OT: Is Ohtani in big trouble over translator’s gambling scandal?
By now most people here know the Dodgers fired Shohei Ohtani’s longtime translator after his $4.5 million gambling debt to an illegal bookie was reportedly paid off, at least in part, by payments made from Ohtani’s account.
Everyone in this story, including Ohtani’s reps, have given shifting accounts. This smells fishy. I think this is bad for Ohtani no matter what. Either he stupidly paid off his friend’s seven-figure gambling debt — by wire, in his own name, to a bookie, thereby violating both MLB rules and California law. (Both prohibit illegal gambling). Or somehow the translator hacked Ohtani’s account — without anyone on Ohtani’s financial team noticing. Which seems unlikely. Thoughts? Theories?
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39768770/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-interpreter-fired-theft
or the gambling debt is actually Ohtani's, and the translator is taking the fall for it?
From the Chris Carter book on fall guys
The translator just throws strikes.
Maybe the interpreter was just borrowing the money so he could throw himself a birthday party--from the Vince Young school of financial management.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand…
the implication is that ohtani was making those bets, the translator just used his own name to avoid getting ohtani in trouble. so really this looks like it could be ohtani's gambling debts since he was so willing to pay 4.5M "for his translator."
Lost in translation?
And what bookie is extending such exorbitant credit to a "translator?" Unless that translator is just the runner for Ohtani's bets and he signed off on it.
First it was a friend paying off another friend's gambling debt and now it's a massive theft? Hilarious that the translator was next to and "watched" Ohtani log on and guided him to wire 500K. Imagine an employee telling the employer what to do. Now, it seems like there's a lot of walking back from Ohtani's camp. This story smells like rotten sushi. He may want to hire for more competent people on his side.
The translator makes half a million himself per year, maybe more. It was a good amount of money, but I’m guessing he showed up with a lot of his own money first before the debt grew to that size.
"He may want to hire for more competent people on his side." \
He should start with a REALLY good lawyer.
Yeah, that's my take, but being MLB's big meal ticket atm he'll not really be held accountable; maybe providing some kind of twisted path for Rose's rehabilitation along the lines of Bush and the NIL stuff? Then again I just woke up hungover and I don't really know anything about anything so there's that.... GO BLUE!
March 21st, 2024 at 11:41 AM ^
Maybe he'll retire and play minor league basketball for two years then un-retire
I didn't know Art Schlichter spoke Japanese.
Is Ohtani known to be into gambling? Serious question, because I don't follow baseball closely so I don't know. Usually, celebrities don't rack up that kind of gambling debt out of nowhere. The big shots who get in that deep are already known to be high rollers, no?
March 23rd, 2024 at 10:23 AM ^
I have no idea but i would guess gambling is so normalized, like any of these mega millionaires might blow $1000 on the roulette table and nobody bats an eye. Because $1000 is nothing to them. But there might be no way of knowing if Ohtani or anyone else then goes on to lose millions over the course of a year. Ive had friends like that, not millionaires but they lose 100$ along with the rest of us livebetting at the bar and we all just have a good laugh about it. Then we find out much later that one of us in that group had a massive gambling addiction, might only lose $100 in front of his friends, but we had no waying of knowing he was losing thousands a week.
March 21st, 2024 at 10:04 AM ^
Has anyone with an axe to grind hired a PI firm to get to the bottom of this yet??? Does anyone know of a “tough” guy who might be willing to spearhead this investigation in a covert manner? MLB needs tread carefully until Petty Tony has advised them on how to handle what could possibly evolve into the new biggest scandal in the history of sports. Is there a chance the NFL would be willing to suspend Harbaugh since none of this came to light until he got to LA so surely this is not a coincidence. When will Pete Thamel release more info? Time for the Dodgers to get the Michigan treatment? Probably not since ESPN has a contract with MLB. MLB really knows how to kick off the season, stealing some March Madness thunder.
March 21st, 2024 at 10:37 AM ^
I know of a wonderful PI firm in New Hampshire.
March 21st, 2024 at 10:48 AM ^
or the gambling debt is actually Ohtani's, and the translator is taking the fall for it?
If that's the case, its going to be fun to see how creative MLB is at sweeping this thing under the rug. There's no way they'll let this be another Pete Rose situation.
March 21st, 2024 at 11:41 AM ^
Right. It'd be in their best interest to find a way to get rid of this and make people stop talking about it ASAP. Ohtani's the most lucrative star likely in the history of baseball, and he just joined the West coast Yankees. There will have been nothing to see here.
March 21st, 2024 at 11:53 AM ^
They are going to have to get real creative, nothing short of a guilty plea from the translator himself will get Ohtani off the hook. Translators are there to translate the spoke word. Ohtani certainly doesn’t need help navigating a computer or other electronic device so I’m not sure why this guy would have access to any banking or other personal information of Ohtani’s unless he was acting as his agent as well, which I don’t believe he was.
March 21st, 2024 at 11:00 AM ^
👆
this is my gut suspicion
what a mess this is. Will be fascinating to see play out.
