The big takeaway is that unless you're on Ohtani's payroll, you just wasted I don't know how much time on making the same point over and over. Looks like roughly 3000 words total, impressive output. Might qualify for a decent high school project paper.

don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility either. just think it's far less likely than the other possibilities that include Ohtani being aware on some level

and there's this too:

Ohtani's past teammates say he has no interest in any sports besides baseball.

The answer is basically nothing. Jarret Cosart in 2015 was fined a small amount for illegal gambling. The general sentiment at the time when the facts became known was that he was cleared of betting on baseball.

This is a pretty good play-by-play and if true, largely exonerates Ohtani and corroborates the theft theory.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...ara-theft-line

And it's still pretty wild:

Yikes.

Ippei's initial interview:

This story is certainly good enough for Ohtani if true. Ohtani didn't know where the money was going, whether the gambling had been illegal, so his act isn't at all problematic, not to mention that the feds pretty much never go after gamblers in the first place.

It also doesn't sound like Ippei is playing the fall guy - he's still clearly trying to bend things if ever so slightly in his favor, despite being caught red-handed.

Again, this rapid pivot from, Ohtani paid the debts (which isn't bad at all legally or otherwise) to Ohtani had no idea being fairly bad PR is precisely the reason why the latter is extremely likely to be true.

mizuhara: "Obviously, this is all my fault, everything I've done," he said. "I'm ready to face all the consequences."
When did Ohtani become aware of the situation? "They told me I can't answer anything," he says.

candybar: It doesn't sound like Ippei is playing the fall guy


all you can do is laugh really

anyone got that bookie's number? i'd like to check the odds of mizuhara "falling out of a window" in the near future

Assuming that the theft theory is true, it would make sense that Ohtani's people would make it clear to Ippei that he should avoid representing Ohtani's position and may have even threatened legally specifically on this point, given that Ippei was literally spouting lies last time he was representing what Ohtani knew and didn't. Again, it says a ton here that Ippei is very cautious about not incriminating himself on specific points even as he's saying he's the guilty one. He sounds exactly like a guilty person that's still trying to rationalize their own behavior.

Also, it doesn't make sense with all the time difference, all the new people involved (Ohtani's spokesperson and lawyers don't seem to have had any pre-existing relationship with Ohtai) and the language barrier, that they would have the ability to orchestrate some grand conspiracy to change the story from Ohtani paid off Ippei's debt to Ippei stole the money without Ohtani's knowledge all basically within a day or so. I can't really think of any other good reason why the story would change - the most reasonable account seems to be what's literally being reported, that Ohtani learned something new and freaked out and demanded that the truth be told, forcing his team to scramble. Again, nothing about this screams some smooth PR operation, but Ohtani and Ohtani's reps in the US simply not being on the same page due to being lost in translation.

Again, why would Ippei play the fall guy if Ohtani was the one gambling? He's willing to risk federal prison to spare Ohtani a small fine? Even the worst case scenario isn't particularly damning for Ohtani here.

how is he risking federal prison? ohtani has apparently forgiven him, even though he supposedly stole millions of dollars from him, then lied about it, implicating him, getting him into all kinds of trouble and damaging his reputation. pretty weird if ohtani doesn't have him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!

and like, does it even make sense that a bookie would let this guy run up $4.5m in debts on the back of "i know this rich guy who will pay for me / i can steal it from him and no one will notice". actually the 2nd one seems completely implausible huh

According to your scenario, Ippei is the fall guy for Ohtani's gambling, but:

But that is exactly what's about to happen. Ohtani's lawyers are literally saying that Ohtani just learned about this theft and have referred the matter to the authorities. No one from Ohtani's camp is saying that Ohtani forgave anything. How is Ippei going to avoid prosecution here?

well i've heard like 10 times how ohtani immediately forgave him and nothing about going after him, so i guess we'll see

Mlb opening investigation into Ippei and Shohei

You're assuming four things: 1) Ippei ran up the debt to 4.5M at one point, rather than this being the total amount of payments, which means the bookie only extended more credit after Ippei was able to pay back his previous debt. 2) Most of the 4.5M wasn't due to interest and late payments that were tacked on, 3) This bookie is good at managing credit, when he himself was bankrupt from gambling back in 2011, 4) The bookie derived no benefit from Ippei's bets leading to payments from Ohtani when it appears that he was bragging to other people about this.

