One, Johnny, lived in Jersey. Not long ago, he brought them out, looked at them and told me about them over the phone. 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. (This notion even found its way into the Pedowitz report itself.) We began by obtaining the trading histories for those games and through those determined which team was the more heavily bet upon. 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. The main problem now was keeping a lid on the thing. [3] During his career in the NBA, Donaghy officiated in 772 regular season games and 20 playoff games. He was already thinking, How can I get a piece of this action? But the person who knows more about the case than anyone isnt on the show and wont be watching. Phil Scala 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. Read More: How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? It matters all the more now. Rather, the investigation found no basis to disagree with the finding of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office that "[t]here is no evidence that Donaghy ever intentionally made a particular ruling during a game in order to increase the likelihood that his gambling pick would be correct." ", "I didn't touch it 10 years ago, and I'm not touching it now. Even if it made them strange bedfellows, then, Donaghy's denials of match-fixing guilt were, in the end, a gift. 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. ", But Donaghy didn't settle in. In spheres other than the country-club set, he went by the nickname Rhino. Although Jimmy first came across Tim while they were both attending Cardinal OHara High School in Springfield, Pennsylvania, it wasnt until years later that they even became acquaintances. 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. In Sarasota, Kim Donaghy printed out for me the first 98 pages of her unfinished and unpublished memoir, The Ref's Wife. Another key figure was Joseph "Joe Vito" Mastronardo, a major black-market bookie who served as Battista's most significant out. Donaghy was horrible betting every other sport. 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. (Of those calls, 2.6 percent could not conclusively be attributed to a referee and were excluded from the study.). Around the same time as Stern's news conference, the NBA also commissioned an investigation, to be led by Larry Pedowitz, a partner with the elite New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Where is Tim Donaghy's Partner Jimmy Battista Now? Thats because this Netflix original documentary features first-hand accounts to elucidate precisely how and why once-renowned NBA referee Timothy Tim Donaghy staked on his own games. One source with knowledge of the conspiracy says that Battista moved as much as $500,000 in wagers on this game: "We had a big bet on that. Whether Donaghy was using his whistle to fix games was beside the point. But I didn't give a s---, because it was great information. Ruggieri was to play the same role Battista had -- mover, fund manager. . The . However, Griffin details why Battista, the professors main Gaming rudder, opted for a plea. Agents monitoring organized crime figures in the Gambino family. A few years ago, he bought its rights and original digital files. THERE ARE MANY misconceptions about the Tim Donaghy scandal. (Pedowitz, who has retired from his firm, did not respond to requests for comment. Battista "was just ruining something that was totally quiet, that nobody knew about," said one of the Animals. For slipping him winning football picks, Donaghy had sent to Battista a Kobe Bryant-signed Lakers jersey. He goes: 'Do you believe it?' Or even put him in any kind of limelight at all. Perhaps this is why the men who formed Battista's loose, disorderly investor group, the men who were "on the ticket," have, for all these years, remained in the shadows. To professional statisticians, any P value of less than 5 percent constitutes a signal that is "significant." Rush recalls watching maybe 10 such games. 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. Martino late at night on the phone with Donaghy, the pair having developed a nightly before-bed ritual: If Donaghy's pick was a winner, if the spread had been covered, Martino calling the ref and whispering "Good boy," and Donaghy echoing "Good boy" and then hanging up Donaghy calling two fouls 50 seconds apart against the 76ers' leading scorer, Andre Iguodala, in the third quarter against Boston, with the score's margin right on the spread. In 2008, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Blowouts would be included. The Philly ref blood runs deep. After learning about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the leak of the original Donaghy story and Jimmy Battista's plea deal, the crew investigates the most . That, though, represented only one knot of the tangled webs. He goes, 'Concannon was making all that money and not giving me anything! Scala won't say whether he believes the NBA leaked the story. Frequent excursions were made to the Borgata, a casino in Atlantic City. "If you're going to ask me if I would do it differently now, the answer is yes. Can I maybe even invest in this thing? "I think there's enough that's been written about Tim Donaghy. Just one game of potential funny business out of 17 wasn't nearly enough to accuse the referee of anything. "He said he liked to call an illegal defense call, right away, in the first minute." 