During the 1960–61 NCAA University Division men's basketball season, a major gambling scandal involving a former NBA All-Star basketball player and many members of organized crime syndicates broke through which had ultimately been years in the making. The scandal involved 37 arrests of students from 22 different colleges, as well as at least nine players that received money from fixers or gamblers that were never convicted of crimes, eight go-betweens being prosecuted for their efforts in the scandal (including a couple of former college basketball players and a college football player from the University of Connecticut named William "Bill" Minnerly), and two players being shown to have received bribe offers without reporting them to proper authorities., pg. 108 Not only that, but close to fifty people who had associated ties with the scandal were reported to have been permanently banned from the NBA as well as a result of this case, including future Hall of Fame players Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown, thus making this case more infamous in terms of results and impact than the 1951 college basketball point-shaving scandal from a decade prior. However, it is slated that hundreds more players alongside 43 other college basketball games were controlled throughout the scandal by comparison.

Background

Jack Molinas, an already well-known gambling associate that was related to the 1951 college basketball point-shaving scandal to the point of being permanently banned by the NBA for gambling issues in 1954, was implicated as the primary key figure of this gambling scandal. One of his partners of crime in this operation at hand, bookmaker (and one-time independent basketball team owner, p. 35) Joe Hacken (born in Austria-Hungary as Solomon Hacken, pp. 32–33),Sports Heroes, Fallen Idols; Stanley H. Teitelbaum, 2005, University of Nebraska Press, pp. 87–89 was a long-time friend of Molinas' well before 1952 during his time at Columbia University back when Jack played basketball there,, pg. 88 with Molinas' first bet that he had with Hacken (who had the neighborhood nickname of Joe Jalop during that time due to him always driving an old battered car) occurring back when Jack was 12 years old during the World War II period (with Hacken essentially teaching Molinas a lot of the gambling terms necessary during this period of time at that age). In fact, the gambling scandal would technically begin with Hacken even before Molinas would be involved in the operation himself by as early as the 1954–55 NCAA season, with two St. John's University sophomore players named Michael Parenti and William Chrystal having been eventually discovered to have manipulated scores throughout their entire playing careers up until they graduated from the university in 1957., pg. 89 Despite their shenanigans being reported to head coach Joe Lapchick by a teammate of theirs named Gus Alfieri, no action was ever taken on them while they attended college. However, the scheme would only grow into a bigger problem once Molinas, who was playing for the Williamsport Billies in the Eastern Professional Basketball League for a few years following his banning from the NBA, got in touch with St. Louis bookie and gambler Dave Goldberg in 1957 with the suggestion that he should try and fix college basketball games to satisfy his gambling itch., pp. 89-90

In addition to Hacken and Goldberg, Molinas' partners in the work included Genovese crime family acting boss Thomas Eboli and enforcer Vincent Gigante, pool shark and Yankee Stadium concessions manager (specifically a manager for the Stevens Concessions Company, a peanut vendor 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., pp. 90-91 Including Goldberg and Genovese crime family members, other organized crime members and high-stakes gamblers that got involved included his associate Steve "Likos" Lekemetros, Boston's Philip La Court, Vincent Gigante's brother Ralph Gigante, and Chicago Outfit informant Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal (the last of whom would inspire a character named Sam "Ace" Rothstein from the 1995 hit film Casino, pg. 92) with later co-conspirators including Pittsburgh's Frankie Cardone and Morris Heyison, Chicago's Anthony Di Chiantini, and New Yorkers Charles Tucker and Paul Walker., pg. 104 Further later convictions that were tried in North Carolina also included Bob Kraw, Jake Israel, Peter Martino, and two go-betweens in Louis Barshak and Michael Siegel., pg. 107 One other case that was also related to the scandal involved a University of Pittsburgh dental teacher named Edward H. Sebastian, who attempted to bribe two Pittsburgh basketball players multiple times in 1959 to earn half of any winnings he got, assist them with entry into the dental school that he taught in, and to even purchase an automobile of any kind they wanted at a reduced price for the apparent purpose of having them seek dental treatment., pg. 95

