Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who spent almost a year in prison for fixing games, said Thursday the arrests this week in connection with betting on NBA games could set the stage for bigger scandals to come.
“I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, like you said earlier,” Donaghy told Chris Cuomo on his show “Cuomo” on The Hill’s sister network NewsNation.
“I think maybe you’re going to see a bigger scandal coming out of the college level because you have these young athletes that aren’t going to make it to the next level,” Donaghy said. “Somebody’s going to offer them money to maybe fix a game.”
These athletes take the money “because they’re going to need a way to support their families,” the former referee continued.
Donaghy has discussed his own gambling addiction, which led to an FBI investigation in 2007 and ultimately his conviction for wire fraud and transmitting wagering information through interstate commerce. He received $300,000 in total for passing information along to bookies, the New York Daily News wrote.
Donaghy pleaded guilty, saying he was pressured into the illegal activity by the Gambino crime family, and served about 11 months of a 15-month sentence before being released in 2009.
Announcing the charges in the latest sports betting scandal, FBI Director Kash Patel called the fraud “mind-boggling.”
On Thursday, more than 30 people, including Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, were arrested in connection with illegal sports betting and rigged poker games. The arrests were the result of a years-long investigation across 11 states and funded La Cosa Nostra, a collection of Mafia families, Patel said.
Dubbed “Operation Nothing But Bet,” the indictment claims that six defendants used access to inside information, including which players would be sitting out of games, to unlawfully place bets.
In the poker case, 32 defendants were accused of rigging poker games with wireless cheating technology that lured “fish” to play in games alongside former athletes. Billups and Jones were among those to participate in the poker games as “face cards.”
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith on Friday morning suggested there were political motivations behind the case, or at least the high-profile way it was announced.
“We’ve seen accusations before,” Smith said. “We’ve seen athletes get in trouble with the law before. You don’t see [FBI director Kash Patel] having a press conference. It’s not coincidental. It’s not an accident. It’s a statement, and it’s a warning that more is coming.”
Speaking with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Patel called Smith’s claim “the single dumbest thing that I have ever heard out of anyone in modern history, and I lived most of my time in Washington D.C.”
