Gaming the Game

by Sean Patrick Griffin

  Footnotes

  “Apples” was the (easily decipherable) code the men used for dollars. Thus, “five thousand apples” meant $5,000.

  According to the FBI, Battista’s intuition regarding Donaghy betting with Jack Concannon on games Donaghy officiated after December 12, 2006, was well founded. There is disagreement on precisely when Donaghy reunited with Concannon, however, because the FBI says that Donaghy didn’t resume betting on his games with Concannon until February. Importantly, Donaghy admitted to betting with Concannon from February to April 2007, which had ramifications for the Battista-Donaghy-Martino conspiracy.

  Martino discussed this situation with the FBI, though he apparently did not discuss how much money was being wagered. The FBI summary states, “a friend of Martino’s whom Martino knew from Costa Rica . . . liked sports gambling so Martino provided [him] with some of the picks made by Donaghy.” The FBI added that the friend “was aware that these picks were coming from Donaghy.”

  As of May 2010, the origin of the FBI’s investigation into the NBA betting scandal remains one of the areas authorities with intimate knowledge of the probe are unwilling to discuss. In court filings, the federal government has stated: “In early 2007, the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . . received information that James Battista, a professional gambler, was engaged in betting large amounts of money on NBA basketball games and was receiving assistance from Timothy Donaghy, an NBA referee since 1994, in determining his bets.”

  Tommy Martino detailed many of these events for the FBI, including: the circumstances of the Phoenix trip, such as the $10,000 payment, Donaghy’s “girlfriend,” and smoking pot with Donaghy; the payments in D.C. and Toronto; and the name of the online service he used to obtain the services of prostitutes for himself and Donaghy. The New York Post later identified Donaghy’s acquaintance in Phoenix as Cheryl Wolfe-Ruiz, a “divorcee . . . mother of two who owns a sports bar in Phoenix.” Her lawyer said Wolfe-Ruiz “did not have a sexual relationship” with Donaghy.

  As of May 2010, no other NBA officials have been charged with criminal wrongdoing, and none other than Tim Donaghy has been found to have wagered on NBA games. Of note, the four referees Jimmy Battista says Donaghy identified during the January 2007 meeting are not precisely those who have been publicly discussed by Donaghy.

  Before retiring in 1997, Gerry Donaghy officiated for forty years. A highly regarded referee, he worked nineteen consecutive NCAA Tournaments, four Final Fours, and the 1992 National Championship.

  Tommy Martino told the FBI that he picked one game during the months-long scheme.

  The FBI wrote the following of the situation, based on interviews with Tommy Martino: “Early on in the scheme, Baba and Martino got new cell phones to use just for the scheme. Because of problems with those phones, Martino just went back to using his regular cell phone.”

  The Harder They Fall

  BACK IN 1996, The Sheep was traveling up the New Jersey Turnpike to pick up a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in New York. The meeting would have to be postponed, however, because, as Battista says, “The idiot who was driving me was really hung over and driving like an asshole, moving back and forth between the lanes. The next thing I know, we got hit, the car spun three times, flipped, and caught fire. We both survived, but I broke a few ribs and pinched a couple of nerves in my neck.” The crash had a lasting effect on Battista because it introduced him to prescription pills. “After surgery,” he says, “I started using Percocets, and they were like candy. I was like, ‘Ooh! One pill and I’m happy.’ I tried to get off them a bunch of times over the next several years, but I would use them and Vicodins. I really only used cocaine after that for special functions like weddings and stuff like that. I was so stressed out with my lifestyle, I ate pills. I loved them. I could have one or two drinks, be relaxed, and still be stoned. I thought I was living the American dream; I gambled, I made good money, and nobody knew about it.”

  Battista’s clandestine pill use continued for the next decade without any noticeable adverse effect on his personal or professional circumstances. By the end of February 2007, with Battista now hooked on OxyContin and overwhelmed with his work, the same could not be said. The first hints of trouble came the previous spring. “Every May I would throw a party at the Radnor Hunt,” Battista says, “which was a steeplechase event that draws around thirty thousand people each year. I can distinctly remember being in my car at the races in 2006 betting baseball on my laptop and wanting the drugs more than I wanted to gamble or hang out with everybody. I didn’t care about the gambling. I didn’t care about what was going on at my party or at the races. I just wanted to get high.” His physical condition soon began deteriorating, and within months he knew his addiction had become a serious problem.

