2 Ex-Asu Players Pleading Guilty Feds Believe Debt Led To Point Shaving
An Arizona State University basketball player’s need to pay a $10,000 gambling debt led to a point-shaving scheme that has brought federal indictments naming two former players and four others, sources have told The Arizona Republic.
The players, Stevin “Hedake” Smith and Isaac Burton, have already pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit sports bribery, sources say.
The plea agreements, along with the indictment naming the players, gambler Joseph Gagliano Jr. and bookmaker Benny Silman, will be announced today.
Two suspected Chicago bookmakers, Joseph Mangiamele, and his father, Dominic Mangiamele, also are expected to be charged in the indictment with money laundering and illegal sports betting.
Federal investigators believe that Smith and Burton shaved points - intentionally failed to score - to fix four ASU games on which gamblers bet huge sums on ASU opponents, sources said.
The two agreed to help fix games for tens of thousands of dollars.
There was no payment made for the fourth game because the plan to shave points was abandoned and the team went on to win.
Many details of the point-shaving scandal, which has haunted the ASU basketball program for four years, remain a mystery. But sources say it began in the winter of 1993, when Smith was trying to figure out how to pay off his $10,000 gambling debt with Silman.
The baby-faced Silman, a fellow student and popular campus bookie, was eager to accommodate Smith’s run of bad luck. He even suggested an easy payment plan:
Smith could erase his debt plus earn a fat, tax-free cash bonus by helping gamblers fix ASU games.
It was an offer that Smith didn’t refuse.
Interviews with several sources, who asked to remain anonymous, indicate that the plan was concocted by Silman and Gagliano, a 29-year-old Phoenix investment adviser with his own penchant for wagering.
The duo reportedly took advantage of Gagliano’s friendship with the Mangiameles to carry out their betting schemes, sources said.
Smith, Burton, Silman and Gagliano would not comment for this article. Their attorneys either refused comment or did not return phone calls.
Gagliano and Silman reportedly placed sizable bets against ASU, through accomplices, on four ASU games in 1994: Jan. 27 with Oregon State, Jan. 29 with Oregon, Feb. 19 with Southern California and March 5 with Washington, sources said.
The gamblers won their bets on the first three games. Then some Las Vegas casinos yanked the ASU-Washington game from the betting board when they noticed unusually heavy betting on the meaningless contest.
One source said that Gagliano and Silman assembled their winnings from the first three games and put down bets totaling more than $1 million on the ill-fated Washington game.
On that game, they lost it all when the plan went awry and ASU blew out Washington in the second half.
Exactly why the scheme fell apart remains unknown.
But some sources believe that Smith decided to play for a win after he somehow got tipped about the storm clouds that were forming.