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. Reportedly born in 1966, Jimmy Battista is 56 years old in 2022. Using burner phones, Donaghy would call Martino and inform him of his pick for the game he was officiating. The effort to hide it was in vain. The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game -- an outrageous bargain. Donaghy was horrible betting every other sport. They'd known each other since high school. It got out to Battista that I'm giving games to Jack! Hes publishing it independently. In early 2017, inspired by the 10th anniversary of the scandal, ESPN set out to reinvestigate it. "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. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. And: You don't want the NBA to find out about what you've been doing with Concannon. Jimmy Battista Bio, Age, Now, Net Worth, Tim Donaghy 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 2008, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Hours later, he called up Donaghy to tell him. Or even put him in any kind of limelight at all. Battista would spend the day betting heavily on Donaghy's selection. It matters all the more now. The office's windows looked out onto a basketball court, where children on youth teams were just then practicing. That way, the gambler said, Donaghy could force the side he'd picked against to play a little less aggressively on defense. "In the bathroom, Donaghy is like, 'Tom, you f---ing believe it?' they thought. 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. Griffins impressive work is again relevant because on Aug. 30, Netflix is scheduled to air Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, about the scandal. They were the real moneymakers of the Donaghy scheme. 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. And how, in turn, could you uncover evidence of it years, even a decade, later? And it drives them crazy. How Tim Donaghy's NBA Betting Antics Made Him A Target Of The Mob His body turned numb. The best sports gamblers win about 60% of bets, Battista says in the book, but. We had a big bet on every f---ing game.". Phil Scala had been investigating organized crime in New York City for almost 30 years when his squad received the tip. It's like looking at a stock chart. 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. Donaghy then found another publisher: a small, independent, newly established outfit -- so new that Personal Foul would be its inaugural volume -- based in Tampa, Florida, and operated by a political consultant and publicist named Shawna Vercher. THERE ARE MANY misconceptions about the Tim Donaghy scandal. Veteran reporter who broke the Donaghy story for the New York Post. Rush, as director of refs, took notice but didn't think much of it at the time. In the casino, Donaghy wore a baseball cap low to hide his eyes; everyone knows about the cameras in casinos, and the NBA forbade any gambling by its refs (with the exception, oddly, of horse racing). 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. 'Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul' clip shows Tim Donaghy's relationship 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. To professional statisticians, any P value of less than 5 percent constitutes a signal that is "significant." 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. NBA director of officials at the time of the scandal. Typically. In spheres other than the country-club set, he went by the nickname Rhino. When I asked, I expected Rush to answer much the same as Nunn had to me: Nothing out of the ordinary. They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme -- what you might call a sustained period of time. "But Donaghy changed our working relationship. "But they all had a piece of the pizza." 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. Had Battista gone to trial, Donaghys character would have come under immense scrutiny. "He was a single man, married with four kids," says Kim Donaghy, his ex-wife. Seated around a table at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott's Riverbend Bar and Grille, Jimmy Battista, Tommy Martino and Tim Donaghy made their deal: Donaghy would get $2,000 per game -- but only . Married to the daughter of powerful Philly mayor Frank Rizzo, who held office in the 1970s, Mastronardo was well-connected. In other words, Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4. And so their syndicate came to be known by some as the Animals. This scandal involved two childhood friends, Jimmy Battista, the gambler, and Tommy Martino, the go-between, who carried the money and information between Donaghy and Battista. Lawyer, Battista replied. He was always locked in a room, on the phone.". The best movers spend years compiling vast networks of clients and "outs," or counterparties, with whom the movers can trade. Or, actually, it was the moral of this story. 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. He has recently admitted that he wishes he was still an NBS referee. Dallas making both free throws, increasing its lead to eight. 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. "But you know what? But while Donaghy would admit to betting on his own games in his plea agreement, he would not admit to fixing games. Don't be fishing, because you ain't getting anything out of me." . We found the referee.'" But there is much evidence to suggest the opposite. Short of an outright confession, how could you prove that Donaghy had fixed the games anyway? But she would keep finding such rolls in his pockets as the years went on. 