Gaming the Game

by Sean Patrick Griffin

  The criminal justice process was moving forward in late July, essentially unaffected by the circus that was now taking place in the media, in the blogosphere, and especially on chat boards, where conspiracy theories were running wild. Jimmy Battista and Tommy Martino were still on the outside of the federal investigation looking in until July 26th, when Martino made the fateful decision to cooperate with authorities against his lifelong friend.

  Footnotes

  Martino told the FBI that he first learned of the investigation from Battista.

  An FBI summary of Martino’s interview about this states, “After Martino was interviewed by the FBI and received a subpoena, he called Baba and met him at the King of Prussia Mall.”

  Tommy Martino characterized the payment in question for the FBI as an “additional $10,000 for [his] work on the scheme.” Of minor note, Martino told authorities he gave Battista $400.

  An FBI memo summarizing one of Martino’s early interviews in mid-May (i.e., before agreeing to cooperate with the federal government, after which he was more forthcoming) discloses a mix of fact and fiction, the latter best embodied by his comments regarding Tim Donaghy and Jimmy Battista: “Martino describes Donaghy as straight-laced . . . Donaghy, as a referee, knew that he could not be associated with gambling. Martino stated that Donaghy would never provide inside information to Battista.”

  Tom Siegel was chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section (OCRS) of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, housed in Brooklyn.

  It was later rumored the FBI had either purchased or rented a home across the street and three houses down from Battista’s Phoenixville, PA, home.

  According to Tommy Martino’s FBI interviews, the code word “cranberries” was suggested by Tim Donaghy and meant “keep your mouth shut.” The FBI wrote of this situation, “Baba told Martino to keep everything between himself, Martino and Donaghy.”

  The 2007 NBA Championship series between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the San Antonio Spurs took place between June 7 and June 14, 2007.

  These conferences essentially consist of subjects and targets of investigations offering information to authorities in the hopes of obtaining beneficial plea agreements, immunity against prosecution, etc. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, before pleading guilty, Donaghy met with federal law enforcement officials on June 15th, June 27th, July 6th, and August 8th.

  As the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York wrote much later in support of a downward departure from the sentencing guidelines in consideration of Donaghy’s cooperation, “In early 2007, the government began investigating illegal gambling activity involving the NBA. By May 2007, the investigation had identified Donaghy as the referee, and had uncovered the basic roles played in the scheme by Donaghy, Battista, and Martino. On May 30, 2007, Martino appeared before a grand jury, and committed perjury. Several days after Martino’s grand jury testimony, the government was contacted by an attorney [not John Lauro] representing Donaghy. Prior to that point, the government had not approached Donaghy, nor had the government publicly disclosed that it was investigating him.”

  FBI SSA Phil Scala has since retired, and is the lone agent who can speak publicly about the case.

  The Dog Days of Summer

  TOMMY MARTINO MADE the trek up to Brooklyn in the hopes of somehow backtracking his earlier false statements to the FBI and, more importantly, to the grand jury. The late July meeting was the first of three such conferences that would take place within two weeks for Martino, who was now represented by Delaware County attorney Vicki Herr.1 The proffer session was attended by all relevant federal officials: FBI Special Agents Conrad and Harris, their squad supervisor Phil Scala, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Tom Siegel, Jeff Goldberg, and Jack Smith. Martino offered the authorities insights into all sorts of consequential matters, ranging from his background with Battista and Donaghy to Martino’s role in the local drug trade to exquisite details of the NBA betting scandal that only he and Battista would know. Just as was the case with much of what Donaghy told authorities, there were no records to buttress Martino’s claims on a host of important matters, including and especially Donaghy’s bets and Battista’s financial transactions orchestrated throughout the scheme. Even if the feds had come to accept Martino’s latest version of events as a fair and truthful assessment, there was no way to support or refute his many statements without access to Battista or his records. After all, The Sheep was the lone conspirator with a mind for numbers and a pedigree for record keeping—and for whom keeping track of everything was a necessity. Just as Martino began working behind the scenes against his childhood buddy—literally, on the same blistering summer day—Battista was dealing with a more overt and pressing problem a hundred and sixteen miles southwest of Brooklyn in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

