 Welcome to the Original Gangster's podcast. I'm your host, Scott Bernstein. We're going to do a edition talking about some breaking news in the NCAA related to a potential point shaving scandal that's starting to break now. And we're going to do our first episode that I'm going to call a producer episode with my main man, Benny Augusta, our producer, MVP that's really helped us turn the corner and get us into the 21st century and get all of our multimedia kind of firing at once. So Benny's going to jump on this episode with me and we're going to kind of chop up a little bit of what's going on right now and then just give a little bit of context with some past point shaving scandals that I have either written about or studied. I'm going to kind of focus on two of them after we talk about what's going on this very second. So over the last week, it's come out that the NCAA and the FBI are investigating the Temple Owls men's basketball program for four separate games played over the last month. I believe the first game was February 8th. We're now a second week of March. So over the last five weeks, four games with peculiar activity related to the point spread and it jumping up and down before the game, before those four respective games. We're not going to get into any speculation of where the root of that is just to say that there seems to be a point shaving scandal bubbling to the surface right now. So I'll just give you a couple of details. First game on February 8th was against Memphis. The Tigers went from 6.5 point favorites, four hours before the game. And when the game tipped off, the number had jumped four points to 10.5. Second game was on February 28th. It was against Rice. It was according to what's being investigated. It was an over under shave. And I guess the total number went from 145 to 140 in the 24 hours before tip. March 2nd was against Tulsa. The number went from 144 to 136. That's an eight point jump in a two hour span. That's crazy. Yeah. And then the one that got everybody's attention last week, which I think kind of blew the lid on this, was a game against UAB where the line spiked like seven points in 10 hours. And it was 172. 172. I believe Temple won that game. Actually, UAB won. UAB won. All right. Sorry. But Temple is not having a season where they're going to be doing any post season dancing. But the NCAA and the FBI are looking at those four games. So I think betting that we're talking off air, I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to know if you know anything about point spreads and betting. If a line in a week moves two or three points, it's a big move. I mean, that's a big, big move. If a line's moving five, six, seven, eight points in a couple hours or a day, it's like a foghorn to the FBI to come look at us for shaving points or the NCAA. But here's my question, Scott. Why would the gambling companies know they were shaving? Well, this was reported by, I believe, a sports book in Las Vegas. They were getting inside information. Well, they were just getting a lot of action on game. They shouldn't be getting a lot of action on. Oh, God, it got UAB Temple game in March should not be getting a lot of action. I get it. I get it. I get it. The line jumped naturally by the amount of bets coming in. Yeah, there shouldn't be a lot of interest in a game like that. It's not. We're not talking about Duke, Duke, North Carolina and the ACC championship. Yeah. So, you know, you focus a lot of attention on games that normally wouldn't draw any interest and all of a sudden there's all this betting money coming into it. Do they have reports on the dollar amount put on that game or no? No, this is all this is all starting just just starting to be reported over the last couple of days. So we'll learn more as it goes on. I just whenever these people get whenever these kind of things happen, it seems like they happen every well, I actually think they happen quite a bit. I wouldn't be shocked that they're happening every single day across the college and pro sports. I think there are points being manipulated every day, but that's a different we can go down that rabbit hole on it on a different time. But at least these big public point shaving scandals seem to happen every 20 years or so every decade, decade and a half. I'm thinking of just because my expertise is in organized crime. So I'm thinking of the past point shaving scandals that were involved in organized crime. The two that I've studied and reported on are the Goodfellas movie Boston College point shaving from 78 79 that was kind of referenced in the movie. But then if you read the book, there's more information on it. And then that's actually what ended up taking all those guys down. It wasn't really any of the murders or the Jimmy Burke, you know, the Robert DeNiro character like he wasn't arrested for Lufonza or killing any of those people he was arrested and put in jail for the rest of his life because of the Boston College point shaving for the rest of his life just for point shaving. Well, I mean, he was well, I mean, I think he only lived another 15 years or whatever. But and he was like an habitual. So he was but it was not Lufonza or any homicides. It was this and we can talk about it in a second. And then Arizona State in 1994, 30 years ago, around this time, there was a four game point shave involving a on campus bookie at Arizona State and the Chicago mafia. And then just one that never really kind