* * *
Jimmy Battista didn’t have a particularly high regard for Tim Donaghy, dating back to high school. Now a partner with him in an illicit betting scheme, the longtime gambler with a penchant for controlling outcomes was constantly worried the referee would seek out additional opportunities to profit from games he was officiating. Such Battista concerns were only aggravated when the betting lines of Donaghy’s games either moved early or in a direction that didn’t follow the expected pattern. Still worse, The Sheep discovered within weeks of cutting his deal with Donaghy that he, just as he feared, couldn’t trust the referee or the scandal’s intermediary, mutual friend Tommy Martino.
“There was one time when Elvis called in his pick like always,” Battista says, “but when I tuned in to watch the game that night, Elvis wasn’t on the court during the pregame. He wasn’t reffing the game he picked! I was like, ‘Fuck!’ Tommy didn’t tell me Elvis was betting someone else’s game that night. By that point, I had already moved close to a million dollars on the game, a lot of it with Bluto up in New York. I immediately called him and said, ‘We gotta get off this game,’ and he screamed, ‘What are you talking about?! I can’t get off the game.’ We tried to buy the game back, but there was no way Bluto could go back to these guys who took all the action because they would be opened up for a middle. We put so much money on the game that the line moved three to four points, and if the stores now took our money on the other side, they’d be fucked. I didn’t know how much he bet for himself, but there was no way he wasn’t piggybacking what I was doing. He’d bet a million dollars on a game like it was nothing.
“Bluto was really pissed at what had happened, and it cost him a lot of money. He called me and said, ‘That’s it. I’m paying you your money and you’re never going to stick it up my ass again.’ I found out a week later that he had bet heavy on the game and lost two to three million. He paid my agent in Vegas the six hundred and seventy thousand he owed me, but was still furious over getting fucked, and stopped doing business with me entirely.
“That game was one of [NBA referee and then close Donaghy friend] Scott Foster’s games, and it was a loss. I told Tommy to tell Elvis right after that game that I wanted to see his referee schedule, because I couldn’t trust him or Tommy. Once I had his schedule, and Elvis would tell me ahead of time who he liked, I could manipulate the lines and it was fat city.” Beyond the issue of trust, there was also discord between Donaghy and his co-conspirators over his payments. “For what we were doing,” Battista says, “Elvis wanted to be paid, like, the next moment. I kept telling him that because of who he was and because we were dealing in cash, that I would pay him in segments, like forty-five or fifty grand each time. He also drove Tommy crazy because he was always calling and asking, ‘How many apples are in my basket? How many apples are in my basket?!’ ”1
By early January, Battista suspected that his runners were selling his picks on Donaghy’s games, which adversely impacted much of what The Sheep was trying to do. As a result, in addition to betting the wrong side simply to move the line in his favor, Battista would often bet the wrong side to harm those who were trying to copy his bets. “I was so mad,” he says, “because I would tell the runners, ‘Go get me X amount of dollars per game,’ and the market would move in ways it shouldn’t have, and I’d say to them when they got back to me, ‘What the fuck did you do? You know what? You either do what I tell you to do or you’re gonna get it in the ass, and it’s gonna come hard. You won’t know what the right side is, and you won’t know where the real money is coming from.’ The beauty of the gambling market was that you could move the money in from Europe, from Asia, from offshore, to Vegas in all sorts of ways.”
Within weeks, Battista encountered more problems when the betting lines on Donaghy’s games started moving prematurely. “Some of the games started to scoot out early,” Battista says, “and I was screaming, ‘Why are these fucking games moving?! I’m trying to get X number of dollars on the game and it’s already starting to trickle.’ The days I was working, I was glued to the computer all day watching the lines move, and I knew where the money was being moved and who was moving the games. People who bet where I did weren’t betting just for the fun of it. If a line moved, it was because of solid information. The Englishman, the Chinaman, and Zorba were using me to move their games, so I knew what their NBA picks were. If one of Elvis’ games moved, I knew it wasn’t because of them.
