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. 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. Perhaps the greatest is this: that Donaghy was the ref who colluded with gamblers on NBA games for one disgraceful season. 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. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. 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. Martino would receive a year and Donaghy and Battista 15 months each in federal prison. James "Bah-Bah" "Sheep" Battista Griffins impressive work is again relevant because on Aug. 30, Netflix is scheduled to air Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, about the scandal. According to Martino and Battista, after such wagering was complete, Battista, via Martino, would then inform Donaghy of the spread he needed to cover. The best sports gamblers win about 60% of bets, Battista says in the book, but. 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. Hours later, he called up Donaghy to tell him. Whenever Scala's special agents interviewed NBA executives for the case, they heard a refrain: "They told us, 'You can't fix a game in the NBA. One, Johnny, lived in Jersey. Wife of Tim Donaghy at the time of the scandal. "His father is an outstanding man," Rush, now retired, says today. Or, actually, it was the moral of this story. A decade later, in the break room of the hair salon he worked in, Martino told me how it had gone: Martino had already known that their mutual buddy Tim Donaghy had been betting on his own NBA games with Concannon, and winning those bets. But she would keep finding such rolls in his pockets as the years went on. If Donaghy talked about Chuck, bet the home side. They knew all about what he'd done, they told him; he was looking at 20 years. In October 2002, Donaghy and Concannon decided to pool their money and wager on Ruggieri's picks. Close friends with the referee since they were kids, Martino had a day job as an IT guy at JPMorgan. 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. 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.". "All I'm seeing," he said he told Donaghy, "is a movie. It's like looking at a stock chart. He has been working on something big, as Tom Petty sang, for 10 years, and its near-future publication will be a bombshell. If you think the Celtics are the side that's likely to cover, then you go to market as early in the trading session as possible and put some money on Philly. ], Griffin, 52, said. Served as one of Battista's biggest "outs" for bets on Donaghy games. Yeah, I did. 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. 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. Who were the referees? In other words, Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4. Large sums but, if handled deftly, not large enough to alert the broader market that something screwy might be going on. Battista referred to Donaghy, 43, as "Elvis" because the ref was "The King" for how often his picks won. He started small. In 2015, Mastronardo had a stroke and died in prison. In July of 2018, he announced a multiyear deal for MGM Resorts to be the "official gaming partner of the NBA.". At the same time, at the request of the NBA, former prosecutor Larry Pedowitz conducted an independent investigation of Donaghy's misconduct and issued publicly a 133-page report. Donaghy and Concannon are betting on Donaghy's games -- and making a goddamn killing. 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. '", Back at the table, Martino and Donaghy told Battista that they needed to drive to a nearby gas station. Oakes was Tim Donaghy's uncle. What does it mean to "fix" a game? You want to get paid, you gotta cover the spread, Battista had told Donaghy. Using burner phones, Donaghy would call Martino and inform him of his pick for the game he was officiating. Don't be fishing, because you ain't getting anything out of me." 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. 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. Thats when Battista started calling Donaghy Elvis, The King of prognosticating NBA games including his own, Battista told Griffin. By chance, over the years its members had all acquired animal nicknames: Tiger, Rooster, Rhino, Seal, Sheep. Another key figure was Joseph "Joe Vito" Mastronardo, a major black-market bookie who served as Battista's most significant out. Once we completed all of that, what we uncovered was that Donaghy's foul calls favored the team that received the heavier betting 70 percent of the time. "It was a job I was born to do," Donaghy wrote in his 2009 memoir, Personal Foul, but the sentence carries a double meaning. To help get his clients' bets down, Battista as a bet broker needed Joe Vito. Instead, Martino would be in the middle. "In the bathroom, Donaghy is like, 'Tom, you f---ing believe it?' Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. The Celtics, favored by 2.5 points, went on to win in a blowout. 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. When Donaghy had finished, Kulle leaned back in his chair. For that reason, the NBA is particularly wary of any hint of the fix. Tommy Martino was tight with both Donaghy and Battista. It wasn't long before people wanted in on the action. Netflix, to me, is the next iteration of that., Donaghy published a book in June 2010, nine months before Gaming.. But the gig is well-paid -- even rookies in 2007 could make six figures. The main problem now was keeping a lid on the thing. The commissioner promised the league's full cooperation. And so nothing about any of this would end up in Pedowitz's final report. 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. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the gambling ring. At the Marriott, Battista thanked Donaghy for the gift. Nunn, then the director of NBA officials, was in town for the NBA summer league games held annually among the casinos, where referee candidates from the minors are assessed for possible promotion to the Show. The big problem, Battista said, was that the betting markets appeared to be getting wise to the emergence of an astonishingly accurate NBA handicapper. And it drives them crazy. Per an account in New York magazine in 2015, the NBA somehow persuaded Random House to kill the book. 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." James "Jimmy" Ba . 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. One more incident, and Stern would sack Donaghy. "He knew what the spreads were going to be. The ESPN Article attempts to revive this old story. It opens in the morning and closes right before tip-off. He said, 'We found the guy. "I was warned," Weiss told me, "that if I stumbled, Stern would do anything he could to crush me. You know what he says? The management entity that controls the gyms is registered as Rhino Holdings, and according to its articles of incorporation, it was formed in Delaware County in February 2008. That couldve helped me and absolutely would have hurt Timmy, [but] I wasnt a rat.. But I didn't give a s---, because it was great information. But he has kept the investigative notes he took on his FBI cases, including the Donaghy case. These games would be mostly winners, so Popeye should feel free to move them -- and copy them too. 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. It's impossible,'" Scala says. 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. It got out to Battista that I'm giving games to Jack! Tony "Tiger" Rufo 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. Donaghy rose from the table. Whether Donaghy was using his whistle to fix games was beside the point. Everyone at the Curaao office, therefore, had access to Concannon's gambling account. It cost Griffin to produce that book. 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). Ed T. Rush He knew how to get into other referees' heads too, about different players because [the other refs] would follow him. 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. Things may have been different. Normally this meant making a few "head fake" bets. 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. He goes: 'Do you believe it?' (Through the NBA, Stern declined an interview request for this story.) Frequent excursions were made to the Borgata, a casino in Atlantic City. It hadn't taken long to deduce. The Timmy Elvis Donaghy thing was only a small part of everything I had going on, and I didnt want anyone to find out. 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. That was obvious. ", Scala, at the time, was livid. 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. Pete "Rhino" Ruggieri Married to the daughter of powerful Philly mayor Frank Rizzo, who held office in the 1970s, Mastronardo was well-connected. 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. Short of an outright confession, how could you prove that Donaghy had fixed the games anyway? He was thus sentenced to 15 months in a federal facility. 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. 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. "And like everything else, when you make changes, initially you'll have an overreaction. To Scala, Stern seemed mostly upset that the NBA's in-house security people had failed to discover Donaghy's wrongdoing before the FBI. He knows what he did was wrong, takes full responsibility for every action, and seems to have genuine regret, which indicates hes not actively into gambling anymore, but we can not be 100% certain. 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. 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?