1961 NCAA University Division men's basketball gambling scandal

One of his partners of crime in this operation at hand, bookmaker Joe Hacken,[5] was a long-time friend of Molinas' since at least 1952 during his time at Columbia University back when Jack played basketball there.

[8] In addition to Hacken and Goldberg, Molinas' partners in the work included Genovese crime family acting boss Thomas Eboli and enforcer Vincent Gigante,[9][2] pool shark and Yankee Stadium concessions manager (specifically a manager for the Stevens Concessions Company, a peanut vender there) Aaron Wagman, former William Howard Taft High School basketball standout player turned dropout pool shark Joe Green (who was also a friend of Molinas' at the time), and former Brooklyn College basketball captain and junior high school teacher David "Dave" Budin not long afterward.

To the young Leveton, he felt like a very cool camp counselor due to him being handsome, suave, having a lot of money with plenty of women to go with him, and a new red Corvette that he was driving at the time; that would leave a long-lasting impression on the teenager.

[21] Perhaps the most infamous cases relating to the scandal involve those of then-high school seniors turned freshmen basketball stars in the making in Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown.

Unlike with other players, however, Brown would admit that he had received some money from Molinas during his freshman year at Dayton, which caused him to get expelled from the university altogether despite not playing a single game for them (and thus not being a part of the official gambling scandal) due to NCAA restrictions for freshmen at the time.

[22] Similarly speaking, Hawkins was also expelled from the University of Iowa during his freshman year due to him admitting that he borrowed $200 ($2,170 in current dollar terms) from Molinas for college expenses that he repaid to his brother Fred before the scandal broke through in 1961.

For Hawkins, he would try to make the best out of his bad situation by playing for the Pittsburgh Rens in the short-lived rivaling revival of the American Basketball League, the Harlem Globetrotters, and the Pittsburgh/Minnesota Pipers of the rivaling American Basketball Association (earning honors in both leagues and the first ever ABA championship while with the Pittsburgh Pipers) before an antitrust lawsuit notably filed by David Litman (brother of the owners of the Pittsburgh Rens) and his wife Roslyn Litman for Hawkins worth $6 million (worth $58.3 million in current dollar terms) that was first created in 1966 combined with a Life Magazine article written by David Wolf clearing Hawkins' name led to him being the first player to be unbanned from the NBA in 1969.

Regardless, North and his teammate John Morgan later met Siegel and Yonkers attorney Charles Tucker at a local restaurant in order to fix four different games involving Detroit during the current season they were on.

Not long after the meeting, North and Morgan were both not only immediately dismissed from the university due to their participating in the scandal for quick money, but they were also given permanent bannings from the NBA once the case came to greater light following Jack Molinas' arrest.

[28] Tagliabue had also mentioned to the U.S. Senate only three months prior to his September 12 meeting that he saw first-hand how some of his fellow peers during his high school days at a summer camp he attended would get used by gamblers for later games in the future by starting small with $50 bills for them before leading up to their parts in the scandal coming to light later on in 1961.

Majewski would be the main player from St. Joseph's College to not just accept the initial offer given to him from the fixers at hand, but also recruit his teammates in Egan and Kempton to join him as well due to each of them being in tough situations in life.

During their Final Four run and before playing their third place game against the University of Utah (who had the team name of the Redskins at the time instead of the modern Utes), both St. Joseph's faculty athletic director Reverend Joseph M. Geib and head coach Jack Ramsay expressed their concerns for Majewski in particular due to his irregular play throughout the season, as well as Ramsay saying to reporters that he'd sooner quit coaching altogether if he found out one of his players got involved with point-shaving themselves.

[32] While the St. Joseph's Hawks tried to bounce back from the awful loss to Ohio State, Majewski and the other two seniors in question had felt guilty for taking on the extra money for fixing games for the purpose of helping gamblers and fixers out earlier on in the season.

[30] Days after the NCAA tournament ended, news broke out on multiple St. Joseph's players being implicated in the point-shaving scandal that was starting to get exposed to the public eye, which not only led to Egan, Kempton, and Majewski being expelled from campus before officially graduating (though they would all eventually later graduate from the university with proper degrees to their names and become successful businessmen afterward)[30] but also led to them being permanently banned from the NBA with Egan losing out on playing with the Philadelphia Warriors (now the Golden State Warriors) after being the 29th pick of the 1961 NBA draft and Kempton losing out on potentially playing for the New York Knicks as the last pick of that year's draft.

