Phone records of gamblers said to have connections with the Gambino crime family were obtained and analyzed, phone numbers traced back to names. The NBA employees "examined every play and determined whether, in their view, Donaghy's calls (or absence of calls) were correct." Strictly speaking, movers are neither gamblers nor bookmakers. 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. Instead of fraud, wire fraud, and illegal gambling, Jimmy was only convicted of the latter; one count of conspiracy to transmit wagering, following a guilty plea. Print length 320 pages Language English Publisher UNKNO It was his first pick for Battista. they thought. A close observer of basketball, the gambler had become acutely curious after suffering losses on Donaghy-reffed games during that season. That couldve helped me and absolutely would have hurt Timmy, [but] I wasnt a rat.. ", "These analyses," the NBA told ESPN, "did not support your finding that an unbiased official would not have made the calls that Donaghy did.". "He said, 'I can't tell you. A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER once confronted Donaghy about the scandal. I was like, 'If anyone's watching this, we've got a problem.' But I didn't give a s---, because it was great information. 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. "We were prepared to do some undercover things to corroborate Donaghy's story," Scala says. Because then "you gotta call a lot of fouls," Martino said. There will almost always be an imbalance of calls. NBA director of officials at the time of the scandal. 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. 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. It was either sink or swim together for all of us. Girlfriend insists her secret visits and conversations with another man dont count as an affair. "If I thought we were going to get caught, then I'd like to think I wouldn't have ever done it," Donaghy said. Donaghy has written that Rhino had a handicapping system for picking NFL and college football winners. 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. If Donaghy talked about Chuck, bet the home side. Too many invested observers -- referee supervisors, coaches, players, owners, media, fans -- would be too quick to complain if they saw something fishy, the NBA argued. They'd shut down a Gambino profit center. Its not like I was laughing at his calls if they helped us, or pissed at his calls if they hurt us. Battista heard Donaghy make racist NBA comments. 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. From what we can tell, since his release from the Metropolitan Detention Center-Brooklyn in New York, James "Jimmy" Battista has returned to his home state of Pennsylvania, where he leads a relatively private life. Whether or not Battista made them explicitly aware of his agreement with Donaghy, their money was used to make one very specific genre of bet: games refereed by Tim Donaghy. (Of those calls, 2.6 percent could not conclusively be attributed to a referee and were excluded from the study.). It means you've found something. The falling-out involved a polygraph test. Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul is available to stream now exclusively on Netflix. 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. 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. About a month after the meeting with Stern, however, the New York Post blared news of the FBI investigation across its front page. 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. And so their syndicate came to be known by some as the Animals. Better to cooperate. ", The NBA wouldn't share the specifics of those statistical analyses, but it did describe them in summary form. He documented a 78% Donaghy win rate and paying him $201,000 for his tips, just a cog in Battistas tentacles, which reached Asia, Europe and Vegas. The Animals landed in Curaao, where they helped launch an online sportsbook known as PlayASAP. The next night, the trio convened at Martinos house to set terms. ", But Donaghy didn't settle in. Married to the daughter of powerful Philly mayor Frank Rizzo, who held office in the 1970s, Mastronardo was well-connected. 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. (This notion even found its way into the Pedowitz report itself.) There's a defined trading session. "Tim was very, very secretive. All of our efforts were focused on understanding precisely what he did and how he did it so we would be best equipped to protect the integrity of our games going forward. Thats not the [b.s.] And they are. But Battista refused to squeal on Donaghy. Battista, after discovering this, had been following those bets for the better part of the past four years. How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? In 2013, Athanas was indicted as part of a federal sports-betting case that was unrelated to Donaghy. How huge? The dubious mafia threat. (Pedowitz, who has retired from his firm, did not respond to requests for comment. "I was like a pot smoker moving up to cocaine.". There was this NBA referee named Tim Donaghy Popeye's eyes grew wide. The best sports gamblers win about 60% of bets, Battista says in the book, but. For our new partnership. Battista told Donaghy. "It was a job I was born to do," Donaghy wrote in his 2009 memoir, Personal Foul, but the sentence carries a double meaning. It was the biggest scandal in American sports history, but it quickly faded from the headlines. When Donaghy became an NBA ref, that continued, sometimes with hookers. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. He then did the same set of calculations for the other two referees on the floor in each of Donaghy's games. But the crucial betting information -- which sides of which games the ref favored -- had been seeping into the black-market gambling business. And those bets won -- won like Concannon had never won before. So what do you do when you stumble upon a possible criminal conspiracy in progress? Or "influence" or "manipulate" or in any way discussed the mechanics of fixing. White-collar criminal defense attorney who led the NBA-commissioned outside investigation into the Donaghy affair. It's possible, through Don Best Sports, a betting information service, to pull the line-movement data for individual NBA games going back years. Gambler, bookmaker and sometime partner of Battista and the Animals betting office who took over the Donaghy scheme after Battista went to rehab but quickly ended the operation. "I called him the King - Elvis," Battista told HBO Real Sports in an interview aired last night. But she would keep finding such rolls in his pockets as the years went on. In the NBA markets, betting experts say, any move of 1.5 points or more is considered unusually severe -- the result of millions of dollars pouring in. Using burner phones, Donaghy would call Martino and inform him of his pick for the game he was officiating. In 2015, Mastronardo had a stroke and died in prison. But this referee didn't lose much. An NBA referee, according to the informant, was "in the pocket" of some people in the sports-gambling underworld. His body turned numb. Ruggieri was to play the same role Battista had -- mover, fund manager. Jimmy "the Sheep" Battista & NBA Revelations In "Gaming The Game". I graduated high school by the skin of my teeth cause I didnt give a f**k, Jimmy admitted in Untold, before adding he saw a drastically different life once he began working as a waiter locally. His messaging was clear: Donaghy was a rogue. Jimmy Battista Net Worth Jimmy Battista should have a net worth above $1 million. Phil Scala 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. In 2007, NBA referee Tim Donaghy was arrested for betting on games he officiated. Just money, just business. Battista told Griffin. 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 . They were the real moneymakers of the Donaghy scheme. It's impossible,'" Scala says. Jimmy was ordered to spend 15 months in federal prison. Battista envisioned the arrangement lasting for 20 years. But as Scala put it, "When someone tells you something's impossible, you know they're full of s---, because nothing's impossible. Normally this guy was a $100 or $200 or maybe $500 bettor. -- wins and wins and wins and wins, his picks almost 100 percent wins. But while Donaghy would admit to betting on his own games in his plea agreement, he would not admit to fixing games. The final game, Martino remembers, was a loss. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. High school friend of Donaghy and Battista who served as the go-between in the betting scheme during the 2006-2007 NBA season. I cant say one nice thing about him. 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. TIM DONAGHY HAS always publicly denied that he deliberately manipulated games so as to win bets, arguing that he based his picks on insider information. For that reason, the NBA is particularly wary of any hint of the fix. They played 18 holes four or five days a week. When I asked, she said she never counted the money, never confronted him about its existence. Now, after Donaghy's downfall but before he headed to prison, Donaghy broke down and wept inside Kulle's office. A few years ago, he bought its rights and original digital files. "No way Battista kept this quiet from Tiger," another told me. After it hit the fan and the legal process dragged on, Battista hoped to expose Donaghys mountain of lies by testifying. Tim Donaghy was Elvis; he was the king of fixing games." This success drew in another form of attention, this time from the FBI. 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. NBA commissioner at the time of the scandal. 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. 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. Any game that he reffed we had a wager on.". "Say hello to Johnny for me ". Perhaps the greatest is this: that Donaghy was the ref who colluded with gamblers on NBA games for one disgraceful season. So the FBI had worked out a plan. He was already thinking, How can I get a piece of this action? Another moneymaker -- according to people with knowledge of the events -- was a man named Spiros Athanas. I accepted because Im an academic; we argue for a living. Per an account in New York magazine in 2015, the NBA somehow persuaded Random House to kill the book. "I think there's enough that's been written about Tim Donaghy. "The only concern I had," he wrote, "was saving my own selfish sorry ass." "You wanna get paid?" 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. "Based on our review, and with the information we have available, we are unable to contradict the government's conclusion. In other words, there was a 23.2 percent chance these foul calls would happen randomly. These games would be mostly winners, so Popeye should feel free to move them -- and copy them too. Next, we pulled game videos for all 40 games and employed a researcher with an extensive background in officiating to watch them closely, logging all of Donaghy's and his fellow referees' foul calls. Instead, Martino would be in the middle. Short, squat, thick-necked, Ruggieri was built, some thought, like a small rhinoceros. This report was based on an extensive review of game data and video as well as approximately 200 interviews, thousands of pages of documents, and consultation with various gambling and data experts. 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. Tim Donaghy's downfall began in 2007 when former classmate Jimmy Battista asked Donaghy if he wanted to earn some extra money while he was still an official in the NBA. He was [expletive] shrewd and believed everyone owed him the world.. Among them: Who made the real money? 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 Scala, the FBI agent who pursued the case, has doubts. 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. He had the f---ing whistle.". What does it mean to "fix" a game? 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. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. 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."