00:00:00
Speaker 1: Philip conspiracy realists. We're coming in Little Caesar style, hot and ready with a classic from twenty twenty as we celebrate the holidays and the passage of one year to another. We are not the experts on the NBA, but we're pretty good at figuring out conspiracies. And in this one, guys, if you remember, not an episode per se, but an interview, we teamed up with a guy named Tim Livingston who introduced us to one of the biggest conspiracies in the entire history of the NBA.
00:00:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, this official named Tim Donahy you back in two thousand and seven got arrested for betting on games he was officiating.
00:00:53
Speaker 3: Whoops, wepe.
00:00:56
Speaker 4: Was this the podcast series that this dude did with Tenderfoot?
00:00:59
Speaker 1: Yes?
00:00:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is Whistleblower.
00:01:02
Speaker 4: Really excellent deep dive and it goes into sports betting, sports fixing conversations we've had in the past with another expert on the subject. Now that I'm thinking about it, his name is escaping me. But this one dude that we talked to who is like all sports are rigged?
00:01:17
Speaker 3: Yes, m mmmmm hmm.
00:01:18
Speaker 1: Well, and Brian Dewey that's it.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: And then we all watched this past year in twenty twenty five, when there's a crazy scandal with Chauncey Billups and Terry Rosier I don't know how to say his name, ro O z I E. R. And a bunch of other players that were caught up in a casino scandal or a you know, like a do it yourself casino style betting scandal where they'd bring in famous folks to play you know, I guess poker with and stuff like that, and then they would just take everybody's money.
00:01:49
Speaker 5: Hey, do you like money?
00:01:51
Speaker 3: Do you like the NBA?
00:01:53
Speaker 1: This is the interview for you. We can't say enough good stuff about Whistleblower. Check it out. It's available on every podcast platform that you dig personally. Add you know, they absolutely did it. Just spoiler for the record, the gambling, the conspiracy stuff is real. Tim l is correct.
00:02:18
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:02:18
Speaker 2: Well, and Tim is a sports journalist out there in Los Angeles, or at least he was, so he really knows what he's talking about. They did their work, you know, to dig into this two thousand and seven thing. I just want to put everybody else on one other show. So if you listen to this episode you like it, Maybe go check out Whistleblower. And then there's another one Tim made called the Raven that you guys, it has to do with a double murder that occurred right after a Super Bowl in Atlanta. And then that was a whole other story that was just pretty insane about Ray Lewis and like potentially him being involved in a double murder, double homicide.
00:02:56
Speaker 5: Rather from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
00:03:22
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. They call me ben Mi Compatriots Matt and Noel are on adventures, but we'll be returning very soon. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We're diving into a strange one today, fellow conspiracy realist. It's a story that you may be familiar with if you are if you are a huge fan of sports. It's a story that you may have heard a headline about, but you I've never seen it fully explored. We're diving into a world of gambling. We're diving into the depths of corruption, into the heights of financial shenanigans and ethics violations. It's a mystery that is being unraveled that occurred here in the US not too long ago. What are we talking about? Well, to answer that question, we're going to defer to an expert, as we always try to do. You know that we want to bring you primary sources, people with experience and expertise in a field. And that's why today I am over the moon to welcome to the show our guest, the sports journalist, writer and creator of the Whistleblower podcast, Tim Livingston. Tim, thanks for coming on the show today.
00:04:55
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me Ben So, you and I I.
00:05:00
Speaker 1: Have talked a bit off air about this story, which as the podcast is still coming out. Whistleblower is a term that I think a lot of people understand nowadays in the West. But Whistleblower, the podcast is diving into a very specific mystery. Could you tell us, just briefly, I want to be careful not to spoil too much, just briefly, what whistle Blower is about. How this story begins.
00:05:34
Speaker 6: The story begins with a former whistleblower, and not the one that we know about now. He has nothing to do with Russia or China or anywhere else. He's a former NBA referee named Tim Donahy and Tim Donahey for sports fans. Sports fans know Tim Donahey as the most disgrace official in American sports history. I think he has that title, and whoever's in second place, it's a pretty distance second. Tim Donnahe is looked upon as a pariah, and rightfully so. However, when he got into trouble, he blew the whistle on That's where we're going with this, Ben. He blew the whistle, the proverbial whistle on a much bigger systemic issue within the NBA, and that issue was a culture of refereeing in which players, coaches, and team personnel were fraternizing with referees, creating relationships with referees where just referees as the police of this game, we're not being policed at all. And it led to, in my opinion, corruption on an unbelievable scale, both with donnahe himself and with other referees at the time.
00:06:50
Speaker 3: And so that's what we dive into.
00:06:52
Speaker 6: It's okay, the narrative has always been Donna, he was a rogue criminal. It was just this guy, He's the only one. And for me, I just never believed it. I've watched so many NBA games that something just didn't feel right. And so that's where we dive in from is what happened, what happened with donnahe himself, and then part two is what happened with his with his former employer, what happened with the NBA, What actually happened behind the scenes. What now can we look at thirteen years ago and peel back layer by layer and understand on a much deeper level. And that's where this story gets really crazy, because thirteen years later, more people are willing to talk, more information has come to light that might have trickled into the news at some point, but that even the most ardent sports fans don't really know. And so that's where we're going with this, and that's the crux the podcast.
00:07:44
Speaker 1: So one thing that's fascinating to me about this is your inspiration because it sounds like you, you know, being a fan, very familiar with the bones of the story, or at least the headlines we saw reported back in oh back in two thousand and seven. I believe it started really the rubber really started hitting the road. But it sounds like you had a tingle of your spider sense almost right, a discrepancy. Something was rotten in Denmark. There was a glitch in the matrix. One thing that fascinates me about this is there's a line in the very beginning of the first episode where you talk about how referees are supposed to be kind of shadows, right, almost non entities on the court. Referees don't get noticed until they make a call that you don't like, Right, isn't that how it usually works out?
00:08:48
Speaker 3: Exactly?
00:08:49
Speaker 6: And what a weird profession, right, You get booed out by thousands upon thousands of people every single night. You only get noticed when you mess up. You get no accolades when you're the best of what you do, and being the best to what you do means that you're invisible. It means that people have no idea who you are. It means that the game they just watched was they watched it without any inkling that there were officials, right, it was just the players playing the game. And that means that you did the best job you could have done, the game was being played in its purest form.
00:09:22
Speaker 3: However, for basketball fans.
00:09:23
Speaker 6: We know that every single game that we've ever watched, there's been at least three or four times you're going to scream with the TV that that call was bull right. That's we all do it as sports fans. We can't help it. We're all couch coaches or whatever you want to call us. And in the NBA, that's what exists on every single night. And for me as a fan growing up, I love basketball. I played basketball my entire life, and so I've been cognizant of the effect that a referee can have on a game since I was five years old. And when I was a kid, I used to have a really bad temper and I used to scream at referees. I used to get so mad at referees when they didn't make the call that I thought was right in direct league, right, these guys are getting paid ten dollars an hour back in the early nineties, and they don't want to be there, and last thing they wanted some little asshl screaming at him. I was that kid, And then as I got older, I realized that these are human beings that you can manipulate them, right that if you're nice to them, if you chat with them before the game, if you make them feel special, they are going to give you the benefit of more calls. So I've been fascinated by that, by the ability to influence a referee for my entire life and for this story, though I having played basketball my whole life and having been in love with the sport forever, watching some of these games that took place in the early two thousands and mid two thousands before the scandal came out, before it was exposed that donnihe before donnihe exposed the idea. I can't say that he exposed everything, right, He just gave us an inkling of the culture and of how things operate behind the scenes. When that all came out, it made sense to me. And because I watched some of these games, some of those games were not right. They weren't officials having a bad day. In my opinion, there was no way there was motive. There was something behind it, and that's what we're exploring in this podcast. Ben that you mentioned I'm pretty transparent about like that's where I'm coming from. I'm not coming from I'm a journalist, but also I have eyes and I've watched these games, and so I'm not shy about the fact that I'm entering this investigation with bias, because you can't tell me the two thousand and two Western Conference Finals were three officials just having a bad game. I won't believe you. It didn't happen. It wasn't just one or two bad calls. It was an incredible amount an entire game, and especially in an entire fourth quarters worth of egregious miscalls. And for me, that's where I approached this destigation, where something was something was amiss, what was it?
00:12:03
Speaker 3: How did it work?
00:12:05
Speaker 6: And that's what we really explore on the podcast.