Scandal's beginnings Implementation of this scheme was planned to have begun as early as the 1957–58 NCAA season back when Molinas was first told to do this kind of betting, but logistical issues on what types of players would be likely to accept offers from fixers and how would these players be recruited into the operation at hand delayed the immediate impact Molinas and his group had. Once the logistics of who could be involved and criteria used were figured out by the group, fixers that had basketball talent like Molinas and Green (and later Budin) would go out and get in touch with the players they targeted for their scheme by softening them up while meeting them in either neighborhood games, summer games, or college basketball towns like Tuscaloosa with either money for them, a lunch or dinner that was on the gamblers, or even arranging a party with booze and women for them. When the player(s) in question were given a sign that had an interest in fixing at least one game (oftentimes more), they were offered a bribe and the ones that agreed to it would be paid to recruit other players into the scheme, as well as communicate with others that agreed to rig certain games and potentially relay information to other gamblers and vice versa. Some regular college students would also be involved with trying to get other student-athletes involved in the scheme for Molinas' group, including using coded language (sometimes through phone calls) to relay information to involved people., pg. 91

Despite the notion of how widespread the scandal would eventually become, it would also involve many mishaps, suspicions from within the group, and betrayals like players double-crossing the group at times or even the group double-crossing some of the players instead. One mishap that almost ended the scheme early involved a failed attempt from Joe Green to recruit Brown University player Jerry Alaimo before the 1957–58 season began; not only did Green fail to recruit Alaimo, but Alaimo would anonymously call the office of Manhattan's District Attorney Frank Hogan (the same man that stopped the 1951 college basketball point-shaving scandal years prior) to report the bribe attempt in order to maintain his own collegiate eligibility, though no known action was taken from this case during that time.

Other times, when bets on what would have been fixed games went awry, some players would agree to take on the bet at first, only to then change their minds during the game and play competitively like they normally would have. Sometimes, players that did end up fixing games the gamblers wanted them to fix so they could take on the money they would have earned later on either attempted to give the money back to the group or contended that it was just payment for advice. In more extreme cases, the fixers would sometimes double-cross players by claiming a spread was by one margin when it was actually by another margin instead, with worse scenarios involving potential violence upon players if they acted out of line for failing to fix a game on their end. There were also instances where backers of the group threatened even the leader of the operation with his own life, let alone refuse to pay out his group, if they suspected Molinas' group double-crossed them, as well as instances where Molinas' own group would double-cross each other to the point of creating a convoluted web of lies and manipulation sometimes., pp. 92-93

Notable times players and teams got affected by the scandal Outside of players that were involved with the scandal directly, other players and teams were also affected by the scandal in sometimes indirect ways as well.

Al Seiden One of the earliest tragic cases involved a star point guard from St. John's University named Al Seiden. In one instance back in 1958, when Seiden was playing collegiately, Budin mistakenly told Molinas that Seiden would fix a game for him, which led to Molinas selling the game to Rosenthal as a bet, which ended up losing him a lot of money in the process. In order to save Budin's life that day, Molinas blamed Seiden for the incident. Despite the group not touching Seiden's name again afterward and Seiden later being drafted by the St. Louis Hawks in the second round of the 1959 NBA draft (back when the NBA would hold at least 14 rounds for their drafts, if not more than that, at one point), the Hawks would mysteriously bench Seiden for his entire rookie season, which forcibly led to him quitting the NBA altogether and the NBA effectively blacklisting him indirectly as an incident of the case. He would later play for a few years in the Eastern Professional Basketball League as well as the Pittsburgh Rens of the short-lived American Basketball League revival attempt, but his basketball career would never be the same following the rookie season benching on the Hawks. Another teammate of his in Tony Jackson would also get banned from the NBA later on due in part of failing to report a bribe offer he had been given himself., pg. 93

Jim Robinson and Alphra Saunders' potential involvement During the month of March 1959, former managing editor of the Peoria Journal and at the time current radio newscaster George W. Barrett reported that around $20,000 to $30,000 (worth around $216,355 to $324,530 in 2024) was being bet on college basketball in the city of Peoria, Illinois on a nightly basis. The problem with those numbers in question was that betting lines were set on a national basis and that similar betting lines occurred in not just Springfield, Illinois, but in other cities within the state as well. As such, Barrett alleged that Molinas' friend, Joe Hacken, gave some softening money to two Bradley University players in Jim Robinson and Alphra Saunders, which would have made Bradley a repeat offender following their previous case in the 1951 college basketball point-shaving scandal going into this scandal. However, when Hacken was arrested two years later in the month of March 1961, he ultimately did not confess to rigging any of Bradley University's games,, pp. 94-95 and since the claims could not be 100% proven, Barrett's claims on the two players could be seen as potential hearsay. Regardless of the validity of Barrett's claims, though, both Robinson and Saunders were likely given permanent bannings from the NBA following the scandal coming to light.

Dave Leveton and Greg Kaufman