"But they all had a piece of the pizza." The main problem now was keeping a lid on the thing. "Maybe the company never sat at a table together," he says. One member of the group called it "the ticket" and "the company." 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. 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. 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. Strictly speaking, movers are neither gamblers nor bookmakers. 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.īattista was a creature of that world.
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NBA commissioner at the time of the scandal.īattista had known the ref, Timmy Donaghy, for 25 years. Filed for divorce immediately after the investigation became public.įBI special agent and head of the investigative unit focused on the Gambino crime family at the time of the investigation. Wife of Tim Donaghy at the time of the scandal. 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. 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. High school friend of Donaghy and Battista who served as the go-between in the betting scheme during the 2006-2007 NBA season. Veteran NBA referee who wagered on his own games but was never charged with manipulating them. Underground bet broker, or mover, who was at the center of the Tim Donaghy betting scheme.
![diver jimmy cheats diver jimmy cheats](http://cwer.ws/media/files/u2407325/01/Diver_Jimmy__3_.jpg)
They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme - what you might call a sustained period of time. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing Battista would eat the loss. If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. "Then you gotta cover the f-ing spread." The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game - an outrageous bargain. "You wanna get paid?" Battista had said to the ref. Now he feared the scheme had become too obvious.
![diver jimmy cheats diver jimmy cheats](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3bDFb60_H-0/hqdefault.jpg)
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. 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. July 9 is the anniversary of Donaghy's resignation from the NBA. Editor's note: This two-year investigation, which revealed how disgraced referee Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA games, whom he did it with and the millions of dollars that flowed from the conspiracy, was originally published on Feb.