  “I started throwing up blood,” Battista says, “because I was eating so many pills and flushing them down every once in a while with some fast food. I was just tearing up my stomach. I tried stopping ‘cold turkey’ a few times, but I couldn’t. I was so hooked; it was like heroin in my system. I’d go three days without the pills and get the shakes. I’d give up and take a few Percocets or Vicodins just to stop shaking. I kept trying to stop because the Oxys were hurting my gambling career and my marriage. I was never thinking straight, and at the same time it was killing me that something I had worked so hard and so long to achieve was being affected. Those fucking pills were taking everything away. As hard as I worked and all the hours I put into my work, everything I had worked for was going away.

  “Denise didn’t know how significant my drug use had become, and that that was why I was such a fucking mess and not acting like myself. She just thought I was power hungry with my gambling, and would tell me over and over that I didn’t have to work for all those guys. She was right, because my mind was overwhelmed with, ‘Oh my God, I have to deal with The Chinaman, and The Computer, and Zorba, and The Englishman, and this guy, and this guy. And, I have to get this done, and get that done, and I can’t let anyone know what I am doing.’ On top of all that, I had a wife and five kids I knew I wasn’t being fair to. The pills became my way of dealing with all of that stress, and I tried really hard to keep them a secret. My wife knew something was going on starting in early 2007, but even then she didn’t really know how much I was using. There was a time that January when I went to Las Vegas with Denise. We went out to dinner at seven o’clock at night, and I had one drink and passed out at the table because I had so many pills in my system. I used to have drugs shipped out to me; they’d be left at the front desk of whatever hotel I was staying at. The next night we went to a Prince concert and were supposed to go to an after-concert event with him, but I just wanted to get back to the hotel and do more drugs. My wife knew at that point I was gone. Gambling was always first, before family, and now it was the drugs that were first and then gambling and then family. By March, Denise was at her wits’ end with me and knew there was something wrong because by then I wasn’t really functioning. I was still trying to work the best I could when I wasn’t passing out from the drugs and the stress.”

  On Thursday, March 15th, basketball fans were—as usual around this time each year—consumed with March Madness. The NCAA basketball tournament’s first round of games were being played, and the sports betting world was its usual mania when the field of sixty-four tipped off. For the first time in decades, such was not the case for Jimmy Battista. His mind was focused elsewhere, namely on his drug problem and related woes. For whatever reason, Battista finally decided to confront Denise with some stark news that day. “I let her know that I was a few dollars in debt—a few million,” Battista says, “and she was obviously very upset. Up until then, she had no idea what I was doing because I kept everything on a ‘need-to-know’ basis so that nothing ever happened to her. Because of everything that was going on, I was staying over Tommy’s house as much as possible. The next day, one of my brothers-in-law called my cell phone in the afternoon and told me to come outside of Tommy’s house. H
e and other family members knew Tommy was the one who got me the drugs, and knew I was there. When I got outside, four of my brothers-in-law were in a car and told me I had to go get help. I said, ‘I know I do, but I have to clean up some business first. I can’t just walk away from my responsibilities.’ I called the people I worked with to let them know I was going away to get help, and my sister arranged for me to go to a place in Lancaster called White Deer Run. I would have gone into rehab the next day, but I had to wait for a bed to open up, which didn’t happen until Sunday, the 18th. I knew I had a problem, and I wanted and needed help. I was out of shape, crazy, throwing up, sick as can be, everything. I could always stop the coke and the drinking, but I couldn’t stop the pills. I could control everything else in my life, but I couldn’t get off the shit.

  “When I went into rehab, they put me on Soboxone for three days.1 I was used to having a bunch of Percocets or Vicodins a day going back to my car accident in the mid-90s, but once I got OxyContin, it was euphoria. I used to take the OxyContins from the moment I woke up. I had a ton of pills, so much so that I used to have a pill bag, but no one knew until the last few months before rehab. I stayed in White Deer Run for twenty-eight days, until the third week of April. It was run like a military base, and we did everything there but cook. I loved it. It was exactly what I needed at that low point in my life. I just knew I needed to change my life and get it together, especially because my marriage was almost out the door.”