[18] David Budin also splintered off with Frank Rosenthal as well at some point following Green and Wagman's departure from Molinas' group, though all of them would continue working on the gambling scandal in their own ways.

Meanwhile, on the northern side of the nation, David Budin, Frank Rosenthal, and one other fixer (potentially Joe Green) tried and failed to get a University of Oregon halfback named Michael "Mickey" Bruce to join in on the scheme by offering him thousands of dollars for certain stipulations at hand, including recruiting his teammate in quarterback Dave Grosz to join him in the scheme also, with a hundred dollars being given to him per week for the entire season afterward had he accepted the offer in order to keep the gamblers informed on the team's physical status throughout the season.

The new informant from within would help New York City District Attorney Frank Hogan dispatch phone wiretaps and follow their activities before eventually arresting every one of the main fixers in this scandal.

Furthermore, no investigative action was taken against varsity players (including future All-American Don Nelson from Iowa) or other head coaches like Sharm Scheuerman that could have potentially been involved at some point as well.

However, a vast majority of names that had been identified to the scandal had been uncovered over the years, including former standout basketball players turned fixers in Columbia University's Jack Molinas, Brooklyn College's David Budin, and William Howard Taft High School's Joe Green.

Not only that, but due to the event taking place while the civil rights movement was still going on, gamblers knew that black players in certain colleges still were not socially accepted at the time, which meant certain players like Hicks felt vindicated in throwing games against their team as payback against racist individuals in the college system and saw gamblers like Molinas, Hacken, Green, or Budin as the most reliable kind of person in their life during that time.

[44] Other players involved with the scandal also echoed the sentiments of Hicks where the fixers had an uncanny ability to sweet-talk them into going along with their schemes, with North Carolina's Louis Brown also noting that New York City detectives psychologically profiled Wagman's partner in crime, Joe Green.

[50] Meanwhile, Green's partner in crime, Aaron Wagman, had a primary motive to gain power over successful athletes like he was a head coach over them by manipulating final scores and having players accept bribes to throw games on their end.

[2] Following Molinas' arrest, a large, select number of current at the time and former college basketball players would be indicted in his trial and testify against him and the other fixers in order to maintain a sense of innocence to their names.

Key testimonies against Molinas involved a recorded conversation with Bowling Green's Billy Reed on how he could lie to the stand alongside Reed providing details on his situation with Molinas, a recorded conversation with the Pacific's Gary Kaufman being threatened with death if any of his fixers were implicated in the case, other testimonies involving players that were used in the scandal, and former Fort Wayne Pistons player and at the time coach for the Los Angeles Lakers Fred Schaus testifying that when the two of them were teammates in the NBA, he noted that Molinas was so inconsistent in terms of results and impact (one time recording a 0-point game with only one shot attempt and just one assist near the end of his time in the NBA[56]) that it easily generated suspicions of fixing in spite of him being named an All-Star that season.

His attorney, Jacob Evseroff, believed that Molinas could have won his trial had he testified on his own behalf, but he was noticeably shaken up to do so on account of his relationship with the mafia and its connections to sports gambling.

[57] Both Green and Wagman were noticeably satisfied with the results of the verdict, primarily because they both agreed to plea deals where they would receive lighter sentences of three to five years in prison in New York had their ringleader been found guilty in the trial.

Before his trial even began, Molinas previously refused the prosecution's offer of a six-month jail term if he had just agreed to plead guilty early and forfeit his attorney's license he had obtained earlier on while going to the Brooklyn Law School in New York before being arrested.

While in the Attica Correctional Facility, he would help Frank Hogan expose both the fixing of harness racing tracks in New York and a checking scam of sorts, both of which would lead to Molinas getting an early release from prison in 1968.

Both Frank Cardone and Morris Heyison ended up avoiding the North Carolina trials entirely by fighting extradition cases from the state of Pennsylvania during that period of time.

[62] David Budin would later plead guilty for violating a 1961 Wire Communications Act law in relation to the conflict of interests, while his son Steve would be deferred fines of $2.5 million.