00:12:07
Speaker 1: You've raised a fascinating point here. It's something that I immediately thought of when you and I were first talking off air a few weeks ago about whistleblower and you were telling us some of the nuts and bolts of the situation, which are frankly disturbing. I started thinking about the tremendous paradox that's inherent and being a referee, one of the most powerful people on the court, is one of the least compensated. They're making peanuts, you know, you get what is it. I think it's an average of one hundred and fifty thousand on the low end per year to a little over five hundred thousand or so. And that's like, depending on how you break down the math, that's what some of the players are making. You know, that's like a fraction of what they're making in a game. And so I could see very easily the opportunity for someone who is unethical to whether through character or stick, incentivize the referee to make a little bit more scratch. And we know you know this. This reminded me a little bit of the conspiracy theories regarding Michael Jordan and gambling, right, which is which is something we've explored a past episode. I'm ted talking a little bit here, but I wanted to outline that because I think a lot of people, myself included, to be transparent, didn't really consider the discrepancy there, the fact that like you know, I'm I'm making two hundred and fifty grand for the whole year. That's what I'm gonna make unless I'm moonlight right somewhere else. And these folks that I'm calling that I'm making calls on no matter what happens to them win or lose. They're multi millionaires, so it doesn't seem like it would take much for the push. But okay, So the idea of rigged sports, it's tremendously controversial because any fan of sports, any fan of any sport, wants the rules to be followed right. Ostensibly, we want the game to be competitive, we want the athletes at the top of their abilities, and we want the rules followed so that a win is a real win and not invalidated and not turning into some like mafia esque con job. Could you tell us a little bit about what Doneghey was going through that pushed him to this like before, like okay, so he clearly was a crooked ref There's no question about that. Is that correct?
00:15:02
Speaker 3: No question?
00:15:03
Speaker 6: And to your point, think about it, right, if going back to the Michael Jordan Bulls, think about how much power referee has Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen stuff from the court. A referee could give both of them two technical fouls for no reason right when they walk on the court, eject them both from the game, and the Bulls have to play the rest of the game without Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen. No referee has ever done that, and probably ever will. That's a little bit too obvious, But think about how much power a referee has, right because he can also call two ticki tack fouls on Scottie Pippen and two ticki tack fouls on Michael Jordan and force them to watch the rest of the first quarter from the bench. And if you're betting against the spread, that's hugely advantageous. If you're a referee and you have money on the game, right, so are against the bulls in that game. So a referee has incredible and incredible amount of power. And for those for sports fans who don't want to believe that there's any possible corruption in sports, just using basketball as an example, the referees, to your point, make tenth, one twentieth, sometimes one fiftieth as much as the guys who were yelling at them, screaming in their face night after night after night. How can they not over time or immediately create how can they not be biased?
00:16:17
Speaker 3: Right? These guys aren't robots, they're humans.
00:16:19
Speaker 6: And with guys that have ego like Tim donahe that and again I don't think donnahe's the only referee that was fixing games over the course of history basketball. I think that would be incredibly naive to believe that.
00:16:33
Speaker 3: The question for me is how many were there and how high up did it go?
00:16:38
Speaker 6: So in episode two, we interviewed Michael Franzis, you might have seen in Netflix's Fear City, one of the most brilliant members of the Mafia of all time. A guy who is running schemes that were making millions upon millions of dollars a day and just a very He was a criminal, but he was a damn good one. And he talks about how he had two NBA referees on his payroll in the nineties that weren't Tim Dannihi, Right, So there's just this is one monster with two NBA reps on his payroll that were not the guy that we're focusing on. And that gives you an idea of a And this is what Fretsy says. It was easy to fix a game. It's not hard when it's against the spread. It's hard if you need one team to win, right. So some of the games that I'm referencing from the playoffs and finals where there was the foul discrepancies you know, there's one team is shooting sixty free throws, there are teams shooting thirty.
00:17:30
Speaker 3: That that's where it gets egregious.
00:17:32
Speaker 6: And as fans, you know, those are the games that we still talk about to this day because we a lot of us don't feel that those were on the up and up. But when it comes just to the spread, that's easy. If the Bulls are supposed to win by by ten and you got a bet on the other team to cover that spread for you know, if the Bulls need to win by nine or less for you to win your bet, yeah, call two quick fouls of Michael Jordan, put them the bench, and you're probably in really good shape for the rest that that right there probably affects the point spread by three or four points immediately. And if the Bulls are up by eleven and in the fourth quarter, start calling more thousand than Bulls, and you as a referee can really dictate whether the Bulls win by eight points or twelve points. So that's exactly and where that's where it gets interesting. And that's where we as fans have to look at the system and look at how easy it is for these guys to manipulate a game and put in The NBA has put in checks and balances since Donahey, they've done an okay job of improving the system. There are a lot more referees who are anonymous, who are invisible, who do a great job. However, there are still referees that have been refereeing for twenty five plus years who one of them. Scott Foster was Donnihe's best friend, and him and Tim Donna He talked one hundred and thirty four times in the phone at the height of the scheme from October two thousand and six to March two thousand and seven, on the phone that donnae He used as what the FBI said, Donna he used this phone for gambling, primarily for gambling or later purposes. And Scott Foster's the top official in the NBA, right, So there's all this circumstantial evidence that points to Scott Foster and Donnahe having a relationship that it minimally needs to be explored further. And this guy's being when we watch the NBA Finals this year, Scott Foster's gonna ref two of those games. And that's the guy that I'm supposed to trust has integrity and then I'm supposed to trust, you know, it's going to create an even playing field for both these teams and not let his ego or bias or anything else infiltrate.
00:19:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I don't. We got a long way to go.
00:19:39
Speaker 6: But yeah, when it comes to the scandal this time in two thousand and seven, I think it went and this is what we explored in the podcast. I believe that it went really, really deep, and it's really fascinating what Donnie he was doing. And then it's also for me on the conspiracy side, way more interesting what the league, what the NBA was doing to make this problem go away.
00:20:00
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's let's explore a couple of those points. So first off, to me, it's still you probably hear me laughing in the background, folks, It's still hilarious to me when you tim were first telling us in our earlier conversations about a gambling phone, Like, I've heard of a burner phone, but I've never known someone who gambles so frequently that at some point they're like, I need a different phone for this, and it's like.
00:20:33
Speaker 6: Yeah, several burner phones and this one was like primarily the gambling phone, but he hit donahe himself. There were so many tentacles he was betting with at least two people that we know about that were part of the scandal that were the FBI found at least two. We speculate that he was probably betting with three, four or five other people. Right, Hey, Ben, can you place you know this is the pick tonight? Put five hundred bucks on the bulls for me and kick me back, you know, three hundred Just bring the cash next time I see you. That's where it gets crazy, and you got to wonder with if you look at Donnahe's phone records, think about how easy it is for that money to move without a trace, if it's just cash, if it's at levels that aren't in the millions, which are what was being bet on Donahe's games. In the professional betting markets, when Tim Donahue refed a game, there were millions of dollars being moved by the mafia, by the Gambino crime family, and by various professional betting syndicates on each game that he refereed. Tim Donnahey referee two hundred and sixty games over the course of the scheme, So you do the math. Were there hundreds of millions wagered in one on Tim Donahy's games by organized crime and other shady outlets. At least, right we know it's hundreds of millions where they're billions maybe, And that's crazy. That's one referee games. So now expand that there's fifty three referees in the NBA, and let's look at college college is even easier. Hofstra is playing Northeastern. Anybody watching that game, anybody gonna notice if a couple grands placed here and there and all over the country and Northeastern shoots sixty two free throws and Hofstra only shoots twenty five.
00:22:13
Speaker 3: Probably not.
00:22:14
Speaker 6: So that's where, again, as basketball fans, I think the big thing I would love to see from our podcast is just a demand for better checks and balances, a demand for greater transparency, and just a demand that our game, the game that.
00:22:31
Speaker 3: We love, is.
00:22:33
Speaker 6: Improved from an officiating standpoint. Because we're still not there yet.
00:22:37
Speaker 1: And we'll pause here for a word from our sponsor before we return to examine this strange tale of conspiracy, corruption and sports with Tim Livingston, and we're back. This is to me, what are the roots of the dilemma? First, though I have to ask, and I know there's a question A lot of our fellow listeners are wondering. Now the process you describe is so subtle, right, and it's so easy to make, uh, you know, to make ten million dollars through a series of relatively innocuous seeming bets instead of one big ten million pot. This stuff being so easy to miss. It makes me wonder how someone got wind of this. How did this guy go from being, you know, one one of the top most established referees in the business to this pariah to this person who was I believe I believe one of the descriptions used is uh is scapegoaded? Right like NBA wanted a bad guy.
