as i understand it cosart was a middling pitcher no one cared about 10 years ago when the sports betting landscape was different. not entirely sure he's a great comp but maybe. just have a hard time believing ohtani would get off with a straight fine if (big if) trying to deceive everyone by having his interpreter take the fall. also i'm slow, what assurance do we have none of the bets were on mlb?

If black friday shut down internet poker for illegal money wiring, why are Shohei and Ippei not in handcuffs?
And yes I am 100% willing to be shown why I am an idiot lol - I am open to being told I am a moron but please tell me why

Agreed that a random guy 10 years ago is a bad comp.

We have the same assurance that Ohtani didn't bet on MLB that we have that any other player didn't bet on baseball. We also don't have any assurance that Aaron Judge doesn't bet on Yankees games. It would be for MLB to prove he did bet on baseball and not the other way around.

Which poker players did you see in handcuffs after Black Friday? When do you see people in handcuffs for betting on sports in states where it's not allowed?

[QUOTE=Which poker players did you see in handcuffs after Black Friday? When do you see people in handcuffs for betting on sports in states where it's not allowed?[/QUOTE]


There were indictments made and jail time was sought for 11 people.
Maybe Shohei shouldn't be in cuffs, but he should be facing at least a civil suit.

Yes, the stigma associated with sports betting was *worse* in 2015 versus now. I also don't believe there's any reason for star players receive larger punishments for the same violations than role players. That's silly and not really supported by history.

Yes, it's an exceptionally bad look *now* for Ohtani (and Balelo and others who seem to have orchestrated the coverup) if it turned out that he did the betting. Which is why it's exceptionally unlikely that he was involved. There wasn't anything substantial to cover up in the first place.

As mentioned many times before, the bookie's lawyer, who has no reason to lie here, was asked about this and said the bets were not on baseball.

These were for people that were in the business of running illegal gambling operations, not those that just played poker. The feds have always gone after those that make money by running gambling operations, not gamblers who they largely see as victims.

The other reason why this is a stupid line of inquiry is that, if the bookie gave Ippei more credit on the basis of Ohtani being the real bettor, then the bookie had to know for sure that Ohtani was involved. Yet, the bookie's lawyer is saying that they never had any kind of contact. So this doesn't make any sense unless you're imagining a conspiracy that involves the bookie. Why would they lie about this just to protect Ohtani? And if the bookie knew, what is the purpose of Ippei being the middle man and the fall guy here? Wasn't the whole theory that Ippei essentially laundered Ohtani's identity? None of this makes any sense whatsoever.

Also, A-Rod:

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...d-for-gambling

https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/news/i...ez-gets-busted

In other words, A-Rod was caught at least *twice* gambling illegally and both times, he was just told not to do it again.

ok so why would a bookie run a random guy with ~no money, assets or ability to repay up to $4.5m then? could i just walk up to a bookie and start betting millions too even though i'm broke? is that how this works?

But Ippei was able to repay, wasn't he? Are you just really not able to follow along or are you just stuck on repeating dumb questions? You're still making all the assumptions I laid out earlier and on top of that, this doesn't make the alternative scenario where Ippei is just relaying Ohtani's orders any more likely, since in that scenario, that doesn't change who Ippei is from Bowyer's perspective. Are you or are you not able to follow this?

Also, the bookie's lawyer literally answered this question:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...bookie-bowyer/

Also it sounds like the bookie's lawyer tried to drag Ohtani into the mess:

Does this sound like someone that would be lying to protect Ohtani? Do you fall for every conspiracy theory that you're motivated to believe or just this one?

This on other hand is a great post, kudos to you for producing such great posts all these years (17K+ and counting) without wasting time.

ok so if i say that my best friend is labald james can i bet billions then? the bookie has zero contact with him but says yes bc vibes. seems legit, i'll go test it out tonight...


yeah, ohtani made a series of $500k payments starting in 2023. er wait, i mean the translator was able to steal ohtani's money $500k at a time for a year or two with literally nobody noticing. the perfect crime, true mastermind here, just lifting $500k from the piggy-bank whenever he wants. zero oversight on ohtani's money. yeah yeah thats the ticket

Are you famous as Lebron's friend? Ippei was extremely famous for his association with Ohtani.

Also, you're now trying to say the bookie and the bookie's lawyer are in the conspiracy to keep Ohtani out of this mess? Because unless they are somehow in on this conspiracy, none of your objections really makes any sense. Also, if Ohtani is willing to make himself known to the bookie, what is even the point of going through Ippei?

Again all this elaborate conspiracy to avoid basically a small fine? Did anyone even care about A-Rod's or MJ's or Barkley's gambling?

