Illegal bookmaker Mathew Bowyer will be sentenced in a Southern California federal court Aug. 29, five weeks sooner than initially planned, according to a docket entry in his case that posted Friday.
Bowyer, who had more than 700 customers at the height of his business, was Ippei Mizuhara’s bookmaker. Mizuhara, who stole nearly $17 million from baseball star Shohei Ohtani, was sentenced earlier this year and is serving 57 months in a federal prison in Pennsylvania.
Bowyer faces a maximum prison term of 18 years and three years of probation. He could be fined the higher of either $750,000 or two times the “gross gain or gross loss resulting from the offenses.”
Like Mizuhara, who faced a maximum sentence of 33 years, Bowyer cooperated with federal authorities and is likely to get a shorter sentence. Bowyer will be sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge John Holcomb, who also sentenced Mizuhara. Those cases are in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Santa Ana.
Bowyer is also connected with Wayne Nix, another Southern California illegal bookmaker, who was among the first arrested in what was ultimately revealed to be a far-reaching scandal. Former Resorts World and MGM Grand executive Scott Sibella played a role by allowing Nix and Bowyer to launder money at the casinos at which he worked. Sibella was sentenced to a year’s probation in 2024.
But Nix, whose case dates back to 2022, does not yet have a sentencing date. He pled guilty in April 2022 and was initially scheduled to be sentenced in July 2022. Many of the filings in Nix’s case remain under seal, and his sentencing date has been moved seven times.
Update on other cases
There has also been some movement in the game-fixing cases linked to former NBA player Jontay Porter, who was banned from the league in April 2024 for betting on himself and match fixing.
Porter pled guilty to multiple federal counts in July 2025 and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 10. According to a federal affidavit filed in June 2024, Porter was in debt to his four co-conspirators and agreed to leave two games early so his co-conspirators could win their bets. Porter admitted to placing bets and exiting games early, telling the judge in June 2024 that he agreed to the scheme “in order to get out from under gambling debt,” per the New York Post.
Court documents revealed that Porter was working with four bettors who placed wagers on legal digital platforms, including DraftKings, which flagged them to the NBA and did not pay on them.
Porter was released last year on $250,000 bond, and his cohorts are also all out on bond. All of the cases releated to Porter are being handled in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
This month, the court granted former professional gambler Long Phi Pham the right to visit a sick relative and co-conspirator Timothy McCormack the right to go on a family vacation. But it denied co-conspirator Mahmud Mollah’s request to travel out of state to be an Uber driver.
Pham and Mollah are set to be sentenced in December — the 16th and 17th, respectively — and McCormack has a Jan. 21, 2026 sentencing date. A “status conference” for co-conspirator Ammar Awawdeh is set for Aug. 27, and he is the only one of the group who has not yet negotiated a plea deal.
Last week, news around two other professional athletes allegedly gambling surfaced.
Cleveland Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz was put on “administrative leave” July 3 until the end of the All-Star break following suspicious betting on several pitches in a June 15 game. MLB and the MLBPA Friday agreed to extend that leave as an investigation continues, according to an ESPN report.
In addition, ESPN reported Friday that a professional bettor placed 30 bets in 46 minutes, all on then Charlotte Hornets Terry Rozier’s performance in a March 23, 2023 game. All 30 bets were winners after Rozier exited the game with a foot injury. Rozier, now a member of the Miami Heat, is under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