00:23:55
Speaker 6: So to answer your question, Donnahie was Donnie was betting on his own games, so we can assume if he's betting on his own games. I think we proved pretty definitively in the first couple episodes that Donnay was fixing any game that he bet on and was refereeing, obviously, right, I mean his the FBI made him admit that he at least subconsciously might have manipulated games that he was referering and had money on. But I think we prove again without a I don't think there's any doubt after the first couple episodes of our podcast that Donnie he knew what he was doing, and then he was fixing those games. So, donnahe is fixing games for four years. And what I think is interesting in two thousand and seven when he got caught, if it wasn't for the scheme getting too big, if it wasn't for this guy, Jimmy bob A Batista, Donnahe's not really friend from high school, but a guy that he grew up with and known his entire life and became a professional gambler. It wasn't for Jimmy Bautista getting involved. Jimmy Batista was at the time addicted to pills, cocaine, and everything else under the sun that you could smoke, swallow or inhale in any in any way I'm trying to think of. I haven't done drugs in a while, so this is I hope my wife is listening for that reason, to for the fact that I started over how to how to do drugs. But Batista was an admitted addict. I mean he went to rehab towards the end of the scheme. And if it wasn't for Batista being in that state and he went into debt, he was he was getting He's winning eighty ninety percent of his picks, which is a professional gambler. That's how you print, That's how you make that's how you go buy an island. Right, you're printing money, like you know, invest It's like, hey, in nineteen ninety he invest in Apple. There's gonna be coming to Google. That's gonna ipo in like two thousand and three, I invest in that. You know, it's it's not fair. You're not playing on an even playing field. But Batista, because of his addiction and because of his hubris, went into debt and started talking and he mentioned it to too many people. The scheme got too big, there was too much money moving, and ultimately it just came down to him talking to an informant. It was an informant for the Gambino crime family, and they caught it on a wire tap and boom, your FBI is like, wait what you have a referee in your in your pocket and they started listening and they started, you know, they did their due diligence and they're the FBI. They figured it out in a week or two, and Donnahue was the guy, and they knew. What's interesting, been to your point is if Donahue kept it relatively small, if it was what he was doing the first couple of years with a couple of friends, and the circle was small, circle was tight, would he still be refereeing in the NBA today? And I believe the answer is yes, unequivocally. I think if a referee was doing this today, we'd have no real way of knowing. It's just it's completely undetectable. And that's a problem. That's a big problem. And so Donahe and if you listened to Tommy Martino, who was the middleman between Donahe Andatista, Tim Martinez says, they're having the time in their lives. They were making gobs of money, and there were criminals, but they never thought they'd get caught. And when criminals don't think they're going to get caught and think that they're just going to make this kind of money and live this kind of lifestyle forever, they have fun. And so Donnahy eventually realized the FBI started knocking, and he quickly went and confessed. Everything became a cooperator, because that's how he only got fifteen months in prison from all this. But that's what's interesting. Could this have gone on in perpetuity? And again I think the answer is yes.
00:27:36
Speaker 1: And does it go on today, which it seems like there's I don't know, no no for everybody listening. Of course, the entirety of whistleblowers is not out yet. The story is ongoing and you should check it out today. But having listened to the show, what I can say is I am per like I live in the world of conspiracies, man, and there are a ton of conspiracy theories that are just easily easily debunked or disproven or don't add up. But I would say, this is not a conspiracy theory. This is an actual conspiracy. Donnie conspired to do these things. And as I was listening, you know one thing that struck me is I massively appreciate you saying at the very top, look, I'm a journalist. I came in with it. I'm convinced something is up here, something's amiss, because as I was listening, I ended up completely agreeing. So there might not be like the FBI's equivalent, there might not be something that meets the FBI's equivalent of a smoking gun or a fire with Foster with some other close relationships. But there's a lot of smoke. You show a lot of smoke in this show, and it makes me think that the money and the opportunity is probably too good for some people to walk away from for a number of reasons, like human ego, like you said, but also just the financial aspect. I wanted to ask, you know, as an outsider, I, like many people, many of our fellow listeners, am not a professional referee. How well did these guys all know each other? That's one of the big questions I think a lot of people have. Is it like a clock in, clock out job? Are you like, once you get in the rarefied air of being a professional NBA referee, don't you kind of know of all the other people in that sphere.
00:29:47
Speaker 6: Absolutely, these guys have all been working together forever. They exist in a very strange bubble and right now for those that are actually in Orlando, that's a funny term to you is considering that the NBA right now is in a literal bubble, but referees, there's only about fifty five NBA referees refing per season, most of them for the most part. I mean it's some of them only last two or three years and get canned. The ones who make it though, they referee forever. They're in the league for fifteen, twenty twenty five, sometimes twenty five plus years, and they become synonymous with the show. And that's what's interesting, right, And that's what we what we're exploring, is how much of this is entertainment and how much of basketball professional basketball is legitimate competition and where did those lines blur. But the referees all know each other very well for the most part. Some of them hate each other. Some of them think that, you know, referee X might think Referee why is the worst referee ever, and you know he's a show off and he makes the game all about himself, and you know those some of those things came to light. Actually after the danahe scandal, the NBA commissioned its own report, you know, like we're gonna we're gonna really nail down and look at our system and look at our culture and fix what's wrong, right, and we're going to pay a lawyer to do it. So this lawyer is going to be he's an independent. He's been completely independent. This investigation is not going to try and you know, cast cast doubt on some of the more salacious things that have been alleged during the scandal. This is an investigation we can all trust. And so the Peduitz report, which is the NBA report that I'm referring to after the Donnahie scandal, it still says it looks at NBA referee relationships and it talks about some of this stuff. Right, How some of these guys look at Dick Pavetta, who's the most senior official during this time, and think that he was.
00:31:43
Speaker 3: Far too How do we say? How should I say?
00:31:47
Speaker 6: I mean intertwined in the game, that he made the game about himself, right, which, according to my definition of what makes a good referees, exact opposite thing that you should do. Dick Paveta CORNEYA Donnie. He had an American Airlines pilot that he call after every game in this Again, according to Donnie, I can't prove this and never talk with excuse me, the stewardess American Airline stewardess, but he used to call stewardess friend of his after every game and to get a report on how much airtime he got during that game. So if that's true, that's really bad, right, that's really really bad. But another interesting thing been to your point, fifteen or so referees again tight fraternity, Not that many. Fifteen hail from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, hail from the greater Philadelphia area, which, over the course of refereeing in the eighties, nineties, two thousands, and now into twenty twenty, a lot of referees hail from this one area of Philadelphia and which, as we find out in the podcast, is a gambling hotbed. And that's where Donnie's from, and Steve Jaffy and Joey Crawford and if you know NBA referees could I could go on and on, but they all hail from this one area in and around Philadelphia. So it's certainly suspicious. It's not really a meritocracy. It's incredibly Donna. He's a product of nepotism. His uncle was an NBA referee, his father was a college referee. So yeah, all these guys, it's gotten better, I think referees now it's definitely more of a meritocracy as far as I can tell. But really, at the time it was who you knew and who your dad was or who your uncle was.
00:33:22
Speaker 1: I mean, that's insane, because we know that nepotism often wins the day over meritocracy and any number of fields or pursuits. But the appeal of the appeal of sports in general is the idea that through one's own hard work, focused practice, and natural talent, you can leave everything else that's outside of the court off the court when you play the game. And for that not to be the case, it's got to be just a profound punch in the gut, you know, especially for a lot of kids who, like you, were growing up living, breathing, loving basketball, you know, and now to find that this may very well be rigged. I mean, it's understandable that people would say, well, this is a bad Apple situation, right, this is a bad actor. It's a one off in the NBA. You know, as you've explored, the NBA goes into crisis mode kind of in their pr and their damage control. But one of the big twists that comes about, there are two big twists I think that are going to be startling. Is first the NBA's damage control, their pr their report it it didn't do the best job persuading people that this was a one off. And I think Donna Gie himself didn't agree with their findings. And I know this because of another big twist in our story, which is that Tim, you talked to him. Everybody should look if you're not familiar with this character. We want to establish this. Tim Donaghue is alive today and you, Tim have had like multiple conversations with.
00:35:18
Speaker 6: Him, multiple And this is we start off. And what I'll say now that we're a little farther because people have asked me since we started, when we started this podcast, the reason I had access to Donahe is because Donnie and I were very friendly. I'm the only when I was writing for The Post Game, which was a Yahoo site back in twenty twelve, I'm the first one, I think, the only person, at least, you know, according to Google search results, which I've done. You know, I've google searched this ardently over the past eight years. I think I'm the only one who said that publicly right that I believe what Tim Donahey's saying about about the culture of the NBA. I said, in so many words, donnahe We know what donnahe is he's not the best guy, but he's also so I think he's a scapegoat for a bigger systemic issue. And I think that the reason I'm the only one to have written those words or something far more eloquent in my actual article.
00:36:12
Speaker 3: Hopefully.
00:36:14
Speaker 6: I think the reason I'm the one who was able to say that is because I wasn't employed by the NBA. Right, if you're an NBA beat writer and you believe what Tim Donna he's saying, you can't say that you're not going to get access to any locker room, You're not going to get access to any player, You're going to become a pariah. You can't say that. And most crime reporters, and I'm sure a lot of the stories that you guys explore from a journalistic perspective, you know, crime in sports is not usually something we look at for that crime reporters look at. Most crime reportters don't gravitate towards sports to say, oh, what's the deal here, what's the scandal here, what's.
00:36:48
Speaker 3: The corruption here?
00:36:50
Speaker 6: So, I, just as a freelance sports writer without any ties to the NBA, found myself in this very odd position. And then after I wrote the article, Tim Donne. He reached out to me and said thank you so much for writing this, and that's where we became friends and now after. But look, at the same time, I'm a journalist, right, so I did my research. I've done I've investigated this story over basically from that day, over the course of eight plus years, and what I found when it comes to Donnae is that he in fact is lying about a lot of things, in my opinion, and because of that, we were forced to reveal those things over the course of the podcast. So Tim Donnie, I don't think it's my friend any longer. Ben unfortunately or not unfortunately, I don't really care. But Tim Donnae is no longer doesn't like me anymore, and that's fine because I still liked Tim. I have no issue with Tim, and all I want is to find the truth at the heart of this scandal, at the heart of this conspiracy, because I really appreciate you saying that it's not conspiracy theory. There's no theory. It's really just a question of how deep the conspiracy goes. And that's what our podcasts about, and that's what unfortunately, for thirteen years, people in my world, the sports world have been too hesitant to investigate for reasons that are completely rational. If you're an NBA writer, you want a job, you got a future family.
