When Battista was afforded the opportunity to make a statement, he choked back tears as he told the Court, “I’m not blaming either of my codefendants, Mr. Martino or Mr. Donaghy. I made bad choices, and I take full responsibility for what I did.” After Battista publicly apologized to his wife, his kids, and his family, Judge Amon moved toward sentencing and said, ‘This is a very serious wagering offense. The NBA, fans, and players depend on the integrity of the game and no single person is more important to the integrity of the game than the referee. If his interest is compromised in any way, the entire sport is compromised.” Amon sentenced Battista to fifteen months in federal prison, and Tommy Martino next received a sentence of twelve months.1 The suspense for both men was finally over, but the year-long drama involving each of their camps was not.
“As we were leaving the courtroom,” Battista says, “Tommy wished me luck and said, ‘I hope the time goes fast for you,’ and I said something similar back to him. Tommy’s older brother, Johnny, came up to me at that point, and his hand was trembling like crazy as he tried to shake my hand. He said, ‘I’m going to be cordial at these events, but that’s it. You brought my brother into this,’ and I just waved Johnny off and said, ‘Come on. Be serious.’ We all got outside the courtroom, and there was a ton of press people waiting there for us. My lawyer, Jack McMahon, was surrounded by the media and started answering questions when Johnny said something to him. Jack just smiled and laughed at him and continued addressing the press. Johnny was trying to look like the older brother taking care of his younger brother.”
“This guy, I didn’t even know it was Martino’s brother at first,” Jack McMahon says, “said something to Jimmy about being an asshole who ought to be ashamed of himself for what he did to Tommy. I turned to the guy and told him, ‘Yo. There is no need for this. This isn’t the time or place for anything like that,’ because I just wanted to get out of there. Well, he started in on me for defending Jimmy, he called me names, told me I should join the Hair Club for Men, and all sorts of stuff.2 I said, ‘Who the fuck are you? I don’t even know who you are, and you’re talking to me this way?’ That’s when he said that Jimmy and I fucked his brother, and I immediately stopped him and said, ‘Look, pal. You’re just a fucking asshole. Nobody fucked your brother. He fucked himself.’ I wasn’t going to let this guy come at me, and scream at me. Well, then, his father—the guy I had spent so much time helping even though his son wasn’t even my client—started screaming at me. It was bizarro world.”
“Jack overheard Tommy’s dad saying that I corrupted his son,” Battista says, “and Jack said, ‘Corrupted your son? Are you kidding?!’ More words were exchanged between the Martinos and Jack, and I asked Jack why he was getting into this because there didn’t need to be a show there. I also felt bad for Mr. Martino, who looked like he was going to have a heart attack. I didn’t like what he and Johnny were saying about me, but they didn’t know the whole story about Tommy and how much drugs he sold over the years. They had no idea he was a drug dealer who was selling pounds of pot, and selling coke and stuff. I don’t think Tommy was ever arrested for dealing drugs, so to Johnny and Mr. Martino, I put Tommy in prison.
“We were on the tenth floor of the building, and finally the Martinos went down the elevators. I was still waiting for Jack to finish talking to the reporters. Elvis’ lawyer, John Lauro, was down the hallway with one of the NBA’s attorneys looking out a window talking. I was always pissed at Lauro for saying that I threatened Timmy and his family, because that never happened. He came down and said, ‘Good luck to you buddy. I hope everything works out.’ He put his hand out for me to shake, but there was no way that was going to happen. I would rather have used my hand to knock his teeth out, so I just shook my head, turned around, and walked away. When we got out of the elevators downstairs, Johnny approached Jack, and they started at each other again.”
