Long before today’s college and pro athletes started making headlines for their (alleged) involvement in gambling scandals, a man named Richard Mark Perry made his own—on more than one occasion. Over the course of three decades, Richard Perry—better known as Sam Perry to some and Richie “The Fixer” Perry to others—impacted the sports world unlike any other figure before or since. The one-time hoops standout rubbed elbows with mob figures, fixed harness races and college basketball games, was a fixture in the New York City basketball scene, and inadvertently contributed to the downfall of a potential college basketball dynasty—all before the Nevada Gaming Commission placed him in its infamous Black Book, barring him from all Nevada casinos.
Following his graduation from Brooklyn’s Erasmus Hall High School in the early ’60s, Perry played college basketball in South Carolina and for Staten Island Community College. Perry could really play. While the schools no longer have records for those seasons, several newspaper articles recapping his games place him among his team’s leaders in points and rebounds. Perry dropped out of college after a couple years, but continued to compete in other ways.
Perry was a gambler—and from all accounts, the rare successful gambler. In Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy, Henry Hill—mobster of Goodfellas fame (portrayed by Ray Liotta) and friend of Perry—described Perry as a “genius,” adding:
Long before anybody else thought of it, Perry had dozens of people all around the country watching college sports for him. He knew what kind of shape the field was in, the injuries to key players, whether the quarterback had been drunk, all kinds of things that gave his handicapping an edge. He used to find things in small-town college newspapers that never made the wires, and he had people calling him right up to the minute he was ready to bet.
And sometimes, Perry found more creative—and less legal—ways to improve his odds.
In 1973, Perry figured out how to fix harness races. Fixing such races has its challenges; horses aren’t always great at taking directions. But shady harness drivers can be—for the right price, of course.
So Perry bribed those shady drivers and turned the odds in his favor. To understand his scheme, an understanding of superfecta races—the type of races Perry bet—is required. A superfecta race is a harness race in which, typically, eight horses compete. While there are several types of bets that can be placed on these races, Perry focused on the three dollar bet.
To win a three dollar bet, the bettor must select the first four horses in the exact order they cross the finish line. In 1973, the average winning superfecta ticket paid out $3,000. In an eight-horse race, there are 1,680 possible combinations of four horses finishing in an exact order in the first four positions. It would cost a bettor $5,040 to place three dollar bets on all of those combinations. So, it would be illogical for a bettor to bet all those combinations since the bettor could lose over $2,000 by doing so.
Perry figured out that if he was able to take two horses out of contention, he would greatly improve the odds of correctly picking the first four horses—more specifically, he would shift the odds from 1,680 to one to 360 to one. That means that a bettor would have to spend only $1,080 to bet all combinations of four horses finishing in an exact order in the first four positions. With an average payout of $3,000 for winning tickets, the bettor’s profit would be virtually guaranteed.
In fact, Perry’s profit was substantial. The scheme ran from January 1973 through April 1973, and it produced gross winnings of approximately $2,250,000; however, it also produced a prison stint for Perry. Court records, newspaper articles, and Henry Hill’s recollections (memorialized in Wiseguy) shed light on Perry’s scheme, as well as his life in general at the time.
Perry and a man named Forrest Gerry worked with a variety of drivers, bettors and organized crime figures to fix the races. Perry, Gerry and Henry Hill spent time around the tracks and eventually got to know trainers and jockeys. Perry and company bribed a number of drivers with a variety of temptations—$1,000, a winning superfecta ticket, even fighting roosters. The fixers also threw one of the drivers parties to keep him happy. Perry was supposed to bring stewardesses to one of the parties; he wasn’t successful finding any stewardesses, so he settled for hookers. Once the drivers were bribed, the fixers had to make their bets.
During this time, Perry worked out of his Brooklyn home. In addition to his gambling and bookmaking activities, Perry and a partner owned (or otherwise controlled) a bar inside a Chinese restaurant called Gam Wah, also located in Brooklyn. Perry hired a local schizophrenic named Bruce—an acquaintance of Perry’s since the sixth grade—to assist with the betting and run errands for him. Bruce started his workday around 10:00 a.m., bringing Perry breakfast, a copy of the New York Times and an “overnight sheet” with the odds on the following days’ races.
