Gaming the Game

by Sean Patrick Griffin

  “In June 2006, I bet a horse with Paramount Sports. I bet a few times in different ways on a horse for something like seventy-five hundred dollars. I also bet around five grand for myself. The horse hit and I won one hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars total, but they weren’t going to pay me. They said they had a cap of twenty-five thousand dollars at Belmont, where the race took place. They also said I was moving the bets for The Chinaman, and that he had inside horse racing information from jockeys. So, I got stuck for a hundred and two grand that I had to cover with my friends in New York that I was moving the horse for—because I always paid. I wasn’t going to stiff them just because I got stiffed. Well, I was pissed with Joe Vito as my agent for not fighting with Paramount for the money. He was saying, ‘You’re making so much fucking money, why do you want to ruin your reputation fighting with Harry at Paramount?’ Joe was Harry’s right-hand man for the East Coast, and Joe didn’t stick up for me, his partner! He didn’t get me paid on the horse, and I was fucking pissed. So, I paid the guys and moved on, but me and Joe were kind of at odds. We were still working together at first, though, because the wheel had to keep turning to make the money. At this point, Joe was putting out the number for every bookmaker in Philadelphia and some other places, and he knew I was moving for the crème de la crème of the sports gambling industry in the world.”

  While Battista was seething about the horse racing bet fiasco and Joe Vito’s refusal to fight on his behalf, The Sheep was still very concerned about the deal his partner was cutting with the Montco prosecutors. Battista let the Belmont-Paramount situation rest as he hoped his longtime betting associate wasn’t ratting him out. Of course, Battista’s business didn’t allow for down time to contemplate such matters, and he was soon offered a deal with a legendary New York bookmaker that would have long-standing—and ultimately fatal—consequences.

  “Joe hooked me up with this bookmaker in New York named Bluto, who could move up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a game for me at the right number,” Battista says. “Joe Vito and Bluto were close friends. I got to hang out with Bluto a bunch of times—in Philly, in Atlantic City, in New York. Bluto was an older Jewish guy, probably in his mid-fifties, who was built like a brick shithouse and didn’t drink. When I was with The Animals, we did some business with him and we would settle anywhere up to two hundred thousand dollars down in Atlantic City. He would always have an entourage with him. We’d be at the craps tables, and he could be down a million or so and he’d tell me to ‘come on over and roll the bones’ to change his luck. He was betting a hundred grand on every roll. This guy was an animal, and I loved him. He was also a true businessman.

  “We later heard that his father and grandfather were big-time guys with one of the world’s major financial firms. Bluto was loaded because of his family, but he was also a gambler and bookmaker. I also heard that at one point he was married to the daughter of the Gambino crime family’s consigliere, but that he got divorced. People also said that Bluto booked John Gotti back in the early 1980s, and that Gotti supposedly only had to pay on half of his losses. I didn’t know what relationship he had with anybody, including New York mob families. It’s not like people in my line of work asked people for business cards and credentials! I had no idea what people did or who they worked with, and they didn’t know who I worked with.

  “Well, I met with Bluto at a Yankees-Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park in the summer of 2006. Joe Vito had a nice box at the park, the kind with the bar and everything, and we met there. I told Bluto I wanted him to start moving some games for me and that I needed a quarter of a million per game for football. Up until then, he’d get me forty or fifty dimes, but I knew he had access to some of the stores that were taking astronomical bets. I knew you had to get invited to that party. Well, like a lot of people, he knew the sharp guys I was moving for, and most people were leery of taking that action. The way I got him to take my football action was that I told him that I knew of a phenomenal NBA handicap-per [without mentioning it was referee Tim Donaghy] and that I might want Bluto to move up to two hundred grand a game without affecting the market when the season started. He knew he’d be able to make good money on those games, so he decided to help me move NBA games in a few months and we agreed to work the 2006-07 football season together.”

  The Sheep didn’t know it, but as the summer of 2006 came to an end, the clock was ticking on his impressive career. The Joe Vito-Bluto-Battista interrelationships would be revisited in the not-too-distant future, and would manifest themselves on a national stage. Until then, Battista had pressing matters at home to address.

