[Neil039]

I don’t remember much about this story as it unfolded. I had a 1 year old, in college 8 hours a day 5 days a week and that didn’t allow for much else in my life. All I do remember were some guys in my classes cursing this guy up and down about his “crimes”. Mostly that they knew something was up with him and his crappy refereeing. Here is the link to the ESPN story. It’s to long to cut and paste. It’s a good read if you like sports history.

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25980368/how-former-ref-tim-donaghy-conspired-fix-nba-games

Little snippet from the article.

ACT 1: A CONVENIENT HALF-TRUTH

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. It was January 2007. 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. Now he feared the scheme had become too obvious.

"You wanna get paid?" Battista had said to the ref. "Then you gotta cover the f---ing spread." The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game-an outrageous bargain. If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing; Battista would eat the loss. A "free roll," as they call it. But this referee didn't lose much. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme-what you might call a sustained period of time.