  Though Battista’s foremost concerns were his family and his health, there remained numerous outstanding issues with his betting partners and clients. Importantly, he owed several people, including The Chinaman and Zorba, significant amounts of money that he squandered in his Oxy-influenced online poker sessions and the like. “When I got hooked on OxyContin and owed Zorba a lot of money,” Battista says, “he didn’t even worry about the money. He was more concerned with my health. He told me to get my health and family straightened out, and wished me luck. The Chinaman said pretty much the same thing, and I owed him money, too. I spoke with both of them after I got out of rehab, and they understood why I was leaving the business for good. They each forgave my debt, and were as good to me or better when I left them as they were when I worked for them; real professionals, and all class.”

  * * *

  The Sheep’s remarkable run as a big-time mover was over, and the four weeks of rehab afforded Battista time to reflect on the unreal Donaghy scheme, which had only recently come to a halt. Battista says his involvement ended shortly after entering rehab, and that he bet on three or four Donaghy games after March 18th. “Before I went into rehab,” he says, “I had it set up that Tommy could still get the calls from Elvis and place them through Pete Ruggieri. Well, there was a group of guys who I had been using in Asia. They were still getting the bets and were moving the lines on Elvis games and crushing over there, and bookmakers were getting pissed. By then, everybody was jumping on Donaghy’s games. I was in rehab but people were still saying, ‘Sheep’s on this game!’ and things like that. Talk on the street was nuts, and everybody in the gambling industry knew what was going on. I found out from Tommy one day when I called him from rehab that Pete was shutting everything down because he said the games were moving too many points, and we were attracting too much attention.2 I only got paid on Donaghy’s games through March 26th, but from what I understand, it may have gone on a few more games just because there was so much easy money out there. It was like stealing, and Elvis didn’t want to stop.” In fact, according to an FBI memo summarizing Tommy Martino’s interviews: “After Ruggieri decided to shut the scheme down, Donaghy pushed Martino to take one more game. Donaghy said it was a schmaga game.” There was apparently no bet on that game, and Martino claims the scheme lasted at most until March 28th, by which point Donaghy had officiated forty-three games dating back to December 12, 2006.

  For most gamblers, sure things like Donaghy’s games would have been all but impossible to give up. To the beaten down and recovering Sheep, though, the conspiracy’s demise didn’t merit much more than his disappointment. “I was hoping it would go on as long as possible,” Battista says, “but I wasn’t really upset when Pete ended it. I knew it had gotten out of hand, and I was more focused on getting my life together, anyway.

  “From the time we hooked up on December 12th until I went in rehab, we bet every one of his games, and then three or four more when I was in White Deer Run. We went something like thirty-seven and ten in games Elvis reffed.3 I never asked him to fix a game or anything like that at all, I just wanted to know who he liked but, in my mind, Elvis knew he was only getting paid if he won.4 I made him a good deal: ‘You get paid for your wins; your losses you don’t have to pay.’ I knew he was picking great already, long before I ever hooked up with him. A referee can control the flow of a game, and one call can affect the outcome of a game. I never let myself get on the phone with Elvis, and I only met with him on three or four occasions, always at Tommy’s house when Elvis was in town.”

  As much as Battista benefitted from Donaghy’s picks on games the referee officiated, he was frustrated by the losses he took on Donaghy’s pick for other referees’ games, following the “laptop meeting” in January 2007. “We started betting those games,” Battista says, “but after a while I was like, ‘These fucking games suck! Why are we betting these games? I don’t want to bet these games! Elvis, when you’re reffing the games, I know we’re winning seventy-two to seventy-eight percent.’ The other refs’ games went one-and-six; we weren’t covering the number. I don’t know if Elvis was getting bad information from the other refs, or if they were the ones placing the bets, or whatever. I never knew what actually transpired with him and the other referees. I just know that Elvis couldn’t control those games, and I was losing money. It got to a point where I stopped taking the bets, because it was throwing the good money away from when he was reffing the games.5

  “Inside information like injuries and stuff like that might have accounted for a small part of Elvis’ ability to pick winners, but being able to control the outcomes was the big reason he won his games. That was why he couldn’t pick those other games.”

