Gaming the Game

by Sean Patrick Griffin

  If it wasn’t ridiculous enough that Donaghy didn’t know his bets were ending up with Battista, whom he knew for years, and with whom he had partied on occasion, there was an incredible footnote to the already surreal, two-degrees-of-separation story. Tim Donaghy was close friends with Jimmy Battista’s lifelong pal, Tommy Martino, and the last time all three men were together was at Martino’s wedding. Nevertheless, Battista says he never let his buddy in on the remarkable situation. “Even though I talked to Tommy every once in a while from Curacao, and even though he was probably talking to Timmy all the time back then,” Battista says, “Tommy didn’t know what Timmy was doing with his betting, and he didn’t know what I was doing with Timmy’s bets. Obviously, I wasn’t going to tell Tommy. This was incredible and I wasn’t going to fuck it up by telling anybody.”

  Ever the savvy business entrepreneur, for whom “less was more,” secrecy was key, and such sound business acumen allowed him to mimic Donaghy’s bets unfettered for the next four NBA seasons. It also helped that Battista was so consumed by his hyperactive betting career, of which the Donaghy discovery was a bit part.

  Footnotes

  Technically, Ronnie Park cut distinct deals with each Animal, and Battista doesn’t pretend to know the particulars of the other offers.

  “Paramount Sports” is a pseudonym for what is likely the world’s most consequential offshore sportsbook. Paramount typically takes the largest bets and has considerable influence in adjusting the world’s betting lines, in large part because it is widely acknowledged that the top sharps wager with Paramount most frequently. “Paramount’s line was the bible of the gambling industry,” says Battista. “They paid almost no attention to the other lines. They didn’t care. If you were going to move their line, you were betting serious money. They also knew, though, that the sharp guys might invest a few hundred thousand to put people on Queer Street and to move the lines.”

  The offshore sportsbook name “All-Star Sports” is a pseudonym.

  Parting Ways, Glory Days

  AS JIMMY BATTISTA returned from his rather eventful stint in Curacao, those outside of his immediate circle still knew little about what he was really up to. Though now living in an upscale neighborhood near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, The Sheep consciously maintained a low profile. This included driving a rather modest 1998 Dodge Caravan with more than 100,000 miles on it. “Could I have afforded a Mercedes or some other nice car? Absolutely, but I dressed like a slob, wanted to look like a slob,” Battista says. “There was no need to advertise. Less was more: the less people knew about me, the better it was for me. In my early days, my twenties, I was flamboyant, running the streets, and drove a Mercedes 190. As I got older, probably by my late 20s, I realized how stupid all that was.” Now among the best movers in the pro gambling world, Battista had the proper perspective to exploit his earned standing. “The guys I was working with in the Philly suburbs were very successful,” he says. “They looked at the gangsters downtown—who were so flashy and were always getting their names in the papers, always drawing attention to themselves, walking into bars and dropping hundreds—as fools. We had a different mind-set: ‘You’re with your wife. You’re with your kids. You work all fucking day long. You make the doughnuts. You work your ass off.’ We didn’t want to be known. Why would we? We didn’t want anyone to know that we were the ones who were going to take all that money out of the market. As far as everybody knew, we were just ‘everyday guys.’

  “It was a great business model. We all dressed in shorts and T-shirts. When The Animals got together, people had no idea who we were or that we were the big money behind certain things. I think if people would have seen us, these three fat slobs, and were told about all the shit we were doing, they would have said, ‘Get the fuck out of here!’ I never felt the urge to tell somebody who I was or what we were doing, to impress them or whatever. Only a fucking idiot would want to tell people what we were up to.”

  Sheep, Tiger, and Bull were now all back in the U.S., with Seal still just a call away within Rinnier’s operation. All four men once again lived and operated within miles of each other in Delaware County, and it seemed these were the best of times. Back in comfortable surroundings with their families near, they continued exploiting the outs and the insider lessons resulting from the All-Star Sports venture in Curacao. The years of priming the world’s sportsbook pumps were paying off, and The Animals never had so many means to get big money down.

