The Perla brothers were small-time gamblers who saw the upcoming 1978–79 Boston College Eagles basketball season as a perfect opportunity to earn a lot of money.
Needing an inside man, the brothers wanted to recruit Rick Kuhn, a high school friend of Rocco who was entering his senior year at Boston College and was expected to be a key member of the 1978–79 Eagles team.
The Perla brothers proposed a simple scheme: they, along with Kuhn, would select certain basketball games where the projected point spread separating Boston College from its opponent was expected to be significant.
Thus, for example, if participating bookmakers determined Boston College to be an eight-point favorite in a particular game, Kuhn would be paid a bonus, usually $2,500, if they won by less than eight points.
Mazzei and the Perla brothers were particularly hopeful that Hill would enlist the support of his associate, James Burke, to finance the payments to the players and to set up a network of bookmakers who were in on the scheme.
They would also ensure protection for the enterprise in the event that the unsuspecting bookmakers, all of whom had toughs at their disposal to collect unpaid debts, discovered they were being swindled.
Burke had Hill fly to Boston on November 16, 1978, to meet with Mazzei, Kuhn, Tony Perla, and any other member of the Eagles team interested in participating in their scheme.
However, the test run for the scheme proved unsuccessful when Boston College established an early lead and ultimately won the game by nineteen points.
Enraged by their gambling loss, the Perla brothers, along with Mazzei, Burke and Hill, decided to recruit additional Eagles players to enhance their control over the outcome of the games.
Burke instructed Hill to warn the players to keep to their end of the deal because "you can't play basketball with broken hands."
They reintroduced the original strategy, which proved successful for the February 3 Fordham game when Boston College, a ten-point favorite, won by seven points.
[i] Confident from their recent success, the conspirators viewed the February 10 game against Holy Cross as an opportunity to reap the full benefits of their scheme.
The conspiracy unraveled in 1980 after Hill was arrested by New York State authorities on drug trafficking charges and was subsequently implicated in the Lufthansa heist, which occurred while the point-shaving scheme was underway.
While he was being questioned, FBI agents inadvertently mentioned Hill's frequent trips to Boston around the time of the Lufthansa heist.
At trial in 1981, the government's case consisted primarily of the testimony of Hill and three other witnesses: Sweeney and Joseph Beaulieu, both Boston College players, and Barbara Reed, a 23-year-old nurse who lived with Kuhn during the 1978–79 Eagles season.
On August 12, 2008, an anonymous user edited the Wikipedia article on the scandal, naming former player Joe Streater as an accomplice in the point-shaving, claiming he had been recruited by Kuhn alongside Sweeney.