As someone who is authorized to make wire transfers and does so professionally, I do not believe this version of the story either.

For example, I have to submit my requests to an e-mail address. The request must come from my account and the bank will only call me on my approved phone number to confirm the wire request. The entire confirmation and phone call occurs on a recorded line. I then receive a receipt for the request via e-mail.

So, the only way for that version of the story to be true, is for the interpreter to be in sole possession of Ohtani's personal devices or for he himself to be authorized to draw on the account. We know that isn't the case because if it were, he wouldn't say he was impersonating anyone.

At some point I expect Ohtani's bank to chime in. I highly doubt they want other clients to think their funds are equally as vulnerable to seemingly lax security measures.

Is this not how it was discovered?

My recollection is that the bookie was bragging about Ohtani being a client to drum up more business as the wires were coming from Othani's account and he could show the sender to clients. A client was the initial whistleblower after the name was dropped to him.

If he was gaining more business and the debts were paid by the stolen money, then why on earth would he limit his betting? There was no debt owed to the bookie, he was paid in stolen money by Mizuhara. He obviously also had to leave a giant paper trail in his panic by sending wires as it was the only access. If he personally walked into a branch for cash he would have been found out immediately.

I had the opportunity to live this kind of lifestyle through the girlfriend I had at the time in Thailand. If you ever saw the movie, Crazy Rich Asians, that was the life I lived for about 7 years. I can tell you during that 7 years, the people I was around would never have any clue if $1 million, $5 million, even $50 million disappeared. These people were drowning in money and had no idea what they had. Every top business person in the country were friends with each other, the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra's daughter was my girlfriends BFF, etc etc. My gf would routinely spend $300K, $500K each week at the mall. $500 bowls of shark fin shop, Ms Louis Vuitton and Mr Gucci as close pals and on and on. Her sister went to England for university, so the family just gave me the Porsche to drive. This despite me not having a Thai drivers license, but it didnt matter. If anything happened, I was "outside" the law. Even when renewing my visa, I never had to leave the country on a visa run, they just gave my passport to the Head of Immigration, a friend of a friend, and gave me an extension automatically.

So many more examples, but the point is, none of these people or their friends had any clue how much money they had, where it was going, how it was spent. There was just an ungodly amount of money that never ran out. From that experience, I can easily see how Ohtani may not know where his money is going. It would be a full time job just for him to manage it. I ended the relationship through boredom, but my main takeaway on that experience is these people in the Top 1% of 1% of 1%, are clueless how the everyday people live. They live in their own world, and missing many millions was nothing of concern. Without a doubt, if my girlfriend was missing $16 million, she would have never known.

If you're handling your own account, then what you say is correct. However, if you've given someone else that you trust access to your account, either the notifications are going to that person or if they are going to you, you would probably ignore them. If what is now being reported is true, Ohtani gave complete access to his accounts to the interpreter who prevented anyone else from accessing them. His interpreter also impersonated Ohtani on the phone when talking to the bank about account activity.

It sounds like Ohtani had complete trust in his interpreter who used that to take advantage of him and steal a lot of money. The part that is hard to understand (as someone else pointed out) is how would a bookie allow so much debt to be built up by someone who clearly didn't make that much. Unless the interpreter was telling the bookie he was making bets for Ohtani (which I have not seen reported), it's hard to understand how he could be given that much credit to keep losing money. Also, if winnings were being deposited to a different account (owned by the interpreter) than where payments were coming from (Ohtani's), how would he explain that to the bookie? A way to cover the connection to Ohtani?

It seems they already are deeply involved and are unlikely to be able to talk about it until after trial.

The recordings and interviews are done and the Feds main charge is bank fraud and seeking up to 30 years. I don't even see an argument here if a conviction is made.

I don't doubt that people with a lot of money don't know the exact balance of their accounts. My point was that you can't manipulate someone's account by simply turning off a notification. Because like I said. practical banking security would force you to use only an approved device to access your accounts.

If you wanted to send a Venmo payment, for example, using any other device but your own personal device would mean a security notification and required code. It would be possible for you to divert those codes to your own contacts, but how would that be explained when the actual account holder attempts to access their account and can't?

