Tim Donaghy

• 1. Introduction

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  Tim Donaghy worked 772 regular season games and 26 playoff games as an NBA referee, earning the trust of the league over 13 seasons before a federal investigation exposed what may be the most damaging officiating scandal in the history of American sports. He resigned on the 9th of July, 2007, after the FBI came knocking, not because of a tip from inside the NBA, but because agents stumbled across him while investigating something else entirely. What followed was a federal case, a prison sentence, a canceled memoir, a renamed memoir, and years of claims that many observers, prosecutors, and journalists concluded were simply false. Who was Tim Donaghy, and how did a referee from a Philadelphia suburb come to betray the sport he had spent his entire career serving?

• 2. Havertown to the NBA

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  Donaghy was born on the 7th of January, 1967, in Havertown, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, and grew up in a household where officiating was simply part of life. His father, Gerry Donaghy, refereed men's basketball at the highest levels of the NCAA for many years, and Tim attended Cardinal O'Hara High School in Springfield, Pennsylvania alongside three future NBA referees: Joey Crawford, Mike Callahan, and Ed Malloy. In 1989, he graduated from Villanova University with a degree in sales and marketing.

  According to the National Basketball Referee's Association, Donaghy earned All-Catholic and All-Delaware County honors in baseball and All-Delaware County honors in basketball during his high school years. The Villanova baseball coach George Bennett disputed parts of that record, contending that Donaghy did not play on the varsity team and that no records place him on either all-star team. The discrepancy would prove an early signal of a broader pattern.

  After five years officiating Pennsylvania high school basketball and seven seasons in the Continental Basketball Association, Donaghy was the head official for the 1993 CBA All-Star Game. The following year he joined the NBA, wearing uniform number 21. In 2002, he participated in the league's Read to Achieve program, appearing at the Universal Charter school during the NBA Finals that year.

• 3. A Short Fuse

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  Tommy Martino's father, who would later become a co-conspirator in the betting scandal alongside his son, described his lifelong friend Donaghy as someone with "a very short temper and a penchant for wanting to get revenge for anything that he perceived as having been done to him where he was wrong." Federal officials who dealt with Donaghy during the investigation were blunter, calling him "a fucking loose cannon."

  The picture that emerged from neighbors, colleagues, and classmates was strikingly consistent. Donaghy was arrested for allegedly harassing a mail carrier. Neighbors sued him for harassment and invasion of privacy; the suit was dropped, but Donaghy was suspended from his country club as a consequence. One neighbor said he "had a personality problem from day one, with 99% of people" he encountered, and that he "just became a flaming maniac" unless everything went his way. The mayor of his township described "a very dictatorial personality, a very aggressive personality."

  Donaghy admitted having someone else take his SAT exams when applying to Villanova. One of his high school teachers said that nearly every homework assignment he turned in appeared to have been copied. When reporters reached his former associates after the scandal broke in 2007, the Delco Times noted that nearly everyone they contacted either declined to comment or did not return calls. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports wrote that multiple sources described Donaghy as "fairly unpopular with his peers, past and present."

  On the court, the same edge was visible. During a 2003 regular-season game, Donaghy called a technical foul on Rasheed Wallace, then playing with the Portland Trail Blazers, for throwing a ball at another official. Wallace confronted Donaghy after the game with screaming and, according to Donaghy, threats. The resulting seven-game suspension for Wallace was the longest the league had issued for an incident not involving violence or drugs.

• 4. The Gambling Scheme

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  On the 20th of July, 2007, Murray Weiss of the New York Post first reported an FBI investigation into an NBA referee betting on games and influencing the point spread. Donaghy had placed tens of thousands of dollars in bets on games during the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons, and the FBI had not been looking for him at all. The league itself discovered the scandal only after agents stumbled across Donaghy in the course of a broader organized crime investigation.

  The bookies at the center of the scheme were two of Donaghy's high school classmates, not mob figures, despite early reporting suggesting organized crime involvement. One of them was James Battista, a former owner of a sports bar in Havertown, the same Philadelphia suburb where Donaghy grew up. The other middleman was Thomas Martino, described in court as Donaghy's lifelong best friend. Researchers who later examined the electronic betting records and betting line data found considerable evidence that the bets were overwhelmingly placed on games Donaghy himself officiated, contradicting Donaghy's later claims that he bet almost equally on games he did and did not work.

