But you likely pay people who care about your banking activity, even if you don’t yourself.
Just reading Jason Gay's piece in the WSJ about Ohtani's statement, and he raised the same question.
If the losses outpaced any winnings I would think they would be deducted from the debt owed and not actually paid out. If not then I would assume that an illegal bookmaker is not wiring money into someone's account, though I can't honestly say that actually know how that all works.
Ya, I think the only way Ohtani's story, and story change, make sense is something like the following: Mizuhara comes to Ohtani and tells him he needs help. Maybe he convinces Ohtani that the bets that accrued the debt were legal, maybe he tells him the debt came from something else. In any case, he convinces Ohtani and Ohtani himself makes the transfer. When the story originally breaks, Ohtani tells that story "I was helping a friend". Then some lawyers get to him and explain that the bets were illegal and even making the payment might open Ohtani to legal consequences. Ohtani changes his story, and now calls it lying and theft. If this is what happened, I think it is fair to say that both versions are reasonable descriptions of the same event.
The larger the ego the larger ones sense of invincibility. Seinfeld fans can relate to the episode when Keith Hernandez is on a date with Elaine debating whether to kiss her and the audio is of him thinking to himself, “I won the MVP, I can do anything. I’m Keith Hernandez!”
Or Ippei could have just said he was Shohei - to the bookie, to any bank calling asking for ID or personal information confirmation, etc. If he had all the information and access to the account(s), which he probably did, it wouldn't have been that hard. Throw on a slightly thicker Japanese accent and you're good to go.
In any case, you'd get a clear picture from Ippei's deposits to conclude that either:
And that does make some sense.
This part of the story is important. In the large majority of agreements between player and illegal bookie the form of payments that are regularly exchanged are going to be consistent. If one side pays cash, the other is very likely to pay cash. PayPal, Venmo, Bitcoin is commonly used now…there would almost certainly be a back and forth trail.
Why? Maybe Ippei wasn't trying to steal from Shohei, but just had a real gambling problem and intended to make him whole again if only his damned luck would turn...
What are the other ways to pay an illegal business $4.5M that won't attract attention? Doing it in cash is basically shouting "I'm doing something illegal". Doing it in many hundreds or thousands of tiny transactions to the same party is a logistical mess and likely going to trip different kinds of banking system alerts.
I'm sure you're right.
Where Ohtani's naiveté certainly could have come into play was the bookie might have had a fronting LLC like a "personal services" company, and he was convinced by the bookie or by Ippei that there will be no issues since the bank will see you are wiring to a "legitimate" business.
K. The post I responded to before yours asked, "If Shohei truly didn’t know about the betting, then Ippei must have convinced the bookie that he was placing bets on behalf of Shohei, right? How else would the bookie extend that kind of credit?"
My post was more about the supposition that if Ohtani had made these payments intentionally, and whether there was a less suspicious way to go about it (I can't think of one).
I think this -- incomprehensible wealth of a young sports star -- is an important thing to consider in our speculative universe. We all regularly see stories of players with detrimental hangers-on, often costing them lots of money. Ohtani had one. (Maybe he's not a totally malevolent hanger-on). It's not inconceivable to me that, just as some players give their closest hangers-on cars to drive, or apartments to use, that Ohtani gave his guy the "keys" to a bank account. And just as its likely that the other players' advisors probably tell the players that its a bad idea to give this "other guy" a car, a gun, 50 grand and an apartment, it's also not inconceivable that Ohtani's advisors told him "we advise against this."
Sorry didn't make myself clear, I used Ohtani's name but this can be replaced with Ippei's naiveté if he conned Ohtani. In Ippei's case, his "gamble" was that the money could be returned with winning bets and Ohtani none the wiser down the road without the authorities blowing up this illegal gambling. Not that I'm saying his thinking would be rational in this case, it is apparent in the most charitable interpretation for Ohtani that Ippei behaved like an addict with the amount of money bet and the ability to hide this from his former friend.
Not saying this wasn't 100% a con, but what would have made me feel more confident in this is if Ohtani said something to the effect that he and Ippei had a shared account so Ippei himself could authorize the wires. Maybe it will be revealed in future reporting/investigations but he could have been ahead of the P.R. battle with this detail, if accurate. Otherwise, I keep falling back on either Ohtani knew about the payments or he was just so utterly brainwashed by Ippei and dumb as a brick to the point he didn't think twice about authorizing nebulous $500k payments...
If the proper tracking systems were in place, someone would know the money left the account. The pertinent information that we don’t yet know is whether or not Ippei had access and what Ohtani’s financial advisor situation was during this time. If he didn’t have any of this in place, we’re talking gross incompetence by those who advise him. But that remains the most charitable explanation.