Banking is secure. It isn't easy to steal money from someone unless they allow you to have unrestricted access to their accounts. But if that were the case, why would he need to impersonate Ohtani? A person with authorized access is treated the same as the account holder. These explanations do not add up.

Was it not the case that originally it was stated by Ippei speaking for Ohtani's team, now allegedly without Ohtani understanding for a day or two even though Ohtani actually knows English and it was front page news, that Ippei's debt was paid by Ohtani via a series of $500,000 wire transfers over an period of time? It's seemed to me that there was a debt at some point here. There was never a debt?

Maybe you should go join Mizuhara's defense team then, because if you were right then they would have used that argument. You can't even mildly compare your banking experiences to what this situation is. It is also insanely unlikely that Othani has all this in his personal account. It is assuredly in an business account possibly under an llc for tax purposes and interest. His personal account was likely not even part of this.

Mizuhara is not going to serve 3 decades to cover up gambling for not even his boss, but the guy the Dodgers hired him to translate for. So much stretching on this.

He has not been charged with a crime so I don't know that he needs a defense team.

My experience in wires comes from authorized access to business accounts. I can authorize the transfer of any amount of money on behalf of my employer without anyone else's authorization. But my employer gave me that authority and it's not something I can impersonate my way through otherwise.

He was charged with bank fraud.

Your speaking from the same point of information. Money was coming in obviously or we wouldn't be here. I am not personally a whale bookie in the state of California so I don't know how that works. Perhaps there was interest? If the Bookie thinks Ippei's debt is financed by Ohtani, what on earth would make him think he's not getting paid? Ohtani makes 16m in a week with deals and contracts.

I just don't get the conspiracy angle going on. This all seems clear as day but i'll just step out. I just put some news out there and everyone quickly donned their tin foil hats.

Looks like that just happened. Interested to see how this plays out. My guess is there's a plea deal to further avoid having to actually prove or disprove what happened.

From the LA Times:

“The complaint also alleges that Mizuhara spent about $325,000 at eBay and the retail site Whatnot on sports memorabilia. The federal agents say they found about 1,000 baseball cards in Mizuhara's car.”

“The complaint alleges that Ippei placed about 19,000 bets between December 2021 and January 2024, all with Ohtani's money. The complaint says Ippei won $142,256,769.74 and lost $182,935,206.68, with a total net loss of $40,678,436.94.”

.... I am so lost with what you think my question had to do with a tin foil hat conspiracy. My post also was before your news post and in no way whatsoever a reply to your later post? I think you are conflating what was actually said with something else...

That's interesting since I thought I read he was accused now of stealing $16 million from Ohtani. That leaves another $24 million unaccounted for.

If these numbers are right, would it still be a tin foil hat conspiracy to question or imply a question wondering how Ippei could place $325M in bets with Ohtani's money over several years and 19,000 bets without Ohtani ever knowing a thing? :rolleyes:

I apologize if I have something confused.

I was only getting frustrated on my favorite spot to not get frustrated, lol. I don't like getting in confrontational tete-a-tetes, so I just called it so I don't say more. I also, genuinely like you Greg so I don't want to argue in any way.

I will just wait for things to play out.

However, still tapping out on this thread.

The Athletic and LA Times have good coverage on this. The federal prosecutors outline in detail how Ohtani was a victim in this. For those of you that are paywalled at those sites here’s a tweet from The Athletic’s editor-in-chief which includes an image from a a key part of the complaint. Tons of evidence on the interpreter’s phone.

Just seems like some people want Ohtani to be guilty of something very badly. Can't imagine what the agenda is though, other than schadenfreude

Jealousy and resentment. Which I guess lead to schadenfreude at the end of the day. He should get some better financial advisors though.

I wonder if any of these cards the agents found are ones I need for my collection? And if I interpret the situation clearly, I believe this Mizuhara character was likely the individual behind buying all those overpriced T206 Evans cards on Ebay a few months ago.


Brian

I don’t think it is jealousy, resentment, or wanting him to be guilty to wonder how he and his financial advisors could not have noticed what appears to now be $325 million in bets over 26 months. That is a heck of a story. It seems like basic common sense to ask what happened there instead of accepting whatever his latest PR release says as 100% true.

