Players not the only ones susceptible to influence of sports gambling

TOKYO — You probably don’t know the name Tim Donaghy, but it might be useful to know it in the wake of the Ippei Mizuhara/Shohei Ohtani sports gambling scandal. Donaghy was an NBA referee who had officiated 772 regular season games and 26 playoff games over 13 NBA seasons between 1994 and 2007 before he was caught participating in several game-fixing episodes related to gambling debts.

An undercover FBI investigation revealed that Donaghy bet money on games that he had officiated during his last two seasons and that he made calls that affected the point spread in those games. Donaghy later admitted to betting on games that he refereed in the years 2003-2008. He pleaded guilty to two federal charges and spent nearly a year in a federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida, before being paroled. He was later sent back to prison for violating the terms of his release.

Donaghy, a Philadelphia native and Villanova graduate and sales and marketing major whose father had been a basketball referee for NCAA games, was a product of his times.