jimmy battista tim donaghy

Normally this meant making a few "head fake" bets. Twice, Griffin said, he appeared in a television studio to partake in documentaries in which Donaghy was supposed to appear. Battista and Donaghy were never to speak directly. 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. The data chronicle price fluctuations. Everyone at the Curaao office, therefore, had access to Concannon's gambling account. Because he was a sometime member of the same golfing circle back home, Ruggieri knew that Concannon and NBA ref Tim Donaghy were friends. Read more in the source You may also like: 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. 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. David Stern He had the artwork. ", "I didn't touch it 10 years ago, and I'm not touching it now. 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. She struggled to recall exactly when, but she told me she probably started finding the cash in 2004, during the season. 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. Oakes was Tim Donaghy's uncle. "We were prepared to do some undercover things to corroborate Donaghy's story," Scala says. 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." ", The Celtics played the 76ers the night after the Marriott meeting. 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. Tim Donaghy was Elvis; he was the king of fixing games." This success drew in another form of attention, this time from the FBI. ", "These analyses," the NBA told ESPN, "did not support your finding that an unbiased official would not have made the calls that Donaghy did.". "During all this s---," he said. ON A NIGHT in early December 2006, Tommy Martino received an urgent phone call from Battista. Sometimes, Battista told Griffin, Donaghy would ring Martino from an NBA locker room to know the spread of a game he was moments from starting. Donaghy in Toronto calling four fouls against the visiting Nets' top scorer, Bob Costas was yanked from the Super Bowl, Deland McCullough's search for his biological parents. 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. "No way Battista kept this quiet from Tiger," another told me. (Ruggieri did not respond to requests for comment.) Phil Scala Where is Tim Donaghy's Friend Tommy Martino Now? - The Cinemaholic Rhino Ruggieri was booking bets made by an acquaintance from back home, a guy he knew from the golf course named Jack Concannon. But I didn't give a s---, because it was great information. There had to be a pattern. 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. Move along. Battista referred to Donaghy, 43, as "Elvis" because the ref was "The King" for how often his picks won. "No one wants to talk about that. We found the referee.'" ", Scala, at the time, was livid. "He played golf and gambled.". Donaghy was horrible betting every other sport. A high roller named Mike Rinnier, who'd made his fortune in Delaware County supermarkets, decided to bankroll a small sports-betting syndicate in the 1980s. It cost Griffin to produce that book. It means you've found something. Moreover, it was indicated he made $20 to $30 million in total for the mob families. What is his Net Worth? If there is a cradle of basketball refereeing, it is here. 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. Namely, they were going to wire up Donaghy so he could get other allegedly corrupted NBA referees to incriminate themselves. "I refuse to comment on him. To help get his clients' bets down, Battista as a bet broker needed Joe Vito. So the FBI had worked out a plan. According to multiple sources, Battista first began moving bets for Athanas in 2005. 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. Convicted Jimmy "the Sheep" Battista Lifts The Lid On NBA Games. Barricade Books, his publisher, had issues. Seth Wickersham on the Cleveland Browns' front office -- and where hope and history collide. 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. Griffin already had published a bestseller in 2005 with Black Brothers, Inc. about the violent rise and fall of Philadelphias black mafia. They checked the games. Rush recalls watching maybe 10 such games. Jimmy Battista Net Worth Jimmy Battista should have a net worth above $1 million. What did he see? Thats when Battista started calling Donaghy Elvis, The King of prognosticating NBA games including his own, Battista told Griffin. I was told, 'They're the kind of people who will do anything they can to protect themselves and the game.'". They had possibly just stumbled on the ultimate edge. Read More: How Much Did Tim Donaghy Earn From Each Bet? Three. 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. 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. 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. One of them was the man that his ex-wife Kim Donaghy described as his forever "partner in crime" -Thomas "Tommy" Martino. And then one afternoon the case agent came into my office. Just one game of potential funny business out of 17 wasn't nearly enough to accuse the referee of anything. The other, Chuck, lived in Delco. Hes publishing it independently. His name was Tim Donaghy. Gerry Donaghy, his father, for a long time wore stripes at the highest levels of NCAA men's basketball. 