Benny Silman of New York City is a former student turned campus bookmaker who was jailed for masterminding a point shaving scandal at Arizona State University. [1] [2] [3]
In 1998, Silman pleaded guilty to charges that he bribed college basketball players Stevin "Hedake" Smith and Isaac Burton to ensure the Sun Devils did not "cover the allotted spread" in four end-of-season basketball games during the 1994 season. [1] [4] [5] He was sentenced to just under four years in a federal prison after pleading guilty to fixing Arizona State basketball games in exchange for money from gamblers. [6] A total of $568,000 was wagered by professional sports handicappers on the approval of Silman.[ citation needed ]
Following his release in 2002, Silman has conducted seminars with NCAA athletes to warn them about the dangers of gambling and has written articles for such publications as Maxim magazine. Silman claims that he was coerced into perpetuating his scheme longer than planned by members of organized crime. His story was made into a movie titled Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie with David Krumholtz playing Silman. [7] [8]
In organized sports, point shaving is a type of match fixing where the perpetrators try to change the final score of a game without the intention of changing who wins. This is typically done by players colluding with gamblers to prevent a team from covering a published point spread, where gamblers bet on the margin of victory. The practice of shaving points is illegal in some countries, and stiff penalties are imposed for those caught and convicted, including jail time.
In organized sports, match fixing is the act of playing or officiating a contest with the intention of achieving a predetermined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law. There are many reasons why match fixing might take place, including receiving bribes from bookmakers or sports bettors, and blackmail. Competitors may also intentionally perform poorly to gain a future advantage, such as a better draft pick or to face an easier opponent in a later round of competition. A player might also play poorly to rig a handicap system.
David Krumholtz is an American actor. Krumholtz is best known for portraying Bernard in The Santa Clause franchise (1994–present), Michael Eckman in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Goldstein in the Harold & Kumar film trilogy (2004–2011), Charlie Eppes in the CBS drama series Numb3rs (2005–2010), and Isidor Isaac Rabi in Oppenheimer (2023).
Stevin L. "Hedake" Smith is an American former professional basketball player, who is also known for his involvement in the 1994 Arizona State point-shaving scandal.
Ralph Milton Beard Jr. was an American collegiate and professional basketball player. He won two NCAA national basketball championships at the University of Kentucky and played two years in the National Basketball Association prior to being barred for life for his participation in the 1951 point shaving scandal.
The Dixie Classic was an annual college basketball tournament played from 1949 to 1960 in Reynolds Coliseum. The field consisted of the "Big Four" North Carolina schools, the host NC State Wolfpack, Duke Blue Devils, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Wake Forest Demon Deacons, and four teams from across the country.
The 1978–79 Boston College basketball point-shaving scandal involved a scheme in which members of the American Mafia recruited and bribed several Boston College Eagles men's basketball players to ensure the team would not win by the required margin or win by the required margin, allowing gamblers in the know to place wagers against that team and win.
Timothy Francis Donaghy is a disgraced former professional basketball referee who worked in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 13 seasons from 1994 to 2007 until he was caught in a gambling scandal. During his career in the NBA, Donaghy officiated in 772 regular season games and 26 playoff games.
The CCNY point-shaving scandal of 1951 was a college basketball point-shaving gambling scandal that officially involved seven American colleges and universities in all, with four of these schools being in the New York metropolitan area, two of them occurring in the Midwest, and one of them being in the South. However, at least one other player from the Ivy League in New York would also be considered involved in the scandal retroactively. Furthermore, it was alleged that the reach of this scandal went as far as the West Coast of the United States out in California and Oregon through attempts to fix games out there. While the starting point wasn't from the City College of New York (CCNY) nor did that college have the most implicated players involved from the event, the scandal became notable and infamous during that period of time due to the number of players in the scandal being players of the collegiate dual tournament champion 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team. It was also seen as the biggest tipping point that threatened the integrity of college basketball's very existence at the time.
The 2007 NBA betting scandal was a scandal involving the National Basketball Association (NBA) and accusations that an NBA referee used his knowledge of relationships between referees, coaches, players and owners to bet on professional basketball games. In July 2007, reports of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were made public, which alleged that during the 2005–06 and 2006–07 NBA seasons, referee Tim Donaghy bet on games in which he officiated. Donaghy later admitted to betting on games he officiated in each of the 2003–04, 2004–05, 2005–06, and 2006–07 seasons.
Dominick J. Basso, sometimes shown incorrectly as Dominic Basso, was an American mobster in the Chicago Outfit and a high-ranking bookmaker who was convicted in 1988 for syndicated gambling. Basso most notably was linked to baseball star Pete Rose in a scandal as having been a bookie through whom Rose had placed bets on major-league baseball.
Sherman White was an American basketball player at Long Island University (LIU) who is best remembered for being indicted in a point shaving scandal that resulted in him being stripped of numerous honors and awards, having to serve an 8-month jail sentence, and being prohibited from ever playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a college senior in 1950–51, White was the nation's leading scorer at 27.7 points per game and was only 77 total points shy of becoming the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) all-time single season leading scorer when he was caught, thus forcing him to prematurely quit and never getting to finish his college basketball career.
The Basketball Fix is a 1951 noir sports drama film directed by Felix E. Feist and starring John Ireland, Marshall Thompson and Vanessa Brown. The film is also known by the alternative title The Big Decision in the United Kingdom. It is based on the CCNY point shaving scandal.
William J. Walker Jr. was an American basketball player. He was a native of Queens, New York and played the guard position. Walker played collegiately for the Toledo Rockets from 1948 to 1951. He was known as an excellent dribbler and passer, and was the first officially recorded national season assists leader with his 7.24 per game average during the 1950–51 NCAA men's basketball season. However, Walker's collegiate accomplishments were overshadowed by his involvement in a point shaving scandal during his senior year.
During the 1960–61 NCAA University Division men's basketball season, a major gambling scandal involving a former NBA All-Star basketball player and many members of organized crime syndicates broke through which had ultimately been years in the making. The scandal involved 37 arrests of students from 22 different colleges, as well as at least nine players that received money from fixers or gamblers that were never convicted of crimes, eight go-betweens being prosecuted for their efforts in the scandal, and two players being shown to have received bribe offers without reporting them to proper authorities. Not only that, but close to fifty people who had associated ties with the scandal were reported to have been permanently banned from the NBA as well as a result of this case, including future Hall of Fame players Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown, thus making this case more infamous in terms of results and impact than the CCNY point-shaving scandal from a decade prior. However, it is slated that hundreds more players alongside 43 other college basketball games were controlled throughout the scandal by comparison.
Kevin Pendergast is a former American football and soccer player. He was the most valuable player for the Notre Dame soccer team before Coach Lou Holtz recruited him to play for the football team as a placekicker. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to conspiring with players from Northwestern University's basketball team to engage in point shaving in three games.
Joseph N. Gagliano is an entrepreneur, former investment advisor, and author of the book No Grey Areas.
Jerry Lynn Graves was an American basketball player. He was banned from the National Basketball Association (NBA) for his involvement in the 1961 college basketball point shaving scandal during his senior season playing for the Mississippi State Bulldogs.
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