  “With some of the offshore places, we dealt through agents in New York, Vegas, or Florida,” Battista says. “With others, we dealt directly with the owners. They didn’t do that with most people, but they knew us. We bet all over the place in Vegas, too, but some places took bigger bets than others. The Coast Casinos were great, and we’d also use Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, and others.” Success oftentimes has an adverse affect on betting operations, depending on the fleeting needs and motives of sportsbooks. This was particularly true for The Animals in Sin City. “There were plenty of times we got flagged by different casinos from betting, and they knew our runners,” Battista says. “Even though we’d try and rotate the runners from different casinos, it was tough because people would find out who they were working for. There were times when our runners couldn’t place bets that we had to send a different person right off the street every day into a casino just to get a bet on a game. If they could get a ten thousand–dollar bet, we’d pay them fifty bucks.”

  The Animals were firing on all cylinders almost immediately since Battista’s return to the U.S., but their decades-long run of booking, betting, and brotherhood was about to come to an end.

  “The Chinaman asked us to move some games for him,” Battista says. “Within a few weeks, we were up big , but then he and Tiger had a falling out. When he and Tiger wanted to take the same side of games, it was a matter of who was going to get more on those games. The other problem was that there were times when Tiger and The Chinaman were against each other on their picks.” The irreconcilable problems were obvious to everyone, and soon The Chinaman asked Battista to come work exclusively with him for the purpose of moving games. “The Chinaman loved the fact that I worked so much and was there all the time,” Battista says. “He wanted to go for the kill when it came to betting, and that took being available around the clock, every day. Tiger was against me leaving because he and The Chinaman were essentially competitors. Tiger and I had worked together for years, but this was an incredible opportunity for me. With The Chinaman, I could still work out of my house most of the time, and then travel to Vegas and other places some of the time. Tiger was an incredible handicapper, but The Chinaman was operating at a level just above him. So, I accepted the offer.”

  Battista’s split with his longtime partners and pals was unthinkable to those in their broader crowd. Their ties extended beyond the betting business, and Tiger was especially off-put by Battista’s decision given all he had done for The Sheep over the years. Further, there were technical matters with which Tiger and Bull would now have to contend. “By going with The Chinaman, I was causing some problems for The Animals because I was the one with the outs,” Battista says. “I couldn’t handicap anywhere near as good as Tiger, Bull, or Seal, but I was the one on the phones and meeting with people for the numbers, the money and everything. Even though I left The Animals on bad terms, I still kept in touch with them because now I had the information. They wanted to know what The Chinaman was betting and how he was moving games, and I needed them to help me move games and stuff like that. So, even though they were pissed at me, we still talked a lot after I split with them.”

  The Sheep’s new partnership would flourish for the next few years, all the while accompanied by anxiety caused by a host of factors, not the least of which was the illegality of what he was doing, now on an even grander scale. The fear of getting caught and what that might mean was offset by Battista’s validation within the international sports betting crowd’s most exclusive club. Throughout, the logistics
of Battista’s betting operations were largely unchanged following the jump to his new partner.

  “The Chinaman was out in Los Angeles, and I was in my house outside of Philly,” Battista says. “At first, working with just The Chinaman was great. He was paying me a salary and a percentage of his winnings. The setup for me was unbelievable, except I was working all the time. I was at home, but I was buried in that box—my office, and I was on the phone all the time . He was a very demanding person to work for, but at least it was worth it. We worked the end of the ’03-04 NFL season, and then started to focus on baseball. The Chinaman owned major league baseball when it came to betting. Pretty soon, the people offshore where I was placing his bets were giving me kickbacks to bet with them because they wanted The Chinaman’s action. They all knew me from when I was working the sportsbook in Curacao.” Battista didn’t have long to get accustomed to his new arrangement with The Chinaman before yet another opportunity arose.