  Jimmy, Tommy, and Timmy

  DENISE AND JIMMY Battista wed in 1994, and by the fall of 2006 the couple had a full and active household. Denise’s son and daughter from her first marriage were joined by three girls she and Jimmy had together, and the kids now collectively ranged in age from five to fifteen years old. Because of Battista’s unyielding work schedule, Denise was raising all five kids by herself, and was left on her own to manage the house and the bills and practically anything not gambling-related. The Sheep’s rise in the betting world had coincided with the growth of his young family and, despite his hopes and wishes, the two sets of circumstances were not a comfortable fit whatsoever. The resulting strain with Denise only increased with each passing month Jimmy was a non-factor in the family’s affairs, and by now the twelve-year marriage was in serious jeopardy. Predictably, Battista’s profession simply wouldn’t permit him to make things right at home, and another problem arose when a colleague passed along some frightening news from the street: the FBI was investigating The Sheep.

  “I had the best information, and I had the biggest outs in the world,” Battista says. “When I spoke, people listened, because they would do anything to get the information from these guys I was handling. I caught wind that the feds were onto me and wanted to know how I was moving millions of dollars a week for these guys without anyone really knowing about it. It suddenly just all got too much for me. I started getting deeper into OxyContin, and started losing some money because of poor decision making while I was high.” The “poor decision making” referenced by The Sheep concerns the numerous and significant bets he placed on his own , which marked a Battista first. Up until this point, he recognized, indeed he embraced, his finite niche as a mover. He was now personally betting on sporting events and, especially problematically, on games of chance online and in Atlantic City casinos, where his unreal connections and inside information were wholly useless.

  The Sheep had gone twenty-plus years without behaving like the suckers he, The Animals, and the world’s biggest sharps so routinely mocked. Incredibly, for the first time in his impressive career, Jimmy “Baba” Battista was paying for the party. “I was making substantial money,” Battista says, “and because I had access to the right information, I would tell myself that I could always get the money that I lost gambling back. I could bet a few hundred thousand dollars a couple of times a day and win back a few million like nothing. Th at’s the way I thought.”

  The pill popping that was designed to alleviate The Sheep’s myriad problems unsurprisingly made things worse, especially at home. Though Denise didn’t know her husband was consuming increasing numbers of OxyContin pills and the occasional line of cocaine, nor why things had gotten to this point in their relationship, she knew enough to prefer having Jimmy around her and the kids less and less. As a result, Battista began to work, and at times stay, elsewhere. His longtime pal, Tommy Martino, was the one who assisted him most, allowing Battista essentially to come and go as he pleased.

  In the midst of this chaos, an old associate was about to make things even more interesting—and complicated—for The Sheep.

  * * *

  After graduating from Cardinal O’Hara High School in the 1980s, Jimmy Battista and Tommy Martino had remained good friends, so much so that each man served as best man in their respective weddings. In fact, so close was Battista to the M
artino family that Tommy’s brother, Johnny, was the second best man in Battista’s first wedding. A lot had changed for Tommy and Jimmy by the early 2000s, when Battista first contemplated recruiting his lifelong buddy as a glorified, and well-paid, gopher.

  “After high school, Tommy went to a computer school to learn how to fix computers, got a legitimate job in Delaware with J.P. Morgan, and was still selling weed,” Battista says.1 “He got married, and I was in his wedding party. Tommy’s buddy Timmy Donaghy was at his wedding, too. Tommy’s brother, Chuck, had a hair salon, and Tommy used to work there. A party scene was tied to the salon, too. I was friends with Chuck, just like with Tommy and Johnny Martino, which was pretty cool. We met a lot of interesting people through the salon. Pat Croce, former owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, used to have Chuck cut his hair, and sometimes we’d get free tickets to the games.”

