a platform for his sensational fodder. The Celtics, favored by 2.5 points, went on to win in a blowout. "And it's too obvious.". Scala's squad went to work. "David Stern and I had never interacted much, and when we did it was not positive," McMorris told me. Who Is Jimmy Battista? Yet the number of games reviewed by Pedowitz's group of NBA employees was only 17. The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game -- an outrageous bargain. They are a form of broker that helps sports bettors by placing wagers on their client's behalf. "Tim was very, very secretive. He and the other Animals who'd been following the bets were not happy. It was situated in a house a block off the beach. Dear Abby: Is it cheating if nothing physical ever happened? Popeye, who died of heart disease in 2014 at age 61, was born in Manhattan and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, but remained estranged from most of his family for most of the rest of his life. In 1998, Donaghy joined a country club in West Chester, Pennsylvania, called Radley Run, along whose fairways the Donaghys built a spacious home. NBA commissioner at the time of the scandal. In the runup to the 2024 election, the Sun-Times, WBEZ and the Center for Effective Government at the University of Chicago will be collaborating on a project to educate our audience about the threat to our democracy and how we can form a more perfect union., Tim Donaghy returns to spotlight in Netflix documentary but somethings missing, Bears draft review: Pieces in place for Justin Fields, White Sox win! None of them says anymore that Donaghy "was a good ref. Strictly speaking, movers are neither gamblers nor bookmakers. A "free roll," as they call it. They were among his biggest brokerage clients and most trusted outs. You don't want anyone "from New York" coming to your house, Battista told him. Ideally, Donaghy should make his pick as early as possible, preferably the night before his games, or at least the morning of. And so, controlling for blowouts by removing those games from the ledger, what we ultimately found was this: Donaghy favored the side that attracted more betting dollars in 23 of those 30 competitive games, or 77 percent of the time. The Celtics won 101-81. Thousands of pages of court documents and investigative records were scrutinized. He gives the media a press packet, and they read him the questions from it, like its a PR campaign, Griffin said. When Donaghy reffed and Concannon bet, the side he bet was covering the spread between 60 and 70 percent of the time. 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. 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. Instead, Martino would be in the middle. 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. In 2015, Mastronardo had a stroke and died in prison. But she would keep finding such rolls in his pockets as the years went on. But Battista refused to squeal on Donaghy. The whole thing had been merely insinuated, a matter of strong innuendo. Instead, he surprised me. "He can influence a game six points either way -- that's what he told me," Tommy Martino said as we sat in the break room of his family's hair salon, where he's worked since he got out of prison in August 2009 after serving 10 months. Battista arrived with a thick stack of $100 bills bound in a rubber band -- $2,000 for the agreed-upon fee and $3,000 as a sweetener. "He gets so pale sometimes, he turns yellow, I swear to god," Martino told me. Or "influence" or "manipulate" or in any way discussed the mechanics of fixing. Battista had since decided to set up shop on his own as a bet broker. Ruggieri was to play the same role Battista had -- mover, fund manager. I knew what it would mean, Battista told Griffin, if I had an NBA ref on my side.. Donaghy has written that Rhino had a handicapping system for picking NFL and college football winners. 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. Had he heard about Donaghy's gambling "issues" -- about what he had done? But while Donaghy would admit to betting on his own games in his plea agreement, he would not admit to fixing games. I accepted because Im an academic; we argue for a living. And indeed, the chart for the Boston-Philly game on Dec. 13, 2006, shows the price for Boston spiking and then shrinking back. They included a beefed-up computerized system for monitoring refs' foul calls; enhanced scrutiny of betting-line fluctuations that might reveal suspicious wagering; the hiring of staff with experience in law enforcement, security and data analysis; and even the cultivation of tipsters within the sports-gambling industry who could relay rumors of possible corruption. "He started betting it with everybody and moving the lines like crazy. 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. Battista called him a strange, mean-spirited guy.. In 2003 in Curaao, when the Animals had made their original deduction and followed the Donaghy-Concannon bets, Tiger had been the leader of the Animals' betting office. Normally this meant making a few "head fake" bets. Donaghy worked the game. In early 2017, inspired by the 10th anniversary of the scandal, ESPN set out to reinvestigate it. 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. ", The NBA wouldn't share the specifics of those statistical analyses, but it did describe them in summary form. 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. Then later in the day, with the price right, you gobble up all the Boston you can. In Donaghy's many conversations with the Feds through these weeks, he had begun pointing fingers and making allegations about other referees -- other refs who may have been corrupt. But he has kept the investigative notes he took on his FBI cases, including the Donaghy case. 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. That way, Battista could begin to prepare the markets, to manipulate the prices in their favor. An attorney for Athanas wrote to ESPN that Athanas never "received information that Tim Donaghy was making wagers on games in which he was the referee," and so never made any bets based on any knowledge of the scheme. Larry Pedowitz They had to get back to it. In the car at the gas station, according to Gaming the Game, Donaghy had said: Bet the Celtics. "Our plans were blown up by the fact that somebody leaked this," Scala lamented to me. He'd acted alone. I was like, 'If anyone's watching this, we've got a problem.' (Pedowitz, who has retired from his firm, did not respond to requests for comment. They'd known each other since high school. He had the artwork. 