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. All those gray-area decisions you have to make, Tim? Thats what bothers me. But the longtime crime reporter says he did at one point talk to a person "involved with Stern and the NBA in that era." IT REMAINS ONE of the most tantalizing questions in all of American professional sport: Does game-fixing still exist? 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. 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. He works seven days every week. Donaghy worked the game. Joseph "Joe Vito" Mastronardo In high school, during a trip to the Jersey Shore, Donaghy got drunk and scavenged through neighbors homes, stealing items. Ensuing betting-scandal headlines jolted the NBA. Dallas making both free throws, increasing its lead to eight. 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. 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. When they departed, Battista asked Donaghy whom he liked the next night, when the 76ers were playing host to the Celtics in a game Donaghy would officiate. 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. [3] During his career in the NBA, Donaghy officiated in 772 regular season games and 20 playoff games. Jimmy "the Sheep" Battista & NBA Revelations In "Gaming The Game". In 2008, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison. The Feds' job, on this one, was done. 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. Battista had since decided to set up shop on his own as a bet broker. 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. 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. He was already thinking, How can I get a piece of this action? Griffin has dogged determination. Filed for divorce immediately after the investigation became public. One of the three was always him. NBA commissioner at the time of the scandal. I have incredibly low expectations for whatever they produce, Griffin said by phone from Charleston, South Carolina. Battista had said to the ref. 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. But before Donaghy even got out of prison, an imprint of Random House was reportedly set to publish his memoir. Donaghy's story is that he bet on all kinds of things for years with his buddy, including NBA games. Im one of the idiots who bought Donaghys book. ", In the early 2000s, Rush went on to explain, the NBA undertook a wholesale revision of its refereeing guidelines, changes that would naturally lead to the entire NBA referee corps calling a greater volume of fouls, at least initially. Tim Donaghy, 55, was born in Pennsylvania on 7 January 1967 and worked in the NBA from 1994-2007. Why? After it hit the fan and the legal process dragged on, Battista hoped to expose Donaghys mountain of lies by testifying. He knew how to control it. "And like everything else, when you make changes, initially you'll have an overreaction. 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. But at the time of the visit, in late 2007, Kulle said, the men were close. A "free roll," as they call it. -- wins and wins and wins and wins, his picks almost 100 percent wins. All this occurred while Rush was director of officials, from 1998 to 2003. How huge? 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. So what do you do when you stumble upon a possible criminal conspiracy in progress? Battista had known the ref, Timmy Donaghy, for 25 years. Had he heard about Donaghy's gambling "issues" -- about what he had done? 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. The number of games in which Tim Donaghy favored the team that attracted fewer betting dollars? Unlikely but not outrageously so. To answer those questions, Pedowitz convened a group of NBA basketball operations personnel to watch games worked by Donaghy during the 2006-07 season -- but the ensuing report did not fully explain the limited number of games they decided to review. He had to use the bathroom, he said, and motioned for Martino to please come along. And so it began From Philadelphia, Donaghy hopping to a Nets home game, then 1,700 miles west to Denver, then over to Seattle, then transcontinental to Atlanta, then southwest to Houston, then back east to DC -- Donaghy zigzagging across the country, in and out of NBA arenas, making his picks to Martino over those cheap bodega burner phones, but not always, because sometimes they'd forget and use their own regular phones, because who cared? He has been working on something big, as Tom Petty sang, for 10 years, and its near-future publication will be a bombshell. So when Gaming appeared at No. Or, actually, it was the moral of this story. A close observer of basketball, the gambler had become acutely curious after suffering losses on Donaghy-reffed games during that season. Lamell McMorris served as the lead negotiator for the referees' union in its collective bargaining with the league. He has given up making betting picks for a tout service, which he did for a time after his release from prison. "He was a single man, married with four kids," says Kim Donaghy, his ex-wife.

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