  “The first time I noticed the press,” Battista says, “was one day when I was going out to walk Fluffy, my dog, and there was this guy parked right in front of my house. He said he was so-and-so, and I told him I couldn’t talk to him and that I didn’t want him on my property. Meanwhile, it was so hot and humid—it was a million fucking degrees—and I noticed this guy had his dog in the car. I said, ‘You’re gonna kill that poor thing.’ I came out later and gave him a bowl and a bottle of water and told him, ‘This is for the dog, not you.’ That guy camped out front, and stayed overnight.2 A lot of reporters were on my block, waiting to get pictures of me, usually walking the dog, and they would go door-to-door asking my neighbors about me. Luckily, my wife and kids were down the shore because I didn’t want them to have to deal with that.” It was also fortunate for Battista that he and his family were so open about his chosen profession since, when the nation’s media outlets pressed friends and neighbors for a “gotcha” story or a sensational revelation, virtually all knew Jimmy Battista was a gambler.

  “I always told people I was a professional gambler,” Battista says, “going back at least to the early 2000s. I never introduced myself that way, necessarily, and I was always as evasive as possible, but if people actually asked me, that’s what I would tell them. I never made anything up or lied to people. When we went to parties in our development, it was hard to explain to our friends and neighbors what I did. I’d tell them I was a gambler, but they couldn’t grasp I was doing that full-time . I’m sure some people thought it was a shady line of work, but they didn’t know what kind of people I was working with. They probably couldn’t imagine people like medical doctors, hedge fund traders, real estate moguls, and sports team owners betting on sports as a major part of their business lives.” Part of the reason so many people knew about Battista’s profession was because of his large and active family. Having five children who were involved in school and with sports meant that the kids were constantly among their friends, classmates, and teammates, and conversations would often give others a glimpse of The Sheep’s career and lifestyle.

  “Everyone knew I was a gambler,” Battista says. “A couple of years I went out to Vegas for a few weeks and invited my entire family to come visit. We’d have like fourteen kids out there with us, and we’d vacation together. I’d stay at the South Coast Casino, and get some work done while we were there. I had a friend there, Larry, who had a relationship with one of the sportsbook managers. Larry was a mover and he had outs; I would give him the games, and he would let me bet big dollars. Larry introduced me to the manager of one of the bigger sportsbooks, this guy named Ernie, who allowed me to place big bets. We would open him up early in the morning, before anyone else and before the market got saturated. He’d let me bet five games at a hundred thousand apiece before anyone else saw the lines. In the four or five years I bet with them, I never worked with them myself. I always had people working for me deal with them. Larry and Ernie got a percentage of the earnings, and we’d settle at the end of the year. That is why I was treated like royalty when I’d visit Vegas.

  “I’d stay for
ten days, three weeks, whatever, and they’d put me up in a suite. The rooms we used to stay in were incredible, and everything was comped. We’d have five or six bathrooms in our room. Each of my kids would have their own bathroom. We’d eat great, and my kids would eat everything under the sun, from chicken tenders to lobster tail. Over the years, my wife and I got to see so many great shows, always had incredible seats, and we never had to pay. They wanted to take care of me out there, and I didn’t ask for as much as a lot of people. We lived simple lives, we liked having nice meals, and seeing some shows. We did a lot of things with our kids out there, too. Of course, I worked a lot when I was out there, too. We’d get out there at least once or twice a year, and we did that for years. We always went as a family. My wife and I only went out there once without the kids, for a weekend, because there was so much for the kids to do. We stayed at the Coast Casinos, at Caesar’s, Bellagio; it varied. The thing is, though, that all of our neighbors and our kids’ friends knew we used to vacation out there and why.”

