yeah.
some details from the criminal complaint:
Quote:
- In 2018, Mizuhara drove Ohtani, referred to as Victim A in the complaint, to the bank and served as translator when he set up the account Ohtani used to receive his salary from the Angels. This was the account later used to wire money to the illegal bookmaker.
- Mizuhara received packages that were emailed to the clubhouse under the alias "Jay Min." The packages contained baseball cards, including "cards for baseball players Yogi Berra, Juan Soto, and Victim A."
- Ohtani also employed a professional bookkeeper, financial manager, and tax preparer and accountant, who, along with his agent, managed all of his domestic endorsement deals, which were handled in separate accounts. None of them spoke Japanese or hired anyone who spoke Japanese.
- Ohtani's agent inquired at multiple points about the bank account that received Ohtani's salary, but Mizuhara told him that Ohtani wished for it to be kept private.
- Ohtani only ever asked Mizuhara for overarching updates about his finances and assumed that his agent and financial managers had access to all of his accounts.
anyway, according to many he is neither a weird guy who is into some **** so he set up his life like a mafia don running everything through literally one guy, nor a moran who got scammed by a not-too-bright scumbag. hey, it could happen to anyone who put their 110% full trust in some random translator that they've known for 11 years. that's not stupid, it's totally normal! who among us hasn't been robbed of $16,000,000 by some guy they've known for just over a decade, throw the first stone, i dare ya
i also don't really buy that none of this stuff was filtering down to ohtani. his agent noticed how ****ed up this was, the team was receiving a lot of expensive memorabilia addressed to an alias, there's no way ppl weren't talking. idk about the angels, but i saw in one article that the dodgers had a couple of japanese ppl around the team
anyway, the point is, if ohtani got scammed because he built walls around himself and handed literally all of the keys to this one guy, that isn't stupid. it's very smart, because he's good at baseball, or something...
and, not really relevant to anything, but very ldo and funny:
Quote:
- Mizuhara told the bookmaker that he "[lost] a lot of money on crypto."