Rick Kuhn, a Boston School basketball participant who was convicted for collaborating in a headline-making point-shaving scandal that was largely organized by Henry Hill, the mobster performed by Ray Liotta within the 1990 film “Goodfellas,” died on Dec. 22 at his dwelling in Ligonier, Pa. He was 69.
The trigger was pancreatic most cancers, mentioned Chuck Finder, who collaborated with Mr. Kuhn on a lately accomplished memoir.
Mr. Kuhn was a 6-foot-5 backup ahead and middle for the Boston School Eagles in 1978 when he agreed to take part in a plot to assist be certain that his crew gained by fewer factors than the unfold — the variety of factors by which oddsmakers make a crew a favourite or an underdog in sure video games — or misplaced by extra.
Small subterfuges, like a participant intentionally committing a essential foul or showing to attempt to steal a ball however letting his opponent get round him to attain, may alter the margin of victory.
The scandal started unfolding when Mr. Kuhn took a teammate and shut pal, Jim Sweeney, to a lodge room close to Logan Airport in Boston to satisfy Mr. Hill; Paul Mazzei, a narcotics trafficker Hill had met in a federal jail; and Tony Perla, a small-time gambler.
“You’re pondering, the preliminary part, they need insider info,” Mr. Kuhn wrote in a memoir. However two hours into the assembly, the topic of level shaving got here up, and the gamers have been requested how a lot cash they’d need to take part in such a scheme.
“I mentioned, ‘100 thousand,’” Mr. Kuhn recalled telling them, to which Mr. Hill replied, “I like this child.”
Analyzing Boston School’s 1978-79 schedule, Mr. Hill, Mr. Mazzei and Mr. Perla mentioned “how a lot they have been going to wager and the way a lot we might make,” Mr. Kuhn wrote. He added, “As we left, Tony gave us $1,000 for coming” — the equal of slightly below $5,000 at the moment, and some huge cash for college kids like Mr. Kuhn and Mr. Sweeney.
Mr. Hill was not solely the self-proclaimed “Boston School basketball fixer,” as he declared in an article in Sports activities Illustrated in 1981 (written with Douglas S. Looney); he was additionally an affiliate of the Lucchese crime household. He quickly introduced in James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke — a convicted extortionist who was the suspected mastermind of the multimillion-dollar Lufthansa heist in 1978 at John F. Kennedy Airport — to make the bookmaking portion of the point-shaving scheme work. (Mr. Burke was performed by Robert De Niro in “Goodfellas.”)
Mr. Hill had been indicted in 1980 on narcotics costs in Nassau County, N.Y., and implicated within the Lufthansa theft when he was questioned concerning the Lufthansa case by the federal prosecutor Edward A. McDonald and an F.B.I. agent. Surprisingly, Mr. Hill additionally revealed the point-shaving scheme, and his position in it, and was given immunity in all circumstances.
After Mr. McDonald’s workplace corroborated Mr. Hill’s story, a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, in July 1981, indicted Mr. Kuhn, Mr. Mazzei, Mr. Burke, Tony Perla and his brother Rocco, a highschool pal of Mr. Kuhn’s, on costs of racketeering, conspiracy to commit sports activities bribery and interstate journey in help of racketeering.
The indictment cited six video games through the 1978-79 season as proof of the repair.
Mr. Kuhn, who had already confessed to his position within the scheme, turned down Mr. McDonald’s supply to cooperate in opposition to the opposite defendants.
“I knew if I didn’t say something, I used to be going to jail,” Mr. Kuhn wrote. “If I did say one thing, these different guys may’ve given me a life sentence as in: shortening my life.”
After a monthlong trial, the defendants have been convicted in November on all three costs. Mr. Kuhn, Mr. Mazzei and Tony Perla acquired 10-year sentences, Mr. Burke acquired a 20-year sentence, and Rocco Perla was sentenced to 4 years. Mr. Kuhn served 28 months.