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. ], Griffin, 52, said. 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. In other words, there was a 23.2 percent chance these foul calls would happen randomly. "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. He had to use the bathroom, he said, and motioned for Martino to please come along. An intervention Battista two days later wearing a bathrobe in rehab. Close friends with the referee since they were kids, Martino had a day job as an IT guy at JPMorgan. It came from above,' " Scala recalls. Then people settle in. 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. 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. Thousands of pages of court documents and investigative records were scrutinized. "Maybe the company never sat at a table together," he says. And those bets won -- won like Concannon had never won before. Donaghy scandal's ringleader speaks - TrueHoop- ESPN So what do you do when you stumble upon a possible criminal conspiracy in progress? 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. In his book, Donaghy wrote, I knew I was screwed and in a tight spot . The referee at the time, Timothy "Tim" Donaghy, was betting on his own game for about a year, if not more, to satisfy his addiction and benefit the two co-conspirators. "We were prepared to do some undercover things to corroborate Donaghy's story," Scala says. 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. Its absurd. They played 18 holes four or five days a week. But at the time of the visit, in late 2007, Kulle said, the men were close. It was his first pick for Battista. It was like: Why would you do that?". He said his old squad had received the initial ref-in-the-pocket tip in October 2006 -- almost two months before Battista had made his marriage with Donaghy. But at the time the scandal broke, the NBA closed ranks. Not exactly the Enigma cipher but better than yapping about specific teams and risking someone overhearing. James "Bah-Bah" "Sheep" Battista In 2007, NBA referee Tim Donaghy was arrested for betting on games he officiated. I can imagine TV producers were looking for an on-air mix-up. He was what's known as a mover. The research entailed interviews with more than 100 people, including current and former NBA referees, current and former NBA staff, gamblers, bookmakers, lawyers, law enforcement officials and friends and relatives of Donaghy. Any game that he reffed we had a wager on.". Namely, they were going to wire up Donaghy so he could get other allegedly corrupted NBA referees to incriminate themselves. So when Gaming appeared at No. ", Mark Fainaru-Wada on how broadcasting icon Bob Costas was yanked from the Super Bowl. The pact was: "Don't tell anybody. Thats what bothers me. They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme -- what you might call a sustained period of time. "All I'm seeing," he said he told Donaghy, "is a movie. But Battista never used the word "fix." And so nothing about any of this would end up in Pedowitz's final report. Why? Who Is Jimmy Battista? Joe Vito cannot speak to that today; he was busted in 2012 at age 63 for illegal bookmaking in an unrelated federal case. In any case, Ruggieri before long decided to shut the whole thing down. I have incredibly low expectations for whatever they produce, Griffin said by phone from Charleston, South Carolina. According to the league, the studies were based on "the entirety of the period during which Donaghy had admitted to gambling on games," including 194 games refereed by Donaghy himself, and entailed examinations of "officiating accuracy," "lopsided [foul] calling and the magnitude of lopsidedness," the timing of his calls during games, foul-call "streaks" and call volumes, along with an analysis of "all associated betting lines and movements. In this game, the second after the marriage with Battista, Donaghy called five straight fouls on New Jersey in the fourth quarter when the spread was in doubt. Much later on he would come to call this meeting "the marriage.". Jimmy Battista, also known by the monikers "The Sheep" and "Bah-Bah," was a 41-year-old man who struggled with stress, obesity, and an OxyContin addiction. Litvin's tone was urgent. "But Donaghy changed our working relationship. Crank's method boasted a certain elegance: It would capture any bias a ref might display in as simple a way as possible. Unlikely but not outrageously so. Making bets at the highest levels of sports gambling is akin to the trading of any financial instrument. Along with the rest of the Animals, Battista had returned from Curaao in 2004 after PlayASAP had gone belly-up. Donaghy's story is that he bet on all kinds of things for years with his buddy, including NBA games. In the car at the gas station, according to Gaming the Game, Donaghy had said: Bet the Celtics. "I was like a pot smoker moving up to cocaine.". How Tim Donaghy's NBA Betting Antics Made Him A Target Of The Mob "Say hello to Johnny for me ". 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.". Jimmy Battista, nickname "The Sheep," is a professional gambler. 