  In addition to the seven non-Donaghy games Battista references, there was one other game bet that Donaghy didn’t officiate. The 2007 NBA All-Star game was played on February 18th in Las Vegas, of all places, and Battista says, “Elvis told Tommy that he wanted to bet on the All-Star game. I said, ‘But, he’s not working it,’ and Elvis told Tommy a friend of his was. Elvis called us, like, four hours prior to the All-Star game and said the West was going to crush the East. We laid two or three with whatever inside information he had, and the West destroyed the East.”6

  Jimmy Battista, who will not—or cannot—discuss his own profiteering from the scandal, claims he paid Donaghy more than two hundred thousand dollars by the time the scheme had ended.7 More specifically, Battista says he gave Tommy Martino approximately two hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars over three months, and that Martino kept the difference after paying Donaghy his earnings.8 As was true with other illicit, profitable, and oft-scintillating moments in his career, Battista says he was never afforded the chance to grasp what he was doing. “I didn’t feel any different when I watched Elvis’ games than I did on other games I bet,” Battista says. “To me, it was just money, just business. It’s not like I was laughing at his calls if they helped us, or pissed at his calls if they hurt us. The ‘Timmy “Elvis” Donaghy thing’ was only a small part of everything I had going on, and I didn’t want anyone to find out. So, I didn’t really have time to focus on it, let alone enjoy it.”

  * * *

  As Battista settled into his new reality, he had mixed emotions. He was sober and getting healthy for the first time in years, and was very much enjoying the company of his wife and kids. Most of his debts were forgiven, and the stress he had weathered for many years was gone, and yet, with each day he spent at home—within paces of his once formidable betting lair—h
e couldn’t believe all he had worked and sacrificed for was over. There was also the issue of what he would do now; how to make a living. Cognizant that his betting life could not be revisited for the sake of his family, and fearful of the drug temptations that were omnipresent in the restaurant business, Battista was forced to consider options outside of the areas for which he had experience and a record of success. He had little time to focus on his career options, it turned out, because within days of his return home from rehab he was visited by the FBI.

  Footnotes

  Like methadone, soboxone is used as treatment in cases of opioid dependence.

  Tommy Martino’s version of these events in FBI memos regarding Ruggieri’s involvement and decision to end the betting scandal almost perfectly mirrors Battista’s.

  When Battista says he went “something like 37 and 10” with his bets on Tim Donaghy’s games, this is either very loosely stated, inaccurate, or he can’t be referring explicitly to games Donaghy officiated between December 12, 2006, and March 26, 2007. When pressed on the issue of his betting record on Donaghy’s games in consideration of the fact that Donaghy only officiated 42 games total between 12/12/06 and 3/26/07, Battista says, “On the Elvis games I bet, we went 37 and 10, or something really close to that. The whole time we were betting on games he reffed, we were winning in the mid- to high 70s [percents].” A record of 37 and 10 equates to a winning percentage of 79%. As the only person who was responsible for millions of dollars among his co-conspirators (who had no money at stake if a pick resulted in a loss), Battista’s insistence regarding his recollection of the 37–10 record can’t be discounted out of hand. Furthermore, Battista’s decades-long history of processing betting stats, win rates, and payout matters must be considered. Although it is certainly possible Battista’s recollection could simply be inaccurate, there are alternative explanations that are at least as likely. First among them is the likelihood that Battista is cognizant of his plea allocution statement, which includes his comments regarding his criminal conduct as follows (emphasis added): “from December of 2006 to March 2007, I was engaged in the business of sports betting, and I agreed with Tom Martino and Tim Donaghy to use the telephone across state lines to obtain information to assist me in wagering on sporting events, on NBA basketball games.” Thus, if the scandal went into April as some informed people believe, Battista likely can’t admit to participating in and/or profiting from them. Simply stated, it is possible Battista was a party to bets beyond March but can’t admit to this activity because of his plea agreement. [From 12/12/06, Donaghy officiated: 44 games through March; 52 regular season games through April; 55 games total (including playoffs) through April; and 57 total (including playoffs) through May.]