“I don’t know if Elvis was bragging to people or betting with Jack Concannon or other people or what. Even though I told him from the beginning not to deal with Concannon anymore or any other guys because I didn’t want it to get out, I think his greed factor got to him and that he was giving the games out.2 Elvis had his little entourage of bookmakers and other people that were betting the games. At that point, Concannon wasn’t using Pete Ruggieri to get down on the games. Whoever Elvis or Concannon wound up using had to know what was going on, or whoever that person was placing bets with did, because otherwise the bets they placed wouldn’t have been enough to move the lines. Even though I was betting good money for Tommy already, I found out later he was betting the games with a friend of his. Tommy was only betting three hundred bucks a game, and meanwhile his guy was betting thousands offshore.3 Greed became a big factor for everybody.
“Who knows how many people were piggybacking games Elvis was reffing when you think about everybody telling their friends about these sure winners? I was such a control freak that it was driving me fucking crazy to see the lines move when they weren’t supposed to. My guys—The Chinaman, The Computer, Zorba, and The Englishman—were consistently picking fifty-six to sixty percent, and people were dying to know these picks. Well, Elvis was picking seventy-eight percent , so you can imagine how much people wanted to jump on games he was reffing. There’s that scene in the movie Wall Street where Charlie Sheen [playing the role of insider stock broker Bud Fox] says, ‘Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel’ and that sets off all this activity—phone calls, stock trades. Well, that’s what it was like when I was betting anything, and when I was betting Elvis’ games. It was like, ‘Whoosh!’ The lines were flying, and all you’d hear people saying was, ‘Sheep’s on this game! Sheep’s on this game!’ By January, people knew I was betting on sure winners.”
No one can know just how widespread the knowledge of The Sheep’s stone-cold NBA locks was, but there is little dispute among the world’s big-time betting community that by early 2007, word within that crowd was that Tim Donaghy was fixing games and only a fool would have ignored Battista’s ridiculously obvious wagering success. Because the world’s sharps had access to at least the same resources (i.e., runners, insiders, outs) and technology (i.e., sophisticated computer models, Don Best subscriptions) as Battista, his moves on the referee’s games were being mimicked around the globe almost from the time Battista cut his deal with Donaghy. Indeed, so significant was the buzz within betting circles surrounding Tim Donaghy’s games that the FBI soon caught wind of the situation during a routine investigation into an organized crime family in New York.4 Agents working for the FBI’s “Gambino Squad” stumbled upon the Battista-Donaghy betting scandal on a wiretap, and it wouldn’t be too long before agents paid The Sheep a visit. Of course, Battista had heard the rumor that he was being eyed by the feds a few months prior. The borderline paranoid pro gambler was always secretive about his actions anyway, and thus didn’t much alter his behavior or his business. As such, Battista was still hyperactive moving games for the world’s sharpest bettors all the while he was conspiring with an NBA referee, which left him—at some level—vulnerable to an actual federal investigation.
As the FBI out of New York began working behind the scenes generating intelligence on the alleged NBA plot, the conspirators pressed on. Times were good, at least as far as Battista et al. knew, and they were soon looking to expand their criminal enterprise.
* * *
Tim Donaghy was in Phoenix to referee the January 5th g
ame between the host Suns and the Miami Heat. The game was just part of the Arizona jaunt for Donaghy, because Tommy Martino was traveling out to meet him and drop off ten thousand dollars from Battista—and more. “When Tommy went out to see Elvis in Phoenix for one of the payments, I gave Tommy a thousand dollars to take Elvis out and show him a good time. They wound up staying in the same hotel, went to a strip club, and Tommy ordered a couple of girls from some service. They were like two teenagers with money out there doing stupid shit. Tommy was laying out by the pool with one of the hookers, and Elvis was upstairs in one of the hotel rooms throwing full cans of soda down at him. One of the cans just missed hitting one of the girls, and another whizzed by Tommy’s head. Tommy called me on his cell phone and said, ‘You wouldn’t believe what this fucking nut is doing.’ Elvis was forty going on fourteen; he didn’t want to grow up, and he was just a different cat.”