00:38:08
Speaker 3: I get it.
00:38:10
Speaker 6: At the same time, this is the darkest moment in the history of basketball, and to make this fort better and too, you need to understand its fault and why you know what needs improving, And so that's where this journey kind of kicked off from. But yeah, Tim Donnahie is is a central part of our story, and I think what's interesting for myself and the audience is deciphering what's true and what's not true.
00:38:35
Speaker 1: Let's pause for a brief word from our sponsor before we return with more and the still developing tale of whistle Blower with Tim Livingston, and we're back. These shows, both both whistle Blower and Stuff they Want you to Know, have have something in common, which is pursuing the truth, even when pursuing the truth is not a popular or even safe thing at times. One thing that stands out to me that surprises me. I haven't thought about really until exploring Whistleblower, until speaking with you, is the idea that the NBA could wield such profound, pervasive influence over what is supposed to be objective reporting. So is it true that the NBA can just stonewall or blackball blacklisted journalists, or they can they shut down and silence a story, or is it more that the journalists themselves are kind of proactively self selecting and avoiding things they think will get them in trouble.
00:39:54
Speaker 3: That's a great question.
00:39:55
Speaker 6: And again, the media side of this is super, super interesting and something that we explorer in the second half of the podcast. So I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but I will say that, in my opinion, during the David Stern era of the NBA, and David Stern, for those who don't know, is the commissioner from nineteen eighty four to twenty fourteen, David Stern is and this is what where if you're just if you're listening to Whistleblower right now, you haven't heard this, or you're we're about to start revealing in episodes five, six, and seven, which you're coming out over the next you'll have heard five and six and seven are about to come out. But the NBA was an entity you did not mess with. And that is not me saying that that's other journalists that I've spoken with. Murray Weiss, a former New York Posts reporter who broke the story in the NBA, said those words very clearly, right you're about to hear You're about to hear Murray Wyss say that right where people warned him, don't mess with the NBA, don't mess with David Stern. David Stern did not mess around. David Stern was a monarch. He really was, and he was brilliant, and he's a fascinating character in this.
00:41:03
Speaker 3: That we really.
00:41:05
Speaker 6: Are going to die, going to dive into his psyche, going to dive into how he ran the league and the way he ran the league. It wouldn't work in twenty twenty, but it worked very well in the nineties and early two thousands. He was not a social media era guy. He said things that would just be absolutely destroyed with the way we disseminate news and at the speed with which we disseminate news today. But the NBA, in my estimation, in my opinion, which hopefully at this point your your audience values at least somewhat as somebody who has spent eight years. If you guys, don't if you think I'm an idiot. That's fine as well, but my opinion is that, yes, the NBA was somebody was a company, right, was a thing that you did not mess with and that people were very scared of. And it wasn't just they would go to great lengths to make stories like this go away. And we explore with the Donahue scandal the great lengths that they made for this story to go away, and it's fascinating. Now.
00:42:06
Speaker 1: I do have to say I've been personally impressed by the uh, the the thoroughness of the reporting, especially when you know in a very real way you are telling a story that doesn't want to be told right, even in the modern day. And one thing we have to let you know if you're listening to the show today, is that me and Matt and nol in Mission Control and Doc Holiday code named Doc Holliday. Uh. Tim, Tim isn't giving us a preview of the episodes. So all the stuff that that you just said, Tim with my question, it's it's stuff that I have to wait for the next episode to hear, which I think is it's fantastic. I just want to say that, you know, unlike some players of the NBA. We're not getting special treatment here, so we are listening along with you, folks. Perhaps one way to close today's episode, before everybody goes and checks out whistleblowers for ourselves, is to go back to something that you post that I think is of crucial importance here. So there's this idea of checks and balances, right, and how best to institute them, But it seems so complicated. It seems like it's a very tall order. Do you have things like checks and balances that you think would mitigate this problem? I mean, is there a solution? Because I you know, I'm not an expert. I'm not like the King of referees or anything like that. And I was thinking through this and yeah, I don't know, and out smart than me. It's just so easy to get away with it, you know.
00:43:58
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I think the first step is right now, the referees are employed by the NBA. So, for example, during the David Stern era, David Stern somewhat facetiously replied during a Dan Patrick interview in two thousand and four about his dream NBA Finals matchup. He said, Lakers versus Lakers is the league. That's that's what the Laker. That's what the league wants to see. And as a Lakers look, I grew up a Lakers fan, right, The Lakers got that hat on, I got the La hat on, and I it's interesting because the Lakers were for ratings, which the NBA cared a lot about. The NBA makes a majority of its money via via television. The TV contracts they've signed over the last twenty years have just gone up by the billions. It's gone from hundreds of millions to billions to multi billions. And last year the NBA did almost nine billion dollars in revenue. So if you're valuing the NBA as a company, their give or take a thirty five billion dollar company, they're a huge corporation. They're a very very powerful corporation. And so the first thing you need to do is make the referees.
00:45:09
Speaker 2: You need to.
00:45:09
Speaker 3: Create a separate employment agency.
00:45:12
Speaker 6: You can't have the NBA employee referees because if the Lakers are playing whichever team in the Western Conference Finals, and that referee has in his head that David Stern, his boss's boss's boss's boss is rooting for the Lakers to reach the next game, that's a problem.
00:45:28
Speaker 3: Right.
00:45:28
Speaker 6: So that's step one is and Phil Jackson, formed Lakers coach, the one who suggested that first, or at least, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people had suggested before Phil Jackson, but I think Phil Jackson, of the time NBA champion's he knows, he's a smart guy. He knows his teams have been privy to different officiating than a lot of other a lot of other teams. And that's one anecdote that donnae He provides in our opening episodes where Phil Jackson or he calls Michael Jordan for travel, Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson flip out and Phil Jackson, you know, Donnie, he says, you watch the same training tapes as I do. And Phil Jackson says, yeah, they might want that call to travel, but not on Michael Jordan. So it's the same kind of bias and talent discrimination that exists throughout the league, and a call, the right call should be the right call every single time, and it's not.
00:46:22
Speaker 3: In the NBA.
00:46:23
Speaker 6: There's biases and different rules for different players, and it's it's not an even playing field. And to get there, the first step is to create make referees part of a different organization that has no ties with the NBA, and that's that's step one, and that's a big step.
00:46:39
Speaker 3: Do I think it's going to happen. I don't know.
00:46:42
Speaker 6: I don't think anytime soon, because definitely during the David Stern era, I think the NBA enjoyed having that control, and I think they giving that up would be something that they would really really have to be pushed into a hole to do. But that's the that's the first step the solution. And then you've got to make sure that that agency, that organization is is run well and run with integrity. But right now, the NBA having control essentially over the employment of its officials creates a conflict of interest. It's too wada chasm to to overcome.
00:47:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is you know, this is reminding me of all those memes where you see like a tiny hero standing up against some gigantic colossus in the on the horizon. That's an enormous conflict of interest. And you know what what I like about this point and what I like about I called some of my friends who are living, breathing, God bless them for their optimism, Atlanta basketball fans and uh and so they so so, uh, you know, a lot of I think a lot of folks here or somehow familiar with the problem you're addressing just at the very offset of Whistleblower, and it's this I think. You know, if you love basketball, then of course you feel like there's been several terrible calls, as you said, Tim, two three, four per game. So I think a lot of our listeners are already excited to see it's a very real proof that they weren't just being you know, sore loser fans or something like that. And so we turn it over to you, folks. Don't take my word for it. Do check out whistle Blower. It's available wherever you find your favorite podcast on any platform. As we said, we actually waited a little bit on this interview because we didn't want to have the interview here while episode one was just out because there's so much stuff on the horizon that we can't get talk about. And Tim, thank you for being patient with me. I know you totally caught me trying to slide in getting a little more info. I guess I'll just have to wait. I'll have to wait till next week, but.
00:49:13
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. Ben Now was great.
00:49:15
Speaker 6: I could talk about this stuff all day, So after episode ten comes out, I'll come back on and we can dive even deeper. But do you appreciate it? It was a lot of fun, and yeah, check out Whistleblower. I think you guys will like it.
00:49:27
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Tim, for anyone who would like to learn more about your overall work, where can they find you online?
00:49:36
Speaker 6: I'm on Twitter at Tim likes sports. To handle that, I think I'd got like twenty twelve or twenty thirteen that I'm going to stick with because I still like sports, even after learning about all the terrible things that have happened in the world that I love. So yeah, Tim likes sports on Twitter, and that's where you can That's where I'm most active on the social media's.
00:49:58
Speaker 1: Again, you can also find Tim on the No Chill podcast if you are like me, waiting for the end of Whistleblower. In the meantime, while you're on the Internet, you can also find stuff they don't want you to know. We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter. If you have listened to our multiple episodes about big data and you are still on Facebook, then check out our check out our group page. Here's where it gets crazy. You can leave us a phone number if you don't sip the social needs one eight three three STDWYTK. Let us know if you want us to use your name on air or not. We can't wait to hear your input, your feedback on whistleblower? How deep do you think this goes? How high and wide do you think this conspiracy breaches? If you don't like phones is twenty twenty, I get it. Real friends text and you don't like social media, there's one way you can always contact us. We have a good old fashioned email address where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
00:51:21
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Speaker 1: Philip conspiracy realists. We're coming in Little Caesar style, hot and ready with a classic from twenty twenty as we celebrate the holidays and the passage of one year to another. We are not the experts on the NBA, but we're pretty good at figuring out conspiracies. And in this one, guys, if you remember, not an episode per se, but an interview, we teamed up with a guy named Tim Livingston who introduced us to one of the biggest conspiracies in the entire history of the NBA.