Every morning that they planned to bet, Gerry would call Perry to let him know which horses would be finishing in the last spots. Perry would then provide Bruce with $9,000 to $15,000 to place bets. He’d also phone others with the information—presumably, so they could have additional bets placed. Perry and Gerry cashed some of the winning tickets themselves, and Perry passed some of the winning tickets to others so the others could cash them (because winnings exceeding $900 had to be reported to the IRS). Perry kept thirty percent of the winnings, as did a mob figure named Peter Vario who was allegedly involved in the scheme. Gerry kept twenty percent, and other participants split the rest.
If there were ever any doubts about the scheme’s connections to organized crime, Peter Vario’s involvement ended them. Peter Vario’s father was Paul Vario, a made man in the Lucchese crime family, who was portrayed as Paul Cicero by actor Paul Sorvino in the movie Goodfellas. During the related legal proceedings, a witness testified that “Gerry was giving the combinations to a guy by the name of Richie in Brooklyn who was connected to the mob . . . .” And there was a reference to an FBI report that “referred to ‘Richie’ as ‘the son of a made man in Brooklyn.’”
Most of the group’s money was bet at Off-Track-Betting parlors throughout the city, and the group’s unusual betting patterns set off an investigation. In 1974, Perry was one of twenty-eight defendants indicted for their purported roles in the scheme. On May 31, 1974—following an eleven-week trial—Perry was convicted of influencing the outcome of a harness race by bribery and conspiracy. On July 19, 1975, the court sentenced him to serve two concurrent two-and-a-half-years prison terms and pay a $10,000 fine. During his prison stint, Perry passed the time coaching a basketball team comprised of fellow inmates serving their time at the Allenwood, Pennsylvania penitentiary.
Perry’s life of crime and hoops continued after his time in Allenwood. Less than five years after he was sentenced, he became enmeshed in a conspiracy to fix Boston College basketball games. Author David Porter describes the Boston College scheme in great detail in Fixed: How Goodfellas Bought Boston College Basketball.
The Boston College scheme originated in Pittsburgh in the summer of 1978. Brothers and small-time gamblers Rocco and Anthony (Tony) Perla recruited Rick Kuhn—Rocco’s high school friend and center on Boston College’s basketball team—to shave points during the Eagles’1978-79 season. Initially, the trio planned to shave points in games in which Boston College was heavily favored; Kuhn was to receive $2,500 or so for each game in which he ensured that Boston College would not cover the point spread.
The Perlas recognized that they had to place bets with numerous bookmakers in order to maximize profits. So the brothers contacted Paul Mazzei, a local friend with some serious gambling connections. Mazzei, in turn, reached out to Henry Hill, a one-time fellow inmate at Lewisburg Penitentiary.
Before Hill could move forward with the point-shaving scheme, he had to get approval from Paul Vario. Vario approved the plan, but he also instructed Hill to get input from Paul’s son, Peter Vario, and Perry; Perry had experience fixing competitions, and he knew basketball.
Perry didn’t simply play a little basketball in college; he was a basketball junkie. When Hill and Vario tracked him down at Aqueduct Racetrack to discuss the Boston College scheme, Perry was carrying a college basketball preseason magazine. Perry recognized that Kuhn’s limited role on the team would limit his ability to impact the outcome of any games, so Perry told the schemers to get the team’s leading scorer, Ernie Cobb, on board.
Through no fault of Perry, the scheme was largely a dud; it turns out that humans aren’t much better than horses when it comes to taking directions. As many as three Boston College players—Kuhn, Cobb and point guard Jim Sweeney—became entangled in the scheme, though any real efforts they made to throw games is a matter of dispute. Cobb denied doing anything to throw games, and he was ultimately cleared of charges. Sweeney said he was scared to death of the gamblers and only pretended to go along with the scheme to keep them happy. And Kuhn’s small role limited his ability to have any real impact on the games.
The group first targeted a December match-up between Boston College and Providence. The gamblers needed Boston College to win by less than six to seven points. Boston College won by nineteen. For the bettors, that was a disaster. Perry immediately lost faith in the players and refused to bet any more of his money on Boston College, though he continued to book bets. Throughout the remainder of the season, the scheme produced mixed results before coming to an uneventful end. Once the season ended, it appeared that all those involved could put the events behind them and move on with their lives, and they did—until Henry Hill was busted on drug charges in 1980.
Hill had two choices—fight the charges, risking a lengthy prison sentence (and possibly death at the hands of mobsters worried that Hill might testify against them) or become an FBI informant and enter its witness protection program. Hill chose the latter. While informing FBI agents of the details of his life of crime, he disclosed the Boston College scheme.
