A reader emailed with a key question: "I noticed that all of these reports coming from the court or officials are saying that Donaghy is accused of making picks based on inside information. Is he not being accused of actually fixing the games at all?"
From scouring the documents, that's a tricky question to answer.
In the government's "two-count information" document, it is clearly alleged that Donaghy both bet on games that he refereed, and provided picks to his co-conspirators for games that he refereed.
It also says that Donaghy "together with others, did knowingly and intentionally conspire to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud the NBA by depriving the NBA of the intangible right to honest services..."
The document then goes into the specific facts supporting the two charges, yet never specifically allege that Donaghy rigged any games. Frankly, it's left to your imagination to fill in that missing piece.
On page 7 of another document, an affidavit (UPDATE: now online!) in support of arrest warrants for James Battista and Thomas Martino, FBI Special Agent Paul Harris writes that "CS-1" (an unidentified 13-year NBA referee said to have conspired with Battista and Martino) "compromised CS-1's objectivity as a referee because of CS-1's personal financial interest in the outcome of NBA games."
That's about as close as either document gets to suggesting Tim Donaghy rigged NBA games.