Martino and Donaghy also met with a female acquaintance of Donaghy’s named Cheryl during the Arizona trip, and the salacious circumstances later became tabloid fodder. Though Martino referred to Cheryl as Donaghy’s “girlfriend,” Battista only knew that something was going on between the ref and his Phoenix-based female friend. “Elvis was unhappy in his marriage and couldn’t stand his wife,” Battista says. “He always made it clear that he loved his kids, but couldn’t stand his wife. He used to say how much he’d love to kill her, he hated her so much. He’d talk about his pre-nup and brag that she ‘wasn’t going to get a fucking penny’ if they ever got divorced. Well, supposedly Elvis was cheating on his wife with this girl named Cheryl out there who owned a bar, and Tommy hung out with them during the trip. I never met Cheryl, and I never talked to her on the phone. She sent me an Arizona State baseball hat and a T-shirt from a strip club after that trip, because I had treated them all. At that point everyone was happy, we were making money on games we were betting, and life was good.” Indeed, things were going so well that Martino and Donaghy used the occasions of two other betting payment meetings, respectively, in Toronto and Washington, D.C., to obtain prostitutes from an online service.5
* * *
The night after Tim Donaghy refereed the Suns-Heat matchup, he was in Denver working the Nuggets-Utah Jazz game. After the Jazz beat the host Nuggets, the ref had a rare break ahead of him. Donaghy’s next game wasn’t for another nine days, an eternity during the grind of an NBA official’s schedule. Another meeting with Battista and Martino was in the offing as Donaghy returned to the Philadelphia area to meet with family in advance of his January 15th assignment in Philly, where the Sixers would host the Toronto Raptors.
Battista and Donaghy had not been in each other’s presence since the December 14th meeting that followed their first successful bet together. On the docket for this meeting, at least as far as Battista knew, was a major Donaghy payment. Such payments were a hassle to arrange, given Battista’s paranoia about moving hot money. “Elvis had to go by train, bus, or car,” Battista says, “because I didn’t want him to have to explain why an NBA referee had forty or fifty thousand dollars in cash on him if he flew and his bags got searched.” Given these concerns, Donaghy’s trip to the area was convenient for all involved. “When Elvis came into town to work the Sixers-Toronto game,” Battista says, “we met at Tommy’s house in the afternoon for his first big payment. I think it was forty or forty-five thousand dollars. I gave Elvis some Percocets because he was complaining his back was sore, and I did some blow.” What happened next became the subject of numerous conspiracy theories over time. “While we were there,” Battista says, “Elvis had his laptop and he showed me the master referee schedule. He pointed at the computer and showed me the four guys whose games he was going to bet. He’d say, ‘This is a good guy, this is a good guy,’ and stuff like that. He didn’t say anything to me about why he wanted to bet their games, and I didn’t ask.”6 Needless to say, when presented with the prospects of growing the market, so to speak, Battista was ecstatic. “When he told me about those other refs, I was so fucking excited! All I could think about was how we were going to get more inside information and more sure winners.”
It was also during this fairly momentous meeting that Battista, who was never close with Donaghy despite knowing him for years, got an up close view of the person so reviled by many who knew him. Whereas Gerry Donaghy was universally revered among his referee peers and embraced by those who were fortunate enough to come in contact with him, his son Tim had a markedly different disposition and reputation.7 In fact, Tim Donaghy’s temper and off-the-court behavior almost cost him his job with the NBA, not long before hooking up with Jimmy Battista. When asked to describe his close friend Tim “Elvis” Donaghy, Tommy Martino simply calls him “greedy and cheap.” Battista’s assessment, based in part on the January 2007 meeting, is a bit more biting. “Elvis was the greediest motherfucker I ever met in my life. He was only worried about getting paid. He was also a racist, and was resentful toward the NBA. Elvis would bad mouth them to death, and say things like, ‘These niggers are overpaid.’ He took it personal that these guys were making so much money more than he was. I didn’t really give a shit about his views. I just wanted to make money, and just wanted to hear who he liked.”
