shohei ohtani alert

g. On or about November 17, 2023, BOOKMAKER 1 messaged MIZUHARA stating, “Hey Ippie, it’s 2 o’clock on Friday. I don’t know why you’re not returning my calls. I’m here in Newport Beach and I see [Shohei] walking his dog. I’m just gonna go up and talk to him and ask how I can get in touch with you since you’re not responding? Please call me back immediately.”

On or about January 2, 2022, MIZUHARA asked BOOKMAKER 2 if BOOKMAKER 1 could “reload my account? I lost it all.”
BOOKMAKER 2 responded, “BOOKMAKER 1 bumped you 50k.”

On or about January 15, 2022, MIZUHARA told BOOKMAKER 2, “Fuck I lost it all lol . . . can you ask BOOKMAKER 1 if he can bump me 50k? That will be my last one for a while if I lose it.”

I can’t stop reading this, I’m in the horrors

On or about November 14, 2022, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating “I’m terrible at this sport betting thing huh? Lol . . . Any chance u can bump me again?? As you know, you don’t have to worry about me not paying!”

it gets so much better (worse)

OK, I'll come clean. Yes, the buy-in for our fantasy league is $16 million, and, yes, Ippei was in it last year. But it's not my fault he drafted Alek Manoah in the first round.

— Grant Brisbee (@GrantBrisbee) April 11, 2024

unreal. Unreal!!!!

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.

— Laura J. Nelson 🦅 (@laura_nelson) April 11, 2024

hope he feels bad, Ohtani's gonna have to play for 20 years to make that up

that's ~20 bets a day for three years. did this gambling operation have an app or something?

It’s crazy. Ippei also said that he lost a lot of money on crypto in one of his texts to the bookie.

the best part is how ippei apparently spent $325k on ebay buying baseball cards with the intent of reselling them later (for a profit???)

I have to say I am stunned the forensic evidence showed Ippei did this.

I cannot stress enough how bad his management and financial team comes across here. "Agent 1" has apparently never spoken or texted with him using a non-Mizuhara interpreter or in English, despite employing his own interpreters to communicate with other clients.

— Jarrett Seidler (@jaseidler) April 11, 2024

yea I mean I like Ohtani as much as anyone but it pretty clearly seemed like a coverup, glad to be wrong on that

I have to say I am stunned the forensic evidence showed Ippei did this.

i don't really get that though - if shohei has his bff interpreter available 24/7 why would you employ your own? xp

we need to figure out how to preserve the "this is all a conspiracy to cover up ohtani gambling on sports" section of this thread in a polystyrene cube for eternal reflection

#freeippei truther Shasta is going to be devastated

i don't really get that though - if shohei has his bff interpreter available 24/7 why would you employ your own? xp

if you brought your own translator that's a pretty big signal to shohei that you don't trust his translator

kinda funny seeing people saying stuff like "I think some of y'all owe Shohei Ohtani an apology"...like come on. he's a once-in-a-generation talent who seems to break records every game he plays, he's gonna make a billion dollars playing baseball and he's also pretty handsome, the man can take it

if you brought your own translator that's a pretty big signal to shohei that you don't trust his translator

easy to say now with the benefit of hindsight, but would you really have been willing to question shohei about the guy who he's seen playing catch on christmas with, who shohei spends every hour of his (limited) waking day with and who you suspect could probably get shohei to drop you as an agent if he wanted to?

Ok but why didn’t the agent keep pressing on that account? Like are secret accounts exempt from tax returns or something? That’s blatant malpractice on their side, sorry.

Like literally this would have come to light years ago if someone at CAA had sacked up and asked Ohtani directly for access to the account, which he assumed they were already handling for him

This guy really sounds like Colonel Parker the more I hear about him

in america taxes are handled from W-2s - IRS never asks for any info about bank accounts.

in the grand scheme of things, ohtani's angels pre-2023 payroll account ($3M in 2021, $5.5M in 2022 on a pre-tax basis) is a minnow compared to his endorsement accounts. it didn't start getting big until ohtani pulled in $30M in 2023 which it also seems is when ippei really got in the hole

i'm just saying there was a 0.001% chance for upside and a 99.99% chance for downside for that agent to go behind ippei's back in this scenario, without knowing what we know now

The report says that CAA asked about it and flagged up the danger of Ohtani’s tax returns not containing all relevant information. Ippei attending meetings without Ohtani present seems like something they should have flagged up as a problem.

i dunno, i'm sure ohtani is not the first big leaguer client they've had who skipped a meeting about filling out their taxes.

the language about risks re: inaccurate returns is just standard language any accountant would say in that situation (because it's true, and also not that big a deal - just file an amendment later!)