Question, obv team Ohtani is saying they didn't bet MLB

can that be proven what they bet on?

I know it is some local bookie but if it took place online i'd assume if enough resources are invested, they could find it

I believe the bookie's lawyer confirmed that Ippei didn't bet on baseball and there's no real reason for them to lie to protect Ippei.

I may be wrong but as I understand it the only way for it to be proven is the bookie to rat them out

Which, considering they’re under federal investigation, seems in play if push comes to shove

They obviously need to put out an official report that demonstrates one way or another on both Ohtani's involvement as well as whether there was betting on baseball. I don't think this will take a terribly long time, though the ongoing federal investigation might complicate the matter, especially once Ippei gets lawyered up, as Ippei has no incentive to share any information that would implicate him in criminal court.

The bookie already ratted them out and that's why we're here.

https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/...bling-reports/

Now this isn't fully proven, but again, there's no reason for her to say this unless it's true to the best of her knowledge.

also, assuming that mizuhara is the only one guilty of anything, i fail to see how it benefits him at all to change his story from "yeah ohtani agreed to repay my debts" to "no he didn't + no comment on me stealing the money". you keep saying how he's not agreeing to be the fall guy here, but...

edit:

isn't this exactly what he just did? for no apparent reason...


i'm assuming nothing, i simply asked some questions about how bookies operate because i have no clue. i am however skeptical that someone would let this guy run up a tab like that with no clear assurance of how he can repay. seems like they're saying this guy told the bookie that ohtani would pay for him, and he took that at face value without ever having any contact with ohtani at all. sounds pretty suss, but i'd love to hear from ppl who know how this works. not your random fanfic speculation though

if Ohtani truly is guilty though i.e he was firing MLB games through this guy (worst case scenario)

then it possibly is true that mizuhara knows he has to stand tall and do the time similar to poot in the wire



if no MLB games involved then not sure why it would matter other than maybe ohtani branding purposes

my working assumption is ohtani will be officially implicated at the end of the day. what do we think the punishment is if they find he was behind these $4M in bets?

Illegal gambling is a misdemeanor in California. If he's guilty of that, MLB should punish him the same way they punish people for other misdemeanors that violate league rules.

Obviously only if no baseball (or softball) was involved.

Because it's true and his original story no longer has any legs? Like at first he made up a story that absolves him of criminal conduct, while making Ohtani a sympathetic figure and was hoping to get Ohtani to buy in, since he's used to Ohtani being like a younger brother that tends to go along with him, then the whole thing blew up when Ohtani freaked out? Like how is he going to stick to the original story if Ohtani isn't in on the cover-up?

If Ippei is guilty, he has a lot of reasons to appear contrite, given that he's clearly going to be the bad guy in the public opinion. Also, you seem to be going from one extreme where Ippei is selflessly being the fall guy for no reason to the other extreme where Ippei is literally only worrying about himself. In reality, Ippei likely has genuine feelings of guilt and to some extent wants to make amends, but clearly is in a lot of trouble, which is leading to all kinds of contradictions.

With that said, at this point in time, he doesn't know exactly what the prosecutors will go after and what concrete evidence there is, which means he has reason not to get into the specifics to self-incriminate. And that's the general tendency of guilty people, there's a lot of conflicting emotion, where part of them wants to come clean and make amends for victim, whereas part of them wants to rationalize and act like what they did wasn't so bad.

And for the most part, that's what Ippei sounds like, he admitted to things that are not illegal (lying in the first interview) and vaguely admitted to being the bad guy in every way (i.e. it's all him, not Ohtani) but kept the details to a minimum.

Not sure why you're backtracking now, when the assumptions I pointed out were baked into your rhetorical question. Also, are you really going the "just asking questions" route when you went: "like does it even make sense ... actually the 2nd one seems completely implausible huh."

Also, at this point, the details that have come out makes the conspiracy theory completely implausible - I mean, are you trying to say at this point that Balelo and his people are involved in a criminal conspiracy to cover up for Ohtani so that he can avoid like a 50K fine?

This has already been covered:

I believe the actual fine was 50K. In fact the current allegation (Ippei stealing from Ohtani) might be a slightly bigger scandal for baseball than the alternative where Ohtani gambled illegally on college football games (which also doesn't make a lot of sense) or something.