In November 1983, Richard Perry was indicted on federal charges for his role in the scheme. When agents tried to arrest him at his Staten Island home, he was nowhere to be found. He was in Canada.
In April 1984, Perry—then 38 years old—was arrested in the suburbs of Vancouver on charges for using stolen credit cards to make telephone calls in furtherance of a bookmaking operation. He pled guilty, paid a $2,500 fine, and did a little jail time before he was extradited to face charges in New York relating to the Boston College case. In September 1984, Perry pled guilty to conspiring to commit sports bribery. He received a sentence of probation and a fine of $5,000.
Despite his guilty plea, Perry was indignant, claiming—through mob attorney and future Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman—that he had actually advised against the scheme and that he had “moved to Las Vegas where gambling activity is legal so as to avoid any problem for [him]self and [his] family.” Perry did move, but problems followed.
Though Perry did relocate to Las Vegas, he was not a full-time resident of Sin City. In a 1987 Washington Post interview, Perry—using the alias Sam Perry—described himself “as a New York summer league coach who works in commodities and winters in Las Vegas ‘because I’m allergic to snow.’” News articles and Swee’ Pea: The Story of Lloyd Daniels and Other Playground Basketball Legends, a book authored by John Valenti and legendary high school basketball coach Ron Naclerio, detail Perry’s basketball life following the Boston College scheme.
Presumably, Richard Perry began calling himself Sam Perry to put his past behind him. His players called him Coach Sam. By all accounts, Coach Sam was a good guy who helped out his players when they needed some financial assistance. While his generosity potentially violated NCAA rules at the time, his actions would elicit little more than a shoulder shrug by today’s standards. In an effort to steer his players away from the making the kinds of mistakes he made, Perry even took some of them to Comstock Correctional Facility to play exhibition games against the prisoners. Perry’s relationship with one such ballplayer thrust Perry back into the public spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
In 1987, Lloyd “Swee’ Pea” Daniels, a New York City street basketball legend who was frequently compared to Magic Johnson, was deciding where he would play after high school. Daniels wanted to attend UNLV. And legendary UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian wanted Daniels in a Runnin’ Rebels uniform. One problem—Daniels never graduated from any of the five high schools he attended; moreover, he could barely read.
Nevertheless, a New York basketball coach who was well-acquainted with Daniels and Perry put them in touch since Perry was a part-time Vegas resident. Perry pushed Daniels to attend UNLV, discouraging him from listening to agents who were urging him to go directly to the NBA or a professional league in Europe. Perry paid Daniels’ way to Vegas and arranged an apartment for him. Perry even helped Daniels enroll in courses that Daniels needed to complete under Nevada law to work his way toward admission at UNLV.
Those efforts came to an abrupt end on February 9, 1987, after the Las Vegas police arrested Daniels when he visited a crack house and asked for “a rock.” It was a sting. “Sam” Perry bailed Daniels out of jail. Tarkanian claimed that, after he publicly stated Daniels could never play for UNLV after the arrest, Perry accused him of “trying to improve [his] image at the expense of [Daniels]” and told Tarkanian to no longer bother trying to recruit players from New York.
Though Daniels’ UNLV dreams were over, he clung to his NBA dreams. He latched on with the Topeka Sizzlers of the Continental Basketball Association (the NBA’s primary minor league at the time). Perry somehow managed to become the team’s unpaid player personnel director. The Sizzlers’ owner described Perry as the biggest basketball fan he had ever met. In a June 19, 1989, Newsday article, journalists Danny Robbins and John Valenti wrote: “Some Sizzlers employees thought it odd that Perry always seemed to have a lot of cash on hand and carried around a telephone paging device, but they found Perry to be such an engaging person that they didn’t dwell on their concerns.” But they started to dwell on those concerns around April 3, 1989, when Time Magazine published an article that identified “Sam” Perry as Richard Perry, and laid bare his criminal past.
The Time article, “Education: Playing to Win in Vegas” by Ted Gup, also linked Perry to potential misdeeds relating to UNLV. The article recounts Perry lunching with David Butler and Moses Scurry, key players on UNLV’s basketball team, and giving them $100 each. Scurry told Gup that Perry previously coached him “and on about half a dozen occasions Perry gave him small amounts of ‘tip money’—no more than $20—merely as a token of affection.” Those who know Perry agree that he had the student-athletes’ bests interest at heart. Even so, the Time article was more than a mere headache for Tarkanian and other UNLV officials.