When there's an evolving narrative it's natural to question where the truth starts and ends.

From something else I read about the investigation-

Text messages showed that after Mizuhara began losing large sums of money via gambling with an illegal sports book, the contact information on Ohtani’s bank account allegedly was changed and linked to an account with Mizuhara's phone number and to an anonymous email address connected to Mizuhara.

That’s what it would take to do what is alleged but as I said what complicates that is Ohtani actually wanting to access his account. He would not receive the requisite security verification codes and I would think at that point you’d notice you’ve lost access to your account.

I’m not saying Ohtani did something wrong by the way. I don’t know what happened. I’m only suggesting there is something missing from the explanation of access like Ohtani giving him the kind of authorization I was talking about or the interpreter gaining control of Ohtani’s devices as well. Typically this kind of theft occurs when someone is authorized and takes advantage of that privilege.

No story will please everyone. We live in a society where the truth is never the truth and regardless of the evidence amassed people can spout whatever nonsense they want with zero evidence. I'll call it the Aaron Rodgers Effect.

There were supposedly educated Americans saying the eclipse was a government scam and Biden was manipulating it.

Case closed.

I'm stupid, but can anyone point me to this evidence proving it is nonsense to wonder how a guy can spend 26 months not noticing $325,000,000 of bets in his name? I'm betting the answer is "No".

A big part of the problem is the story keeps shifting every week and there's almost no publicly visible evidence at all.

No one is even saying he's guilty of any wrongdoing - a couple are merely asking the blatantly obvious question that would be asked of anyone else in the world.

There is - or, well, was - a presumption of innocence in this country at one point.

Hard to believe right?

Sure he’s guilty because you have no facts either way and the story keeps shifting — in the media. The people who have been investigating it for law enforcement are going to prosecute the interpreter for massive theft

I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

Aaron Rodgers implicated Hilary Clinton today in the death of John Kennedy. There’s a story that keep changing! And I’ve seen zero evidence she’s innocent!!!!


QUOTE=G1911;2426108]I'm stupid, but can anyone point me to this evidence proving it is nonsense to wonder how a guy can spend 26 months not noticing $325,000,000 of bets in his name? I'm betting the answer is "No".

A big part of the problem is the story keeps shifting every week and there's almost no publicly visible evidence at all.

No one is even saying he's guilty of any wrongdoing - a couple are merely asking the blatantly obvious question that would be asked of anyone else in the world.[/QUOTE]

I haven't seen anything indicating that bets were made in Ohtani's name so I'm not sure what you mean by that. I agree it's hard to believe that he wouldn't notice that so much money was missing from his account, but as someone else pointed out, it may not be that unbelievable when you have that much money and rely on others to manage your accounts for you.

[/QUOTE]

No one has accused him of any criminal act nor a morally wrong act? He’s not guilty because I say so - I haven’t even accused him lol. Can you read? No one is saying he’s guilty of any wrongdoing. Ranting about the Clintons, Biden and Aaron Rodgers has absolutely nothing to do with anything anyone has said.

A couple of us are asking how a guy can not notice for more than 2 years $325,000,000 of bets in his name, conducted with his money from his accounts. That’s a reasonable question to ask. It is not accusing him of being guilty whatsoever. That is a huge percentage of his worth and probably more money than he even has.

I really don’t know any simpler words to use to ask how a guy can spend 26 months not noticing what so today said to be $325M of bets in his name. That does not mean he did anything wrong or is guilty of anything, it is simply the obvious question when one hears this story. These are massive sums of money for Ohtani.

You are twisting the facts slightly.

Let's say I play blackjack and bet $100

Black jack

Now have $200

Bet $200

Bust

Now have $0

Total bets $300

If I had bet $20 or $50 each bet for as long as it took me to hit zero (because somebody has to pay the neon bill so that the pro gamblers can make a profit), then the total value of my bets mat have been in the thousands, all with just $100.


That number you mention as his number of bets came from a considerably smaller amount of money.

Of course it did, and no one has said otherwise. I have not seen the full dataset to use (as there is almost 0 publicly facing evidence). This clearly did not come from a small sum, relative to Ohtani’s wealth, as there was $40M of debt and Ippei apparently wasn’t winning overall. We are talking about massive sums of money that must have had to move in and out over 2+ years.