  The Chinaman called Battista and asked him to do a favor for Zorba, who asked The Sheep to move a game for him. In no time, Battista was moving numerous games for Zorba, and for The Computer, who was a partner with Zorba on a host of things. “They liked that they could trust me, that I had the outs that paid, and that I was working all the time,” Battista says. “For a gambler, this ultimate echelon of betting was a market you dreamed of. These guys were just incredible.”

  Moving for three of the world’s most influential bettors quickly brought other rewards. “Pretty soon, word on the street was that Sheep was moving for all these guys,” Battista says, “and I started getting phone calls with people offering me deals to give them the sharp bets. I never even thought of this happening when I first hooked up with The Chinaman. It was a nice bonus to working with them. Sometimes, I would sell the picks, as long as it didn’t affect the bets I was placing for my clients. I actually told The Chinaman I had been offered for some of his games by The Englishman, who might be the world’s best soccer handicapper and bettor. He had no problem with me giving The Englishman his picks because we needed access to parts of the European market, and The Englishman could give it to us. From then on, I moved games for The Englishman, too.” The introduction to The Englishman opened Battista’s eyes and expanded his betting enterprise still further.

  “One of The Englishman’s partners, this guy named Peter, gave me a trip to the Bahamas as a way of showing his appreciation for me giving him the sharp bets,” Battista says. “My wife and I couldn’t go, so I gave the trip to Tommy Martino. He went to the resort Atlantis in the Bahamas with his girlfriend, his brother, Chuck, and his guest. Everything was taken care of, soup-to-nuts, and that trip had to be worth twenty thousand dollars. They would have given me anything at that point because our picks were worth a small fortune. Peter was connected to high-ranking people in British government and had places in Florida, Amsterdam, Dubai—all over the world. Peter wanted to meet, so he and I flew into Orlando and we met in a hotel lobby. He was an older guy, and when I got up to shake his hand, he slapped my face like a grandfather would, smiled, and said [in his polished British accent], ‘My son, we’re going to make lots of money together.’

  “One time, I was on the phone with Peter and he was in Russia at some charity event with [then-U.K. prime minister] Tony Blair. Here I was giving him what games to bet on the phone just as he was sitting at a table with Tony Blair!” On another occasion, Peter was going to the Super Bowl and was expected to be sitting with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in a box. “Peter invited me and my wife to go,” Battista says, “so we give them our social security numbers for the background checks. He called me two weeks before the game and told me that I didn’t get the security clearance to be in the box, and that I’d have to sit in what he called ‘the grandstand.’ It was a nice offer, but we declined. We would have gone if we had gotten in the box with Clinton.” If the perks that went along with having Peter as a client weren’t enough for Battista, there was an important and yet unknown benefit that only a major pro gambler could appreciate—and exploit.

  “At first, I didn’t know that one of Peter’s good friends was Harry at Paramount,” Battista says. “Peter said to me, ‘Harry will give me anything I want. He’ll give me half a million dollars if I ask.’ Inside, I was like, ‘Yes!’ Harry feared us and wouldn’t take big action, so now I looked at Peter as the ultimate out. I felt like I was running the circus, though, because I was now doing big-time deals with The Chinaman, Zorba, The Computer, and The Englishman and his pal, Peter. The Chinaman was using my connections with all these guys to his advantage and we had more ways to get big money down. It was easier for us to get millions of dollars down without affecting the market. My family life was nonexistent, even though I was in the house pretty much the entire time. I’d be in the office with all my computers and all my phones firing away all day and night, every day of the week. That escalation from one to four or five major bettors all took place within a year. By 2005, I was getting mentally destroyed.”

  If The Sheep was struggling at that point in his life, he no doubt couldn’t handle what was on the horizon. His decision to split from his Animal pals had, indeed, brought him the expected wealth and then some. Battista, however, had vastly underestimated what he was getting himself into, and had little if any time to appreciate his newfound standing in the sports betting world.