* * *
A few weeks later, The Sheep was tending to other, more significant matters involving his role as one of the world’s most consequential sports betting movers. The Super Bowl each February was always one of the primary events at which pro gamblers settled with agents, movers, and bookmakers. For Battista, one of this year’s settling figures was in dispute, since he was still livid over the horse racing bet fiasco with Paramount Sports and Joe Vito. Battista felt Joe Vito should have fought harder with Paramount on The Sheep’s behalf, and that he was owed one hundred and two thousand dollars. Battista, who was willing to round the total figure owed him down to a neat hundred grand, saw an opportunity to settle the score with Joe Vito at the Super Bowl.
“When it was time for me and two of my partners to settle up money at the Super Bowl,” Battista says, “we owed Joe fifty-two thousand dollars. I told my partners that I would take care of the situation, and that we wouldn’t be dealing with Joe anymore; we’d be taking our customers elsewhere. When I spoke with Joe I told him, ‘You know what? I am settling for these guys and you can take the fifty-two grand off of what you owe me. Now you can just owe me forty-eight thousand.’ My sense of everything was that he still owed me for the horse, so I would take their money and not pass it along to Joe. Well, we had a ‘phone war’ over this, and he wound up sending his assistant over to my house asking me to straighten everything out. Joe’s guy used to be over my house a lot, and was friendly with my kids, but I was like, ‘Get the fuck out of here! He fucked me, so here’s the Vaseline.’ ” And so, the roughly twenty prosperous years of working with Joe Vito were over, and Battista felt a degree of vindication. There was, however, the underlying concern that Joe had ratted him out within the past year during Joe Vito’s plea negotiations with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office. Indeed, Battista would revisit his fears in this regard within months, and the question of who had won this battle would be revisited as well.
* * *
Now more than a month into the Battista-driven scheme, his bungling co-conspirators were creating problems for The Sheep again. Though none necessarily proved fatal, the difficulties demonstrated that the sure thing of earnings on Donaghy’s games was still, at its core, reliant upon Donaghy and Martino. “There was one time where Tommy tried to give his own selection on a game. Elvis said to Tommy, ‘You choose the game.’ I got into an argument with Tommy after we lost that bet. I said, ‘You don’t fucking choose the game. Elvis is the one who is working the game. How can you choose the game?’ Tommy said, ‘But why can’t I pick a game?’ and I yelled back at him, ‘Because Elvis is gonna control the game, you idiot!’ I just think it was a situation where the two of them would get together, smoke a few bones, get stoned off their asses, and Elvis probably said some
thing like, ‘If you think you can pick a game, pick a game.’ ”8 The dynamic duo of Martino and Donaghy also caused Battista grief when it came to speaking on phones registered in their names—a no-no if there ever was one in Battista’s betting operations over the years. In fact, The Sheep’s phone concerns would be validated in the near future, causing considerable problems for all three men. For now, the lack of adherence to protocol simply added to Battista’s anxiety. “I didn’t want them using their regular cell phones for our calls,” Battista says, “especially because they talked so much. I was paranoid about their phones being tapped. I got Elvis and Tommy their own dummy phones—phones that were not in any of our names—for calls about the bets and stuff like that. But, they were too fucking stupid to use them. One time, Tommy called me using the proper phone, the dummy phone, but then called me minutes later from his regular phone! It was so stupid, but there was nothing I could do about those two.”9
By the time February came to an end, Tim Donaghy had refereed thirty-two games since the December Marriott meeting, and the scheme was as fruitful as the co-conspirators had envisioned. Unfortunately for Jimmy Battista, the easy and considerable profits brought him little joy and certainly no peace, because the Donaghy situation was just a blip on The Sheep’s busy radar screen. Battista still had the onerous job of betting games for the world’s sharps and concealing all he did, while incessantly worrying about the FBI whispers and Joe Vito’s rumored actions. Battista’s addiction to OxyContin, which was greatly influenced by his over-active career and related lifestyle to begin with, worsened, and was finally affecting his business. Jimmy’s relationship with his wife and kids was also never this bad, and Battista found himself at the lowest point in his life, even as he was in the midst of one of the biggest scandals in U.S. sports history.
Gaming the Game Page 17