", Not every retired referee is reticent. Word about Donaghy had permeated the market, followers following followers. I can imagine TV producers were looking for an on-air mix-up. For that reason, he had a lot of cash on hand. 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. What is his Net Worth? The next documentary in the series, The Race of the Century, hits Netflix on September 6. (Rufo declined to comment for this story.) Around the same time as Stern's news conference, the NBA also commissioned an investigation, to be led by Larry Pedowitz, a partner with the elite New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This was an episode of gambling, yes, but almost assuredly not match-fixing. "Then you gotta cover the f---ing spread." The best movers spend years compiling vast networks of clients and "outs," or counterparties, with whom the movers can trade. The informant didn't know any names, and the people with the ref in their pocket did not appear to be made members of the Gambino crime family. Instead, Martino would be in the middle. Huge bets on Boston in the middle of the trading session, between 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., drove the spread from 2.5 to 3 to 4. But Battista never used the word "fix." They'd known each other since high school. Reportedly born in 1966, Jimmy Battista is 56 years old in 2022. 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. The Feds made no mention of game-fixing. One of its officials is dirty, film at 11. "Tiger was the brains behind that group," says one gambler who knew them well. Ridiculous.. Hours later, he called up Donaghy to tell him. And at some point, per a person close to the situation, Battista had to tell Athanas, a heavy NBA bettor, that Battista believed he had a profitable edge; a different person close to Athanas' syndicate a decade ago told me that Athanas bet more heavily on Donaghy's games in the 2006-07 season than he did on other NBA games. It would have been great for me, great for sales, just for selfish reasons, Griffin said. 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. Battista would cut a deal, pleading guilty in April 2008 only to the charge of transmission of gambling information. Battista referred to Donaghy, 43, as "Elvis" because the ref was "The King" for how often his picks won. It was January 2007. After the scandal, Rush was among those NBA personnel tasked by Pedowitz with reviewing a set of Donaghy games for evidence of game-fixing. 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. David Anders, an attorney who helped Pedowitz run the investigation, declined to comment.) We found the referee.'" According to a breakdown from NBC Sports, NBA referees earn an estimated salary of anywhere between $150,000 and $550,000 every year. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. 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. 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. "Uh, no.") 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. In our case, it means there's just a 4.1 percent chance that an unbiased ref would have randomly made the calls that Tim Donaghy did during his crooked run. Hes publishing it independently. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. According to what we've observed after being released from Metropolitan Detention Center-Brooklyn, New York, James "Jimmy" Battista has returned home to the state of Pennsylvania and lives an extremely private life. And, if he did, what was his method? Because then "you gotta call a lot of fouls," Martino said. ", To this day, what amounts to something like a self-imposed gag order on the subject of Donaghy persists, even among those refs who no longer work for the league. Filed for divorce immediately after the investigation became public. But the longtime crime reporter says he did at one point talk to a person "involved with Stern and the NBA in that era." 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. Iguodala heading to the bench; Boston covering the spread Donaghy in Seattle, the Sonics hosting the Mavericks, calling 11 straight fouls against Seattle as well as the last foul of the night, with 23 seconds to go. Donaghy and Concannon are betting on Donaghy's games -- and making a goddamn killing. Who besides Donaghy, Battista and Martino was in on it? ", The NBA wouldn't share the specifics of those statistical analyses, but it did describe them in summary form. Among those to share their tale is thus his co-conspirator James Jimmy Battista so now, if you wish to learn more about him as well as his current standing, weve got all the details for you. 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. 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. The pact was: "Don't tell anybody. To Scala, Stern seemed mostly upset that the NBA's in-house security people had failed to discover Donaghy's wrongdoing before the FBI. An intervention Battista two days later wearing a bathrobe in rehab. This was a clear violation of NBA rules, but Donaghy got over it. ", The Celtics played the 76ers the night after the Marriott meeting. They just march on, say whatever they want, anyway. And it drives them crazy. Thats what bothers me. In the end, Rush felt there was no need to relay his observations to the Pedowitz people. They are a form of broker that helps sports bettors by placing wagers on their client's behalf. All those gray-area decisions you have to make, Tim? And then, twisting the knife, Battista told him how much Concannon was winning. High school friend of Donaghy and Battista who served as the go-between in the betting scheme during the 2006-2007 NBA season. Nobody wanted to golf with him, Minutella said. 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. 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. 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. 