To professional statisticians, any P value of less than 5 percent constitutes a signal that is "significant." Battista had said to the ref. That's the bottom line. "They were intelligent guys who just couldn't have full-time day jobs," says a former gambler who knew them. I asked. In the end, Rush felt there was no need to relay his observations to the Pedowitz people. He has been working on something big, as Tom Petty sang, for 10 years, and its near-future publication will be a bombshell. People know I have documents and files, and they constantly ask me questions whose answers they dont like. 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. In other words, there was a 23.2 percent chance these foul calls would happen randomly. Underground bet broker, or mover, who was at the center of the Tim Donaghy betting scheme. It would have been great for me, great for sales, just for selfish reasons, Griffin said. Based in an anonymous office building in Kew Gardens, Queens, Scala and his agents had spent years assembling a network of informants inside the gang. 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. Things may have been different. But that was the company line.". 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. He started a gambling group called "The Animals." Place fifty thousand dollar bets and get a massive returnif you won. James Battista, who was charged as a co-conspirator in the 2007 case, told HBO's "Real Sports" that he and Donaghy bet on 47 games over four months and won 37 times. Timothy Francis Donaghy ( / dni /; born January 7, 1967) [2] is a former professional basketball referee who worked in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 13 seasons from 1994 to 2007 until he was caught in a gambling scandal. 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. Griffins impressive work is again relevant because on Aug. 30, Netflix is scheduled to air Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, about the scandal. Donaghy worked the game. One of the three was always him. 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. One of them was a man nicknamed Tiger. 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. In early 2017, inspired by the 10th anniversary of the scandal, ESPN set out to reinvestigate it. IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. Hes publishing it independently. It wasn't long before people wanted in on the action. Word about Donaghy had permeated the market, followers following followers. FBI special agent and head of the investigative unit focused on the Gambino crime family at the time of the investigation. A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER once confronted Donaghy about the scandal. Their sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. 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. In 2013, Athanas was indicted as part of a federal sports-betting case that was unrelated to Donaghy. By many accounts, it's like semi-retirement. "He knew what the spreads were going to be. ", Mark Fainaru-Wada on how broadcasting icon Bob Costas was yanked from the Super Bowl. Sure enough, there he was. In his book, Donaghy wrote, I knew I was screwed and in a tight spot . A close observer of basketball, the gambler had become acutely curious after suffering losses on Donaghy-reffed games during that season. He told the gambler about other tactics as well. 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. [But] nothings there.. He told me Monday that those producers called him, they talked for maybe 90 minutes and Griffin provided relevant notes and potential lines of inquiry. The Celtics, favored by 2.5 points, went on to win in a blowout. Close friends with the referee since they were kids, Martino had a day job as an IT guy at JPMorgan. Not long ago, he brought them out, looked at them and told me about them over the phone. "No one wants to talk about that. I was like, 'If anyone's watching this, we've got a problem.' Move along. Any game that he reffed we had a wager on.". It's like looking at a stock chart. Joe Vito cannot speak to that today; he was busted in 2012 at age 63 for illegal bookmaking in an unrelated federal case. Before joining the NBA, he worked as a referee for high school basketball games and for the minor league CBA. The Feds' job, on this one, was done. Read More: How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? Simply put, to show that Donaghy fixed games would suggest that it's easier for gamblers to manipulate games than any sports league would want to admit. Instead, Martino would be in the middle. He has given up making betting picks for a tout service, which he did for a time after his release from prison. Martino also penned a book in 2019. Large sums but, if handled deftly, not large enough to alert the broader market that something screwy might be going on. They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme -- what you might call a sustained period of time. "I was warned," Weiss told me, "that if I stumbled, Stern would do anything he could to crush me. His brief was to audit the entire NBA referee program for corruption, but he also had a narrower goal: figuring out whether Donaghy had indeed fixed games. They now had one job: Do not lose the edge by letting the information leak. If there is a cradle of basketball refereeing, it is here. To control for bias, he performed what's called a hypothesis test on these numbers, which would produce a P value, or a probability, for Donaghy's calls in each game in the 2006-07 season. But this referee didn't lose much. They checked the games. You don't want anyone "from New York" coming to your house, Battista told him. It was Donaghys 13th NBA season. They would use, per Martino's statement to the FBI, a code. According to multiple sources, Battista first began moving bets for Athanas in 2005. He goes, 'Concannon was making all that money and not giving me anything! They were also brothers-in-law; the women they'd married were sisters. Can I maybe even invest in this thing? ], Griffin, 52, said. When Donaghy had finished, Kulle leaned back in his chair. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. He knew how to control it. -- wins and wins and wins and wins, his picks almost 100 percent wins. He was already thinking, How can I get a piece of this action? 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. 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." According to Battista, though, it was Donaghy who reached out, asking for a meeting. 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. 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 . 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. The Feds wanted to talk to me and go against him, but I wouldnt, Battista told Griffin. He goes: 'Do you believe it?' 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. 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. Where is Tim Donaghy's Friend Tommy Martino Now? Tim Donaghy Netflix docufilm returns disgraced ex-NBA ref to spotlight Phone records of gamblers said to have connections with the Gambino crime family were obtained and analyzed, phone numbers traced back to names. 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. Veteran reporter who broke the Donaghy story for the New York Post. They produce whatever theyre going to produce, independent of the evidence. Ensuing betting-scandal headlines jolted the NBA. 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. But no. They were an organized crime squad, dealing with murder and mayhem. "Then you gotta cover the f---ing spread." "But they all had a piece of the pizza." He entered a conspiracy only when Battista and Thomas Martino, the go . 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. They'd gone to the same parochial high school in the working-class Catholic neighborhoods of Delaware County, just outside Philadelphia -- Delco, as it's sometimes called -- where the sports bars are abundant, where a certain easy familiarity with all forms of gambling prevails, where guys have bookies like they've got dentists. The big problem, Battista said, was that the betting markets appeared to be getting wise to the emergence of an astonishingly accurate NBA handicapper. (Donaghy himself declined repeated requests for an interview.) The best movers spend years compiling vast networks of clients and "outs," or counterparties, with whom the movers can trade. NBA commissioner at the time of the scandal. 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. He had the artwork. He would start before dawn with the enormously liquid Asian betting markets, an amorphous group of black- and gray-market internet sportsbooks based in places like Manila and Kuala Lumpur. (When I contacted Weiss, who now works as a producer for CBS News' 48 Hours, he said he didn't recall this conversation.) Print length 320 pages Language English Publisher UNKNO That's when Donaghy "laid everything out" and "spilled everything," Kulle said. 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,. 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? If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. A "free roll," as they call it. They'd known each other since high school. 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. 2 documentary Operation Flagrant Foul, on the 2007 gambling scandal centered on former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, is how it's not just about Donaghy. Nunn, then the director of NBA officials, was in town for the NBA summer league games held annually among the casinos, where referee candidates from the minors are assessed for possible promotion to the Show. Whatever his issue was, Battista said he couldn't talk about it over the phone. By most accounts, Tony "Tiger" Rufo is no longer a gambler. Girlfriend insists her secret visits and conversations with another man dont count as an affair. What is his Net Worth? "How's Chuck doing?" "During all this s---," he said. I knew what it would mean, Battista told Griffin, if I had an NBA ref on my side.. Yeah, I did. . "I was like a pot smoker moving up to cocaine.". He even contacted Murray Weiss, the Post reporter who wrote the story, to uncover the source of the leak. "Someone in the NBA notified the press [in order] to stop this investigation, in my opinion. 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. In-season, it is demanding, tiring, high stress. I can imagine TV producers were looking for an on-air mix-up. (Pedowitz, who has retired from his firm, did not respond to requests for comment. 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. Martino, in that way, was about to become the unlikely bridge upon which the conspiracy would travel. Freedom of Information Act requests were filed. Favored by 12, Dallas covering Donaghy in Miami calling 12 fouls against visiting Charlotte, two against the Heat. The latest updates, reviews and . But soon enough, Martino says, Rhino learned about the nature of Battista's deal with Donaghy. 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. Donaghy has written that Rhino had a handicapping system for picking NFL and college football winners. His income now reportedly comes from rental properties he owns. Conspiracy theories about corrupted refs have dogged the league for decades. ON A NIGHT in early December 2006, Tommy Martino received an urgent phone call from Battista. At the same time, at the request of the NBA, former prosecutor Larry Pedowitz conducted an independent investigation of Donaghy's misconduct and issued publicly a 133-page report. "I refuse to comment on him. Scala's squad went to work. Griffin has dogged determination. Kulle got up, crossed the room and closed the blinds. Or, actually, it was the moral of this story. Tommy Martino was tight with both Donaghy and Battista. Hours later, he called up Donaghy to tell him. That's what they were looking for. 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.
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