Isn't this extremely common?

https://tucson.com/sports/arizonawil...99d8a068e.html

it's been known to happen with small-time guys who put too much trust and power in 1 guy handling their money yeah, but i'm not buying it with ohtani. he's too big. i don't really believe this guy can keep stealing $500k for years without it being flagged somewhere and ppl noticing. he has to have a team of ppl working for him. sorry, not buying that a translator can pull this off

but there are perks! like being able to take $500k whenever you want

he had control over everything!!! (the translator making like $70k)


also what kind of billionaire hires their best friend and pays less than $100k/year? do you know how expensive it is to live in california, maaan!!?

do japanese ppl have a rep for being cheap? because wow

agree sports betting was more stigmatized back then before it became so ubiquitous. what i meant on current landscape is leagues like MLB have partnered with sports gambling sites and it's now a cash cow. to keep milking that cow, they need to maintain the integrity of the sport and can't tolerate even the appearance that mlb players/staff are covertly betting. your superstar player betting seven figures on the dl is not a good look, esp if there were any mlb games involved. guess i'd be surprised if ohtani got off with only a small fine, all i'm saying.

thanks, wasn't sure if it was solely based on ippei's word. wouldn't say there's zero reason for the bookie to lie in that spot... in one scenario you're facilitating insider trading / potential match fixing, in the other it's just vanilla bookmaking. but if he can produce records showing no mlb was involved and it ties out to the amounts of transfers from ohtani, that'd probably go a long way.

Again, how is it even possible for to be this uninformed? Almost every report mentioned that Ippei's total income is somewhere between $300K and $500K, but typically MLB intepreters are paid less than $100K/year by teams. What's obviously going on is that Ippei's salary from the team is fairly low (makes sense given that it's a highly desirable job that's maybe like 8 months out of the year), but Ippei is dually employed by the team and Ohtani (perhaps through CAA), which brings his income to $300K - $500K range.

$how ur werk. the washington post says he's "a professional interpreter, whose salary was reportedly less than six figures"


also, somebody should bet candybar that at the end of all this, ohtani will receive a punishment greater than a $50k fine. since he's so confident that there's nothing to see here

Ohtani has only been "too big" here since like mid-2021 and he doesn't really do that much outside of playing baseball in the US, so I don't see why he'd have some big team that would scrutinize his finances. If anything, his true inner circle being Japanese folks in Japan makes it likely that they'd be able to provide any kind of effective oversight. I'm also not buying this idea that this only happens to "small-time guys" - seems like you just made this up. I don't see any big difference between the likes of Gilbert Arenas and Richard Jefferson and Ohtani in this regard.

The [[[[[[[[[[ FBI ]]]]]]]]]] also being in on the conspiracy is one of the details I hadn't noticed earlier.

I didn’t have anything else to read while taking a big **** so i slogged through all that.

Conclusion: I’m on team candybar!!

Dude who can’t really speak English deciding to bet millions through someone he never directly contacts just sounds off.

Way more likely Interpeter-San got a sudden huge bump in income/lifestyle running with the BigSho, got in over his head and took the only way out he had. I’m no high stakes underground gambling expert but I feel like the guy could get in just saying something - Yo, don’t you know Shohei? He pays me a mill a year to wipe his ass.

Do you not know how to google either?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/shohei-...-fired-salary/

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

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...er-fired-theft

Given that both figures are from basically the same source (Ippei in an interview with ESPN), that paints a fairly clear picture. His interpretation services strictly are worth less than 100K annually in the market so the Angels didn't pay any more than that, but given that he also helps Ohtani in personal capacity and gets compensated for that.

I'd be happy to bet a fair amount here (just for fun, in case any law enforcement folks are reading this) but I don't think anyone on your side would be interested.

you convinced me that he's a pathological liar who cannot be trusted about anything though, so i refuse to believe this. he's a min-wage translator to me

If MLB games were involved, we're looking at 1-year suspension at a minimum and potentially lifetime suspension. It also makes no sense for Ohtani - it's at least plausible that Ohtani has a gambling problem and might need to compulsively bet on sports, but betting on your own sport/games isn't something you do out of compulsion, that's a business decision and one that makes no sense for someone whose career earnings might easily end up being multiple billions. Bowyer also seems like a fairly small time guy who would have no ability to buy off a moderately successful professional athlete, let alone Ohtani.

I agree that if match-fixing is on the table, you can plausibly argue that it's possible for Bowyer and Ohtani to be conspiring, but match-fixing is definitely well beyond the realm of possibility. The reason why this was somewhat more common in the past among players is that players just didn't make that much money and were easily tempted. If you had to fix professional matches, you'd be relying on coaches and refs and if it had to involve players, it would be guys that are paid close to the minimum.

You're pretty much always going to be on the right side this way, not because I have some amazing insight every time but because I rarely get involved in arguments here unless the other side is extremely wrong. The COVID-era arguments on the economy in BFI were especially funny.