“I thought things finally ended when we all went downstairs,” McMahon says, “but when we got downstairs the father started screaming at me again! It was like something out of Alice in Wonderland. I didn’t really say anything back to the father because he was just a little old Italian guy.”3 By now, Battista just wanted to get over to the U.S. Marshal’s Office to turn himself in. “Tommy looked at me like he was embarrassed by Johnny trying to look like a hero, and said, ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ as they left the courthouse,” Battista says. “Meanwhile, Jack was as red as a beet, and I was laughing and said, ‘What are you doing? You are the lawyer. Why am I telling you to calm down? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?!’ ”
Laugh as he might about the surreal scene outside the courtroom, Battista was mildly surprised and seriously disheartened about the sentence he had just received. “I was a little bit shocked at the fifteen months,” Battista says, “because for just illegal gambling, that was a stiff sentence. By that point, I was down the federal building in Philadelphia every week pissing in a cup and had a clean record. The FBI agents followed me everywhere I went, like I was an operative for the French Connection or something. There have been plenty of other people who had done far worse things than me who got less time. One of the FBI agents who worked the case said he felt bad for me, because he thought fifteen months was too much.
“It bothered me that the court wouldn’t recognize my drug rehab program, which would have reduced my sentence; it could have been a reduction in the sentencing guidelines. After I got clean at White Deer Run, I entered a program called ‘Change or Die’ at the Malvern Center where I went to meetings at least once a day. It wasn’t appointed by a court, though, which is how you save time on your sentencing. I went in and got clean before I was ever arrested. The feds used to follow me to my meetings and even came into the meetings. My two codefendants each went into programs for their addictions after they got arrested. I am a drug addict and I take responsibility for the things I did, but I was upset I didn’t get credit for getting clean on my own and for trying to turn my life around.
“Part of me was mad that I didn’t get five to seven months, but I was relieved because at least it was closure. I was glad I didn’t bring anybody else down with me, I wasn’t a rat, and the only people suffering were my family. I really thought I’d get ten months, and I was hoping for five to seven. I could have lived with that for what I did. I have five kids, and fifteen months away is a long time. A day—hell, an hour —to a little kid is a long time. For me to be away for a year or more and miss their school, Christmas, and all sorts of activities, was going to be tough on me and on them. It was a good thing I didn’t bring my wife and kids to the sentencing hearing.”
Six days after Battista and Martino were sentenced, Tim Donaghy was before the same court to hear his plight. Judge Amon sentenced Donaghy to fifteen months in prison, noting, “The NBA, the players and the fans relied on him to perform his job in an honest and uncomplicated manner.”4 Amon added that Donaghy was “more culpable” than Battista and Martino, stating, “Mr. Donaghy was a central figure in the scheme, and without him, there would have been no scheme.” The judge also ordered three years of supervised release and treatment for Donaghy’s gambling addiction. Though harsher than the probation Team Donaghy had requested, for Jimmy Battista, Donaghy’s sentence was too light and just the latest example of Donaghy manipulating others. “I was disgusted,” Battista says. “I thought he would get eighteen to twenty-four months. It was a sham based on the words of a pathological liar. Part of that was my fault, though, because the feds wanted to talk to me and go against him, but I wouldn’t. That could’ve helped me, and absolutely would have hurt Timmy. For us to get the same sentence is like saying we were equally wrong. I didn’t work for the NBA, I never asked him to fix games, and he was doing this before I ever got hooked up with him. How were we even close to equal? But, being the fucking egomaniac and pathological liar he is, some people are going to listen to him.” Battista, a recovering drug addict, is not entirely receptive to Donaghy’s claims of gambling addiction. “Timmy
loved to fuck with people, going back years,” Battista says. “A lot of the shit he did to people wasn’t funny, and he has always been a greedy, mean-spirited motherfucker. So, he might have been addicted to gambling, but to me his betting was just the next thing with him.”
* * *
On September 18, 2008, Jimmy Battista began serving his fifteen-month sentence at the federal detention center in Brooklyn.5 The detention center was a far cry from the white-collar prison environment to which Battista assumed he would be sentenced. Battista believes he may have been sent to a general population prison because he didn’t cooperate with authorities, who may also have been holding out hope the incarceration with violent criminals would compel Battista to revisit his decision not to speak with the FBI. The feds, of course, began their investigation with him, not with Tim Donaghy, and knew the spokes emanating out from Battista went far beyond the NBA betting scandal to the highest reaches of the global sports betting underworld. Less than a week after Battista entered prison, Tim Donaghy reported to the minimum-security federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida. With the NBA betting scandal’s two lead conspirators incarcerated, the sports world was now awaiting the release of the league’s officiating program review.