March 21st, 2024 at 11:38 AM ^
Or maybe the translator has dirt on Ohtani, so Ohtani is buying his translator's silence?
March 21st, 2024 at 12:15 PM ^
The dirt is that Ohtani knows English 😱.
March 21st, 2024 at 12:25 PM ^
Might be kicking himself he pushed off that $700 million.
Who needs to ever place a single bet again with that amount of cash?? Maybe a few $2 25 leg parlays for shits and giggles but c'mon, why gamble when you've already won the jackpot.
Michael Jordan agrees.
MLB will make this a non-issue very fast. He is like LeBron/Giannis/Jokic/Doncic all rolled into 1 international megastar, and is the biggest draw in the game.
As punishment, he should be forced to buy the A’s, play for them, and keep the team in Oakland.
Oakland wins. A’s fans win. Ohtani loses.
Win-win… win.
March 21st, 2024 at 10:44 AM ^
or in the inverse of the Michael Jordan scenario they can make Ohtani go play in the NBA G League
No. This needs to treated EXACTLY like Jordan. He MUST be banished to the White Sox for two years.
No chance. This is a legal matter; it’s beyond the MLB. The IRS and feds are already involved, raiding the bookies’ house in October. Now, with Ohtani’s legal team asserting that the payments weren’t voluntary, but stolen, they’ve boxed themselves in to getting the cops involved on the alleged $4.5 million theft.
This will take awhile, but it’s already messy, and is going to get worse.
He’ll just play for the Birmingham Barons G-League basketball team for two years and all will be forgotten.
I regret that I have but one up-vote to give to this.
Hey now, the "cops" cleared Michael Jackson; some people are too big to fail
March 21st, 2024 at 12:18 PM ^
....and OJ!
Michael Jackson was arrested and tried for child sexual abuse. It was a whole big thing. In all the papers
March 21st, 2024 at 12:05 PM ^
Agreed. The paper trail or electronic paper trail will tell the true story here. There is no victim to pay off to drop charges.
I think the fact that his legal team said anything at all probably means he needs a better legal team. @popehat is a California criminal defense attorney, been listening to him for years now. No idea how good an attorney he is but he does do a good job telling people to shut the fuck up in any and all media
What if MLB is already involved and both they and Ohtani's camp devised this plan to place the blame on the interpreter? That is, this is their attempt to quickly resolve the situation because the interpreter was indeed placing bets for Ohtani, and worse, Ohtani also gambled on baseball.
Or, the interpreter stole the money from Ohtani to pay off his own gambling debts, just like they're saying. I know nuthin'. Just letting my mind wander.
March 21st, 2024 at 10:28 AM ^
There’s a bigger reason why MLB (and all the leagues) wants this to go away: They partnered with the sportsbooks to create the giant mess that is sports betting in America in 2024. Hope the marginal additional revenue was worth it!
March 21st, 2024 at 11:21 AM ^
The problem here is with an illegal sport bookie. California is one of the holdout states left, and it didn’t prevent anything. Some people were always going to find a way to get way too much money in sports, and this guy was one of them.
March 21st, 2024 at 11:37 AM ^
The Feds are involved. I don't think they are going to let MLB drop it if they end up prosecuting the bookie.
With Japanese culture in play here as well - where protecting your friends/employer can be a premium quality (think Samurai) I consider it highly suspicious of Ohtani directly while at the same time concluding the MLB is most eager to cover this up and move on for myriad reasons.
The dude paid his translator's multi-million dollar gambling debt (how did a translator have that kind of money to lay down) and said "naughty naughty never again" and then he didn't know about it all and actually never said anything because he didn't know??
Ohtani was much more involved and the MLB and everyone will not explore this.
That whole cultural angle is very problematic and you might want to rethink it.
This is accurate though - however it's a broad generalization and a delicate topic.
I'm an intercultural executive coach with extensive work in Japan.
It could go both ways as Othani helping his long time translator (and I assume confidant and friend), or the translator taking the fall for Othani. Neither of these would be surprising were it to happen in Japan. If you're familiar with cultural dimensions this gives some insight
All I know abt Japanese culture I have learned the last month from Shogun.
Think very carefully before you hang a pheasant outside of your house.
The cultural angle is only problematic unless it is wrong.
These kinds of takes aren't wrong so much as hilariously projective.
It is true that Japanese culture is very big on protecting their superiors, but to bother pointing this out. . . as if American culture is any different. Crissakes the men's basketball team was forced to play out their season under a coach they loathed for the sole stated purpose of Manuel wanting to spare Howard some dignity. More generally, from corporate golden parachutes to coach buyouts to rampant cult of personality to the abuse scandal coverups of Anderson and Sandusky (to protect Schembechler and Paterno), how is America even slightly less bad? It's not. That's not to say America is worse, but we just notice it when the Japanese do it, because the way we do it is our "normal" so the way they do it looks different.
So, yes and no. It's not really problematic because it's an accurate portrayal, but it's problematic because the portrayal is really about making American culture look superior, when it's basically just how scumbags run things everywhere.