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. Because that's how you get in trouble. ", Scala, at the time, was livid. they thought. 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. Yeah, I did. Accounts of the meeting differ. How huge? It means you've found something. Martino also penned a book in 2019. Once Tim, Jimmy, and Tommys betting scheme came to light in 2007, the professional gambler was the only one who refused to speak or cooperate with the FBI in any way, shape, or form. If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing; Battista would eat the loss. Then later in the day, with the price right, you gobble up all the Boston you can. The NBA employees "examined every play and determined whether, in their view, Donaghy's calls (or absence of calls) were correct." He forfeited $5 million, agreed to three years' probation and now lives in the Lakes Region of central New Hampshire, in a home with views of the cold blue lakes and, beyond them, the massed forms of the White Mountains. Just before tip-off, Battista bet $60,000 on Boston, bumping the line to 3.5 points. Each of the city's famous Five Families -- Genovese, Lucchese, Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino -- has a dedicated FBI unit investigating it full time, and Scala was the boss of the one focused on the Gambinos. Donaghy officiated in 40 games between the marriage on Dec. 12, 2006, and March 21, 2007, which according to one source is likely the last game before Ruggieri took control of the scheme. 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. If Donaghy talked about Chuck, bet the home side. "My life is ruined," Kulle recalled Donaghy saying. Taylor "Popeye" Breton 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. "All I'm seeing," he said he told Donaghy, "is a movie. He knew how to get into other referees' heads too, about different players because [the other refs] would follow him. Donaghy said he couldn't do that, Vercher recalled in a deposition. 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. When Donaghy reffed and Concannon bet, the side he bet was covering the spread between 60 and 70 percent of the time. Jimmy Battista, to participate in the betting. Donaghy was horrible betting every other sport. Tommy Martino was tight with both Donaghy and Battista. 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. It got out to Battista that I'm giving games to Jack! Blowouts would be included. Hundred-dollar bills in $10,000 packs, bound in rubber bands and delivered by trusted gofers. And now, Scala would later tell me, one of the squad's snitches had divulged this new tip, too delicious to be ignored. His name was Tim Donaghy. 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. They were the real moneymakers of the Donaghy scheme. The final game, Martino remembers, was a loss. Instead, Martino would be in the middle. And what more did you want? Battista had known the ref, Timmy Donaghy, for 25 years. In 1998, Donaghy joined a country club in West Chester, Pennsylvania, called Radley Run, along whose fairways the Donaghys built a spacious home. He'd acted alone. "His father is an outstanding man," Rush, now retired, says today. "He knew what the spreads were going to be. 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-season, it is demanding, tiring, high stress. Furthermore, exceedingly large price jumps or plunges, or even the timing of certain price moves, could signal the trading strategies of a gambling syndicate. Word about Donaghy had permeated the market, followers following followers. They had to get back to it. 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. They had possibly just stumbled on the ultimate edge. Infrequently, Donaghy was at home. "Someone in the NBA notified the press [in order] to stop this investigation, in my opinion. Now there's a Netflix documentary on the subject, . But she would keep finding such rolls in his pockets as the years went on. But now, when Battista arrived at Martino's house, he dropped the bomb. That couldve helped me and absolutely would have hurt Timmy, [but] I wasnt a rat.. The pact was: "Don't tell anybody. story youve been telling for the past 10 years.. How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? Had Nunn heard anything about Donaghy's resignation? All those gray-area decisions you have to make, Tim? Kim Donaghy Still, as Rush explained to me over the phone, these were just "trends," not "red flags," and the NBA and the Pedowitz people were interested only in red flags. It's possible, in effect, to buy and sell bets, to go long or go short, to hedge. So I didnt really have time to focus on it, let alone enjoy it., I dont want to say the NBA scandal was easy, he said, but once I got access to personnel in the U.S. attorneys offices and FBI agents, they were not only confirming what Battista said but were elaborating.. The play claims that his strict, god-fearing family caused him to rebel when he was younger, but he wound up going out with the wrong crowd. When Donaghy had finished, Kulle leaned back in his chair. 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. 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,. He said, 'We found the guy. Today, Scala considers that meeting a mistake. You know what he says? 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. The commissioner promised the league's full cooperation. About a month after the meeting with Stern, however, the New York Post blared news of the FBI investigation across its front page. Donaghy rose from the table. 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. The main problem now was keeping a lid on the thing. They were among his biggest brokerage clients and most trusted outs. 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. Griffin became so acutely and repeatedly aware that the former ref was full of fabrication and fiction that hed relegate Donaghy to the disingenuous shadows of his own imagination. In 2008, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison. 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. It wasn't long before people wanted in on the action. That relationship would eventually turn acrimonious, winding up in court, with Donaghy successfully suing Vercher in 2010 and accusing her of stealing his book proceeds. Agents monitoring organized crime figures in the Gambino family. The methods of fixing are rather straightforward. 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 . The best movers spend years compiling vast networks of clients and "outs," or counterparties, with whom the movers can trade. There will almost always be an imbalance of calls. 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. After it hit the fan and the legal process dragged on, Battista hoped to expose Donaghys mountain of lies by testifying. Ideally, Donaghy should make his pick as early as possible, preferably the night before his games, or at least the morning of. Now he feared the scheme had become too obvious. By many accounts, it's like semi-retirement. But he has kept the investigative notes he took on his FBI cases, including the Donaghy case. When I asked, she said she never counted the money, never confronted him about its existence. Underground bet broker, or mover, who was at the center of the Tim Donaghy betting scheme. By chance, over the years its members had all acquired animal nicknames: Tiger, Rooster, Rhino, Seal, Sheep. 