of died on the vine in terms of an investigation. But there were a lot of rumors and people looking into it was the I think it was even 1999 2000 ish UCLA football, Kate McNown was the quarterback. And these were just, you know, let's be very clear, these were just allegations. But a lot of those UCLA players that that was a top 10 UCLA team, I'm pretty sure to Kate McNown was the first round quarterback went to Chicago started for a year or two. But they were seen in the presence of guys that should have been connected to the Colombo crime family. And then I also think of the human LV guys with talk the shark Larry Johnson, Stacy Ogman, Greg Anthony, Anderson Hunt, the end of the shark to talk, sorry, talk the shark college career at least was too many guys that were from the movie Goodfellas and that Boston college point shade hanging around that UNLV program when they were the number one team in the country and defending national champions. But they never were they were never nobody was ever charged. Tarkhanian ended up stepping down because of it. He had been I thought they got in trouble for paying players. Well, it was a both both. So Tarkhanian was somebody for people that might not know, you know, he was a legendary college basketball coach that was a bit of a renegade, a very colorful character coach at UNLV Fresno State had a second in the NBA. And coach had a moist towel. Yeah, would chew on his towel to chew on his towel because he hated those small Dixie cups, Gatorade cups, because they kept on spilling over. Yeah, right. And he always was like heavy with the quips with the media. And as players swore by him, he was the type of guy that would give everybody a second, third, fourth, fifth chance. He was known for taking in a lot of, you know, kind of kids with troubled pasts and reclamation projects at both UNLV and Fresno State. But he was always hounded by NCAA investigators and dating back to the 70s, they were always trying to get them. And he reached the apex of his career with that Larry Johnson, Stacey Augman, national championship team in 90. They came back in 91. Probably, I say this unequivocally, they were the greatest college basketball team to never win a national championship that 91 team, even though the 90 team did. But that 91 team, I was 12, 13 years old, that was the most dominant college basketball team I have ever seen until the last game of the season against Duke where they lost in the national championship, Grand Hill and Christian Leitner. But that whole year, NCAA, FBI were all over that program because of guys that were connected to Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke and the Vario crew that you see in Goodfellas, specifically a guy named Richie Perry. Richie, his nickname was Richie the Fixer. And he had season tickets to the UNLV games, you know, was, was seen talking to Tarcanian on the sidelines, would have the players over to his mansion. A bunch of kind of famous pictures came out of them being in his hot tub. That's what eventually brought an end to Tarcanian's career coaching college basketball. At that time, I should say, with, with UNLV, he went to the NBA, and then eventually came back with Fresno State and coached like Chris Herron and skipped to my Lou, Rayford Austin from the, from the and one league. But last thing I'll say about that, even though there were never any charges, I know that there were surveillance units assigned to some of those UNLV players, I'm not going to name the players, that were seen in the days after the loss to Duke with Richie Perry at Atlantic City Casinos, cashing in betting slips. Again, no charges were ever brought. So you're saying there's a chance that that national championship game at night, or was it the final four, was it the final? Oh, you're right. I think it was. I think you're right. I think it was the semi-final, and then they, they beat, Duke beat them in the semi-final and then beat Kansas in the final. I'm pretty sure you're right. It was a semi-final game. And it was, I think it was their first deficit of the year, and they didn't know what to do on that final play. Larry Johnson, I can remember it. Larry Johnson like drove to the basket, didn't take the shot, pushed it through it back out. Guy missed the jumper, but it was like a very like helter-skelter final play that didn't look like they knew what they were doing or maybe didn't want to know what they were doing. I don't know. I'm not, I don't want to get into conspiracy theories, but I know that that was investigated. There's the famous CCN, I don't know anything about it, but there's that famous CCNY point shaving scandal in New York from the 50s. There's the scene in the Sopranos, remember, when Carmine Lupitazzi dies and they call over to Junior's house and Bobby Bacala answers the phone and tells Junior that Carmine died and then Bobby Bacala says, I heard he invented point shaving. And then Junior says, CCNY point shaving scandal. I bought myself a new Cadillac. That's all I know about that scandal. Just jumping into Arizona State for a second. That was the Chicago mob. It was a Jewish kid from Brooklyn who came to Arizona State, guy named Benny Silman, was booking bets on campus. I think when he was a freshman or a sophomore, he met an older guy that was also booking bets. His name was Joe Gagliano and he was connected to the Chicago mob where his dad and his uncles were. Gagliano moves home, whatever he was doing in Chicago. Silman is like a senior at this point and gets the best player on the team or the, I should say, gets the two best players on the team in his pocket. Guy named Heddyk Smith and Isaac Burton. Heddyk Smith was going to be a first round NBA graphic. He was the number one scorer in the pack. Back then it was the pack 10. 