  Even though Battista and Martino had never gone more than a few weeks over the years without seeing or speaking with each other, their respective illicit business ventures were left aside their friendship. “Tommy and I didn’t work together until we were in our late thirties when I was on my own as a gambler,” Battista says. “I wanted him to help me as a runner, essentially, and I knew he had the time to work with me because he was still selling weed. Tommy was probably making more money selling drugs than he was fixing computers. I told him to stop selling the fucking drugs and just come work with me. I was paying him around fifteen hundred bucks a week just to run around for me and to keep getting me my drugs. There was one time where I was yelling at him, ‘Tommy, you have ten pounds of marijuana in your fucking garage! If you get caught, you’re gonna go to jail for a long time!’ I think for a little while he did stop dealing his pot and just kept getting me pills and cocaine.”

  Martino and Battista were in each other’s company more frequently than in the previous several years, and yet despite Martino’s close friendship with NBA referee Tim Donaghy, Battista made a conscious decision not to be in the same place as Donaghy over the years. Of course, because of their mutual friendship with Martino, he and Donaghy were always somewhat aware of each other’s affairs. “I wouldn’t associate myself with Timmy,” Battista says. “He was an NBA referee, and I was a known gambler and former bookmaker. Timmy didn’t want to be seen anywhere near me, and I didn’t want to be seen anywhere near him, and Tommy would do whatever we said.” Long before Donaghy ever wagered on an NBA game he was officiating, and even longer before conspiring with Battista to bet on games, Battista assumed he and Donaghy would be dealing with each other at some point. “I always knew that sooner or later Timmy was going to need me. I knew sooner or later—I didn’t know when—that Timmy would have to come to me. It was just his nature. I knew that Timmy’s demand for money far exceeded his ability to get it. If the NBA gave out free tampons, Timmy would take them. That’s the type of guy he was. He was fucking shrewd, and believed everyone owed him the world.”2

  All of this was before Battista’s surreal 2003 All-Star Sports experience in Curacao, which ended the first iteration of his “partnership” with Tommy Martino. Upon his return to the U.S., The Sheep re-enlisted Martino’s services, but it was Battista’s marital problems, following the split with The Animals, which eventually enhanced Martino’s role in Battista’s betting operation. The increasingly frequent shift in “office” location from The Sheep’s home, where more than a dozen computers and numerous televisions and various communication devices were available, to Martino’s house in 2006 was a major hassle for Battista. In fact, he needed to borrow the use of Martino’s laptop to try and keep up.3 “I would have his laptop next to mine on his kitchen table, side by side,” Battista says. “Th at way, I would use one to monitor the lines on Don Best and the other one to bet. It wasn’t until I was operating out of his house and I got so busy that he started placing bets for me. He didn’t place a lot of bets for me, but he placed some because I was so fucking busy. I’d be on the road, and my job was so demanding with moving the games and stuff like that. I kept my laptop at his house and he could go to the betting Web sites for me. I gave him my codes and all. I also stashed money at his house.

  “By that point, I was on my own and wasn’t working with The Animals anymore. I needed someone to work with. I realized I was fucked; I only had two hands and needed ten. Tommy would meet people for money, go get me drugs—my coke and Oxys, and drive me to places like New York and Atlantic City when I was meeting people. That way, I could sit in the car, have my laptop, and work the phones. I could talk on two phones and gamble while he was driving me around. It was great for him, too, because he still had his full-time job fixing computers and he made good money working for me. His regular job had benefits and with my line of work, you never knew when you were gonna get busted or how long people would be around, so he kept it. I’d pay him anywhere from a thousand to twenty-five hundred a week, depending on what he did for me. I always had a lot of tickets to a bunch of events, and I’d set him up with all sorts of things.” According to Battista, having the forty-year-old, recently divorced Martino more involved in the life of The Sheep had little impact on Tommy’s day job.4 “Even though he still had his job fixing computers at J.P. Morgan, Tommy was never at work,” he says. “When I used to operate out of his house, he’d be home laying out in the sun, and was more worried about getting a tan than with being at work.”