The UNLV basketball program was a powerhouse at the time. To this day, UNLV is the fifth most winningest men’s basketball program in the nation—behind blue bloods Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas and Duke. At its pinnacle in the late ’80s and early ’90s, UNLV basketball was a cultural phenomenon. So many celebrities filled courtside seats that they became known as Gucci Row. Much of this success came under Tarkanian, who coached the men’s team from 1973 to 1992 and left the program as the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history, with a 509-105 win-loss record (an .829 winning percentage).
Despite (or perhaps because of) his success, Tarkanian was subjected to intense NCAA scrutiny long before Perry entered the picture. Tarkanian took the UNLV job after a stint at Long Beach State, which the NCAA investigated and sanctioned for violations. The NCAA continued to hound Tarkanian at UNLV. While Tarkanian fought the NCAA more than any individual before or after him, most fans loved (or at least respected) him for his blunt honesty. He once quipped, “Nine out of 10 schools are cheating. The other one is in last place.” Another time, he said that he preferred to recruit junior college players because their cars were already paid for. Tarkanian’s brazenness had limits. In the Time article, Tarkanian claimed to know Perry only as Sam—someone in the commodities business. He told his players to stay away from him.
The Time article did nothing to slow UNLV. In fact, UNLV won the 1989-90 national championship, beating Duke by a record margin of 30 points. UNLV won its first 34 games the following season. And looked unbeatable.
UNLV and Duke met again in the semifinals of the 1990-91 NCAA tournament. UNLV was favored by nine-and-a-half points, and given the prior year’s blowout, appeared poised to win with ease. In a shocker, Duke won by two. The outcome was so unexpected it was easy to wonder if the game had been fixed. It was even easier to wonder that two months later.
In May 1991—shortly after the upset—the Las Vegas Review Journal published a photograph showing Perry in a hot tub with three prominent members of those great UNLV teams. Another photograph showed some of the players’ names painted on the basketball court at Perry’s home. And Perry’s neighbors reported that they had frequently seen UNLV players visiting his home.
On top of that, Tarkanian suspected that UNLV officials—embarrassed by the national scrutiny that the men’s basketball program had been drawing—were working with the NCAA to force him out of UNLV. During the time Tarkanian and his supporters publicly warred with UNLV officials, one-time interim athletic director Dennis Finfrock claimed that Perry threatened him (though the nature of the alleged threat is unspecified in public reports and Finfrock has since passed away).
No amount of hardwood success could help Tarkanian escape the increased scrutiny, and he resigned from UNLV following the 1991-92 season. While news articles published after the hot tub photo mention a possible federal investigation into the fixing of the 1991 UNLV-Duke tournament game, nothing came of it. But Perry’s troubles continued.
In 1992, the Nevada Gaming Commission placed Perry on its “List of Excluded Persons”—better known as Nevada’s Black Book—barring him from all Nevada gaming establishments. In 1996, Perry was indicted on tax evasion charges, alleging that from 1986 through 1992 he failed to file income tax returns despite having earned more than $650,000 from gambling during that time span. In 1997, he was sentenced to fifteen months in prison, fined $30,000 and ordered to pay the taxes he had evaded. Perry has since stayed out of the spotlight.
But the more things change, the more they remain the same. On October 23, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice announced two separate cases charging NBA players and coaches, as well as organized crime figures, with crimes relating to a variety of gambling misdeeds. Inevitably, members of the sports media criticized professional sports leagues for getting into bed with (legal) gaming companies. Never mind that many members of that same sports media had routinely criticized the leagues for hypocritically shunning (illegal) gambling interests while knowing full well that such interests were at least partially responsible for the leagues’ popularity.
Michelle Obama recently compared watching ESPN to watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta. The same can be said of following sports in general; with its rivalries, drama and revolving cast of characters, sports are part athletic competition, part reality television, part soap opera. For decades, Richard Perry played one of its juiciest roles in this world—that of Richie “The Fixer.”
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Michael C. Kovac is an assistant professor for Vermont Law and Graduate School, where he teaches legal writing. He has also taught law and/or criminal justice courses for Penn State University, Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, the University of Southern California, and the University of New Mexico. Previously, Kovac spent a decade working as a prosecutor in Las Vegas, Nevada. He received his B.S. from the University of Pittsburgh (Johnstown), his M.A. from Arizona State University, and his J.D. from Duquesne University. He still enjoys playing basketball in his free time.