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. You want to get paid, you gotta cover the spread, Battista had told Donaghy. Married to the daughter of powerful Philly mayor Frank Rizzo, who held office in the 1970s, Mastronardo was well-connected. "I started thinking -- or should I say, rationalizing: S---, everyone on the staff bets," he wrote. Had he heard about Donaghy's gambling "issues" -- about what he had done? He was thus sentenced to 15 months in a federal facility. 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. They were also brothers-in-law; the women they'd married were sisters. ON A NIGHT in early December 2006, Tommy Martino received an urgent phone call from Battista. Read more in the source You may also like: 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. I knew what it would mean, Battista told Griffin, if I had an NBA ref on my side.. "You've got to arrange a meeting with Donaghy," Battista said. Im one of the idiots who bought Donaghys book. One of them was a man nicknamed Tiger. The NBA conducted its own investigation and concluded that Donaghy, in fact, did not fix games. (Concannon declined comment for this story.) David Stern He then did the same set of calculations for the other two referees on the floor in each of Donaghy's games. 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. But as Scala put it, "When someone tells you something's impossible, you know they're full of s---, because nothing's impossible. How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? He has recently admitted that he wishes he was still an NBS referee. Scala recalls that he and Donaghy went around and around on the issue. And then there's the offseason. It was January 2007. Kim Donaghy Gaming the Game: The Story Behind the NBA Betting Scandal and the 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. ", 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. If there is a cradle of basketball refereeing, it is here. About a month after the meeting with Stern, however, the New York Post blared news of the FBI investigation across its front page. Battista said Donaghy and Martino were close in high school because both liked to smoke pot. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. 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. 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. Since moving to Sarasota in 2005, Donaghy had often volunteered for the local youth sports leagues that Kulle ran out of a community center. He gained notoriety as a mover who is neither a gambler nor a bookmaker. She said there was no extortion, no conspiracy and you were more culpable than the others. Then he hung up. The FBI investigated the disgraced refs claims of other NBA officials involvement, with negative results. The closing line: Dallas by 8 Donaghy on New Year's Day in Charlotte calling 14 fouls against the Bobcats, five against the Timberwolves; the Wolves covering Battista usually watched these games at home, but sometimes not. Or, actually, it was the moral of this story. Sure enough, there he was. "Someone in the NBA notified the press [in order] to stop this investigation, in my opinion. 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. Then later in the day, with the price right, you gobble up all the Boston you can. FBI special agent and head of the investigative unit focused on the Gambino crime family at the time of the investigation. 2 on a Nielsen list in the middle of September 2011, he knew something was up when his royalty checks were a pittance. After it hit the fan and the legal process dragged on, Battista hoped to expose Donaghys mountain of lies by testifying. . When Donaghy had finished, Kulle leaned back in his chair. Battista would cut a deal, pleading guilty in April 2008 only to the charge of transmission of gambling information. The Animals went so far as to study the box scores after each of Donaghy's outings. 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. Had Battista gone to trial, Donaghys character would have come under immense scrutiny. 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. That was obvious. Jimmy Battista: Who is he? Where is Tim Donaghys partner Jimmy Battista His messaging was clear: Donaghy was a rogue. Kulle got up, crossed the room and closed the blinds. 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. Black-market street bookies from all over the U.S., sharp pro gamblers and digital-savvy entrepreneurs with coding skills were all setting up online sportsbooks, often establishing themselves in places with little regulatory oversight, like Costa Rica, Antigua, Jamaica and Curaao. IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. According to Donaghy's account, the two were sitting alone in the Radley clubhouse after a round of golf when they decided to bet the NBA. Disgraced NBA Referee Tim Donaghy Revealed the Player He Almost Fought These games would be mostly winners, so Popeye should feel free to move them -- and copy them too. Still, in Scala's telling, the FBI eventually just had to move on. A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER once confronted Donaghy about the scandal. What did he see? 