00:00:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, this official named Tim Donahy you back in two thousand and seven got arrested for betting on games he was officiating.
00:00:53
Speaker 3: Whoops, wepe.
00:00:56
Speaker 4: Was this the podcast series that this dude did with Tenderfoot?
00:00:59
Speaker 1: Yes?
00:00:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is Whistleblower.
00:01:02
Speaker 4: Really excellent deep dive and it goes into sports betting, sports fixing conversations we've had in the past with another expert on the subject. Now that I'm thinking about it, his name is escaping me. But this one dude that we talked to who is like all sports are rigged?
00:01:17
Speaker 3: Yes, m mmmmm hmm.
00:01:18
Speaker 1: Well, and Brian Dewey that's it.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: And then we all watched this past year in twenty twenty five, when there's a crazy scandal with Chauncey Billups and Terry Rosier I don't know how to say his name, ro O z I E. R. And a bunch of other players that were caught up in a casino scandal or a you know, like a do it yourself casino style betting scandal where they'd bring in famous folks to play you know, I guess poker with and stuff like that, and then they would just take everybody's money.
00:01:49
Speaker 5: Hey, do you like money?
00:01:51
Speaker 3: Do you like the NBA?
00:01:53
Speaker 1: This is the interview for you. We can't say enough good stuff about Whistleblower. Check it out. It's available on every podcast platform that you dig personally. Add you know, they absolutely did it. Just spoiler for the record, the gambling, the conspiracy stuff is real. Tim l is correct.
00:02:18
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:02:18
Speaker 2: Well, and Tim is a sports journalist out there in Los Angeles, or at least he was, so he really knows what he's talking about. They did their work, you know, to dig into this two thousand and seven thing. I just want to put everybody else on one other show. So if you listen to this episode you like it, Maybe go check out Whistleblower. And then there's another one Tim made called the Raven that you guys, it has to do with a double murder that occurred right after a Super Bowl in Atlanta. And then that was a whole other story that was just pretty insane about Ray Lewis and like potentially him being involved in a double murder, double homicide.
00:02:56
Speaker 5: Rather from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
00:03:22
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. They call me ben Mi Compatriots Matt and Noel are on adventures, but we'll be returning very soon. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We're diving into a strange one today, fellow conspiracy realist. It's a story that you may be familiar with if you are if you are a huge fan of sports. It's a story that you may have heard a headline about, but you I've never seen it fully explored. We're diving into a world of gambling. We're diving into the depths of corruption, into the heights of financial shenanigans and ethics violations. It's a mystery that is being unraveled that occurred here in the US not too long ago. What are we talking about? Well, to answer that question, we're going to defer to an expert, as we always try to do. You know that we want to bring you primary sources, people with experience and expertise in a field. And that's why today I am over the moon to welcome to the show our guest, the sports journalist, writer and creator of the Whistleblower podcast, Tim Livingston. Tim, thanks for coming on the show today.
00:04:55
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me Ben So, you and I I.
00:05:00
Speaker 1: Have talked a bit off air about this story, which as the podcast is still coming out. Whistleblower is a term that I think a lot of people understand nowadays in the West. But Whistleblower, the podcast is diving into a very specific mystery. Could you tell us, just briefly, I want to be careful not to spoil too much, just briefly, what whistle Blower is about. How this story begins.
00:05:34
Speaker 6: The story begins with a former whistleblower, and not the one that we know about now. He has nothing to do with Russia or China or anywhere else. He's a former NBA referee named Tim Donahy and Tim Donahey for sports fans. Sports fans know Tim Donahey as the most disgrace official in American sports history. I think he has that title, and whoever's in second place, it's a pretty distance second. Tim Donnahe is looked upon as a pariah, and rightfully so. However, when he got into trouble, he blew the whistle on That's where we're going with this, Ben. He blew the whistle, the proverbial whistle on a much bigger systemic issue within the NBA, and that issue was a culture of refereeing in which players, coaches, and team personnel were fraternizing with referees, creating relationships with referees where just referees as the police of this game, we're not being policed at all. And it led to, in my opinion, corruption on an unbelievable scale, both with donnahe himself and with other referees at the time.
00:06:50
Speaker 3: And so that's what we dive into.
00:06:52
Speaker 6: It's okay, the narrative has always been Donna, he was a rogue criminal. It was just this guy, He's the only one. And for me, I just never believed it. I've watched so many NBA games that something just didn't feel right. And so that's where we dive in from is what happened, what happened with donnahe himself, and then part two is what happened with his with his former employer, what happened with the NBA, What actually happened behind the scenes. What now can we look at thirteen years ago and peel back layer by layer and understand on a much deeper level. And that's where this story gets really crazy, because thirteen years later, more people are willing to talk, more information has come to light that might have trickled into the news at some point, but that even the most ardent sports fans don't really know. And so that's where we're going with this, and that's the crux the podcast.
00:07:44
Speaker 1: So one thing that's fascinating to me about this is your inspiration because it sounds like you, you know, being a fan, very familiar with the bones of the story, or at least the headlines we saw reported back in oh back in two thousand and seven. I believe it started really the rubber really started hitting the road. But it sounds like you had a tingle of your spider sense almost right, a discrepancy. Something was rotten in Denmark. There was a glitch in the matrix. One thing that fascinates me about this is there's a line in the very beginning of the first episode where you talk about how referees are supposed to be kind of shadows, right, almost non entities on the court. Referees don't get noticed until they make a call that you don't like, Right, isn't that how it usually works out?
00:08:48
Speaker 3: Exactly?
00:08:49
Speaker 6: And what a weird profession, right, You get booed out by thousands upon thousands of people every single night. You only get noticed when you mess up. You get no accolades when you're the best of what you do, and being the best to what you do means that you're invisible. It means that people have no idea who you are. It means that the game they just watched was they watched it without any inkling that there were officials, right, it was just the players playing the game. And that means that you did the best job you could have done, the game was being played in its purest form.
00:09:22
Speaker 3: However, for basketball fans.
00:09:23
Speaker 6: We know that every single game that we've ever watched, there's been at least three or four times you're going to scream with the TV that that call was bull right. That's we all do it as sports fans. We can't help it. We're all couch coaches or whatever you want to call us. And in the NBA, that's what exists on every single night. And for me as a fan growing up, I love basketball. I played basketball my entire life, and so I've been cognizant of the effect that a referee can have on a game since I was five years old. And when I was a kid, I used to have a really bad temper and I used to scream at referees. I used to get so mad at referees when they didn't make the call that I thought was right in direct league, right, these guys are getting paid ten dollars an hour back in the early nineties, and they don't want to be there, and last thing they wanted some little asshl screaming at him. I was that kid, And then as I got older, I realized that these are human beings that you can manipulate them, right that if you're nice to them, if you chat with them before the game, if you make them feel special, they are going to give you the benefit of more calls. So I've been fascinated by that, by the ability to influence a referee for my entire life and for this story, though I having played basketball my whole life and having been in love with the sport forever, watching some of these games that took place in the early two thousands and mid two thousands before the scandal came out, before it was exposed that donnihe before donnihe exposed the idea. I can't say that he exposed everything, right, He just gave us an inkling of the culture and of how things operate behind the scenes. When that all came out, it made sense to me. And because I watched some of these games, some of those games were not right. They weren't officials having a bad day. In my opinion, there was no way there was motive. There was something behind it, and that's what we're exploring in this podcast. Ben that you mentioned I'm pretty transparent about like that's where I'm coming from. I'm not coming from I'm a journalist, but also I have eyes and I've watched these games, and so I'm not shy about the fact that I'm entering this investigation with bias, because you can't tell me the two thousand and two Western Conference Finals were three officials just having a bad game. I won't believe you. It didn't happen. It wasn't just one or two bad calls. It was an incredible amount an entire game, and especially in an entire fourth quarters worth of egregious miscalls. And for me, that's where I approached this destigation, where something was something was amiss, what was it?
00:12:03
Speaker 3: How did it work?
00:12:05
Speaker 6: And that's what we really explore on the podcast.