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. Popeye, no dummy, asked the obvious question: Who's the handicapper behind these games? A former gambler that was unquestionably tied to the biggest betting scandal in NBA history, is of the opinion that disgraced referee Tim Donaghy did not act alone and had help from other game officials. To shut it down. In October 2002, Donaghy and Concannon decided to pool their money and wager on Ruggieri's picks. 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. "If you're going to ask me if I would do it differently now, the answer is yes. 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. An intervention Battista two days later wearing a bathrobe in rehab. 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. That never really flew with us." It has been more than 15 years since Tim Donaghy's NBA betting scandal made headlines. It was too obvious. 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. We began by obtaining the trading histories for those games and through those determined which team was the more heavily bet upon. He was thus sentenced to 15 months in a federal facility. 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. "If what you're telling me is true," Kulle said he told Donaghy, "you're gonna be rich.". Tim Donaghy is back in the conversation, thanks to 'Untold' doc, but Ridiculous.. He then did the same set of calculations for the other two referees on the floor in each of Donaghy's games. That's what they were looking for. The important comparison is to the team that received the greater amount of betting dollars. Tim Donaghy was Elvis; he was the king of fixing games." This success drew in another form of attention, this time from the FBI. 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. They knew all about what he'd done, they told him; he was looking at 20 years. In the end, Rush felt there was no need to relay his observations to the Pedowitz people. It hadn't taken long to deduce. Privately, however, he has at times taken a different position. 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. Through them, we deduced which side Donaghy had picked for Battista to bet on. 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. Only this time, Rush viewed these calls with suspicion. 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. You don't want anyone "from New York" coming to your house, Battista told him. 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. The FBI investigated the disgraced refs claims of other NBA officials involvement, with negative results. 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. The NBA conducted its own investigation and concluded that Donaghy, in fact, did not fix games. It stuns Griffin how media, especially sports-talk radio, has provided Donaghy with a platform for his sensational fodder. He was 27 years old. A ref, on the other hand, can effectively add points -- calling fouls that result in free throws. The Pedowitz Report made no such conclusion. The whole thing had been merely insinuated, a matter of strong innuendo. 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. 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. . I cant say one nice thing about him. 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. 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. When Donaghy reffed and Concannon bet, the side he bet was covering the spread between 60 and 70 percent of the time. At the Marriott, Battista thanked Donaghy for the gift. He staffed it with working-class Delco kids ambitious to earn. 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? Convicted Jimmy "the Sheep" Battista Lifts The Lid On NBA Games. They checked the games. (Donaghy himself declined repeated requests for an interview.) In four games, he called the game neutrally, 50-50. Martino was not a gambler, had hardly ever placed a bet in his life. Jimmy Battista, nickname "The Sheep," is a professional gambler. Battista had such a network. He started a gambling group called "The Animals." Place fifty thousand dollar bets and get a massive returnif you won. There is a footnote buried deep in Gaming the Game that refers to someone taking home in excess of $200 million. ", "These analyses," the NBA told ESPN, "did not support your finding that an unbiased official would not have made the calls that Donaghy did.". The person wanted to deliver a message about Weiss' more critical reporting on the scandal. She describes the moment she picked up his official NBA jacket to put it in the wash and found in the pocket "a huge wad of $100 bills rolled in a rubber band." But it isnt really a debate. FAQ: How will legal gambling change the NBA and the way we watch it? In that moment -- like the many people before him who'd expanded and abetted the scheme and profited from it -- Aron Kulle sensed opportunity. Griffin said, While it, too, is lacking, nothing can compare to Donaghys book for comic relief. 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. By many accounts, it's like semi-retirement. Tommy Martino Griffin documented how Donaghy admitted to getting into Villanova, in part, by having someone take his SAT for him. 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. Then he hung up. Battista "was just ruining something that was totally quiet, that nobody knew about," said one of the Animals. Ruggieri was to play the same role Battista had -- mover, fund manager. They came out of the station bearing a packet of rolling papers, and right there inside the car, under the fluorescent gas station lights, in the rental-return sprawl adjacent to the Philadelphia International Airport runway, Martino rolled a joint. It was only later, in 2007, after Donaghy had been exposed, that Donaghy's letter-of-the-law foul-calling acquired a darker hue. Making bets at the highest levels of sports gambling is akin to the trading of any financial instrument. Hundred-dollar bills in $10,000 packs, bound in rubber bands and delivered by trusted gofers. James "Bah-Bah" "Sheep" Battista "Maybe the company never sat at a table together," he says. 