I'm not sure why you keep saying the bets were made in Ohtani's name. Everything I have read indicates that the interpreter was betting in his own name, but that the bookie knew he was getting money from Ohtani when he needed to. Apparently, when he won, the money was going into his own account so he wouldn't have always needed to pay from Ohtani's account every time he lost. I'm trying to understand how if he is charged with stealing $16 million from Ohtani but supposedly lost about $40 million net, where did the other $24 million come from?

There are different rules for different people though. Your experience sending wire transfers almost certainly differs from that of someone like Ohtani.

Nate Silver, founder of fivethirtyeight.com and an avid high-stakes gambler, had this to say on the matter:

I thought Ohtani's name was used by Issei? He was allowed to place $325M of bets and a $40M loss on a $300K salary without using Ohtani's name? Back to my actual, original question today in the transcript - is that normal or plausible? To have such a gigantic gap between wealth and bets and the bookie just being okay with that?

I don't know the other $24M details - like I've said the big problem here is the story changes every single week and there is almost no publicly available actual evidence. It's a little difficult not to question things when it's a new tale every week. I have no idea what is actually true, and neither does anyone else here despite what they may claim.

The information included in the charging document released today is the most that has been made public. I read an article that had excerpts from text messages between the interpreter and the bookie, and they all seemed to indicate that it was the interpreter betting for himself and asking for additional credit, time to pay, etc. Other places have said that some of the wire transfers showed Ohtani's name so the bookie knew that money was coming from him at times which presumably is why he was willing to extend so much credit to someone making nowhere near enough to afford it.

It definitely wouldn't surprise me if someone with as much money as Ohtani has would have different rules associated with how he could move money around. If the interpreter was able to successfully convince someone at the bank that he was Ohtani and wanted to be able to wire large amounts, after getting that done once he was probably able to do it repeatedly without as much oversight as you would expect.

Hence my use of "in Ohtani's name" ;).

It's not like $325 million just went missing from his account though. That's not how sports betting works. These were on average, 24 $17k wagers placed per day over the span of 26 months. The wagers are settled each day, win or lose. The bookie keeps a balance sheet and requires you to top off when your account gets low in order to continue betting. The actual money trading hands would have been much smaller than the total amount wagered.

No, he did not.

Betting with a bookie 101:

You aren't putting up any money up front. Money doesn't exchange hands until after the event. Even then, with a good client, a bookie may well be willing to let things roll for a while. $325,000,000 was bet but that money didn't move back and forth ten thousand times in small increments.

When the debt load got to the point where it was making the bookie nervous he asked for his $40 million. About $16 million had been stolen. That is the "only" money that ever left Ohtani's account. The bookie never had $325 million pass through his hands.

EDIT: Betting with a bookie 101 (Or so I've heard...)

I wouldn't consider that as bets being placed in Ohtani's name, but if that's how you are describing it, I now understand what you have been saying.

Which makes the claim no less funny, or even improbable in the world we live in.

For the second time tonight, nobody ever said $325M went missing from his account. That is a huge sum of bets for which Ohtani's bank account was the backer. There is a huge sum of money to not notice when his bank account is being used to pay it off whenever it's time to balance. This wasn't a single transfer that escaped his attention. It begs the question how he never noticed any of this going on for 26 months.

That's the nature of a 24 hour news cycle in a situation where there isn't a lot of "news".

So to circle all the way back... Is it normal or plausible for a guy who makes $300K to even be able to rack up $40M of debt with a bookie? I do not gamble so I do not know anything about it, hence why I called it a possibly stupid question, but I would think that if one is allowing such huge sums to being gambled that one would take some steps to determine the person could actually pay the bet. Otherwise, I can't see how they would stay in business.

I do not know the answer to your question, but I do know that most people who make $300k per year are not so closely connected to a person who makes tens of millions a year.

I don't think all of the money came out of Ohtani's account since winnings went into an account owned by the interpreter, so he would be able to pay losses at times from his own account.