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. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. And it was there, in the otherwise vacant dining area, seated around a table, that Battista and Donaghy, with Martino witnessing, consummated their deal. Tim Donaghy was Elvis; he was the king of fixing games." This success drew in another form of attention, this time from the FBI. ", The gambler added, "He also told me they were betting millions and he was an idiot not to ask for more.". The Celtics, favored by 2.5 points, went on to win in a blowout. 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. 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 attorneys, he told her, had advised him not to. IT REMAINS ONE of the most tantalizing questions in all of American professional sport: Does game-fixing still exist? There was this NBA referee named Tim Donaghy Popeye's eyes grew wide. The number of games in which Tim Donaghy favored the team that attracted fewer betting dollars? Martino couldn't remember, not exactly. Seth Wickersham on the Cleveland Browns' front office -- and where hope and history collide. "Maybe the company never sat at a table together," he says. Several sports-betting experts -- two former underground movers and a longtime professional NBA gambler -- agreed that global markets contained enough liquidity in 2007 for an in-the-know bettor to win as much as $100 million. Typically. He was [expletive] shrewd and believed everyone owed him the world.. Scala won't say whether he believes the NBA leaked the story. "We all had expectations that Tim was going to be really, really good. Favored by 6, the visiting Wizards covering Battista on March 15 confessing to his wife that he'd lost $7 million of his clients' money Battista on March 16 strung out and sleepless at Martino's house and surrounded suddenly by almost his entire immediate family. 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. "No way Battista kept this quiet from Tiger," another told me. It stuns Griffin how media, especially sports-talk radio, has provided Donaghy with a platform for his sensational fodder. "I don't like to talk in terms of coulda, woulda, shoulda, but if the Post story didn't come out, [Donaghy] would have worn a wire, and I don't know where it would have gone. ACCORDING TO SCALA, the truncated probe meant the Feds left several lines of inquiry hanging. Then, at some point in 2003, Donaghy and Concannon crossed the Rubicon. Donaghy worked the game. What Battista, Ruggieri and the rest did was follow the Concannon-Donaghy bets with bets of their own -- $30,000, $50,000, $100,000 a game, according to a person familiar with the betting. The Sun-Times Patrick Finley answers the biggest questions facing the Bears after the draft: On this International Workers Day, were committed to fighting for a better future for all workers in our city and state, two labor leaders write. Supervisor of the FBI probe. Any game that he reffed we had a wager on.". We found the referee.'" Making bets at the highest levels of sports gambling is akin to the trading of any financial instrument. Larry Pedowitz 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. Watching would give him agita, he's said, at which point he'd have to turn off the TV: "I remember being like, 'Oh s---, he's getting out of hand.' According to multiple sources, Battista first began moving bets for Athanas in 2005. But this referee didn't lose much. 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. "I called him the King - Elvis," Battista told HBO Real Sports in an interview aired last night. In that first March, he bet on only two or three games. 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. For our new partnership. Battista told Donaghy. "I refuse to comment on him. Tim Donaghy Worked In Pro Wrestling After His NBA Betting Scandal. Tim Donaghy, 55, was born in Pennsylvania on 7 January 1967 and worked in the NBA from 1994-2007. Battista, after discovering this, had been following those bets for the better part of the past four years. I was told, 'They're the kind of people who will do anything they can to protect themselves and the game.'". . Still, in Scala's telling, the FBI eventually just had to move on. Another key figure was Joseph "Joe Vito" Mastronardo, a major black-market bookie who served as Battista's most significant out. He had the artwork. He had to use the bathroom, he said, and motioned for Martino to please come along. The Timmy Elvis Donaghy thing was only a small part of everything I had going on, and I didnt want anyone to find out. 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. 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)." 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. THERE ARE MANY misconceptions about the Tim Donaghy scandal. 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. In four games, he called the game neutrally, 50-50. ON A NIGHT in early December 2006, Tommy Martino received an urgent phone call from Battista. It was 0.232. But the crucial betting information -- which sides of which games the ref favored -- had been seeping into the black-market gambling business. They checked the games. 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. ", "I didn't touch it 10 years ago, and I'm not touching it now. 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 played golf and gambled.". High school friend of Donaghy and Battista who served as the go-between in the betting scheme during the 2006-2007 NBA season. But while Donaghy would admit to betting on his own games in his plea agreement, he would not admit to fixing games. 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. Inside the pipes was $1.1 million.) "He said, 'I can't tell you. And then one afternoon the case agent came into my office. That way, the gambler said, Donaghy could force the side he'd picked against to play a little less aggressively on defense. Crank's method boasted a certain elegance: It would capture any bias a ref might display in as simple a way as possible. There's a defined trading session. If youre in a pinch and lack a coffee machine and a grinder, you can try making whats called cowboy coffee. This might not be the tastiest cup of joe, but itll certainly get the job done. Move along. Thats not the [b.s.] They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme -- what you might call a sustained period of time. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. In the early 2000s, the sports-betting world was undergoing its own equivalent of a dot-com boom. 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. Griffin already had published a bestseller in 2005 with Black Brothers, Inc. about the violent rise and fall of Philadelphias black mafia.

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