  Standing on Top of the

  Sports Betting World

  HE HAD REACHED the sports betting summit. Now working with the world’s sharpest bettors, Jimmy Battista’s dayto-day activities would soon become the subject of considerable scrutiny. The Sheep’s betting operation, among the most significant in the industry, was something to behold.

  LOGISTICS

  “In my home gambling office, I had a bunch of laptop and desktop computers, and a few TVs,” Battista says. “I had at least ten computer screens live at all times, and they were essentially stacked three high by four wide. If it was, say, October and basketball season was just beginning and football season was five or six weeks in, my first screen to my lower left would have pro football from the Don Best. The second screen [vertically] would be college football. The top screen would be pro basketball. Those Don Best screens would tell me all the lines from around the world—the casinos, the offshore sportsbooks, and other books. Those screens would change all the time and if a line moved it would show me with a black mark on the screen. If it was a major line move, I had my computer set up that it would actually announce [in a computerized human voice] ‘Major Line Movement.’ That would happen when every bookmaker was getting hit at the same time. So, when I was going out on a game and hitting fifteen to twenty bookmakers at once, the Don Best would notify people like me. On the far right of my desk would be screens showing my main offshore accounts, where I had the big numbers, so I could see my accounts as I was processing everything going on. You could have sites set on ‘auto-pilot’ so that it updated itself with any changes automatically. Just to the right of the Don Best screens, I had my Zorba’s offshore sportsbook site up. His site routinely took games off the board, which let people like me know that someone like me was betting something. Because of my deal with him, I could contact him and bet on whatever he had going on with those games.

  “Other screens were for sportsbooks in Asia, Taiwan, and England. I actually had another computer on my main offshore account that was hooked up with a different Internet router just in case my main router got messed up. My other computers were all set up for communication. I’d use them to chat, talk through Skype, to set up moves, send out orders, all that stuff. I used to speak to other bettors and movers through the computer using Skype because we believed that was a way to avoid being traced. Even though there was a delay of a few seconds, it was worth it so that your conversations weren’t tapped.

  “Eventually, I started working in different spots, constantly moving to avoid the authorities. I didn’t want to be locked into one place in case someone was onto me. I worked a
little at Tommy Martino’s house in Aston, and had a place in Manayunk, a spot in Vegas, and at my house. I even took my laptop and my phones and went to different parks. I’d sit in my car or on a park bench, and work from there. I never worked more than a few days in a row at any one spot. There were times where I’d work at one spot one day, another the next, another the next.

  “Each of my clients got their own phone so that I would talk to them and only them on their phone. I also had phones just for other purposes. I didn’t want to confuse people on the phones. I always brought my ‘phone bag’ with me, which was a little black drawstring bag. I used to carry all the cell phones in it. At night, I would have anywhere from fifteen to twenty phones charging in my house. None of them were in my name. T-Mobile was a gift from Heaven. When you bought a phone with them, you could just make up a name. You didn’t need a driver’s license or anything. I registered them all in the names of actors from my favorite TV show, Everybody Loves Raymond : Ray Romano, Peter Boyle, Brad Garrett, Patricia Heaton, Doris Roberts, and so on. I would pay cash each month for like a hundred minutes on each phone. You could go to any T-Mobile store in the country and just keep adding minutes.

  “T-Mobile was great because you could call anywhere in the country and overseas. You were paying for it, ten cents a minute, but it was fucking worth it because your name wasn’t attached. You don’t want it anymore? Take out the sim card, destroy the phones, and you’re done.1 I’d throw the sim cards out in a different place than the phones so that no one would ever connect the two. Usually, I’d put the sim cards in some river or creek or whatever. I was spending thirteen or fourteen grand on ‘disposable’ cell phones. I had a friend who owned a restaurant that had an acid dip tank, for cleaning the grill. Well, he would let me come over and throw the phones in the acid so no one could get a hold of them. I’d leave them in there for fifteen minutes, and then break them with a hammer. I would do this on a monthly basis. It was a hassle but it had to be done. Every month, I re-did the phones.”