Yes, you would think having $16 million stolen from an account over time would be noticed by the account owner, but there have been many professional athletes over the years who were ripped off by their accounts, agents, etc so it's not impossible to believe it could happen to Ohtani. Also, he probably has other accounts with significant amounts of money in them, and if he isn't handling his own finances (and it's been reported before that his interpreter did handle a lot of things for him), then it seems possible he would never be looking at this account and know how much money was in it at any given time. As long as he had money to use when he needed it, where it was coming from or how much was there may never have come up. It's not something I can relate to, but it certainly seems plausible if you have more money than you can ever spend in several lifetimes.

Aaron Rodgers said something about it being a weird coincidence that JFK Jr. died in a plane crash when he was running for the Senate against Hillary Clinton. He didn't say anything about her being involved in JFK's death.

Yes, but the board objected to me saying it was done in Ohtani's name. I'm wondering how it can both be stated the bets were not in Ohtani's name and the interpreter was able to rack up $40M of debt on $325M of bets on a $300K salary.

“So Bobby loses his uncle, JFK, his father, RFK. His cousin dies in a plane crash when he was running against Hillary Clinton — I’m not saying that was a conspiracy, but it’s kind of a weird coincidence. Bobby’s in danger, he’s putting himself on the line. Why? Because he f---ing believes in this country.”

This appears to be what was actually said on the podcast. I am still at a complete loss what this has to do with anything else in the thread lol.

Agreed.

Like I think I said before, the interpreter apparently was betting in his own name, but the bookie knew he worked for Ohtani and had access to money to cover his losses. If you want to say that means the bets were in Ohtani's name, go ahead. I just don't see it that way.

If the bookie was assuming there was an Ohtani connection that does not mean there was.

I work for somebody you have heard of. If I need something from you, I might mention the name if I think it will help me get what I want. That doesn't mean my boss is involved on any level.

You guys got to stop leaping. No one has said Ohtani is guilty or knew he was the guarantor. Issei, however, obviously used him as the guarantee to be able to even place the bets and many acts were done in his name. If you work for Ohtani and you're placing huge bets guaranteed by him, according to you, I'm eventually going to ask to speak to your boss to validate that's actually true. Many of us are close to people worth silly money, but there is no way I could get away with making deals in such vast sums under their name without anyone asking to validate with them. Issei may well have impersonated Ohtani to the bookies and the bank too, or perhaps nobody even asked or tried to validate. It is entirely possible that Ohtani's current story and/or the version approved by the board tonight is correct and he did nothing wrong in any way whatsoever. He has still not been accused of anything.

I am saying Issei must have used his name, and question what happened here and how Ohtani and his financial advisors, who I assume exist, never noticed multiple huge transactions for many millions of dollars. The story today is pretty wild. I don't know how anyone can not wonder what happened and how this worked nor why it is so very clearly controversial to ask that here.

This article appears to have an explanation to the question of yours I put in bold:

https://sports.yahoo.com/shohei-ohta...222700264.html

I'm not leaping anywhere, I too question how the people who look after his accounts ALLOWED WHAT HAPPENED TO HAPPEN, I will not assume they didn't notice, I will assume that they DID notice, but for some reason they allowed it to continue.

The ONGOING story line involves a guy who doesn't speak the language, who has a guy who he trusts speak it for him, and then that guy doing some shady stuff, which is where we all started wondering about various details, and it started to get interesting.

Remember, this thread started with four words :

Amazing.

I would not assume they did notice; there is a lot of incompetence in this world. The complaint today argues that they knew the account existed but did not have any access to it or ask any real questions about it and that his own agent never spoke to Ohtani without Issei even once - essentially a picture of Ohtani's circle doing and just going with whatever Issei said.

I do have a hard time buying the picture painted here of Ohtani as a childishly naive guy who doesn't know English and thus can't know anything that goes on and completely reliant on Issei. I posted a video of him speaking English just fine earlier in the thread. If I was him I would also use an interpreter to keep my statements perfect, but he definitely and demonstrably speaks the language on the rare occasion he wants to do so.

there are articles out there dealing with all this including a very good one on Yahoo of all places.

The interpreter basically said "Ohtani's good for it" and would send over $500k at a time which made the claim look plausible.

He eventually actually admitted to the bookie that he was stealing. The bookie believed Ohtani was OK with it and said so, that's when the interpreter actually confessed he was stealing from Ohtani TO THE BOOKIE. The feds have this text exchange.