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. Once I realized that Id be dealing with these offshore guys who may as well be your next-door neighbors, I was overwhelmed with that entire sociology.. Typically. Ed T. Rush It was 0.232. It is likely Tim did not know just how influential Jimmy had become, or how Battistas words and deeds now affected bettors and bookies worldwide.. What is his Net Worth? The Pedowitz Report made no such conclusion. No one realizes its a scam. Oakes was Tim Donaghy's uncle. IT WOULD NOT be the only time Tim Donaghy would come clean. Suburban Philadelphia insurance salesman and friend of Donaghy who, in spring 2003, partnered with Donaghy to bet on NBA games that the referee was working. Hes publishing it independently. Infrequently, Donaghy was at home. 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. And they are. THEY CALLED IT The Office. It's despicable." "My life is ruined," Kulle recalled Donaghy saying. Donaghy said he couldn't do that, Vercher recalled in a deposition. 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. 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. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. 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. After Donaghy, the NBA put into place a host of new measures designed to detect any nascent game-fixing schemes. Where is Tim Donaghy's Friend Tommy Martino Now? - The Cinemaholic White-collar criminal defense attorney who led the NBA-commissioned outside investigation into the Donaghy affair. "Tiger was his boss." 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. We Finally Have Details On How Exactly Disgraced Ref Tim Donaghy Fixed But this referee didn't lose much. And if you exclude two split-foul calls -- the same foul called by two refs simultaneously and credited to both -- the P value for Donaghy's calls in that set of games was 0.041, or 4.1 percent. Lawyer, Battista replied. 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. Kim filed for divorce in late 2007, a few months after the scandal became public. Their sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. The Defense of Tim Donaghy - Whistleblower - Podcast But stomping out a Mafia profit center was. 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. Where is Tim Donaghy's Friend Tommy Martino Now? The Celtics were favored by 1.5 points. Unfortunately, it is replete with errors, beginning with its statement that the Pedowitz Report "concluded that Donaghy, in fact, did not fix games." Because that's how you get in trouble. "Uh, no.") 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. They were the real moneymakers of the Donaghy scheme. Donaghy had Martino arrange the Marriott rendezvous. When Donaghy was still slogging it in the minors in the early 1990s, Rush had taken it upon himself to mentor his young fellow Philadelphian. Battista had such a network. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. They were the gamblers and bookmakers closest to Battista. Conspiracy theories about corrupted refs have dogged the league for decades. Just money, just business. Battista told Griffin. -- wins and wins and wins and wins, his picks almost 100 percent wins. According to a breakdown from NBC Sports, NBA referees earn an estimated salary of anywhere between $150,000 and $550,000 every year. 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. Freedom of Information Act requests were filed. They checked the games. An NBA referee, according to the informant, was "in the pocket" of some people in the sports-gambling underworld. He already knew of the NBA referees gambling issue owing to his profession, and they soon somehow agreed to work together for some extra cash Tim would give him picks, and hed run with it. That clip has Donaghy saying "Tommy was one of those guys all the girls loved, athletic, funny, good-looking kid that everybody liked." It then has Battista saying "He had good street smarts,. And so it is that May's Supreme Court decision demands a review of the Donaghy affair. The heart of labor is beating strong in Chicago and Illinois, Why were launching The Democracy Solutions Project. They were an organized crime squad, dealing with murder and mayhem. One member of the group called it "the ticket" and "the company.". Whatever his issue was, Battista said he couldn't talk about it over the phone. In particular, a crew of Gambino thugs in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn had figured out the formula and was supposedly, from what this informant had heard, winning millions on this ref's games. 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. 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. We had a big bet on every f---ing game.". He even contacted Murray Weiss, the Post reporter who wrote the story, to uncover the source of the leak. Only a fool, Dr. Sean Patrick Griffin wrote, would have ignored Battistas ridiculously obvious wagering success.. ", 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? Nobody wanted to golf with him, Minutella said. They now had one job: Do not lose the edge by letting the information leak. In high school, during a trip to the Jersey Shore, Donaghy got drunk and scavenged through neighbors homes, stealing items. It would have been great for me, great for sales, just for selfish reasons, Griffin said.