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. He felt the trends were embodied in the stats: The volume of Donaghy's calls was noticeable; it must be obvious to all. Instead, he surprised me. Perhaps this is why the men who formed Battista's loose, disorderly investor group, the men who were "on the ticket," have, for all these years, remained in the shadows. What did he see? Ruggieri was to play the same role Battista had -- mover, fund manager. Im not nave, Griffin said. Litvin's tone was urgent. To help get his clients' bets down, Battista as a bet broker needed Joe Vito. Martino would receive a year and Donaghy and Battista 15 months each in federal prison. . Tim sits down with Jimmy Battista and Tommy Martino hoping to find out new information about the relationship between referees Tim Donaghy and Scott Foster. Thats when Battista started calling Donaghy Elvis, The King of prognosticating NBA games including his own, Battista told Griffin. By many accounts, it's like semi-retirement. Short, squat, thick-necked, Ruggieri was built, some thought, like a small rhinoceros. When I asked, I expected Rush to answer much the same as Nunn had to me: Nothing out of the ordinary. I was told, 'They're the kind of people who will do anything they can to protect themselves and the game.'". F---ing Donaghy. 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. Rhino Ruggieri was booking bets made by an acquaintance from back home, a guy he knew from the golf course named Jack Concannon. The research entailed interviews with more than 100 people, including current and former NBA referees, current and former NBA staff, gamblers, bookmakers, lawyers, law enforcement officials and friends and relatives of Donaghy. By now the spreads were moving violently. 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. We had a big bet on every f---ing game.". Dust-ups with neighbors (one who called Donaghy a flaming maniac), an assault on a mail carrier and the West Chester, Pennsylvania, mayor noting Donaghys very aggressive personality also were filed. It was 0.232. It's despicable." Scala reached the FBI's mandatory retirement age in 2008 and is now a private detective based on Long Island. Battista, who'd drifted as a bartender, restaurant manager and small-time hustler after high school, was in his early 20s when, according to Gaming the Game, a book about the Donaghy scandal by former Philly police detective Sean Patrick Griffin, Rinnier recruited him to join the group. Because you're betting on the game, your judgment is off -- and you threw the game.'". He had many lucrative gambling-related businesses. 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. But Warren Flagg, a private investigator and former FBI agent who worked with Donaghy's attorney during the case, will. In his memoir, Donaghy writes that he was standing on the first tee at his home golf club in Sarasota with a driver in his hands when he took the call from Martino. 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. James "Jimmy" Ba . In the early 2000s, the sports-betting world was undergoing its own equivalent of a dot-com boom. "Based on our review, and with the information we have available, we are unable to contradict the government's conclusion. 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. Popeye, no dummy, asked the obvious question: Who's the handicapper behind these games? That, though, represented only one knot of the tangled webs. Because he was a sometime member of the same golfing circle back home, Ruggieri knew that Concannon and NBA ref Tim Donaghy were friends. 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. Taylor "Popeye" Breton In 2015, Mastronardo had a stroke and died in prison. Once we completed all of that, what we uncovered was that Donaghy's foul calls favored the team that received the heavier betting 70 percent of the time. The Defense of Tim Donaghy - Whistleblower - Podcast 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. Like so many others in Donaghy's life, Kulle and the referee would eventually have a vitriolic falling-out; at one point, Donaghy won a stalking injunction against Kulle. "Tiger was his boss." "But Donaghy changed our working relationship. The gambler described the conversation with Donaghy to me on the condition that I not use his name in the story. His messaging was clear: Donaghy was a rogue. Rush, as director of refs, took notice but didn't think much of it at the time. One morning in early July 2007, Ronnie Nunn was asleep in a hotel room in Las Vegas when his cellphone buzzed him awake. There will almost always be an imbalance of calls. 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. The Celtics, favored by 2.5 points, went on to win in a blowout. It wasn't long before people wanted in on the action. I would not have gone to brief Stern," Scala told me. Favored by 12, Dallas covering Donaghy in Miami calling 12 fouls against visiting Charlotte, two against the Heat. Move along. Just money, just business. Battista told Griffin. Netflix's Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul revisits . Editor's note: This two-year investigation, which revealed how disgraced referee Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA games, whom he did it with and the millions of dollars that flowed from the conspiracy, was originally published on Feb. 19, 2019. The commissioner promised the league's full cooperation. In Martino's words, "Blowouts, he can't control." The accounts of their actual meeting vary, yet the one thing Jimmy did not shy away from conceding was that while Tim made $2,000 per successful bet initially, he made at least $2 million. Gambler, bookmaker and opener of offshore sportsbooks. How Tim Donaghy's NBA Betting Antics Made Him A Target Of The Mob Vercher told me that, in December 2009, after questioning from reporters, including ones from ESPN, she had wanted Donaghy to take a polygraph that asked point-blank whether he'd fixed games. In other words, there was a 23.2 percent chance these foul calls would happen randomly. ACCORDING TO SCALA, the truncated probe meant the Feds left several lines of inquiry hanging. Martino did recall Donaghy telling him that certain games would be unfixable. Popeye's real name was Taylor Breton, and he was the great-great-grandson of Marcus Goldman, the founder, in 1869, of Goldman Sachs. According to a court document, Donaghy and Concannon placed their first bet on a game Donaghy was refereeing in March 2003 -- more than four years and four NBA seasons before he was caught. FBI special agent and head of the investigative unit focused on the Gambino crime family at the time of the investigation. Sure enough, there he was. Griffins impressive work is again relevant because on Aug. 30, Netflix is scheduled to air Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, about the scandal. 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. The one thing we do know for sure, though, is he has a family and children, so he might just be focusing on caring for and spending quality time with them these days.

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