93, 94, I think, both years. And Heddyk Smith was betting through Silman, got in debt like 10K. Silman had the idea, let's shave it to eliminate your debt. And at that point, I believe they were shaving wins, I think, where the players didn't have to lose the game. They didn't even have to lose the point spread. They just had to be sure that the point spread was covered. So they could do the mental gymnastics and they're having to convince themselves, oh, we're not really, we're not losing for our team. We're not, we're still winning, but we're just making sure that the point spread is at a certain point. One of those games, I believe, Heddyk scored 40 points. So Silman gets on the phone to his old pal Gagliano in Chicago and says, this is probably, the story I'm about to tell, this is probably in terms of money, the biggest point shaven, or at least what we know of, biggest monetary point shaven in NCAA history. And this was 30 years ago, 94. It was four games, and they were bringing like a million dollars to Vegas for every game to spread it around, five million. I mean, they were betting big, big money. And they would go to 30, 40 different sports books in Nevada. So Silman calls Gagliano. Gagliano at that time was a kid too. I mean, I think it was like 24, 23, 24. But the guys behind Gagliano are the Manjia Mellies, who were Cicero, Elwood Park, Chicago Outfit Guys, into the trucking and trucking business, but still serious guys. I mean, these were like real mob guys, not college bookie tough guys. Associates or made? No, the Manjia Mellies, I believe, were made guys, or at the very least high ranking associates. Gagliano, I'm not exactly sure how he's connected to the Chicago mob Gaglianos, but I'm pretty sure he's related son, grandson, nephew, cousin, Joe Gagliano, who was a pretty legendary guy in the 50s and 60s and 70s, and then Gary Gagliano is around right now. So first two games, go well, everyone wins money. Third game, everyone wins money. And then they're like, all right, we're going all in now, like we've already tested the waters. So now we're, I don't know what the number was, but they are already we're betting like millions. So I'm guessing this was like tens of millions. And word got out, just like what we're talking about at Temple right now, where a meaningless Arizona State, Washington Huskies, packed 10 game on a, you know, Saturday afternoon, that should have limited betting numbers is like everybody in their brother is trekking from Arizona State to Vegas to make these bets. You have like the whole campus is aware of this point change going on. And the point spreads jumped like nine points. It was the biggest jump in like the history of Vegas college basketball betting. And that stepped off the feds, the feds, and then the feds went into the locker room at halftime. That's pretty dramatic, right? Could you imagine? Well, the coach halftime speech. Yeah. Oh, by the way, the feds want to talk to you. And the coach at that time was Bill Frieder. Us, me and Betty being from Detroit, you know, Bill Frieder as a Michigan guy, started his career as a pretty successful high school basketball coach in Flint, won a couple of state championships, went, became an assistant coach at Michigan, and then became the head coach at Michigan for most of the 1980s, had some very good Michigan basketball teams, the back to back big 10 champions 85, 86. I believe they entered both of those NCAA tournaments as one seeds. And in both of those tournaments, they got upset before the sweet 1687. They made the sweet 16 lost to North Carolina, or maybe it was 88. Either way, 89 season, the year they win the national title, you know, six NBA players on that roster. Glenn Rice, Terry Mills, Leibot, Ramil Robinson. He led, Betty, you know about this, you obviously don't remember it, but do you know about it? About Frieder takes it takes the Arizona State job, like a day or two before the NCAA tournament. And Michigan is like a six seed, even though they got six NBA players on the team, they had underachieved that whole year. And he announces, like either it was either right before selection Sunday or right after selection Sunday. He announces that he's going to take the Arizona State job back of the season. But I'm going to coach the tournament. And Bo Schambackler, who was the athletic director is like, no, you're not like kick bricks, the fuck out of the building. Like it was pretty controversial at the time. And then they Steve Fisher, they elevated Steve Fisher, who was the assistant. And Steve Fisher goes from nobody knows who this guy is. Even the Michigan fans, I don't think knew who the guy was. And two weeks or three weeks later, he's he's winning your was that their first national channel? It might have been their first national championship. I believe in basketball. I know they went to the finals a couple of times in the 50s and 50s. I think that's their one and only championship in basketball. But that was because Frider left to go to Arizona State. So five years after that, he's got this Arizona State team who was a, I think they were a good team. I mean, they weren't