00:12:07
Speaker 1: You've raised a fascinating point here. It's something that I immediately thought of when you and I were first talking off air a few weeks ago about whistleblower and you were telling us some of the nuts and bolts of the situation, which are frankly disturbing. I started thinking about the tremendous paradox that's inherent and being a referee, one of the most powerful people on the court, is one of the least compensated. They're making peanuts, you know, you get what is it. I think it's an average of one hundred and fifty thousand on the low end per year to a little over five hundred thousand or so. And that's like, depending on how you break down the math, that's what some of the players are making. You know, that's like a fraction of what they're making in a game. And so I could see very easily the opportunity for someone who is unethical to whether through character or stick, incentivize the referee to make a little bit more scratch. And we know you know this. This reminded me a little bit of the conspiracy theories regarding Michael Jordan and gambling, right, which is which is something we've explored a past episode. I'm ted talking a little bit here, but I wanted to outline that because I think a lot of people, myself included, to be transparent, didn't really consider the discrepancy there, the fact that like you know, I'm I'm making two hundred and fifty grand for the whole year. That's what I'm gonna make unless I'm moonlight right somewhere else. And these folks that I'm calling that I'm making calls on no matter what happens to them win or lose. They're multi millionaires, so it doesn't seem like it would take much for the push. But okay, So the idea of rigged sports, it's tremendously controversial because any fan of sports, any fan of any sport, wants the rules to be followed right. Ostensibly, we want the game to be competitive, we want the athletes at the top of their abilities, and we want the rules followed so that a win is a real win and not invalidated and not turning into some like mafia esque con job. Could you tell us a little bit about what Doneghey was going through that pushed him to this like before, like okay, so he clearly was a crooked ref There's no question about that. Is that correct?
00:15:02
Speaker 3: No question?
00:15:03
Speaker 6: And to your point, think about it, right, if going back to the Michael Jordan Bulls, think about how much power referee has Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen stuff from the court. A referee could give both of them two technical fouls for no reason right when they walk on the court, eject them both from the game, and the Bulls have to play the rest of the game without Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen. No referee has ever done that, and probably ever will. That's a little bit too obvious, But think about how much power a referee has, right because he can also call two ticki tack fouls on Scottie Pippen and two ticki tack fouls on Michael Jordan and force them to watch the rest of the first quarter from the bench. And if you're betting against the spread, that's hugely advantageous. If you're a referee and you have money on the game, right, so are against the bulls in that game. So a referee has incredible and incredible amount of power. And for those for sports fans who don't want to believe that there's any possible corruption in sports, just using basketball as an example, the referees, to your point, make tenth, one twentieth, sometimes one fiftieth as much as the guys who were yelling at them, screaming in their face night after night after night. How can they not over time or immediately create how can they not be biased?
00:16:17
Speaker 3: Right? These guys aren't robots, they're humans.
00:16:19
Speaker 6: And with guys that have ego like Tim donahe that and again I don't think donnahe's the only referee that was fixing games over the course of history basketball. I think that would be incredibly naive to believe that.
00:16:33
Speaker 3: The question for me is how many were there and how high up did it go?
00:16:38
Speaker 6: So in episode two, we interviewed Michael Franzis, you might have seen in Netflix's Fear City, one of the most brilliant members of the Mafia of all time. A guy who is running schemes that were making millions upon millions of dollars a day and just a very He was a criminal, but he was a damn good one. And he talks about how he had two NBA referees on his payroll in the nineties that weren't Tim Dannihi, Right, So there's just this is one monster with two NBA reps on his payroll that were not the guy that we're focusing on. And that gives you an idea of a And this is what Fretsy says. It was easy to fix a game. It's not hard when it's against the spread. It's hard if you need one team to win, right. So some of the games that I'm referencing from the playoffs and finals where there was the foul discrepancies you know, there's one team is shooting sixty free throws, there are teams shooting thirty.
00:17:30
Speaker 3: That that's where it gets egregious.
00:17:32
Speaker 6: And as fans, you know, those are the games that we still talk about to this day because we a lot of us don't feel that those were on the up and up. But when it comes just to the spread, that's easy. If the Bulls are supposed to win by by ten and you got a bet on the other team to cover that spread for you know, if the Bulls need to win by nine or less for you to win your bet, yeah, call two quick fouls of Michael Jordan, put them the bench, and you're probably in really good shape for the rest that that right there probably affects the point spread by three or four points immediately. And if the Bulls are up by eleven and in the fourth quarter, start calling more thousand than Bulls, and you as a referee can really dictate whether the Bulls win by eight points or twelve points. So that's exactly and where that's where it gets interesting. And that's where we as fans have to look at the system and look at how easy it is for these guys to manipulate a game and put in The NBA has put in checks and balances since Donahey, they've done an okay job of improving the system. There are a lot more referees who are anonymous, who are invisible, who do a great job. However, there are still referees that have been refereeing for twenty five plus years who one of them. Scott Foster was Donnihe's best friend, and him and Tim Donna He talked one hundred and thirty four times in the phone at the height of the scheme from October two thousand and six to March two thousand and seven, on the phone that donnae He used as what the FBI said, Donna he used this phone for gambling, primarily for gambling or later purposes. And Scott Foster's the top official in the NBA, right, So there's all this circumstantial evidence that points to Scott Foster and Donnahe having a relationship that it minimally needs to be explored further. And this guy's being when we watch the NBA Finals this year, Scott Foster's gonna ref two of those games. And that's the guy that I'm supposed to trust has integrity and then I'm supposed to trust, you know, it's going to create an even playing field for both these teams and not let his ego or bias or anything else infiltrate.
00:19:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I don't. We got a long way to go.
00:19:39
Speaker 6: But yeah, when it comes to the scandal this time in two thousand and seven, I think it went and this is what we explored in the podcast. I believe that it went really, really deep, and it's really fascinating what Donnie he was doing. And then it's also for me on the conspiracy side, way more interesting what the league, what the NBA was doing to make this problem go away.
00:20:00
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's let's explore a couple of those points. So first off, to me, it's still you probably hear me laughing in the background, folks, It's still hilarious to me when you tim were first telling us in our earlier conversations about a gambling phone, Like, I've heard of a burner phone, but I've never known someone who gambles so frequently that at some point they're like, I need a different phone for this, and it's like.
00:20:33
Speaker 6: Yeah, several burner phones and this one was like primarily the gambling phone, but he hit donahe himself. There were so many tentacles he was betting with at least two people that we know about that were part of the scandal that were the FBI found at least two. We speculate that he was probably betting with three, four or five other people. Right, Hey, Ben, can you place you know this is the pick tonight? Put five hundred bucks on the bulls for me and kick me back, you know, three hundred Just bring the cash next time I see you. That's where it gets crazy, and you got to wonder with if you look at Donnahe's phone records, think about how easy it is for that money to move without a trace, if it's just cash, if it's at levels that aren't in the millions, which are what was being bet on Donahe's games. In the professional betting markets, when Tim Donahue refed a game, there were millions of dollars being moved by the mafia, by the Gambino crime family, and by various professional betting syndicates on each game that he refereed. Tim Donnahey referee two hundred and sixty games over the course of the scheme, So you do the math. Were there hundreds of millions wagered in one on Tim Donahy's games by organized crime and other shady outlets. At least, right we know it's hundreds of millions where they're billions maybe, And that's crazy. That's one referee games. So now expand that there's fifty three referees in the NBA, and let's look at college college is even easier. Hofstra is playing Northeastern. Anybody watching that game, anybody gonna notice if a couple grands placed here and there and all over the country and Northeastern shoots sixty two free throws and Hofstra only shoots twenty five.
00:22:13
Speaker 3: Probably not.
00:22:14
Speaker 6: So that's where, again, as basketball fans, I think the big thing I would love to see from our podcast is just a demand for better checks and balances, a demand for greater transparency, and just a demand that our game, the game that.
00:22:31
Speaker 3: We love, is.
00:22:33
Speaker 6: Improved from an officiating standpoint. Because we're still not there yet.
00:22:37
Speaker 1: And we'll pause here for a word from our sponsor before we return to examine this strange tale of conspiracy, corruption and sports with Tim Livingston, and we're back. This is to me, what are the roots of the dilemma? First, though I have to ask, and I know there's a question A lot of our fellow listeners are wondering. Now the process you describe is so subtle, right, and it's so easy to make, uh, you know, to make ten million dollars through a series of relatively innocuous seeming bets instead of one big ten million pot. This stuff being so easy to miss. It makes me wonder how someone got wind of this. How did this guy go from being, you know, one one of the top most established referees in the business to this pariah to this person who was I believe I believe one of the descriptions used is uh is scapegoaded? Right like NBA wanted a bad guy.
