You remember Ippei Mizuhara, the interpreter for baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani? He supposedly stole $4 million from Ohtani to pay off gambling debts, but I haven't really been paying attention to this since the story first broke. New York gets me up to speed:
According to U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, Mizuhara got ahold of Ohtani’s bank account to feed his “insatiable appetite for illegal sports gambling.” He then blocked Ohtani’s agent, financial adviser, and accountant from being able to access the account of the baseball phenom, who is known for paying less attention to his finances than your average multimillionaire. Bank records in the filing show that Mizuhara also changed the phone number and email on Ohtani’s account so Mizuhara could access the funds. And the Feds claim to have a recording of Mizuhara calling the bank pretending to be Ohtani to release more money to pay off his debts.
With Mizuhara allegedly in control of Ohtani’s finances, the indictment states that Mizuhara placed a staggering amount of bets with the player’s money. Between December 2021 and January 2024, prosecutors allege that he placed around 19,000 bets, winning over $142 million and losing around $183 million — for a total loss of around $41 million.
Shazam.
Heated discussions I was party to leaned toward the ball player being complicit. I was of the opinion that electronics were heavily involved and easily camouflaging activities. Score one for me, once.
Apparently yes. In a much cooler discussion, I had said there's no cost in giving Ohtani the presumption of innocence unless contrary information comes out.
But that $41 million should puncture his innocence in trusting others. An expensive lesson. Not many could recover from that kind of loss, even among pro athletes, but he's lucky to be one of them.
From what I've seen elsewhere the interpreter is accused of stealing "only" $16million, so the rest of those $41million is probably money he owes the bookies.
Othani's entire contract for his time with the Angels was $43million, so I'd imagine he'd have realized a lot sooner he was being robbed if nearly the entire amount went missing.
Why would bookies let him get in that deep?
Because they assumed that he had access to Ohtani's money.
Does anyone ever make money gambling? Ever?
Ask James Holzhauer.
I just looked at his bio, and he seems to have made money only on TV game shows, not gambling. He tried the World Series of Poker but crapped out.
My question is whether anyone consistently comes out ahead and earns a living by pure gambling (not show business). I seriously doubt it - very few if any. I'm sure there are many who think they are coming out ahead when they really are not.
Take the subject of this piece. He presumably knows baseball well, but his betting on it led to a loss of $41 million. Maybe a few poker players are able to leverage sucker money enough to come out ahead, but there can't be many of them.
Gambling is for fools who want to be parted from their money.
I think you can make money playing poker. But it's long hours in smokey environments and you have to grind it out. There are better ways of making a living.
The only reason you might be able to make some money playing poker if you are very good at it is that there are a whole lot of crap poker players (who probably think they are good). So there is a pool of sucker money available, but of course there will be a lot of competition for it.
Any other gambling game, you are bound to lose over the long term because of the house percentage.
The house. Well, it maybe not Trump's casinos.
I am currently up 40$ the only time I ever played. In Atlantic City in the '90's.
Gamblers definitely can make money playing against other gamblers (poker, sports betting, etc.) Of course, **most** gamblers who play against other gamblers do lose, since the house is keeping a cut.
Gamblers don't ever make money playing against the house (slots, blackjack, roulette, craps, whatever), unless they cheat. Or unless they just play for a short while, get lucky and win, and then quit.
Agreed.
I still wonder if anyone really makes money sports betting. A lot probably say they do or think they do, but how many actually do? I would bet very few if any.
OT - yet a news item needing a translator - for those who think that trump's rants are just calculated to fire up his angry, low-information followers, this incident furthers my belief that not even lack of sleep due to facing multiple expensive trials, with or without Adderall (in short supply) results in meltdowns like this.
i still believe that he is suffering from dementia, just as his father did later in life.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-letitia-jones-mental-decline/
If you type “Trump cognitive decline” into Google you will see many articles dating back to 2017 regarding this. So even though I think you might be right it’s still hard to tell.
Also, he talks about Biden as if he is the one having cognitive issues almost every speech and when the news shows parts of one of his speeches they will often show his rants regarding Biden. But I looked for other mentions of what Raw Story reported and found scant mention of it. And even when news outlets like CNN and the NYT do mention it they “both sides” the story. So, in the end, whether or not Trump has dementia I seriously doubt it will have any influence on the campaign.
Pete Rose probably wishes he had an interpreter…
Many years ago when my daughter was playing softball I bought a video on hitting featuring Pete Rose. The video was unintentionally hilarious. I’m sure he gave them no opportunity to reshoot scenes and was out of there at the first opportunity. I suppose they released the thing because it had cost a lot of money to get him and they just went with what they had. But I got the feeling that the guy is a total jerk. I guessed he is probably like that a lot and people in the world of sports reporting are well aware of it and thus unforgiving of his gambling problem. Which would explain his inability to get into the Hall of Fame.
Kevin, you forgot the all-important detail: None of those bets involved baseball games.
The best job security in the universe is to be an opportunist with connections to people who are so rich that they don't pay attention to their finances, AND to be an opportunist who doesn't get so greedy that they call attention to themselves.