great, but they were like NCAA tournament caliber. Headache Smith was a all conference, one of the best players in the league. And this guy threw away his entire pro career for probably $40, $30, $40,000. I guess you it's different. Yeah, it's easy to talk crap at the time. But you know, he probably was struggling. He was probably struggling. And that, you know, $30, $40,000 is a lot of money for a kid who probably came from nothing. I came from Dallas and back then there were no NILs or yeah, no NILs couldn't get paid couldn't even sell you autograph. Somebody comes up to you and says, Hey, you want to make some cash? Well, he needed to he needed to erase his debt because he he obviously was, which is the was he betting on games or is he just gambling? No, now he wasn't betting on Arizona State basketball. I get it. From what I can remember, he was a big Dallas. He was from Dallas and he was a big Cowboys fan. And I think he was betting big on Cowboys games, but like betting like prop bets, like betting the game, but then also betting the over betting, like how many touchdowns to throw or whatever. And he accumulated a 10k debt, which is a lot of money now. A lot of money 30 years ago. So the feds go into the locker room, headache Smith and Isaac Burton, who were the guys that were shaving points, you know, shit themselves. And they go out and they destroy the points. So there's all this money riding on this game for these guys to shave it. And they got so spooked by the feds coming in in the locker room, they abandoned that plan, play it straight. But then all these mob guys had lost a lot of money. And that's when the whole thing blew up. Benny Silman got arrested. He ended up in four years in prison for that. The mob guys themselves actually did not get that much time. Like less than a year, I think those mob guys were able to crowd themselves in their plea. There was another like Phoenix kind of wannabe gangster that had heard about it, the point shaving like just showed up at Benny Silman's apartment and just said like, yeah, I heard that you and the mob are shaving points. Guess what? I'm your new partner. And then he ended up dead afterwards too, but it was ruled an overdose. Who knows? So that was Arizona. There's been a content produced on it, scripted content and unscripted content. There's a ESPN movie in the late 90s early 2000s. I forgot what it was called. I think David Krumholz was the lead. And then there's like a untold Netflix. So Bactic Temple. Do you think the suspects will be charged? And if so, how many years? There's a lot to unpack here and a lot to kind of figure out what's happening. I'm working sources in the college basketball world. I have other people working sources for me. I think we'll know more in the next week or two. I mean, no clue if this thing has anything to do with real criminals, organized crime favor. I mean, that's so far down the line. I'm not even going to speculate. I mean, this could just be guys on their own doing it. It could be guys, bookmakers at Temple that have no, like Benny Silman could have, in theory, Benny Silman could have shaved those points without calling Chicago. Yeah. And it could have just been this student is having this athlete shaved point. So we don't know that in terms of what kind of sentences you're looking for. Yeah, that's just curious. I mean, I guess it depends on how much you pocket, how much other people pocket, how forthright you are with investigators when they start knocking on your door. And then if there are people that are like puppeteering this thing, how willing are you to point the finger at those guys or women or whoever? I think things got way more intense back in the 78, 79 Boston College point shave because you had all due respect to the Manjia Mellies in Chicago and at that time, 24 year old Joe Gagliano, but they were serious. But when you're dealing with Jimmy Burke, it's a whole different galaxy of seriousness and stakes. And that was a whole season point shave. This one was four games. The ones that being investigated right now is four games. The Arizona State one we just talked about was four games. The Boston College one was like 15 games over a 30 game season. Do you know how many players were involved? So there's always been a lot of debate about that. There was a Sports Illustrated article that came out maybe five years after that caused a lot of acrimony and people that were allegedly defamed, allegations that they were involved in it, they're claiming that that was never proven. So it's kind of, there was, I think two guys that we know for sure were involved in it. And then there were another two or three guys that were suspected to be involved in it and were implicated in the Sports Illustrated article and it really hurt their lives and their ability to make money. I don't think any of them were in the NBA, but they were like playing in Europe or whatever. So if you remember in Goodfellas, there's all that talk about the Pittsburgh connection that he meets in prison. Well, that's where this came from. Not only was he dealing drugs and coke with those Pittsburgh guys who were mob guys that were tied to Chuck E. Porter. It doesn't sound like an Italian name, but Chuck E. Porter was the underboss of Pittsburgh. And there were a couple guys that were low-level mob guys that Henry Hill had met and they knew a guy from their neighborhood who was like the starting forward on Boston College. His name was