  Events surrounding the betting scandal investigation were now fast and furious, with many playing out in the public sphere. One of the more curious, and yet key, moments took place on July 30th when Pete Ruggieri’s attorney, prominent Philly defense lawyer Christopher Warren, held court with the press to discuss his client’s cooperation with the FBI. Ruggieri had met with agents eight days earlier in Warren’s Center City office, where the pro gambler explained why and how long he and others knew to bet on games Tim Donaghy officiated, and also his understanding of why Donaghy switched from betting with Jack Concannon to Jimmy Battista. Ruggieri, of course, had known Concannon and Battista for years, and knew them extremely well. He explained that Concannon, whose last name and involvement were not publicly discussed yet, had approached him years prior seeking advice on where he could place bets, at which point Ruggieri referred him to offshore betting operations.3 Ruggieri tracked Concannon’s bets and, as Warren explained, “Ruggieri noticed that Jack kept winning bets on NBA games,” Warren said. “Ruggieri looked harder and noticed that Jack bet on games officiated by Tim Donaghy.” As the Philadelphia Daily News put it, “Pete Ruggieri thought he had it all, the inside track to winning the majority of bets he would place on the NBA. The method was simple: bet games that Tim Donaghy officiated.”

  Ruggieri told authorities that he estimated bets on games Donaghy officiated won between sixty and seventy percent of the time, and that the same was true later when Donaghy switched from betting with Jack Concannon to Jimmy Battista. Warren’s discussion of what Ruggieri told authorities was succinctly recounted in the New York Daily News on July 31st: “Donaghy first partnered with a fellow professional gambler named “Jack” . . . [and] grew dissatisfied with the money Jack funneled back to him as part of the betting scheme . . . Donaghy then turned to high school chums Jimmy Battista and Tommy Martino . . . Soon, a word or bet from Battista would send the point spread on a given NBA game flying. Eventually others realized the common denominator that Ruggieri had already discovered: ex-NBA ref Tim Donaghy.”

  Ruggieri’s version of events regarding Donaghy’s dissatisfaction with Concannon and subsequent move to Battista perfectly mirrored what Tommy Martino was telling federal authorities at the time. Ruggieri’s comments regarding what he was betting and why were also important to the understanding of Donaghy’s actions. Just as Martino was depicting for authorities, pro gambler Ruggieri told the FBI he was mimicking bets first placed by Concannon and then by Battista only for games Donaghy was officiating . These were the bets winning at a ridiculous clip and thus sending bookmakers and sports-books into a frenzy with wild line swings and producing huge earners. Somehow, this key point would wind up getting lost amid all sorts of conspiracy theories within a year’s time, and it thus bears repeating: those with ‘skin in the game,’ namely the sportsbooks and the big-time bettors (and their hangers-on) with millions of dollars at stake, were only concerned with NBA games that Tim Donaghy was officiating.

  History’s take on the scandal would have to wait, however, and the other cooperating witnesses were in the midst of completing their respective proffer sessions. Tim Donaghy met with authorities for a fourth time on August 8th, and was on the verge of accepting a guilty plea. Tommy Martino, on the other hand, met with officials for the third time on the following day, and yet was nowhere close to a deal despite his newfound appreciation for the truth. By this point in the investigation, case agent Paul Harris and his colleagues knew Battista was not going to cooperate and were confident they generally understood the scheme and felt comfortable with Donaghy’s story at its most basic level. The now-former NBA referee bet on his own games with Jack Concannon dating back to the end of the 2002-03 season, and on thirty to forty games he officiated during each of the ’03-04, ’04-05, and ’05-06 seasons. In the particular matter involving Jimmy Battista and Tommy Martino, Donaghy admitted to participating in a scheme with his co-conspirators during the 2006-07 season whereby he would be paid for winning picks (to Battista, via Martino) but not have to pay for losing wagers.

