[But] nothings there.. They were an organized crime squad, dealing with murder and mayhem. T. Rush, Joey Crawford, Steve Javie, Tom Washington, Mark Wunderlich, Duke Callahan, Ed Malloy, Mark Lindsay, Aaron Smith, Tim Donaghy -- all NBA referees current, retired, dead or (in the last case) disgraced, all born and/or raised in the environs of Philadelphia. James "Bah-Bah" "Sheep" Battista The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game -- an outrageous bargain. Kim Donaghy 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. By this point, the latter was an NBA official, whereas the former had established himself as a professional gambler under several nicknames, including Bah-Bah (or Baba) and The Sheep. It was actually allegedly his extremely strict, god-fearing family that drove him to rebel a little in his younger days, only for him to end up getting mixed with the wrong crowd, as per the production. 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. He was 27 years old. 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. His income now reportedly comes from rental properties he owns. From here on out, Battista said, he and Donaghy would never communicate directly. Netflix's Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul revisits . 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. That's what they were looking for. It was 0.232. Yeah, I did. "Tiger was the brains behind that group," says one gambler who knew them well. 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. An interesting part of the Untold: Vol. The main problem now was keeping a lid on the thing. He then did the same set of calculations for the other two referees on the floor in each of Donaghy's games. 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. What is his Net Worth? Tommy Martino was tight with both Donaghy and Battista. '", Back at the table, Martino and Donaghy told Battista that they needed to drive to a nearby gas station. The new material that ESPN has assembled to support its own conclusion that Donaghy manipulated games is not strong and adds little to the existing record. 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. And so their syndicate came to be known by some as the Animals. (Rufo declined to comment for this story.) Only this time, Rush viewed these calls with suspicion. Phone records of gamblers said to have connections with the Gambino crime family were obtained and analyzed, phone numbers traced back to names. It's possible, through Don Best Sports, a betting information service, to pull the line-movement data for individual NBA games going back years. It is normal, of course, for a referee to call more fouls against one team than the other. But I didn't give a s---, because it was great information. He had the f---ing whistle.". It stuns Griffin how media, especially sports-talk radio, has provided Donaghy with a platform for his sensational fodder. Gambler, bookmaker and the boss of the Animals betting office when it first deduced that Concannon and Donaghy were betting on Donaghy's game together; now the owner of Planet Fitness franchises. The agents informed Stern that it had come to their attention that one of their veteran refs, Tim Donaghy, had been betting on his own games and giving inside information to a gambling ring, for a fee. Freedom of Information Act requests were filed. 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. Dallas making both free throws, increasing its lead to eight. I was like, 'If anyone's watching this, we've got a problem.' Scala won't say whether he believes the NBA leaked the story. Popeye, no dummy, asked the obvious question: Who's the handicapper behind these games? Conspiracy theories about corrupted refs have dogged the league for decades. In early 2017, inspired by the 10th anniversary of the scandal, ESPN set out to reinvestigate it. Their sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. Taylor "Popeye" Breton 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. 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. Not long ago, he brought them out, looked at them and told me about them over the phone. "The only mechanics, he had in his hand. And what more did you want? Then people settle in. Underground bet broker, or mover, who was at the center of the Tim Donaghy betting scheme. IT REMAINS ONE of the most tantalizing questions in all of American professional sport: Does game-fixing still exist? 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. In four games, he called the game neutrally, 50-50. Any game that he reffed we had a wager on.". The person wanted to deliver a message about Weiss' more critical reporting on the scandal. IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. To help get his clients' bets down, Battista as a bet broker needed Joe Vito. According to Battista, though, it was Donaghy who reached out, asking for a meeting. 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. Battista envisioned the arrangement lasting for 20 years. Infrequently, Donaghy was at home. And he could have been.". He thought he was having a heart attack. Thats not the [b.s.] When I asked, she said she never counted the money, never confronted him about its existence. The pact was: "Don't tell anybody. 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. This was a few years after Donaghy's release from prison. David Stern A player who's on the take can shave points, purposely missing baskets, say, in an effort to lower the score for his side. In Sarasota, Kim Donaghy printed out for me the first 98 pages of her unfinished and unpublished memoir, The Ref's Wife. 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. 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. ", But Donaghy didn't settle in. But that was the company line.". "They were looking for something real obvious. 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. He'd been raptly listening to the referee's story -- the gambling, the cash, the secrecy, the corruption, the endless search by human beings to gain an edge, the gross opportunism that seemed almost contagious, the almost shockingly easy fixing of a major American sport -- but now there was one big thing on Kulle's mind, and it wasn't the moral of the story. If there is a cradle of basketball refereeing, it is here. 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. That couldve helped me and absolutely would have hurt Timmy, [but] I wasnt a rat.. He goes: 'Do you believe it?' It was either sink or swim together for all of us. By now the spreads were moving violently. 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. Sure enough, there he was. An intervention Battista two days later wearing a bathrobe in rehab. No line-movement data would be required. According to Martino and Battista, after such wagering was complete, Battista, via Martino, would then inform Donaghy of the spread he needed to cover. But examine that imbalance against the financial imbalances discovered in the trading histories-which side received the heavier betting -- and the important comparison isn't between Donaghy's foul calls and the team that won the game. 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. Donaghy worked the game. 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. At the Marriott, Battista thanked Donaghy for the gift. 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. That never really flew with us."
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