On July 29, 2008, Tim Donaghy — a 13-year NBA referee who had officiated 772 regular-season games across the league — was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison after pleading guilty in the Eastern District of New York to two felony counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud by depriving the NBA of his honest services, and transmitting wagering information across state lines. A 2007 FBI investigation revealed that Donaghy had been feeding betting picks to professional gambler James "Baba" Battista and middleman Thomas Martino, both childhood classmates from the Philadelphia area, across four seasons spanning 2003 through 2007. Donaghy leveraged nonpublic information available only to working officials — referee crew assignments, player physical conditions, and relationships between officials and players — signaling his picks through a phone code in which innocuous words like "Mom" indicated the home team. Investigators confirmed the scheme when they established that Martino could only have known which team to bet when the game being wagered on was one Donaghy was personally working. Judge Carol Bagley Amon ordered $217,266 in restitution and called Donaghy the most culpable party, stating plainly: "Without Mr. Donaghy, there was no scheme." The true cost was not the money — it was the permanent asterisk stamped on every close call in every game he ever worked.