I'm not sure that the issue was really a lack of understanding English as it was putting so much trust in someone to manage his finances. Unfortunately, he is far from the first person, athlete or otherwise, who was apparently ripped off by someone he trusted without doing any real oversight of his accounts on his own.

There's a baseball card angle to this story!

I wonder what his ebay name is/was.




Ippei Mizuhara used Ohtani's money to buy $325K worth of baseball cards
Mizuhara allegedly used the vast majority of the money stolen from Ohtani to pay off his debts to Bowyer, but he was apparently working on a baseball card resale side hustle, too.

The feds allegedly found more than $325,000 in transactions on eBay and Whatnot involving the Ohtani bank account used by Mizuhara between January and March 2024. A member of the investigative team reportedly spoke with a club employee who said his team would set aside packages for Mizuhara that were received under an alias.

The investigator eventually procured some of those packages and found ... around 1,000 baseball cards, including at least one for Ohtani:

Certain of these package had already been opened when I received them. Inside of these packages were baseball cards which appeared to be in protective cases for collecting.

With consent from MIZUHARA and his counsel, I have also taken possession of several additional briefcases and boxes that were found inside a vehicle used by MIZUHARA. Inside the briefcases and boxes were additional baseball cards, including cards for baseball players Yogi Berra, Juan Soto, and [Ohtani]. The Investigative Team is still attempting to inventory all of the baseball cards but I estimate that there were approximately 1,000 baseball cards in the briefcases and boxes.

The investigator concluded that Mizuhara purchased those cards to resell at a later date.

I think this implicates many on this board that also purchase cards to resell. And like my previous post about this, and to give it a little prewar spin, I am pretty sure T206 Evans cards are among those 1000's of cards found in the vehicle.


Brian

Fascinating !

in other news the mets fransisco lindor has 1 hr 2 rbis and is batting .90...making 35 million a year.

Ever have your paypal accessed from your hacked email?
It's totally plausible.
Hack email,
Change email on paypal
Send yourself a few payments to namibia or wherever.

Bank wouldn't stop it, they had to let it go through so it was actually fraud???
Paypal said "oh we investigated and despite you never sending money to anywhere even close there, it's totally legit so forget it. "

Reset with all new passwords etc.
Set up 2 factor authentication....
2AM email "is this actually you sending money to namibia again?"
4AM "Well you didn't say no so say good bye to that money again."
Wake up and check emails at a reasonable time .... WTF Paypal!

If he's not keeping close watch on things, he might not even realize he's getting no notifications because the emails went somewhere else.

PayPal is not a bank. I don't see why their security measures would be equal.

After reading the updates it seems as though the interpreter did everything I thought they'd have to do, I'm just extremely surprised he was able to do it. I'm "interpreting" the explanation of him switching the contact details to him actually providing his own details upon opening the account with Ohtani. The details for the transfers are all correct. As I said, he would have to submit his request from an authorized e-mail address and would only be able to confirm the transfer on an authorized line. Both of which he had for his own devices, which also bypasses the need to obtain Ohtani's devices. These are the missing explanations from the original story that I've been wondering about.

I also just logged into my own bank account just to see if it were possible for me to change my own personal contact details that I provided when I opened my account. I can't change my phone number/e-mail address or add a phone number/e-mail address just by logging into my account. I have to call a security number and I'm unsure what the process is from there.

Yep have had PP hacked. Neither they or the bank seemed like they cared. Neither would give any information about what actually happened or who got my money.

For those that don't know there is a school that actually teaches you how to hack into most accounts in seconds. A friends nephew went through it and he can hack into pretty much any account in seconds. The school is legit as large companies hire the graduates to help improve their security.

Since Ohtani hasn't retired and picked up basketball I still say he is completely innocent.

A good reminder to use secure passwords of significant length and random characters and marks, and to enable 2 factor authentication.

Pretty funny side plot with Ippei. Nothing wrong at all with being a delivery driver, but this story just gets weirder.

https://nypost.com/2024/06/08/sports...fraud-scandal/

Sheesh

Banned from Uber Eats employment. Quite the dramatic fall for this idiot.

.

Have to deliver A lot of eats to repay that money