Rick Coon, Q. So that was their kind of entry point. And then he got the senior captain. I think his name was Jim Sweeney. And it reached a point where like they were being threatened. Like I don't think headaches, I shouldn't say I know, headache Smith and Isaac Burton weren't getting phone calls or visits from killers telling them that they better do X, Y and Z or they're going to be in the hospital. But Boston College was a different story. Those guys were sometimes being a little uncommitted, I guess would be the word to the shave while it was going on. And some of the mob guys felt like these guys weren't 100% invested in it. And I think in one situation they came with a group of them and sat behind the basket where you're shooting free throws. And like to show Sweeney like you better be in on this. We can touch you. Yeah. And I think Sweeney said that I don't know if it was Jimmy or Henry said to him like, if you don't do this, like we're going to break your legs. There'll be no more basketball for you. So that was a year long shave that nobody knew about for two years until Henry Hill flipped. And it's interesting how that whole Goodfellas bus came to be. You see it, remember at the end of the movie or near the end of the movie, he's going to take the babysitter to go get her hat. He's like, I thought the feds were following me when in reality it was just the local cops. The only local cops talk like that. You shut the motor off. I'm going to shoot you in the head motherfucker. That scene. Well, Henry Hill got busted on a local drug case, a county drug case where he had an 18 year old kid moving coke and pills and marijuana for him and the 18 year old kid flipped. And his dad was a member of the Henry Hill Jimmy Burke group. And if you remember in the movie, the last time Henry sees Jimmy, they're at a diner and he asked Jimmy to go kill. That was the kid who they eventually did kill. This 18 year old kid gets killed like a month or something after Henry Hill flips. And then Henry Hill gives them Boston College, not realizing that it's even a crime. At least if you believe Henry Hill, he was saying, I didn't even realize this was illegal. And then that brings Jimmy Burke down. So it was an 18 year old kid who was moving fucking quay lose out of a Long Island High School parking lot and the Boston College point shaving scandal that actually brought down that entire Goodfellas group. How much time was Henry Hill looking at? Or did they know he was? Oh, that what Hill was looking at life for all that other stuff. Okay, so the feds tied it. I think he was debriefing like he would debrief. And, you know, you got to tell them everything you've done. And I think he mentioned this kind of like, Oh, by the way, we did this, not realizing that it was like a big deal. And the guy that he was debriefing for at McDonald had played basketball at Boston College. So he was like, very, you know, his ears perked up when he saw that. And he knew that it was a way to get Burke. So yeah, it was in addition to all the murders and drugs and thefts and racketeering that that Henry admitted to when they popped him. And if you remember, he rightly so we flipped because he knew or thought that the Vario crew and Jimmy Burke, we're going to kill him. What do you think, Benny? Do you think Karen, if she would have gone back into that alleyway, which you've made it made her way back to Henry? I don't think so. I don't need at least how they portrayed it out of the director portrayed out square stage, portrayed it. Oh, just around the core. I don't think she makes it out. Another piece of trivia I always like to tell people that most people don't know is that Karen was sleeping with Paulie in the movie, not in the movie in real life. So Karen wasn't necessarily all well, there's the scene with with the debriefers. Don't give me the babe in the woods routine, Karen. I heard you on those wire deaths. You're talking about cocaine. Yeah. But besides that, she was, you know, they obviously the character, they didn't want to make the character out to be, you know, slutty or promiscuous. But in reality, that was going on. Henry Hill's wife was sleeping with his boss. So another thing was that even if Jimmy or Tommy wanted to hurt Karen, I don't think they could have. Unless I'm misreading it and Paulie would have had her killed too. I mean, it's very possible. So I guess we'll just keep people updated on what's going on in Philly with Temple. You know, it's a pretty, that program's got a lot of, you know, tradition, John Cheney. I remember those temple teams in the 80s and 90s were always top 15 squads. A couple of them got to, I think the elite eight, never made it to the final four, but wasn't Bill Cosby a huge temple fan? Yeah. Yes. He played football at temple. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. And did he make like a wager with? The curse of Bill Cosby is coming back on the temple house. Who knows? We'll see. Benny, thanks for joining me. Thanks for being a sounding board. Listen to me ramble and give out random facts and spew useless information. No, this was good. But they will keep everybody updated on what's going on. But those point-shave shifts over the last couple of weeks were just screaming out to be looked at. And now they're being looked at. So we'll see. Thank you, Benny. Thanks, everyone. Check back for another long form or quick edition of the OG pod only here at OG pod. I'm Scott Bernstein.