With former Shohei Ohtani interpreter Ippei Mizuhara set to report for a 57-month long federal prison term next Monday, ex-big leaguer and Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen late last week questioned Ohtani’s innocence in the scandal.
Mizuhara pled guilty last June to stealing nearly $17 million from Ohtani to place illegal wagers with Matt Bowyer, a Southern California-based illegal bookmaker who had nearly 700 customers and laundered money at several Las Vegas and Southern California casinos. Early in the Mizuhara investigation, Major League Baseball wrote that Ohtani was “considered a victim.” Federal prosecutors agreed and did not pursue any action against the Los Angeles Dodgers star.
But Guillen appears to see things differently.
“Everyone knows that Shohei Ohtani gambled,” Guillen told a Spanish-language baseball outlet Thursday. “And [Major League Baseball] protected him.”
The comments, along with an Awful Announcing story that says that former NBA player Jontay Porter was granted a FanDuel VIP account as early as 2020 — his rookie season — shine the spotlight again on sports betting scandals that rocked the industry in 2024.
Guillen’s comments appear to be in a vacuum, with no evidence to back them up. In the original story, reporter Fernando Ballesteros wrote that the comments could get Guillen, a White Sox on-air analyst, fired. In 2024, Ohtani distanced himself from Mizuhara immediately after that scandal broke. At that time, Ohtani held a press conference in which he said, “I have never bet on sports or willfully sent money to the bookmaker.”
2023-24 big years for gambling scandals
Between 2023 and ’24, about 20 professional athletes — in all four major professional sports — were suspended from their leagues for gambling. MLB in 2024 suspended five players for violating Rule 21, the league’s gambling policy. Four of those players were reinstated late last week. Not all cases were for betting with an illegal bookmaker.
But the NBA’s Porter was banned from the league for life in April 2024 after it was revealed that he limited his participation in a game in order to ensure an associate of his won a bet. He pled guilty to conspiring with four others, admitting that he removed himself early from two games to ensure wagering wins. Porter is set to be sentenced Dec. 10 in federal court in New York.
According to Awful Announcing, by the time he turned himself in July 10, 2024, Porter had been a FanDuel VIP customer for four years. It’s unclear if Porter used his real name, as the NBA prohibits players from betting on their own sport, and in some cases, players’ names appear on an involuntary exclusion list. Porter began his career with the Memphis Grizzlies, and was playing on a two-way contract with the Toronto Raptors when the gambling scheme was discovered.