Just from my own experience seeing multi-million-dollar business wires get executed, I do think that this is at least possible (may depend on the bank). Yes, giant wire transfers need authorization and approvals, but someone is designated as the authorizing party. That someone can often be an accountant, not necessarily the "owner" of the bank account. There are obviously differences between business and personal banking, and I don't really know about high net worth private bank accounts, but I assume there may be an analogous concept. Perhaps part of their arrangement was Mizuhara acting as his de-facto bookkeeper for purchases. Even if Mizuhara wasn't separately authorized to make transfers, it's possible Ohtani could have just given him his personal credentials and all confirming information - physical copies of IDs, etc - needed to authorize transfers (short of an in-person authorization requirement, which I doubt is needed).
Again though, why didn't the Jacksonville Jaguars know that $22 million had been siphoned away from them? The guy was literally in their finance department and had to clear every expense he fraudulently conducted.
I deal with this stuff professionally and I know the systems that are in place for clients like this. Fraud generally happens with poor internal controls, like trusting a business manager unconditionally. I can’t speak to the Jaguars situation but whoever their CFO is sucks at his/her job.
I think if this story were 'a close associate to Shohei stole $4.5 million to buy luxury items for himself' then this thread would probably be 2-3 pages long. It would just be accepted that he got de-frauded because it's a story heard a million times and everyone would move on to the next story. The salaciousness of the gambling angle makes it a whole different ball of wax and, frankly, there's a desire to theory craft ways to pin a massive gambling scandal on one of the most remarkable players to ever play baseball.
Agree, shit like the above happens all the time and it's barely a paragraph on page 17. Or you hear about it watching a documentary on E! or some streaming service. You cannot always assume that celebrities have hired someone competent to manage their money. Or that they have given their financial advisors complete access to *all* of their banking accounts. Especially an international celebrity such as Ohtani. There is plenty of opportunity for $4.5M to walk without people "knowing" about it or it even triggering alarm bells.
Got it. I'm definitely not trying to question your professional expertise. I'm curious to see what transpires from here.
Perhaps, but in my opinion it got a lot more salacious because his story changed in a very significant and honestly alarming way early on, and then he went on to publicly and directly accuse his translator of significant crimes. He kind of escalated things in a way he didn't have to - which speaks to either him being really transparent or being an idiot.
Ha, feel free to do so! Was just providing my perspective that for clients at my firm, committing fraud would be very tough and I know client teams that have snuffed out fraud attempts like this. But I think Lex makes a good point that we don’t really know how his financial empire is set up and without that information and knowing how Ohtani operates behind the scenes, it’s really hard to draw firm conclusions.
Funny thing is that the "first scandal" has already happened. Multiple times. The head coach of the Cavaliers said he received threats last season from gamblers, and the story barely lasted 24 hours.
You've made this point a few times, and I'd like to take a moment to echo it - because it seems to be overlooked.
You're 100% correct about others getting duped, but the thing that sticks in my head is the changing of the story and that his spokespeople took the "lies" that Mizuhara fed to them as gospel without confirmation from Ohtani before speaking publicly.
Yeah that's definitely a hint of the icebergs ahead, but I don't think any have really been hit yet. When someone gets hurt or there's direct evidence of game fixing (that could happen here, but maybe not the most likely possibility at this point) it will get loud I think
I can hear this in my head. Straight back to confused students from my Osaka teaching days.
I think there is a lot of smoke, much of it bad, some of it unexplained, and some of the explanations for the smoke dubious but not completely impossible given certain sets of facts. It’s not hard to look at what we’ve been told so far—and what we haven’t—and conclude that it’s currently more likely than not that Ohtani himself was responsible for these bets. But I wouldn’t be jaw-droppingly shocked either way.
I'm not sure I understand, because the bolded is precisely what happened.
Yeah, and in a non-sports story, Dane Cook’s brother stole $12M from him over several years. At one point, he wrote himself a $3M check, which, to me, is an unfathomable amount for a single check.
I don't think that Ohtani's team "lied to investigators." They spoke to ESPN, and then Mizuhara gave an interview to ESPN. That's where the public "I wired money to help my friend" narrative comes from. They can lie to ESPN all day long, and while that complicates things from a law-enforcement perspective, lying to ESPN is not a crime.
Perhaps I misunderstand the sequence of events here. I thought the first story was the interpreter saying that his good buddy Shohei covered his debts. Because he’s swell and all.
This makes me curious about language barriers in the financial services spheres.