Thankfully nothing bad happened when nobody followed up

thankfully we all have the benefit of hindsight to look at this with!

i think anyone w/ an understanding of how megastar celebrities are typically treated by people around them would not find it surprising that people at CAA were apparently unwilling to imply to ohtani that his best friend wasn't trustworthy. i'm not excusing CAA nobody needs to do that for a sports agency but what i am saying is that it's very standard for people who surround a money generator on the order of ohtani's magnitude to take the approach of doing whatever possible to not upset the apple cart. it's why the kinda people who can actually say uncomfortable or true things to super duper famous people are incredibly valuable, most people are far more interested in protecting their relationship w/ the person

You literally don’t have to imply he’s trustworthy. Can’t be that difficult to ask “what’s going on with this account, just need to check for something”.

what if that account is his derek jeter "🤫 gift basket" account? you're going to make him explain that to you?

good on him for playing the game the right way IMO

you'd think it's a hard earned lesson for CAA, but also if ohtani continues to employ them, then from their perspective, their coddling of him is still effective at their no 1 goal which is continuing to be in business w/ him. maybe he's the kinda guy who looks at the situation and takes it as a wake up call to change his circle, but some athletes/celebs really like being coddled!

Yeah I agree with that. He should definitely be asking some difficult questions about some of these details, but maybe he just wants to draw a line under it and move on.

I'm curious how all this is being covered by Japanese media.

This account is totally losing its shit (have seen speculation that this is an executive that rhymes with Rave Rombrowski but I don’t follow it so idc!)

Here’s a major issue with our Government and why so many have lost faith in its legitimacy.

We’ll never know how much money flows into the Super PACs of those responsible for protecting Ohtani.

Ohtani’s Agency CAA also represents Joe Biden and are generous Democratic Donors. https://t.co/9BJ1sGyNHO

— MLBExecutiveBurner (@HotStoveintel) April 11, 2024

There’s doubling down, then there’s whatever is happening in that tweet

looks like they've got the brain worms p bad. would be shocked if it was anyone actually important.

I just want to put on record a blazing hot take: I, for one, am glad the face of the sport I love is not a degenerate gambler

Oh my goodness, I step away from the internet for half the day and these bombshells dropp.

All I can say is... #freeIppei

Lol

The timeline of Mizuhara's text messages to the bookie in this article is really something:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39922624/shohei-ohtani-ippei-mizuhara-gambling-debts-line

i think anyone w/ an understanding of how megastar celebrities are typically treated by people around them would not find it surprising that people at CAA were apparently unwilling to imply to ohtani that his best friend wasn't trustworthy. i'm not excusing CAA nobody needs to do that for a sports agency but what i am saying is that it's very standard for people who surround a money generator on the order of ohtani's magnitude to take the approach of doing whatever possible to not upset the apple cart. it's why the kinda people who can actually say uncomfortable or true things to super duper famous people are incredibly valuable, most people are far more interested in protecting their relationship w/ the person

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Thursday, April 11, 2024 1:10 PM bookmarkflaglink

You literally don’t have to imply he’s trustworthy. Can’t be that difficult to ask “what’s going on with this account, just need to check for something”.

― Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Thursday, April 11, 2024 1:16 PM bookmarkflaglink

Like Jordan said, why would you want to though, if you're a sport agent. Granted I've only read the summary here but the role of a sports agent is to generate revenue and negotiate deals and take your commission. That is a separate role from personal manager or business manager. Successful clients often have all three, and people who are successful in these roles generally stay in their lanes. It might make good business sense to advise your client generally to engage a business manager so things like this don't happen, or remind them not to jeopardize the income stream by violating any of the morality clauses in their deals. But generally it's not in the remit of a sports agent to remind them of sketchy-seeming people in their entourage.

Victim A’s translator and de facto manager.

This seems like the problem right here. Personal manager and business managers are not licensed or regulated the way agents are. It's nutty to have that kind of money coming in and not have an actual personal manager or business manager, if that's what this is suggesting.

It's kind of funny that the criminal complaint alleges that Ippei "was, until recently, employed as Victim A’s translator and de facto manager" because it sort of becomes an admission by the government in this case that Ippei was both "employed" as a manager was "de facto" a manager - which would imply a certain amount of authority and certainly right to be compensated. If Ippei was holding himself out as a manager or even reasonably subjectively believed himself to be so, it would also explain why a bookie would extend that kind of credit to Ippei. Because a customary management fee could be 10-20% of everything Ohtani was making.

So Ippei's criminal defense lawyer should be all over that, and also be pushing the employment angle.

I would like to confirm, shohei ohtani is still very good at baseball

Out here making Betts, Freeman and Smith look like bums (no pun intended)

Good piece by Lindsay Adler in the WSJ that confirms what a lot of you upthread were saying re CAA handling of Ohtani:

Ohtani, in his effort to focus exclusively on his on-field performance, chose to be left in the dark. What lurked in the shadows cost him at least $16 million.

In the criminal complaint against Mizuhara, prosecutors allege that Balelo (described in the complaint as “Agent 1”) asked Mizuhara about the bank account from which he was allegedly siphoning off their client’s money, and was told that Ohtani wanted it to remain “private.”

According to prosecutors, at least two financial professionals asked Balelo about accessing the account that Mizuhara was controlling. A financial adviser and accountant each told investigators that Balelo told them that Ohtani wanted to keep the account “private,” based on the information from Mizuhara. Another accountant told investigators that Mizuhara showed up alone to a meeting that they believed Ohtani was scheduled to attend. There, the accountant claims Mizuhara dismissed concerns about potential tax implications for Ohtani and that the player wanted it “kept private from everyone.”

Sorry, omitted link: https://www.wsj.com/sports/baseball/shohei-ohtani-gambling-scandal-146d31c9?st=fsdp6haf98xovni&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink