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.. 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. FBI special agent and head of the investigative unit focused on the Gambino crime family at the time of the investigation. One of them was the man that his ex-wife Kim Donaghy described as his forever "partner in crime" -Thomas "Tommy" Martino. (When I contacted Weiss, who now works as a producer for CBS News' 48 Hours, he said he didn't recall this conversation.) He started small. ACCORDING TO SCALA, the truncated probe meant the Feds left several lines of inquiry hanging. The next season, though, the volume rose sharply -- he made between 30 and 40 wagers on games he worked. ", From the archives: How former ref Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA games, 'It's going to be epic': Stephen Curry and LeBron James face off -- again, Curry sets G7 record with 50 as Dubs move on, Hobbled Butler serves as 'decoy' late in Heat win, Grizz's Brooks doesn't regret verbal jab at LeBron, 'This one's on me': Brunson self-critical after loss, Jokic on Murray's playoffs: 'We are following him', Rivers: Embiid likely doubtful for G1 vs. Celtics, 'This is probably his best shot': Why the time is now for Harden and the 76ers, Celtics-76ers first look: What could decide the battle of East heavyweights, Tigers coach fumes at Zaire v Dwyane comparisons after loss, Which teams will reach the NBA conference finals? Ruggieri was to play the same role Battista had -- mover, fund manager. The Philly ref blood runs deep. Kulle's eyes were practically dollar signs. Battista envisioned the arrangement lasting for 20 years. Battista had since decided to set up shop on his own as a bet broker. Kim filed for divorce in late 2007, a few months after the scandal became public. 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. 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. ], Griffin, 52, said. And it drives them crazy. In spheres other than the country-club set, he went by the nickname Rhino. Short of an outright confession, how could you prove that Donaghy had fixed the games anyway? Yeah, I did. But while Donaghy would admit to betting on his own games in his plea agreement, he would not admit to fixing games. I refuse to talk about him." He did well. 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.". And they are. 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. 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)." 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? With her thumbs and forefingers, she made an "O" the diameter of an orange. ", The NBA wouldn't share the specifics of those statistical analyses, but it did describe them in summary form. They were among his biggest brokerage clients and most trusted outs. 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! The data chronicle price fluctuations. Toronto, favored by 10.5, covering Money now pouring into games Donaghy is refereeing, the lines during trading sessions swinging violently, like stocks beset by takeover rumors-widening and narrowing by 1.5, 3, 4.5, even 5 points, unheard of in the NBA except in the case of significant player injuries Battista popping pills, Vicodin and OxyContin, sometimes falling asleep at the dinner table at restaurants, sometimes vomiting blood. It matters all the more now. 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. Ensuing betting-scandal headlines jolted the NBA. About a month after the meeting with Stern, however, the New York Post blared news of the FBI investigation across its front page. There is a footnote buried deep in Gaming the Game that refers to someone taking home in excess of $200 million. But the person who knows more about the case than anyone isnt on the show and wont be watching. 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 . 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. To discuss Donaghy with more than a dozen of them now is to sense that their silence has more to do with the fact that they hate the guy. Thats what bothers me. 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. Jimmy Battista, to participate in the betting. Both times, however, Donaghy didnt show. When Donaghy reffed and Concannon bet, the side he bet was covering the spread between 60 and 70 percent of the time. In it, she writes of the paradox of being both "lonely for him" and "truly afraid of him." His income now reportedly comes from rental properties he owns. They are a form of broker that helps sports bettors by placing wagers on their client's behalf. ", Said another: "Did I assume he was fixing the games? 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). Close friends with the referee since they were kids, Martino had a day job as an IT guy at JPMorgan. It means you've found something. The pact was: "Don't tell anybody. A few weeks later, four days after the Post story broke, David Stern gave his first news conference. It was his first pick for Battista. Tim Donaghy Im one of the idiots who bought Donaghys book. The gambler described the conversation with Donaghy to me on the condition that I not use his name in the story. 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. 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. He works seven days every week. It wasn't long before people wanted in on the action. ", Weiss disputes that; he told me his tipster wasn't affiliated with the NBA "as far as I know." "He gets so pale sometimes, he turns yellow, I swear to god," Martino told me. They now had one job: Do not lose the edge by letting the information leak. There was this NBA referee named Tim Donaghy Popeye's eyes grew wide. At the club he developed a circle of golfing pals. Griffin documented how Donaghy admitted to getting into Villanova, in part, by having someone take his SAT for him. "If you looked at the stats," said one gambler in The Office at the time, "you could see he was calling more fouls on the team he bet against and less fouls on the team he bet on. Vercher asked him why. To professional statisticians, any P value of less than 5 percent constitutes a signal that is "significant." There was, after all, that definitive frame within the 2006-07 season: the 40 games between the beginning of the marriage and the end of Battista's involvement. ", Not every retired referee is reticent. One, Johnny, lived in Jersey. Popeye, no dummy, asked the obvious question: Who's the handicapper behind these games? Because then "you gotta call a lot of fouls," Martino said. And, if he did, what was his method? He had many lucrative gambling-related businesses. Even if it made them strange bedfellows, then, Donaghy's denials of match-fixing guilt were, in the end, a gift. Money drops and cash settlements in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania; in New York City; in Las Vegas; in San Francisco. He and the other Animals who'd been following the bets were not happy. Netflix's Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul revisits . "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. He had an unhappy marriage, four daughters and a $260,000 salary. 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. The whole thing had been merely insinuated, a matter of strong innuendo. 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). Tim Donaghy, Tommy Martino, and Jimmy Battista had attended the same Catholic High School near Philadelphia. The methods of fixing are rather straightforward. Seth Wickersham on the Cleveland Browns' front office -- and where hope and history collide. Hundred-dollar bills in $10,000 packs, bound in rubber bands and delivered by trusted gofers. Just money, just business. Battista told Griffin. Ex-Referee Donaghy's Accomplice Says They Bet on Many Games That's the bottom line. I was like, 'If anyone's watching this, we've got a problem.' 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. In 2008, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison. This was a clear violation of NBA rules, but Donaghy got over it. "You wanna get paid?" By most accounts, Tony "Tiger" Rufo is no longer a gambler. But Weiss, a veteran newsman, protected his source. To Scala, Stern seemed mostly upset that the NBA's in-house security people had failed to discover Donaghy's wrongdoing before the FBI. The Hero of Goodall Park: A true-crime drama 50 years in the making. Holy s---! IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. 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. So the FBI had worked out a plan. Tim Donaghy returns to spotlight in Netflix documentary but something Tim Donaghy, NBA Ref and Convicted Gambler - The Sports Column | Sports 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. And those bets won -- won like Concannon had never won before. According to Martino and Battista, after such wagering was complete, Battista, via Martino, would then inform Donaghy of the spread he needed to cover. T. Rush, Joey Crawford, Steve Javie, Tom Washington, Mark Wunderlich, Duke Callahan, Ed Malloy, Mark Lindsay, Aaron Smith, Tim Donaghy -- all NBA referees current, retired, dead or (in the last case) disgraced, all born and/or raised in the environs of Philadelphia. ", Scala, at the time, was livid. Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul is available to stream now exclusively on Netflix. 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. 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. Why? A ref, on the other hand, can effectively add points -- calling fouls that result in free throws. Battista "was just ruining something that was totally quiet, that nobody knew about," said one of the Animals. The person wanted to deliver a message about Weiss' more critical reporting on the scandal. Battista would cut a deal, pleading guilty in April 2008 only to the charge of transmission of gambling information. Donaghy said he couldn't do that, Vercher recalled in a deposition. You want to get paid, you gotta cover the spread, Battista had told Donaghy. The NBA employees "examined every play and determined whether, in their view, Donaghy's calls (or absence of calls) were correct." 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. Short, squat, thick-necked, Ruggieri was built, some thought, like a small rhinoceros. "I refuse to comment on him. 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 even contacted Murray Weiss, the Post reporter who wrote the story, to uncover the source of the leak. But the longtime crime reporter says he did at one point talk to a person "involved with Stern and the NBA in that era." I accepted because Im an academic; we argue for a living. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. Ill never understand that., Battista, who called Donaghy a pathological liar with bottomless greed, told Griffin, I knew that Timmys demand for money far exceeded his ability to get it. Privately, however, he has at times taken a different position. Where Is Tim Donaghy Now? The Former NBA Referee Worked In Pro - Bustle For that reason, he had a lot of cash on hand. He entered a conspiracy only when Battista and Thomas Martino, the go . "If I thought we were going to get caught, then I'd like to think I wouldn't have ever done it," Donaghy said. They produce whatever theyre going to produce, independent of the evidence. And Battista, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not smartly, gave him the truth. The Feds' job, on this one, was done. Print length 320 pages Language English Publisher UNKNO Battista was positioned well enough in that world that, without Donaghy's knowledge but based on Donaghy's picks, he'd helped set up a kind of loose, disorderly hedge fund. Ridiculous.. His messaging was clear: Donaghy was a rogue. James "Jimmy" Ba . Martino had two brothers. It was only later, in 2007, after Donaghy had been exposed, that Donaghy's letter-of-the-law foul-calling acquired a darker hue. He has recently admitted that he wishes he was still an NBS referee. 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. Griffins impressive work is again relevant because on Aug. 30, Netflix is scheduled to air Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, about the scandal. Thousands of pages of court documents and investigative records were scrutinized. They had to get back to it. A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER once confronted Donaghy about the scandal. IT WOULD NOT be the only time Tim Donaghy would come clean. And how, in turn, could you uncover evidence of it years, even a decade, later? ", 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. 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. The Feds made no mention of game-fixing. There's a defined trading session. 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. It was January 2007. The scandal architect, Battista was addicted to various pills and cocaine, yet he was the straight-shooter, as reams of evidence and others corroborated his most-minute details. But stomping out a Mafia profit center was. 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. 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. He goes, 'Concannon was making all that money and not giving me anything! 'UNTOLD: Operation Flagrant Foul' Netflix Review: Stream It or Skip It?
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