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). Just money, just business. Battista told Griffin. Two years of reporting later, the story can now be told: This is the definitive account of how Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA games -- and how, in so doing, he unwittingly enriched an array of gamblers to the tune of likely hundreds of millions of dollars. Tim Donaghy, 55, was born in Pennsylvania on 7 January 1967 and worked in the NBA from 1994-2007. If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. 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). That, though, represented only one knot of the tangled webs. ", Proponents of legalization have long argued that regulation leads to transparency, which helps root out game-fixing schemes. Jimmy Battista: Who is he? Where is Tim Donaghys partner Jimmy Battista The NBA employees "examined every play and determined whether, in their view, Donaghy's calls (or absence of calls) were correct." The falling-out involved a polygraph test. Now he feared the scheme had become too obvious. "He can influence a game six points either way -- that's what he told me," Tommy Martino said as we sat in the break room of his family's hair salon, where he's worked since he got out of prison in August 2009 after serving 10 months. Martino did recall Donaghy telling him that certain games would be unfixable. Sure enough, there he was. I believe this guy was almost soulless.. 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. "Then you gotta cover the f---ing spread." Tim Donaghy Worked In Pro Wrestling After His NBA Betting Scandal. Now there's a Netflix documentary on the subject, . He was already thinking, How can I get a piece of this action? Donaghy said he couldn't do that, Vercher recalled in a deposition. 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. "Uh, no.") The night after the Boston victory, according to all parties, the conspirators met once more, at Martino's house in the Philly suburb of Boothwyn. Gaming the Game is definitive, vital to comprehending the NBA scandal and how sports-betting money zips around the world. Or "influence" or "manipulate" or in any way discussed the mechanics of fixing. A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER once confronted Donaghy about the scandal. 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. I was like, 'If anyone's watching this, we've got a problem.' They now had one job: Do not lose the edge by letting the information leak. Normally this meant making a few "head fake" bets. James "Jimmy" Ba . In July of 2018, he announced a multiyear deal for MGM Resorts to be the "official gaming partner of the NBA.". 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. He admitted to fixing the games.". Illegal sports gambling was not Scala's focus. But suddenly this recreational dumb-money insurance salesman was putting five dimes each on select NBA games and beating the bookies? And then, twisting the knife, Battista told him how much Concannon was winning. "Based on our review, and with the information we have available, we are unable to contradict the government's conclusion. Do it right and you can drive down the price of Boston. And they are. Twice, Griffin said, he appeared in a television studio to partake in documentaries in which Donaghy was supposed to appear. David Anders, an attorney who helped Pedowitz run the investigation, declined to comment.) Veteran NBA referee and Nunn's immediate predecessor as director of officials. Rhino Ruggieri was booking bets made by an acquaintance from back home, a guy he knew from the golf course named Jack Concannon. Martino would then relay the pick to Battista. For that reason, the NBA is particularly wary of any hint of the fix. 2 on a Nielsen list in the middle of September 2011, he knew something was up when his royalty checks were a pittance. Same with the season after that and the season after that. This was a few years after Donaghy's release from prison. Netflix's Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul revisits . I have incredibly low expectations for whatever they produce, Griffin said by phone from Charleston, South Carolina. '", Back at the table, Martino and Donaghy told Battista that they needed to drive to a nearby gas station. In 2014, commissioner Adam Silver penned an op-ed in The New York Times advocating for legalization. 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. His name was Tim Donaghy. "He started betting it with everybody and moving the lines like crazy. "I called him the King - Elvis," Battista told HBO Real Sports in an interview aired last night. That's the bottom line. It is normal, of course, for a referee to call more fouls against one team than the other. Griffin has dogged determination. 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. It was situated in a house a block off the beach. I accepted because Im an academic; we argue for a living. By most accounts, Tony "Tiger" Rufo is no longer a gambler. They included a beefed-up computerized system for monitoring refs' foul calls; enhanced scrutiny of betting-line fluctuations that might reveal suspicious wagering; the hiring of staff with experience in law enforcement, security and data analysis; and even the cultivation of tipsters within the sports-gambling industry who could relay rumors of possible corruption.