  The only real matters left for debate were the possible fixing of games to advance Donaghy’s betting propositions, and the nuances of the scheme (e.g., duration, bets, results). Concerning the former, Donaghy insisted he did not fix games and that his betting success was instead due exclusively to his access as an NBA referee to “inside information,” including things like the officiating crews for upcoming games (which were not publicly disclosed in advance at the time) and the relationships between players, coaches, referees, etcetera. Regarding the scheme’s logistics, Donaghy claimed: the scheme ended on March 18, 2007, when Battista went into rehab; he bet on thirty games total, including sixteen he officiated, and his betting success was the same regardless of whether he worked the games or not; and he received less than thirty thousand dollars total for his role.

  Much of this flew in the face of what authorities heard from Pete Ruggieri and Tommy Martino, who, for example, had each independently explained to the FBI that it was only wagers on games Donaghy officiated which produced such out-of-this-world results. Ruggieri told the FBI that he copied Donaghy’s bets on games Donaghy was officiating, and Martino told the FBI that Donaghy bet thirty-seven games, including “some” that Donaghy didn’t officiate, implying that the vast majority of the bets were on Donaghy’s games. The clear inference of Martino’s and Ruggieri’s claims was that Donaghy’s version of events was not accurate, to say the least, regarding his betting record, and his assertions that access to “so-called” inside information alone accounted for his betting success.4 Martino also told authorities the scheme continued for three or four Donaghy games after Battista entered rehab, and that Donaghy pushed Martino to take one more game after hearing that Ruggieri was shutting the scheme down. Lastly, Martino had informed the FBI that he paid Donaghy at least one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars total over three months or so.

  Federal authorities, for whom a white-collar gambling probe based in Phoenixville, PA, was a far cry from their traditional Brooklyn-grounded mob cases, concluded that trying to resolve these discrepancies was not worth their time and use of resources. This was in large part because of a lack of supporting evidence, most of which resided with Jimmy Battista and his files and which was therefore out of the FBI’s reach. In addition to that significant void in the probe, there were no court-authorized wiretapped conversations of the parties during the conspiracy. The Bureau did what little it could to vet Donaghy’s claim he didn’t influence or manipulate games, including having a team of agents review approximately fourteen of Donaghy’s 2006-07 games, and saw nothing overtly dubious in Donaghy’s actions. Agents also interviewed various people in the sports betting world (some of whom no doubt who had interests to protect) regarding things like whether they had heard of anything odd involving NBA games, especially those officiated by Tim Donaghy.5 These inquiries again, in the parlance of law enforcement, produced negative results.

  Incredibly
, federal officials never researched one wholly objective set of data which doesn’t need a witness to vouch for its validity and which was available to them—betting line move analyses for NBA games, including those just for games Donaghy officiated. Unlike the statements of cooperating witnesses, which are always viewed with a critical eye, especially when the witness has interests to protect, the historical and unassailable betting line data has no motivations. Such an analysis could have disclosed, for instance, whether the line movement in Donaghy games was constant during the years he was betting, if it changed in any particular year (i.e., 2006-07) or in any specific time period (i.e., December 12, 2006–March 26, 2007), and so on. No one set of data or analyses in a circumstantial case like the NBA betting scandal is likely sufficient to conclude or prove anything. Rather, when hard, objective data exists, it can at least form the foundation for lines of inquiry, and assist in supporting or refuting the many subjective areas of a case.

  In addition to more important aspects of the case, investigators also briefly humored two claims Tim Donaghy made during his proffer sessions, including one that would become legend when it became public. During his interviews, Donaghy told authorities that the origin of the scheme was Jimmy Battista threatening Donaghy twice on December 12, 2006, to give him his NBA picks. Specifically, Donaghy claimed Battista said that unless Donaghy gave him the picks Battista would “out” Donaghy to the NBA regarding his betting on games he was officiating, and that Battista told Donaghy, “you don’t want anyone from New York visiting your wife and kids.” Donaghy further explained to authorities that he assumed “New York” meant “the Mafia” because Tommy Martino had mentioned at some point that Battista knew someone who was connected to organized crime.