ScottM

Thaiss sucks.

I highly suggest that everyone shifts their mindset to pretending like this is a triple-A team. The team as currently constructed isn't a playoff team, but it'll still be fun to watch and root for the young core to have good games. Save the heartache. P.S. Aaron Hicks and Miguel Sano are not major leaguers.

Rooting for him. Seems like a genuinely good dude.

this is so fucking hilarious

Why was the infield in?

wow, MLBTR predicted 6/150

Damn, I legit read "Arizona" as "Angels" for a split second.

Really great journalism. Thanks for posting, Chuck.

Tax evasion will be Ippei's like 13th count in his indictment

Schanuel hits .305

lol sorry! FBI doesn't care...

Dan O'Dowd: "That was an angry young man right there." He's almost 30...

So how did Friedman know to tell the team that Ohtani paid the debt? I find it super hard to believe that Friedman just talked to Ippei and ran with it.

Shouldn't be hard to determine if Ippei accessed his accounts without his knowledge. The FBI has a million ways to do this.

"10 a.m. ET Wednesday (11 p.m. in Seoul): After the game, the Dodgers hold a meeting in the clubhouse, where team owner Mark Walter tells the players a negative story is coming, according to a team official later interviewed by ESPN. Mizuhara apologizes, according to the official, and tells the team he has a gambling addiction. A Dodgers executive, Andrew Friedman, stands up and says Ohtani had helped to cover Mizuhara's losses, the team official and others present said." So there are, what, 50+ witnesses to this lie? The FBI will have a field day with this. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39784809/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-mizuhara-theft-line

"There are so many potential crimes here, state and federal, and the big dangers with violating the anti-gambling laws is they're all written to go after organized crime, which means all the organized crime statutes can kick in, like RICO and money laundering," said Nelson, who has served as a government consultant to entities including the Arizona Department of Gaming, the Delaware State Lottery, the Illinois Gaming Board, the Michigan State Lottery and the New Mexico Gaming Control Board. If Ohtani did knowingly wire the money to pay Mizuhara's debt, either to Mizuhara or directly to the bookie, he could be considered complicit in helping an illegal gambler collect, according to Nelson. "In other words, he's helping the bookie collect the debt. It gets extraordinarily bad if he knew any of this was going on and agreed to it," Nelson said. https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/could-shohei-ohtani-face-punishment-for-interpreter-gambling-scandal-what-legal-expert-mlb-rules-say/

A little on the nose: Bowyer runs "Pick Enterprises LLC" out of Las Vegas. Pick Enterprises had a California branch from Dec 2019-Feb 2022: Type of business: "investment consulting"

This is called credit card "miscoding" and it's a key part of proving fraud. Ippei implicated Ohtani in this...

Ippei admitted to multiple felonies in the ESPN interview and implicated Ohtani in a criminal conspiracy. This is going to absolutely blow up.

HAHAHAHA never gonna live it down...

4.5 million directly from Ohtani's bank account: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39768770/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-interpreter-fired-theft

https://archive.ph/Hd9xq WaPo journos are good people. Their owner, not so much.

It was unrelated to Shohei, he just hired the same firm led by Andrew Brettler: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/31/oligarchs-data-privacy-law/

my day job used to be a journalist but the stories were about someone else, not ohtani

Fun fact: Shohei's attornies went after me for some journalism I did (unrelated to Shohei)... they are vicious and represent some really bad dudes (Prince Andrew, Armie Hammer, etc)