00:23:55
Speaker 6: So to answer your question, Donnahie was Donnie was betting on his own games, so we can assume if he's betting on his own games. I think we proved pretty definitively in the first couple episodes that Donnay was fixing any game that he bet on and was refereeing, obviously, right, I mean his the FBI made him admit that he at least subconsciously might have manipulated games that he was referering and had money on. But I think we prove again without a I don't think there's any doubt after the first couple episodes of our podcast that Donnie he knew what he was doing, and then he was fixing those games. So, donnahe is fixing games for four years. And what I think is interesting in two thousand and seven when he got caught, if it wasn't for the scheme getting too big, if it wasn't for this guy, Jimmy bob A Batista, Donnahe's not really friend from high school, but a guy that he grew up with and known his entire life and became a professional gambler. It wasn't for Jimmy Bautista getting involved. Jimmy Batista was at the time addicted to pills, cocaine, and everything else under the sun that you could smoke, swallow or inhale in any in any way I'm trying to think of. I haven't done drugs in a while, so this is I hope my wife is listening for that reason, to for the fact that I started over how to how to do drugs. But Batista was an admitted addict. I mean he went to rehab towards the end of the scheme. And if it wasn't for Batista being in that state and he went into debt, he was he was getting He's winning eighty ninety percent of his picks, which is a professional gambler. That's how you print, That's how you make that's how you go buy an island. Right, you're printing money, like you know, invest It's like, hey, in nineteen ninety he invest in Apple. There's gonna be coming to Google. That's gonna ipo in like two thousand and three, I invest in that. You know, it's it's not fair. You're not playing on an even playing field. But Batista, because of his addiction and because of his hubris, went into debt and started talking and he mentioned it to too many people. The scheme got too big, there was too much money moving, and ultimately it just came down to him talking to an informant. It was an informant for the Gambino crime family, and they caught it on a wire tap and boom, your FBI is like, wait what you have a referee in your in your pocket and they started listening and they started, you know, they did their due diligence and they're the FBI. They figured it out in a week or two, and Donnahue was the guy, and they knew. What's interesting, been to your point is if Donahue kept it relatively small, if it was what he was doing the first couple of years with a couple of friends, and the circle was small, circle was tight, would he still be refereeing in the NBA today? And I believe the answer is yes, unequivocally. I think if a referee was doing this today, we'd have no real way of knowing. It's just it's completely undetectable. And that's a problem. That's a big problem. And so Donahe and if you listened to Tommy Martino, who was the middleman between Donahe Andatista, Tim Martinez says, they're having the time in their lives. They were making gobs of money, and there were criminals, but they never thought they'd get caught. And when criminals don't think they're going to get caught and think that they're just going to make this kind of money and live this kind of lifestyle forever, they have fun. And so Donnahy eventually realized the FBI started knocking, and he quickly went and confessed. Everything became a cooperator, because that's how he only got fifteen months in prison from all this. But that's what's interesting. Could this have gone on in perpetuity? And again I think the answer is yes.
00:27:36
Speaker 1: And does it go on today, which it seems like there's I don't know, no no for everybody listening. Of course, the entirety of whistleblowers is not out yet. The story is ongoing and you should check it out today. But having listened to the show, what I can say is I am per like I live in the world of conspiracies, man, and there are a ton of conspiracy theories that are just easily easily debunked or disproven or don't add up. But I would say, this is not a conspiracy theory. This is an actual conspiracy. Donnie conspired to do these things. And as I was listening, you know one thing that struck me is I massively appreciate you saying at the very top, look, I'm a journalist. I came in with it. I'm convinced something is up here, something's amiss, because as I was listening, I ended up completely agreeing. So there might not be like the FBI's equivalent, there might not be something that meets the FBI's equivalent of a smoking gun or a fire with Foster with some other close relationships. But there's a lot of smoke. You show a lot of smoke in this show, and it makes me think that the money and the opportunity is probably too good for some people to walk away from for a number of reasons, like human ego, like you said, but also just the financial aspect. I wanted to ask, you know, as an outsider, I, like many people, many of our fellow listeners, am not a professional referee. How well did these guys all know each other? That's one of the big questions I think a lot of people have. Is it like a clock in, clock out job? Are you like, once you get in the rarefied air of being a professional NBA referee, don't you kind of know of all the other people in that sphere.
00:29:47
Speaker 6: Absolutely, these guys have all been working together forever. They exist in a very strange bubble and right now for those that are actually in Orlando, that's a funny term to you is considering that the NBA right now is in a literal bubble, but referees, there's only about fifty five NBA referees refing per season, most of them for the most part. I mean it's some of them only last two or three years and get canned. The ones who make it though, they referee forever. They're in the league for fifteen, twenty twenty five, sometimes twenty five plus years, and they become synonymous with the show. And that's what's interesting, right, And that's what we what we're exploring, is how much of this is entertainment and how much of basketball professional basketball is legitimate competition and where did those lines blur. But the referees all know each other very well for the most part. Some of them hate each other. Some of them think that, you know, referee X might think Referee why is the worst referee ever, and you know he's a show off and he makes the game all about himself, and you know those some of those things came to light. Actually after the danahe scandal, the NBA commissioned its own report, you know, like we're gonna we're gonna really nail down and look at our system and look at our culture and fix what's wrong, right, and we're going to pay a lawyer to do it. So this lawyer is going to be he's an independent. He's been completely independent. This investigation is not going to try and you know, cast cast doubt on some of the more salacious things that have been alleged during the scandal. This is an investigation we can all trust. And so the Peduitz report, which is the NBA report that I'm referring to after the Donnahie scandal, it still says it looks at NBA referee relationships and it talks about some of this stuff. Right, How some of these guys look at Dick Pavetta, who's the most senior official during this time, and think that he was.
00:31:43
Speaker 3: Far too How do we say? How should I say?
00:31:47
Speaker 6: I mean intertwined in the game, that he made the game about himself, right, which, according to my definition of what makes a good referees, exact opposite thing that you should do. Dick Paveta CORNEYA Donnie. He had an American Airlines pilot that he call after every game in this Again, according to Donnie, I can't prove this and never talk with excuse me, the stewardess American Airline stewardess, but he used to call stewardess friend of his after every game and to get a report on how much airtime he got during that game. So if that's true, that's really bad, right, that's really really bad. But another interesting thing been to your point, fifteen or so referees again tight fraternity, Not that many. Fifteen hail from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, hail from the greater Philadelphia area, which, over the course of refereeing in the eighties, nineties, two thousands, and now into twenty twenty, a lot of referees hail from this one area of Philadelphia and which, as we find out in the podcast, is a gambling hotbed. And that's where Donnie's from, and Steve Jaffy and Joey Crawford and if you know NBA referees could I could go on and on, but they all hail from this one area in and around Philadelphia. So it's certainly suspicious. It's not really a meritocracy. It's incredibly Donna. He's a product of nepotism. His uncle was an NBA referee, his father was a college referee. So yeah, all these guys, it's gotten better, I think referees now it's definitely more of a meritocracy as far as I can tell. But really, at the time it was who you knew and who your dad was or who your uncle was.
00:33:22
Speaker 1: I mean, that's insane, because we know that nepotism often wins the day over meritocracy and any number of fields or pursuits. But the appeal of the appeal of sports in general is the idea that through one's own hard work, focused practice, and natural talent, you can leave everything else that's outside of the court off the court when you play the game. And for that not to be the case, it's got to be just a profound punch in the gut, you know, especially for a lot of kids who, like you, were growing up living, breathing, loving basketball, you know, and now to find that this may very well be rigged. I mean, it's understandable that people would say, well, this is a bad Apple situation, right, this is a bad actor. It's a one off in the NBA. You know, as you've explored, the NBA goes into crisis mode kind of in their pr and their damage control. But one of the big twists that comes about, there are two big twists I think that are going to be startling. Is first the NBA's damage control, their pr their report it it didn't do the best job persuading people that this was a one off. And I think Donna Gie himself didn't agree with their findings. And I know this because of another big twist in our story, which is that Tim, you talked to him. Everybody should look if you're not familiar with this character. We want to establish this. Tim Donaghue is alive today and you, Tim have had like multiple conversations with.
00:35:18
Speaker 6: Him, multiple And this is we start off. And what I'll say now that we're a little farther because people have asked me since we started, when we started this podcast, the reason I had access to Donahe is because Donnie and I were very friendly. I'm the only when I was writing for The Post Game, which was a Yahoo site back in twenty twelve, I'm the first one, I think, the only person, at least, you know, according to Google search results, which I've done. You know, I've google searched this ardently over the past eight years. I think I'm the only one who said that publicly right that I believe what Tim Donahey's saying about about the culture of the NBA. I said, in so many words, donnahe We know what donnahe is he's not the best guy, but he's also so I think he's a scapegoat for a bigger systemic issue. And I think that the reason I'm the only one to have written those words or something far more eloquent in my actual article.
00:36:12
Speaker 3: Hopefully.
00:36:14
Speaker 6: I think the reason I'm the one who was able to say that is because I wasn't employed by the NBA. Right, if you're an NBA beat writer and you believe what Tim Donna he's saying, you can't say that you're not going to get access to any locker room, You're not going to get access to any player, You're going to become a pariah. You can't say that. And most crime reporters, and I'm sure a lot of the stories that you guys explore from a journalistic perspective, you know, crime in sports is not usually something we look at for that crime reporters look at. Most crime reportters don't gravitate towards sports to say, oh, what's the deal here, what's the scandal here, what's.
00:36:48
Speaker 3: The corruption here?
00:36:50
Speaker 6: So, I, just as a freelance sports writer without any ties to the NBA, found myself in this very odd position. And then after I wrote the article, Tim Donne. He reached out to me and said thank you so much for writing this, and that's where we became friends and now after. But look, at the same time, I'm a journalist, right, so I did my research. I've done I've investigated this story over basically from that day, over the course of eight plus years, and what I found when it comes to Donnae is that he in fact is lying about a lot of things, in my opinion, and because of that, we were forced to reveal those things over the course of the podcast. So Tim Donnie, I don't think it's my friend any longer. Ben unfortunately or not unfortunately, I don't really care. But Tim Donnae is no longer doesn't like me anymore, and that's fine because I still liked Tim. I have no issue with Tim, and all I want is to find the truth at the heart of this scandal, at the heart of this conspiracy, because I really appreciate you saying that it's not conspiracy theory. There's no theory. It's really just a question of how deep the conspiracy goes. And that's what our podcasts about, and that's what unfortunately, for thirteen years, people in my world, the sports world have been too hesitant to investigate for reasons that are completely rational. If you're an NBA writer, you want a job, you got a future family.