  Martino’s tanning exploits were legendary among his circle of friends and were part of a long-standing pattern of behavior. “Tommy was obsessed with his appearance ever since we were little,” Battista says. “If you had to sum up Tommy’s life, it would be called Weed, Insecurity, and Women . Tommy was, like, five-foot-five, and had what some people call ‘Little Man’s Disease.’ He was always insecure about his height, and he always felt he had to prove to someone that he wasn’t a little guy. He would dye his hair and his eyebrows, and make sure he was tan all the time to overcome his height. Of course, this psychobabble is coming from a bald and fat guy!”5

  Working out of Tommy Martino’s house was designed to help solve Battista’s problems at home, and to an extent it did. Unfortunately for The Sheep and his family, being around Martino meant an increased likelihood Tim Donaghy would somehow enter the mix. At the time, Martino considered Donaghy a “good friend,” and Donaghy called Martino a “true friend.” “When I was working out of Tommy’s house,” Battista says, “Timmy was calling Tommy all the time, mostly bullshitting about women and pot. Timmy used to ask Tommy to mail him weed down in Florida, and Tommy was so fucking stupid he would do it. He mailed him pot a few times, even though I was telling him I thought he was crazy. I didn’t want him getting locked up because I needed him to work for me. It was bad enough he was selling drugs around our area, but mailing drugs? Are you fucking kidding?!

  “When I was in high school, I didn’t hang out with Timmy but we knew each other. He hung more with Tommy because they both liked to smoke pot. After high school, Timmy used to always try to come across as Mr. Almighty, better than everybody else, because he was going to Villanova and his father was a collegiate referee. Tommy was more known for getting laid, having hot girls, and selling drugs. When Timmy was a senior in high school and I was about nineteen or twenty, he was in a lot of escapades down the shore. Timmy liked drinking, like a lot of us, but he was a sick pup and really liked fucking with people. One night we were partying and he got all fucked up and went from house to house stealing shit from people. He was just a strange, mean-spirited guy.” Tommy Martino, of course, was also privy to Donaghy’s “pranks,” which Martino says included Donaghy: calling police to break up a party; pulling a fire alarm to break up a party; using stink bombs; and urinating in a girl’s saline solution and shampoo.6 “Timmy and Tommy partied together a bit in high school, but they were a year apart. Right after high school they became close friends; Timmy liked smoking pot, and Tommy was the one who got it for him. They kept in contact through the years mostly because of dope and pussy, and they wou
ld get together when Timmy was in town.”

  By the summer of 2006, Tim Donaghy was a twelve-year veteran NBA referee earning two hundred and sixty thousand dollars per year, who also happened to be betting on games he officiated for at least the previous three seasons. By this point, in fact, pro gambler Jimmy “Baba” Battista had all but ceased referring to Donaghy as “Timmy.” Rather, The Sheep opted to almost exclusively call him “Elvis,” the apt nickname Battista had been using ever since making the Great Discovery while in Curacao.

  “Elvis knew me for years, and Tommy would tell him, ‘Baba is over here working,’ and stuff like that,” Battista says, “so Elvis knew what my situation was from Tommy.” What Donaghy didn’t know, however, was that since 2003 Battista had been tracking the bets Donaghy placed with Jack Con-cannon. “Even though he had been betting successfully with his NBA games the past few years, Elvis was pissing away money throughout the year betting other sports. At the start of the ’06-07 NFL season, he got crushed in September and October. The guys who were providing Jack Concannon with their football picks were having a bad season, which meant that Jack and Elvis were losing good money. Elvis would always ask Tommy, ‘Who’s Sheep on?’ For three or four weeks starting in late October or early November, I was giving Tommy my football games to give to Elvis.7

  “My guys were picking winners and his guys were picking losers. It was that simple. Elvis would call Tommy every week and say things like, ‘Sheep’s guys don’t lose!’ After a few weeks, he said, ‘Nobody can be this good!’ My guys were absolutely crushing that season, and Elvis got hooked up with me at the right time. That, really, is how the whole ‘thing’ between Jimmy Battista and Timmy “Elvis” Donaghy started in the fall of 2006. Elvis asked Tommy how he could thank me for giving him the winning football picks. I said that we’d talk about it when we got together when he came into town next time, but he insisted. So, I said that Elvis could get me a signed Kobe Bryant jersey for my stepson. Pretty soon, a FedEx package arrived at Tommy’s house and it was Kobe’s signed game jersey. The first payment in the NBA betting scandal was actually an autographed Kobe Bryant Lakers jersey from Elvis to me. He got it done, which I really appreciated.”