How former ref Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA games
Long read this is ESPN's cover story
How former ref Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA games
In 2007, NBA ref Tim Donaghy pleaded guilty to betting on games he officiated. But it was never proved that he fixed them -- until now. Our two-year investigation reveals how he did it, whom he did it with and the millions that flowed from the conspiracy.
ACT 1: A CONVENIENT HALF-TRUTH
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. It was January 2007. 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. Now he feared the scheme had become too obvious.
"You wanna get paid?" Battista had said to the ref. "Then you gotta cover the f---ing spread." The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game -- an outrageous bargain. If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing; Battista would eat the loss. A "free roll," as they call it. But this referee didn't lose much. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme -- what you might call a sustained period of time.
Cast of characters
(in order of appearance)
James "Bah-Bah" "Sheep" Battista
Underground bet broker, or mover, who was at the center of the Tim Donaghy betting scheme.
Tim Donaghy
Veteran NBA referee who wagered on his own games but was never charged with manipulating them.
Tommy Martino
High school friend of Donaghy and Battista who served as the go-between in the betting scheme during the 2006-2007 NBA season.
Jack Concannon
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.
Pete "Rhino" Ruggieri
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.
Kim Donaghy
Wife of Tim Donaghy at the time of the scandal. Filed for divorce immediately after the investigation became public.
Phil Scala
FBI special agent and head of the investigative unit focused on the Gambino crime family at the time of the investigation. Supervisor of the FBI probe.
David Stern
NBA commissioner at the time of the scandal.
Battista had known the ref, Timmy Donaghy, for 25 years. 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.
Battista was a creature of that world. He was what's known as a mover. Strictly speaking, movers are neither gamblers nor bookmakers. 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. Battista was positioned well enough in that world that, without Donaghy's knowledge but based on Donaghy's picks, he'd helped set up a kind of loose, disorderly hedge fund. Several people from the sports-betting underworld had, in effect, staked Battista a bankroll -- a fund he was now using to bet on games officiated by this one NBA referee. One member of the group called it "the ticket" and "the company."
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25980368/how-former-ref-tim-donaghy-conspired-fix-nba-games
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