00:38:08
Speaker 3: I get it.
00:38:10
Speaker 6: At the same time, this is the darkest moment in the history of basketball, and to make this fort better and too, you need to understand its fault and why you know what needs improving, And so that's where this journey kind of kicked off from. But yeah, Tim Donnahie is is a central part of our story, and I think what's interesting for myself and the audience is deciphering what's true and what's not true.
00:38:35
Speaker 1: Let's pause for a brief word from our sponsor before we return with more and the still developing tale of whistle Blower with Tim Livingston, and we're back. These shows, both both whistle Blower and Stuff they Want you to Know, have have something in common, which is pursuing the truth, even when pursuing the truth is not a popular or even safe thing at times. One thing that stands out to me that surprises me. I haven't thought about really until exploring Whistleblower, until speaking with you, is the idea that the NBA could wield such profound, pervasive influence over what is supposed to be objective reporting. So is it true that the NBA can just stonewall or blackball blacklisted journalists, or they can they shut down and silence a story, or is it more that the journalists themselves are kind of proactively self selecting and avoiding things they think will get them in trouble.
00:39:54
Speaker 3: That's a great question.
00:39:55
Speaker 6: And again, the media side of this is super, super interesting and something that we explorer in the second half of the podcast. So I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but I will say that, in my opinion, during the David Stern era of the NBA, and David Stern, for those who don't know, is the commissioner from nineteen eighty four to twenty fourteen, David Stern is and this is what where if you're just if you're listening to Whistleblower right now, you haven't heard this, or you're we're about to start revealing in episodes five, six, and seven, which you're coming out over the next you'll have heard five and six and seven are about to come out. But the NBA was an entity you did not mess with. And that is not me saying that that's other journalists that I've spoken with. Murray Weiss, a former New York Posts reporter who broke the story in the NBA, said those words very clearly, right you're about to hear You're about to hear Murray Wyss say that right where people warned him, don't mess with the NBA, don't mess with David Stern. David Stern did not mess around. David Stern was a monarch. He really was, and he was brilliant, and he's a fascinating character in this.
00:41:03
Speaker 3: That we really.
00:41:05
Speaker 6: Are going to die, going to dive into his psyche, going to dive into how he ran the league and the way he ran the league. It wouldn't work in twenty twenty, but it worked very well in the nineties and early two thousands. He was not a social media era guy. He said things that would just be absolutely destroyed with the way we disseminate news and at the speed with which we disseminate news today. But the NBA, in my estimation, in my opinion, which hopefully at this point your your audience values at least somewhat as somebody who has spent eight years. If you guys, don't if you think I'm an idiot. That's fine as well, but my opinion is that, yes, the NBA was somebody was a company, right, was a thing that you did not mess with and that people were very scared of. And it wasn't just they would go to great lengths to make stories like this go away. And we explore with the Donahue scandal the great lengths that they made for this story to go away, and it's fascinating. Now.
00:42:06
Speaker 1: I do have to say I've been personally impressed by the uh, the the thoroughness of the reporting, especially when you know in a very real way you are telling a story that doesn't want to be told right, even in the modern day. And one thing we have to let you know if you're listening to the show today, is that me and Matt and nol in Mission Control and Doc Holiday code named Doc Holliday. Uh. Tim, Tim isn't giving us a preview of the episodes. So all the stuff that that you just said, Tim with my question, it's it's stuff that I have to wait for the next episode to hear, which I think is it's fantastic. I just want to say that, you know, unlike some players of the NBA. We're not getting special treatment here, so we are listening along with you, folks. Perhaps one way to close today's episode, before everybody goes and checks out whistleblowers for ourselves, is to go back to something that you post that I think is of crucial importance here. So there's this idea of checks and balances, right, and how best to institute them, But it seems so complicated. It seems like it's a very tall order. Do you have things like checks and balances that you think would mitigate this problem? I mean, is there a solution? Because I you know, I'm not an expert. I'm not like the King of referees or anything like that. And I was thinking through this and yeah, I don't know, and out smart than me. It's just so easy to get away with it, you know.
00:43:58
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I think the first step is right now, the referees are employed by the NBA. So, for example, during the David Stern era, David Stern somewhat facetiously replied during a Dan Patrick interview in two thousand and four about his dream NBA Finals matchup. He said, Lakers versus Lakers is the league. That's that's what the Laker. That's what the league wants to see. And as a Lakers look, I grew up a Lakers fan, right, The Lakers got that hat on, I got the La hat on, and I it's interesting because the Lakers were for ratings, which the NBA cared a lot about. The NBA makes a majority of its money via via television. The TV contracts they've signed over the last twenty years have just gone up by the billions. It's gone from hundreds of millions to billions to multi billions. And last year the NBA did almost nine billion dollars in revenue. So if you're valuing the NBA as a company, their give or take a thirty five billion dollar company, they're a huge corporation. They're a very very powerful corporation. And so the first thing you need to do is make the referees.
00:45:09
Speaker 2: You need to.
00:45:09
Speaker 3: Create a separate employment agency.
00:45:12
Speaker 6: You can't have the NBA employee referees because if the Lakers are playing whichever team in the Western Conference Finals, and that referee has in his head that David Stern, his boss's boss's boss's boss is rooting for the Lakers to reach the next game, that's a problem.
00:45:28
Speaker 3: Right.
00:45:28
Speaker 6: So that's step one is and Phil Jackson, formed Lakers coach, the one who suggested that first, or at least, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people had suggested before Phil Jackson, but I think Phil Jackson, of the time NBA champion's he knows, he's a smart guy. He knows his teams have been privy to different officiating than a lot of other a lot of other teams. And that's one anecdote that donnae He provides in our opening episodes where Phil Jackson or he calls Michael Jordan for travel, Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson flip out and Phil Jackson, you know, Donnie, he says, you watch the same training tapes as I do. And Phil Jackson says, yeah, they might want that call to travel, but not on Michael Jordan. So it's the same kind of bias and talent discrimination that exists throughout the league, and a call, the right call should be the right call every single time, and it's not.
00:46:22
Speaker 3: In the NBA.
00:46:23
Speaker 6: There's biases and different rules for different players, and it's it's not an even playing field. And to get there, the first step is to create make referees part of a different organization that has no ties with the NBA, and that's that's step one, and that's a big step.
00:46:39
Speaker 3: Do I think it's going to happen. I don't know.
00:46:42
Speaker 6: I don't think anytime soon, because definitely during the David Stern era, I think the NBA enjoyed having that control, and I think they giving that up would be something that they would really really have to be pushed into a hole to do. But that's the that's the first step the solution. And then you've got to make sure that that agency, that organization is is run well and run with integrity. But right now, the NBA having control essentially over the employment of its officials creates a conflict of interest. It's too wada chasm to to overcome.
00:47:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is you know, this is reminding me of all those memes where you see like a tiny hero standing up against some gigantic colossus in the on the horizon. That's an enormous conflict of interest. And you know what what I like about this point and what I like about I called some of my friends who are living, breathing, God bless them for their optimism, Atlanta basketball fans and uh and so they so so, uh, you know, a lot of I think a lot of folks here or somehow familiar with the problem you're addressing just at the very offset of Whistleblower, and it's this I think. You know, if you love basketball, then of course you feel like there's been several terrible calls, as you said, Tim, two three, four per game. So I think a lot of our listeners are already excited to see it's a very real proof that they weren't just being you know, sore loser fans or something like that. And so we turn it over to you, folks. Don't take my word for it. Do check out whistle Blower. It's available wherever you find your favorite podcast on any platform. As we said, we actually waited a little bit on this interview because we didn't want to have the interview here while episode one was just out because there's so much stuff on the horizon that we can't get talk about. And Tim, thank you for being patient with me. I know you totally caught me trying to slide in getting a little more info. I guess I'll just have to wait. I'll have to wait till next week, but.
00:49:13
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. Ben Now was great.
00:49:15
Speaker 6: I could talk about this stuff all day, So after episode ten comes out, I'll come back on and we can dive even deeper. But do you appreciate it? It was a lot of fun, and yeah, check out Whistleblower. I think you guys will like it.
00:49:27
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Tim, for anyone who would like to learn more about your overall work, where can they find you online?
00:49:36
Speaker 6: I'm on Twitter at Tim likes sports. To handle that, I think I'd got like twenty twelve or twenty thirteen that I'm going to stick with because I still like sports, even after learning about all the terrible things that have happened in the world that I love. So yeah, Tim likes sports on Twitter, and that's where you can That's where I'm most active on the social media's.
00:49:58
Speaker 1: Again, you can also find Tim on the No Chill podcast if you are like me, waiting for the end of Whistleblower. In the meantime, while you're on the Internet, you can also find stuff they don't want you to know. We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter. If you have listened to our multiple episodes about big data and you are still on Facebook, then check out our check out our group page. Here's where it gets crazy. You can leave us a phone number if you don't sip the social needs one eight three three STDWYTK. Let us know if you want us to use your name on air or not. We can't wait to hear your input, your feedback on whistleblower? How deep do you think this goes? How high and wide do you think this conspiracy breaches? If you don't like phones is twenty twenty, I get it. Real friends text and you don't like social media, there's one way you can always contact us. We have a good old fashioned email address where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
00:51:21
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
