
Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
The more I think about this, the more it really does look like a bearding situation.
If Shohei is a soccer degen like Kalam says, and he lives in CA with no legal betting options, using Ippei makes sense. It’s only surprising they didn’t have a coherent excuse prepared in case this got out. Maybe he figured if he didn’t bet baseball, his penalties would be minimal at worst.
Even if it was legal, would non baseball sports betting be permitted under his MLB contract? I assume no, but have no clue. Also, I dont think he payed through Ippei. The money was being payed directly out of his accounts. That is why they had to make up the whole "Ippei stole the money" angle, which still makes no sense.
Also, I think you might not appreciate how 'in the open' all of this is, and 99.9% of the time no one cares and no authorities ever get involved. Pretty similar to the prostitution in Asian massage parlors. Most bookies generally accept and pay out through Zelle or Venmo, which the FBI could easily track if they cared, but they generally dont.
Looks like probably because he was booking action with Ohtani, who obviously is betting WAY BIGGER than guys like me and Druff, and so much money was flowing into the accounts, the FBI took notice. The bookie may have also been involved in some other shady stuff, and discovering he was receiving money from Ohtani and it getting leaked to the media during the investigation was just bad luck on Ohtani's part.