Two different gamers — Mr. Sweeney and Ernie Cobb, the crew’s star participant — additionally took cash as a part of the point-shaving scheme, Mr. McDonald mentioned. Mr. Sweeney, who was not indicted, testified that he had felt tricked by Mr. Kuhn into becoming a member of the airport lodge assembly after which too fearful of Mr. Hill to say no.
Mr. Cobb was indicted in a separate however related federal case in 1983. He was acquitted. Mr. Kuhn testified in that case.
Richard John Kuhn was born on July 18, 1955, in Swissvale, Pa., east of Pittsburgh. His father, Frederick, labored on railroad alerts. His mom, Geraldine (McGuire) Kuhn, ran the house and, after elevating her youngest son, held jobs as a bartender and a bookkeeper and owned a magnificence salon.
Rick performed basketball and baseball in highschool and was drafted in 1973 by the Cincinnati Reds. His pitching profession within the Reds’ minor league system ended after two seasons when he tore the rotator cuff in his pitching shoulder.
He was quickly employed because the assistant baseball coach on the Boyce, Pa., campus of the Neighborhood School of Allegheny County. He additionally took some enterprise programs and performed on the varsity’s basketball crew. Boston School recruited him through the 1976 Nationwide Junior School Basketball Event in Hutchinson, Kan.
In his three years at Boston School, Mr. Kuhn averaged simply 4.3 factors a sport. However he performed sufficient minutes to affect the betting scheme, Mr. McDonald mentioned.
Mr. Kuhn didn’t graduate. He performed basketball in Argentina earlier than his indictment and was reportedly managing a nightclub in Pittsburgh whereas he was on trial.
In 1985, two years into his imprisonment, he testified to the President’s Fee on Organized Crime that school basketball gamers have been most susceptible to monetary strain from gamblers “of their junior and senior years, when it turns into actuality that they’re not going to have profitable careers” as skilled gamers.
In 1990, talking to the ABCD Camp, a showcase of prime highschool basketball recruits, Mr. Kuhn mentioned he thought his sentence had been too harsh. However he added: “I did make a mistake. I did commit a criminal offense.”
After being launched from jail, he owned house buildings and held jobs in safety and development.
The scandal was the topic of a ebook, “Mounted: How Goodfellas Purchased Boston School Basketball” (2000), by David Porter, for which Mr. Kuhn didn’t grant interviews, and an ESPN documentary, “Enjoying for the Mob” (2014), which Mr. Liotta narrated.
Joe Lavine, a director of the documentary, mentioned in an interview that he spoke to Mr. Kuhn in particular person and on the cellphone. Mr. Kuhn declined to talk on digicam however “would lead me in instructions and let me know sure issues,” Mr. Lavine recalled. He added, “He had a daughter in junior excessive or highschool who was enjoying sport, and he didn’t need to grow to be a narrative that impacted something she was doing.”
However Mr. Finder, the collaborator on Mr. Kuhn’s memoir, wrote in an e-mail that in his final months, Mr. Kuhn “wished to inform the true story he by no means advised earlier than. The story he by no means even fully shared together with his family.”
The primary draft of the manuscript was completed two weeks earlier than his demise.
Mr. Kuhn is survived by his spouse, Patti Jo (Bean) Kuhn; two daughters, Annie Kuhn and Kari Kuhn-Wagner; a son, John; two brothers, Frederick and Jerry; and three grandsons. A earlier marriage led to divorce.
Mr. Hill died in 2012, Mr. Liotta in 2022.
Mr. McDonald, the prosecutor, who performed himself in “Goodfellas” and who earned a bachelor’s diploma from Boston School in 1968, turned pleasant with Mr. Kuhn after the trial.
“He made a silly mistake as a senior in school,” Mr. McDonald mentioned in an interview. “I felt sorry for him. Many of the guys I convicted, I didn’t really feel unhealthy for.”
Sooner or later, he recalled, Mr. Kuhn was being interviewed by F.B.I. brokers on the federal courthouse in Brooklyn whereas nonetheless serving his jail sentence. Mr. McDonald advised him that he and a few buddies have been going to see Boston School play that afternoon within the Huge East Convention basketball event at Madison Sq. Backyard.
Jokingly, Mr. Kuhn requested, “Can I include you?”