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. ", But Donaghy didn't settle in. That was obvious. Married to the daughter of powerful Philly mayor Frank Rizzo, who held office in the 1970s, Mastronardo was well-connected. Where is Tim Donaghy's Partner Jimmy Battista Now? His mind still foggy with sleep, Nunn could hear the voice of his boss, Joel Litvin, then NBA president, asking questions about Tim Donaghy. And what more did you want? they thought. He staffed it with working-class Delco kids ambitious to earn. 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. There was golfing but also drinking and gambling. 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. "I called him the King - Elvis," Battista told HBO Real Sports in an interview aired last night. Unlikely but not outrageously so. But there is much evidence to suggest the opposite. And so it began From Philadelphia, Donaghy hopping to a Nets home game, then 1,700 miles west to Denver, then over to Seattle, then transcontinental to Atlanta, then southwest to Houston, then back east to DC -- Donaghy zigzagging across the country, in and out of NBA arenas, making his picks to Martino over those cheap bodega burner phones, but not always, because sometimes they'd forget and use their own regular phones, because who cared? Martino couldn't remember, not exactly. They'd gone to the same parochial high school in the working-class Catholic neighborhoods of Delaware County, just outside Philadelphia -- Delco, as it's sometimes called -- where the sports bars are abundant, where a certain easy familiarity with all forms of gambling prevails, where guys have bookies like they've got dentists. Jimmy Battista, to participate in the betting. The heart of labor is beating strong in Chicago and Illinois, Why were launching The Democracy Solutions Project. Joseph "Joe Vito" Mastronardo What did he see? Based in an anonymous office building in Kew Gardens, Queens, Scala and his agents had spent years assembling a network of informants inside the gang. Just one game of potential funny business out of 17 wasn't nearly enough to accuse the referee of anything. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the gambling ring. 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. One of the three was always him. To the gambler's enduring surprise, Donaghy acknowledged that, yes, he deliberately called more fouls against the side he'd bet against. I had a good personality to get information out of people on a one-to-one basis [no matter the league], the then-member of The Animals syndicate said, explaining the reason behind his success. Griffins impressive work is again relevant because on Aug. 30, Netflix is scheduled to air Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, about the scandal. The next season, though, the volume rose sharply -- he made between 30 and 40 wagers on games he worked. 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. You know what he says? But stomping out a Mafia profit center was. Blowouts would be included. 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. But now, when Battista arrived at Martino's house, he dropped the bomb. By chance, over the years its members had all acquired animal nicknames: Tiger, Rooster, Rhino, Seal, Sheep. There was this NBA referee named Tim Donaghy Popeye's eyes grew wide. Donaghy scandal's ringleader speaks - TrueHoop- ESPN "If it wasn't basketball season, he had a lot of time on his hands," says one of Donaghy's friends. What does it mean to "fix" a game? 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. Still, in Scala's telling, the FBI eventually just had to move on. According to statements Donaghy made to federal law enforcement, Battista's deal was effectively an act of extortion. 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. . To Martino, Battista seemed desperate, even frightened. 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. In the early 2000s, the sports-betting world was undergoing its own equivalent of a dot-com boom. FAQ: How will legal gambling change the NBA and the way we watch it? Ensuing betting-scandal headlines jolted the NBA. Tim Donaghy Worked In Pro Wrestling After His NBA Betting Scandal. I believe this guy was almost soulless.. In high school, during a trip to the Jersey Shore, Donaghy got drunk and scavenged through neighbors homes, stealing items. But Crank didn't stop there. Whether Donaghy was using his whistle to fix games was beside the point. At the time, she told herself the money was from golf-course betting. "There were lots of whistles in the game, by him, that did not fit the game," he says. "They were looking for something real obvious. In four games, he called the game neutrally, 50-50. 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. 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. Tommy Martino In this, Pedowitz followed the lead of federal investigators, who had analyzed video of Donaghy's games -- recruiting Nunn himself to review eight of them -- based on Donaghy's admission to the Feds that he'd wagered on just 16 of his own games in the final season of his career. Both times, however, Donaghy didnt show. The NBA conducted its own investigation and concluded that Donaghy, in fact, did not fix games. At the Marriott, Battista thanked Donaghy for the gift. "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. The important comparison is to the team that received the greater amount of betting dollars. 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 . Veteran NBA referee and Nunn's immediate predecessor as director of officials. I can imagine TV producers were looking for an on-air mix-up. "Tiger was his boss." (Of those calls, 2.6 percent could not conclusively be attributed to a referee and were excluded from the study.). 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. 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. Now there's a Netflix documentary on the subject, . Over the course of the past decade, he's built a company that has become one of the biggest Planet Fitness franchisees in the nation, with more than 30 locations and exclusive rights to the regions of Philadelphia and Chicago.