* * *
Lawrence B. Pedowitz, a partner at the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, formerly served as Chief of the Criminal Division in the active U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. In August 2007, Pedowitz was selected by the NBA to head the review of the league’s officiating program. He says that when he was interviewed by the league, they focused on his prior criminal investigation experience and his appointment by a federal district court to oversee a mob-infested union for six years in the 1990s. Pedowitz also says he and his firm also have a track record of “handling internal investigations and related inquiries for major companies.” As Pedowitz explained to the press:
We were retained by the Commissioner of the NBA and the audit committee of the NBA to do a review that has had three areas of focus. First, the NBA asked us to determine if referees, other than Tim Donaghy, had bet on NBA games or had leaked confidential information to gamblers. Second, the NBA also asked us to do a forward-looking compliance review, and look at the NBA’s rules, policies and procedures, and compliance systems, to see if we could recommend steps that might prevent a reoccurrence of this type of incident. Third, we were also asked to do a review of the referee program to see if we could recommend improvements.
With the assistance of a research team from his law firm, Larry Pedowitz conducted more than two hundred interviews with referees and team and NBA personnel over fourteen months, resulting in his “Report to the Board of Governors of the National Basketball Association.” The one hundred and sixteen-page assessment, which also includes reviews of several game tapes, was submitted to the NBA on October 1, 2008, and released to the press the following day. The so-called “Pedowitz Report” examines numerous aspects of officiating and (often arcane) NBA policy. Its key findings regarding the referee betting scandal focus on two preeminent issues: whether other referees were involved and whether the outcomes of games were influenced by Donaghy and/or other officials. On these matters of primacy, the report respectively states:
We have discovered no information suggesting that any NBA referee other than Tim Donaghy has bet on NBA games or leaked confidential NBA information to gamblers . . . Donaghy has denied intentionally making calls designed to manipulate games, and the government has said that it found “no evidence that Donaghy ever intentionally made a particular ruling during a game in order to increase the likelihood that his gambling pick would be correct.” Based on our review, and with the information we have available, we are unable to contradict the government’s conclusion.
Media observers almost universally and uncritically accepted the report’s conclusions, as can be inferred from the following sample of headlines covering the report’s release: “Donaghy Report Clears Other Refs” (Washington Post); “Probe: No evidence of other referees’ misconduct” (USA Today); “Report confirms Donaghy was the only corrupt referee, clears NBA” (Philadelphia Daily News); “Review of NBA officials finds Donaghy only culprit” (ESPN.com); “NBA referees are cleared; Report: Only Donaghy guilty” (Boston Globe), and “Report: Donaghy fixed games alone” (Newsday).
Problematically, however, the Pedowitz Report notes, “Despite our repeated requests, Donaghy has declined to speak with us. The government also has declined to share any nonpublic information from its investigation with us.” Combined with Battista’s refusal to speak with its researchers, the Pedowitz group was confined to reviewing the public record, namely court filings. This critical weakness doomed the NBA’s “study” from being anything more than a rather superficial synopsis of court activity, and kept it far from being an incisive look into the scandal.
By November 2008, with the scheme’s co-conspirators in prison, and the NBA’s “study” completed, for most the betting scandal story was over; public opinion had largely been formed, and was hardening. Outside of the law enforcement community and a few die-hard scandal followers, many had not considered how necessarily superficial the understanding was without access to Jimmy Battista, to his records, and to those in his circle who wouldn’t dare cooperate in earnest with authorities.6
* * *
Footnotes
Judge Amon also ruled on July 23, 2008, that the NBA was entitled to a total of $217,267 in restitution from Battista, Martino, and Tim Donaghy.
