Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Biggest Scandal in the NBA - The Tim Donaghy Story

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

Between 2005 and 2007, Tim Donaghy bet on games he officiated and supplied inside information to gamblers, exploiting injury reports, referee assignments, and his influence over foul calls. His actions triggered a federal investigation that exposed a network of illicit betting tied to organized crime.

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Plus, time management tools. And Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Do you remember when that NBA referee got caught betting on his own games? Because I do. So the referee's name is Tim, and Tim is 31 when this story starts, and he's living in Pennsylvania, and like I said, he works as a ref for the NBA. And he's doing pretty well for himself.

But for whatever reason, like all these guys, he wants more. So one day in 1998, his life starts to change, because he joins a country club and he meets a couple of guys there. And they start playing golf together like four or five days a week, and sometimes they drink together. and they hang out as well. And soon they expand their hangouts to beyond the country club and they start taking trips to Atlantic City where they hit up the casinos and they gamble.

And they do this for a couple of years. So now it's 2002. And they're still hanging out in Atlantic City casinos sometimes. And one day, Tim and one of his friends, this guy, Jack, Tim and Jack decide to start placing bets on NBA games, which NBA refs are not allowed to do. Betting on games is strictly against the rules for NBA referees. But I guess Tim don't care. He just wants to gamble. And so they start betting on these games.

Not games that Tim is involved in, just sports betting in general. And about a year later in 2003, they decide to take it up a notch, and they place a bet on an NBA game that Tim himself is the referee of. And that's exactly what they do. They bet on a game, Tim referees it, and boom, they win and make some money. Then they do it again and boom it works again. Then they do it again and again and again. And in the next season alone, they place bets on up to 40 games, all ones that Tim is refereeing. And so like before each game, Tim will give Jack his winning pick. Then they both place their bets and of course they win.

And this starts bringing in serious money for these guys. In fact, Tim wins so much money that he starts worrying about where he's going to hide it in his house so that his wife doesn't find it. So I guess he's winning all this money and just like not telling his wife. But here's the crazy thing. Jack is placing all his bets through an online betting site. This online betting site is run by a small sports betting syndicate called the Animals, which is just a small group of professional gamblers. But one day, someone in this syndicate who knows Jack personally, they start noticing a strange pattern in Jack's betting. Because before all this, Jack used to bet small amounts, and he would lose most of the time as most gamblers lose.

But now, all of a sudden, he's placing much bigger bets on very specific NBA games, and he's winning them somewhat consistently. So this guy starts thinking, there is no way Jack got that good overnight. So he goes and he tells the others in the animals. And they also get suspicious of Jack, and they start looking into him. I mean, they know he's up to something, and they want to know exactly how he's pulling this off. Well, after a bit of investigating, they find out that Jack is close friends with an NBA referee, a referee named Tim.

And they also find out that all the games Jack has been betting on are games refereed by Tim. And so now they know Jack and Tim have some kind of illegal scam going on. But they don't confront either of them about it. Instead, they just start copying Jack's bets. Because remember, they run the betting website. So they start throwing thousands of dollars on each game that Tim is refereeing and it works. The bets are successful most of the time. And pretty soon, these guys are making massive amounts of money.

And neither Tim nor Jack has any idea that these guys are copying their bets. They think it's still their private little operation between the two of them. Now, here's where the story gets really crazy. So a few years pass, and it's now 2006, and at this point, the animal's betting syndicate has disbanded. I'm not exactly sure why, I couldn't find any reason for it. But one of the guys from the syndicate, this guy, Batista, Batista decides to start his own operation as an independent betting broker, which means he's going to take a bunch of his clients' money and bet it for them to, you know, get the best odds and stuff.

And Batista, he wants to be extremely successful. at this, and he knows that the best way to do that is to get Tim involved. No more just copying Jack's bets like everyone else was doing. He wants direct access to Tim. So he reaches out to him, and they agree to meet up at a restaurant. And there, Batista tells Tim that he knows about everything. He knows about him and Jack's whole scam, and that he knows that they're placing bets on games that he officiates. Then Batista starts trying to manipulate Tim by painting Jack as a villain. He tells him that Jack has been secretly betting huge amounts of money behind his back, and that Jack is over here getting super rich off of Tim's hard work. And this manipulation

works. Because when Tim hears all that, he gets pissed. Like how dare Jack use all his tips and not give him a cut of all this extra money he's making? Then Batista makes his pitch. He's like, it'll be different working with me. Basically, he says for every winning tip that Tim gives him, he'll give Tim $2,000 cash. And if the bet loses, Tim doesn't owe him anything. So Tim literally has nothing to lose in this deal. Now, I don't know if Tim accepts this deal because he wants the money. I don't know, $2,000 a game seems like a low price for him.

But I'm guessing that he accepts this deal because he's scared. He's scared that if he doesn't comply, Batista might rat him out to the NBA. But that's just my guess. So anyway, Tim hears this offer and he's like, all right. And thus a new partnership begins. Literally the next day, the Boston Celtics play the Philadelphia 76ers and Tim is one of the referees. So before the game, Tim sends Batista a message telling him to bet on the Celtics to win. And Batista places a $500,000 bet on this game through various bookmakers.

And during the game, Tim, of course, works his shady math. He calls multiple fouls on the 76ers top scorer, so that scorer gets benched, and because of that, the Celtics eventually win the game. And so Batista's like, sweet, it worked! In fact, he's so happy about this that he not only sends Tim the agreed $2,000, but he even throws in an extra $3,000 on top of it as bonus. And so this partnership continues. For several months, Tim will send his picks before the games, and Batista will bettta will bet on the team. teams and they keep winning. In fact, they win so much that Batista eventually starts his own bet brokerage operation, like a hedge fund, where he helps wealthy clients bet their money,

and this makes huge profits for them. And so Batista's over here living the life. Bro is over here going on expensive dinners. He's out gambling at luxury casinos, all kinds of stuff. And it looks like this is just going to go on forever and that these guys are never going to get caught. Until. Now, here's where it all starts to go wrong. Batista's bet brokerage operation has a bunch of wealthy clients, and a lot of these clients are associated with organized crime families. And if there's one thing we all know about crime families,

it's that the FBI always has their eye on them. Specifically, the FBI is investigating one of these crime families when they get a tip that they might have an NBA referee in their pocket. So they start investigating, and soon enough, they discover that it's Tim. And by 2007, they get enough evidence, and so, bam, the FBI arrests him, here's his mugshot. Also, bam, the FBI arrests Batista. Here's a picture of him. And so, ultimately, Tim takes a plea deal, and he gets sentenced to 15 months in prison,

while Batista also gets sentenced to 15 months in prison. And Jack, I actually couldn't find what happened. happened to Jack, so I assume he flipped on the other two guys and got little to no punishment. That's just my guess.