NFL Referees and game fixing (circa 1999)

[uva3021]

Jack's post on the Pro Football board lead me to research NFL referees and I stumbled upon an archived article (1999) from http://www.moldea.com

In my January 1988 article about the NFL and the mob for Regardie's, I had focused on the suppressed and killed investigations of NFL corruption. But I had no evidence of game-fixing and received a considerable amount of criticism from the media for making such a fuss about corruption in the NFL without getting it. So, for my book, I concentrated most of my resources on proving that NFL games had been fixed.

The NFL and its commissioner, Pete Rozelle, had claimed that no game in its history--since the formation of the league in 1920--had ever been fixed. However, the NFL did acknowledge two unsuccessful attempts to fix NFL games: the 1946 NFL Championship Game between the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears and a 1971 NFL game between the Houston Oilers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Nevertheless, even before the January 1983 Frontline broadcast, several people had made allegations of NFL game-fixing, and I began working to confirm or reject those charges based on my own investigation.

For instance, Bubba Smith, a defensive lineman for the Baltimore Colts, had told Playboy that the 1969 Super Bowl, featuring the heroics of New York Jets' quarterback Joe Namath, had been fixed; that Carroll Rosenbloom, then the owner of the Colts, had bet against his own team.

Not true, according to my own investigation, which included a statement from the Bookmaker who had actually handled Rosenbloom's bet--which was placed on his own team.

However, my research--which included interviews with the top Bookmakers, oddsmakers, and gamblers in the country--revealed that no fewer than 70 NFL games had been fixed.

In 1983, when I began my preliminary work for the NFL book in the wake of the Frontline program, I contacted Vincent Piersante, the head of the organized-crime division of the Michigan state attorney general's office. Piersante, who had been helpful to me during my research for The Hoffa Wars, told me that if I wanted to write about game-fixing in the NFL, I would have to investigate Donald Dawson, a top Bookmaker from Detroit.

Piersante told me that Dawson had been involved with members of the Detroit Lions and other NFL teams during the 1950s, 1960s, an 1970s. "Professional football, we had cold," Piersante said. "It was clear to us that games had been fixed by players [who were] shaving points in cooperation with several organized-crime connected bookmakers."

Piersante added that Dawson was among those bookmakers who were financing the players' game-fixing schemes.

After speaking with Piersante, I then went to other law-enforcement officials, including a former top official with the Criminal Intelligence Division of the Internal Revenue Service. This IRS official had coordinated the agency's 1969-1970 investigation of Dawson.

During the IRS probe, several NFL players were proven to have been in regular contact with and provided inside information to Dawson, who was later convicted and sentenced to prison for his bookmaking activities.

And numerous other law-enforcement officials, whom I also interviewed, agreed with Piersante and the IRS in their assessment of Dawson's activities.

At this point in my investigation, I had enough evidence to print that, according to state and federal law enforcement officials, as well as several former NFL players whom I had also interviewed, Don Dawson had allegedly engaged in game-fixing.

But, wanting more, I went after Dawson and found him living in Las Vegas. He had never been interviewed by any reporter and, at first, tried to blow me off, but I wouldn't let him. I kept prodding him, playing to his enormous ego. When that didn't work, I started to recount what my law-enforcement sources had told me about him. That placed Dawson on the defensive, forcing him to reply to each charge in detail.

After finally getting Dawson to admit for the first time that he had been involved in NFL game-fixing, I asked him to explain the mechanics. Dawson replied, "A player, usually a quarterback, would come to me and say, 'I need some bread.' Then he'd ask me to make a bet for him and myself. If the Lions were ten-point favorites, he'd say, 'Well, we'll probably win by six or seven. We won't cover the spread.'"

Naming names and teams, Dawson continued:

Naturally, I wanted to do business with the quarterback, because he handles the ball on every play. And a lot of quarterbacks were shaving points. Sure, it happened. The players didn't make any money [from playing football], and so they bet. In those days, they were barely getting by. They were getting their brains beaten out for almost nothing.

I was involved with players in at least thirty-two NFL games that were dumped or where points were shaved. I knew a lot of players and then through them I got acquainted with other players and then did business with them.

Of course, I had taped this conversation.

In another game-fixing conspiracy, the head of Project Layoff, an IRS gambling investigation in Nevada, provided me with evidence, indicating that two referees had allegedly participated in the fixing of no fewer than eight additional NFL games.

[Deck]

here we go.

[upinya83]

did goterps write this?

[Deck]

i think he is doing the follow up article.

[uva3021]

more...

September 25, 1999
More game-fixing evidence
Copyright © 1999 by Dan E. Moldea
The most controversial allegation in my 1989 book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football (William Morrow), is that over seventy NFL games have been fixed. Despite the evidence, league officials have long claimed that no professional football game has ever been successfully fixed since the creation of the NFL in 1920. Of course, any admission to the contrary would jeopardize the public's perception of "the integrity of the game."
The following is the untold story of how I developed the information about eight of these allegedly fixed games:

Several years ago, I received a copy of an FBI-302 report, which detailed the FBI's investigation of NFL referees and game officials. The report stated that "two or three referees" had been paid $100,000 by a New York Mafia figure for their participation in each of eight allegedly fixed games--which I list on page 308 of Interference. The referees' alleged job was to ensure that the unnamed mob figure covered the spread and, thus, won his bets. The referees' names were not mentioned in the FBI report.
As I state in my book, the FBI eventually dropped its probe, because the evidence of game-fixing was, supposedly, inconclusive. In addition, the bureau's principal informant was caught trying to sell the same information to the IRS.
During my own interview with the informant, who had passed a polygraph test, he identified the two referees.
Even though I had the FBI report, the results of the informant's polygraph examination, and the names of the two game officials, I decided not to publish this material without further corroboration. My FBI sources, who had provided a considerable amount of help to me during my research for Interference, refused to comment about this particular game-fixing investigation for my book. I never fully understood why.
Subsequently, I contacted nationally-known oddsmaker, Bobby Martin, who said that he had had similar game-fixing suspicions about at least one NFL game official, whom he named. This referee was one of the two identified by the informant. Martin told me that he had also shared this information with Las Vegas gambler Lem Banker, who confirmed to me both Martin's personal investigation of the referee, as well as his name. Both Martin and Banker told me that they could prove that unnatural money had shown up on the referee's games--but they could not prove that any of the games had been actually fixed.
I then contacted Leo Halper, who was involved in Project Layoff, which included the IRS's investigation of game-fixing in the NFL. He told me that the FBI informant, who had also sold his information to the IRS, had given him the outcomes of the eight fixed games, along with the names of the two referees, in advance of the games being played.
Halper added that the referees had made their own bets on the eight fixed games through beards in Las Vegas. The initial IRS probe included surveillance on one of the beards, who reportedly bet so much money on these games that the betting line actually moved in response to the vast amount of money wagered. According to Halper, this wagering activity occurred at the Barbary Coast's sports book on the Las Vegas Strip.
Also, during my research, I received a correspondence from one of the beards involved with the two NFL referees. He confirmed, in writing, the fixes and named the same two referees.
But the IRS probe, according to the Halper, collapsed when agency chiefs--despite the reliability of the informant's information--refused to authorize a full-scale federal investigation, even though the IRS had concluded that the games had, indeed, been fixed. (Rumors persist that agency officials--who had received the outcomes of NFL games in advance of the contests--were scoring their own betting coups.)
On the basis of the overwhelming evidence--the FBI report, my interviews with Martin and Banker, statements made to me by the IRS agent in charge of the investigation, the letter from the beard allegedly involved with the officials, and the statements made by the FBI/IRS informant, who had passed a polygraph examination--I published the material about the eight fixed games in Interference, hoping that a subsequent official investigation would answer the lingering questions about this matter.
However, upon the advice of my personal attorney, I decided not to publish the names of the two referees.
On August 23, 1989, after the publication of Interference, I was contacted by an intermediary, who told me that NFL league officials wanted to know, among other things, the names of the two referees. On August 25, I met with Warren Welsh, the director of NFL Security, in Las Vegas. I provided him with: a) the FBI report, b) the names of the two NFL referees, and c) the names of all but one of my confidential sources during this particular investigation. The exception was the beard, who asked that his name not be disclosed. The other sources had given me permission to reveal their names and information to Welsh.
On ABC's Nightline on September 11, which was hosted by Jeff Greenfield and focused on gambling in the NFL, I appeared on the program along with Warren Welsh and Las Vegas oddsmaker Michael Roxborough. The question of these eight allegedly fixed games was raised during the program.
According to the official Nightline transcript, the exchange between Welsh and me was precipitated after I claimed that there was evidence that no fewer than 70 NFL games had been fixed. The transcript states:
Greenfield: . . . I can't forbear from picking up on the point you [Moldea] said earlier. Are you talking about games that have been fixed within recent history, recent NFL history, last 10 years or so?
Moldea: I'm saying that the last games I have where there's allegations of fixed games were 10 years ago. There were eight games that were allegedly fixed by two referees who were paid $100,000 each for each game by a New York Mafia guy, and their job was to basically make sure that that Mafia guy covered the spread.
Greenfield: Mr. Welsh, quickly, what do you have to say about those allegations? Have you looked at Mr. Moldea's book? Can you respond to them?
Welsh: I have, and I would like to say that in contact with law enforcement sources, that the informant that Mr. Moldea refers to is term a pathological liar by the FBI.
Moldea: Well, the IRS has a different feeling about him, Warren, and basically they viewed him as being credible, and
that--the IRS believed that the investigation itself concluded that the games were indeed fixed. They had the information in advance of the games on those eight fixed games.
In 1992, Halper of the IRS sat down for a sworn deposition during a separate investigation of game-fixing in the NFL, which had developed in the midst of a civil litigation. Halper was specifically questioned about the accuracy of what I had written in my book:
Question: So you say you knew Dan. That is Dan Moldea?
Halper: Yes.
Question: Where did you know him from?
Halper: He had contacted me when he was doing research for his book. That's how I knew him. . .
Question: Did you read his book?
Halper: I have read most of it.
Question: What did you think of his book from a professional point of view?
Halper: I thought it was well done. . . .
Question: Does he mention in the book the 1979 football season, the games that were fixed?
Halper: Yes.
Question: Did you read that particular component in the book?
Halper: Yes.
Question: Is the book accurate in its detailing or referring to the events of the 1979 football season?
Answer: Yes.

[uva3021]

just found it interesting

[Deck]

anything from 90's or above?

[uva3021]

in the late 70's its not really surprising

[Deck]

well if you find anything near the late 90's or early 00's let me know so i can get re-imbursed.

[Will]

Good Read.