  At his Brooklyn federal court appearance on the 15th of August, 2007, Donaghy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in wire fraud and transmitting wagering information through interstate commerce. He told U.S. District Judge Carol Amon that he used coded language to tip Battista about players' physical condition and the relationships between players and referees. The code was significant: when Donaghy phoned in a pick using a word like "Mom" for the home team, the only way Martino could translate the pick was if the game being bet was one Donaghy was working. He initially received $2,000 per correct pick; because his picks were so accurate, Battista raised the payment to $5,000. By the time it was over, Donaghy had received $300,000 in total.

• 5. Accusations and Denials

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  After pleading guilty, Donaghy did not stop making claims. On the 10th of June, 2008, his attorney filed a court document alleging that Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings had been fixed by two referees who wanted to extend the series to seven games. The Lakers won that game, attempting 18 more free throws than the Kings in the fourth quarter alone, and went on to win the 2002 NBA Finals. The document claimed that Donaghy told federal agents that NBA executives had sought to manipulate games using referees to increase television ratings and ticket sales.

  NBA Commissioner David Stern denied the accusations and called Donaghy "a singing, cooperating witness." Federal authorities investigated the claims and found no evidence supporting them. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Goldberg told the court that there is "a difference between telling the truth and believing you're telling the truth and finding out later that a number of the allegations don't hold any water."

  Donaghy also alleged that referees had been instructed not to call technical fouls on certain players, and that a referee was privately reprimanded for ejecting a star player in the first quarter of a January 2000 game. U.S. Representative Bobby Rush of Illinois, chairman of the subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, wrote to Commissioner Stern saying the affair could be "one of the most damaging scandals in the history of American sports" and raised the possibility of a congressional hearing.

• 6. Sentencing and Prison

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  On the 29th of July, 2008, Judge Carol Amon sentenced Donaghy to 15 months in federal prison, two concurrent 15-month terms followed by three years of supervised release. He could have faced up to 33 months. Amon stated that she held Donaghy "more culpable" than his two co-conspirators and added, "Without Mr. Donaghy, there was no scheme." His lawyer, John Lauro, had asked for probation; the request was denied. Donaghy told the court, "I brought shame on myself, my family and the profession."

  Battista and Martino, sentenced earlier that month, received 15 months and 366 days respectively. Donaghy was also fined $500,000 and ordered to pay at least $30,000 in restitution. The NBA separately claimed he owed the league $1.4 million, including $577,000 in pay and benefits over four seasons plus legal fees; his lawyers argued the obligation should apply to only one season.

  Donaghy served 11 months at a federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida, where he began writing a memoir originally titled Blowing the Whistle: The Culture of Fraud in the NBA. His first publisher, Triumph Books, canceled the book over liability concerns after the NBA threatened legal action, which the NBA denied. A second publisher, VTi-Group, released a renamed version, Personal Foul: A First-Person Account of the Scandal That Rocked the NBA, in December 2009. Researchers and journalists subsequently debunked many of the book's central claims, including assertions about game outcomes, organized crime involvement, and how the scandal began.

• 7. After Prison

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  Donaghy was released after 11 months but did not complete his sentence without incident. In late August, he was arrested and placed in county jail after being found at a health club without permission when he was supposed to be at work. Both his lawyer and his ex-wife argued he should not have been taken into custody, saying he was permitted to visit the facility to rehabilitate his injured knee. He was finally released on the 4th of November, 2009, from prison in Hernando County after serving out the remainder of his term.

  His wife Kimberly had married him in 1995; they have four daughters. In September 2007, shortly after the scandal became public, she filed for divorce and sought a restraining order, alleging that Donaghy had threatened to "knock her head off her body" and that he was "enraged, out of control, cursing at her in front of their four children and making threats." The matter was dropped when she did not appear in court.

  In June 2012, a jury found his publisher VTi-Group liable for breach of contract for not paying him royalties. Donaghy was awarded $1.3 million. In 2016 he was featured in the documentary film Dirty Games - The dark side of sports. On the 1st of November, 2019, the film Inside Game was released in theaters, focusing on Donaghy's account of the scandal. While promoting that film, Martino admitted that he and Donaghy had agreed years earlier to lie about the threats Donaghy claimed to have received from co-conspirator Jimmy Battista.

  On the 27th of January, 2021, Donaghy made his debut as a professional wrestling referee for Major League Wrestling, helping Richard Holliday defeat Savio Vega for the IWA Caribbean Heavyweight Championship. His character is a heel referee whose gambling scandal is woven throughout the storyline.