Jack McMahon is bald. John Martino said of the exchange with McMahon, “In the heat of the moment, you go for the first thing you see, and I saw that chrome dome.’’
The heated exchange made for some interesting media coverage, including one report which noted, “Downstairs in the lobby, Martino’s father became infuriated at McMahon; with eyes bulging, he tried to lunge at McMahon and had to be restrained by both of his sons.”
Donaghy was technically sentenced to two fifteen-month sentences, one each for the two counts to which he pleaded guilty, but Judge Amon ordered the sentences to be served concurrently.
The facility is technically the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) Brooklyn, New York.
This list of informed gambling sources includes Battista’s partners, his colleagues, his clients, his adversaries, bookmakers, and those sportsbook officials who knew—or should have known—about the curiosities in betting line moves on Donaghy’s games. Largely as a result of this crowd’s lack of forthright cooperation with various authorities, Tim Donaghy’s version of events, starting with his seminal 2007 trip to meet with the FBI in New York and running through his 2009 release from prison and beyond, remained predominant as of March 2010.
State of The Sheep
THE RESEARCH FOR Gaming the Game began in March 2008 with extensive interviews of Jimmy Battista, who was debating his next steps in the court process at the time (he pleaded guilty weeks after our first meeting). Interviews of Battista in March and April were augmented on occasion until Battista entered prison in September 2008. Because the plan was always to explore big-time betting and the NBA scandal, the research was never intended to cover his imprisonment or the melodrama that would likely play out for years afterward as the scandal was debated. There is thus no such narrative or analysis in that regard. I thought, however, it might be enlightening to catch up with Battista after his August 2009 release from prison to glean his perspective on certain issues after time had passed and he was no longer in the hot spotlight.1 What follows are brief post-prison insights into the former pro gambler’s views on various professional and personal matters.
On Tim Donaghy’s “Extortion”/“Mob” Allegations
“The first time I heard Timmy was saying I threatened him was when it was in the news,” Battista says. “I sort of knew something like that was going on because a few people close to me in the business were approached by the feds and proffered against me. Luckily for me they were men enough to let me kn
ow what they were asked and what they told the feds. The one thing they each were asked first was whether I threatened Timmy or not. These guys have all known me for, like, twenty years, and they laughed at the idea that I would threaten Timmy. They essentially told the FBI, ‘Listen, that wasn’t in Sheep’s character, to threaten anybody. As fucked up as he was on drugs and whatever he was going through in his personal life, he was always the guy trying to help people out.’ The truth is that part of my problem has always been trying to appease everyone and make them happy. Th reatening Timmy, or especially his poor wife and kids, was the furthest thing from what I was like. Listen, I was a gambler. I’m not the best father in the world, but I try to be a good dad. I would never, in a million years, threaten anyone’s family. It just isn’t me.
“When we met at the Marriott and then went to the gas station, Tommy and Timmy were both stoned off their asses, and I had two lines of coke in me. We were in a great mood because we knew we were going to make money! It wasn’t like I said {Battista says in a sarcastically dastardly tone}, ‘Oh, well, you’re going to fix games for me and tell me who you like or you’re going to be like Luca Brasi and sleep with the fishes.’ Timmy’s just trying to cover up his involvement in one of the greatest scandals in sports history. Why not say, ‘Well, the mob threatened me, and that’s why I did it!’?
“The federal government never considered me as being a mob associate or anything like that, because I wasn’t! In my eyes, I had no ties to organized crime except that they were bookmakers and we were bettors; that’s the only ties I ever had to organized crime. If anything, the mobsters were the fi sh and my guys were the sharks , and anybody that knew what we were doing knows that.2 Now, is it possible that the FBI heard on a Gambino wiretap that I was betting large amounts of money on Donaghy’s games? Sure. But just because I bet with somebody in, say, Conshohocken who bets with somebody in, say, North Jersey, and somehow that gets filtered into the Gambino family or other crime groups doesn’t mean I was involved in some mafia conspiracy or extortion or threats or anything like that.”
Gaming the Game Page 27