The former NBA referee under investigation for a betting scandal is reportedly receiving death threats. Police are staked out all around his Florida home.
The FBI is looking into whether Tim Donaghy changed the outcome of certain games in order to win money. The FBI is investigating whether calls he made had an impact on point spreads.
Donaghy is expected to surrender this week.
The bets were all supposed to have taken place in New Jersey, not Las Vegas. And as that scandal grows, national attention turns to Las Vegas and the fleeting hope for a professional sports franchise for the city.
FBI investigators say this case appears to have nothing to do with Las Vegas. But anytime you involve sports, gambling and scandal, Las Vegas always seems to come up, and now the fate of a franchise is hanging in the balance.
Deep inside an office complex off of Sunset Road, a dark shadow hangs over the Mecca of sports betting. Las Vegas Sports Consultants is the force in laying down the line for billions of bettors.
Kenny White runs Las Vegas Sports Consultants and said, "We would find any, any sports fix long before it got started."
Right now, an undisclosed but a powerful client has asked White to look at the odds on every game in the NBA last season because Tim Donaghy.
The former NBA referee has been linked to the Gambino crime family and is accused of fixing certain games. Now, Las Vegas is back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
Mayor Oscar Goodman said, "The eastern media can go drop in the lake as far as I'm concerned. I was going to say drop dead. I would never say something like that."
Goodman says the scandal is a concern NBA Commissioner David Stern, but the Las Vegas mayor doesn't worry about the hopes for a team fading to black.
"I think this is a good thing, as far as Las Vegas is concerned," Mayor Goodman said.
Goodman has pride and trust in Nevada's tough gambling regulations. The mayor says the issue isn't gambling. It's making sure everything is done in the open, but temptation is never far away in Las Vegas.
The mayor continued, "Who's going to want to watch any of the games in any of the sports without having a little wager on it?"
Goodman says the NBA owners will meet next week. They may discuss moving a franchise to Las Vegas, but a deal is far from done.
The final word will rest with Commissioner Stern. He had no comment about Las Vegas and will make a statement later this week. He's the one man who will decide yes or no.
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