shohei ohtani alert

Jr railpass jacked up the price significantly a few months ago, sadly not worth it except foe the fastest travellers now imo

Would you believe... that once upon a time (pre-mobile gps/OCR trans.), the JTB used to heavily subsidize airfare & railpasses because Japan tourism was considered too daunting due to language & cultural barriers?

I wonder if the JTB even exists anymore, they used to have a huge office downtown but it closed 7 years ago.

Last night I watched Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist on Netflix which is about Manti Te'o and his dead girlfriend who Manti found out was a fake/hoax/catfish and in spite of that, he still wove the story of her death into his Heisman campaign in the days/weeks after finding out the truth.

During one interview Manti mentioned that Notre Dame had hired a PR crisis management team, and admitted that he didn't tell the truth but rather what the PR crisis tea and lawyers told him to say instead.

This has obviously nothing to do with Shohei & Ippei but I did remember the level of scandal reaching a similar fever pitch.

One thing that also stuck out for me was that the 2 main players in the documentary (Manti Te'o & Naya Tuiasosopo) both went on and on about their strict religious faith but were revealed to be compulsive liars to their family, friends, associates and even strangers.

I was kinda thinking of the Manti Te'o thing too, because it's a really wild story that ultimately became too complicated and weird for your average fan to keep track of, and as such it didn't really stick with him the way scandals usually do. Even though it was like, front page sports news for a week. Wild to think it was Deadspin who actually broke that story. Ohtani's probably gonna have the same thing, like in a year we'll all be like "oh yeah what was that about? did we ever get to the bottom of this?"

Why do this, it’s such an unforced error

The fan that caught Shohei Ohtani's first Dodgers home run received a signed bat, ball & two hats.

But the fan and her husband say the Dodgers separated them, refused to authenticate the ball & pressured her into a quick deal.

Here's what they told me: https://t.co/PnnSywQBiq pic.twitter.com/MXjn1RbrgU

— Sam Blum (@SamBlum3) April 4, 2024

Another important element of this story:

Shohei Ohtani said (via interpreter Will Ireton) that he met with the fan who caught the ball.

“I was able to talk to the fan, and was able to get it back."

Ohtani never met the fan.

— Sam Blum (@SamBlum3) April 4, 2024

Agree that the Dodgers look terrible. And I understand the human impulse not to want to appear greedy. But I don't know why people continue to return these baseballs. Hang on to it, pick your spot, and try to sell it for as much as you can. The feeling that you owe some sort of obligation to the game or to players who make this much money escapes me entirely.

A rookie's first HR, I guess I'd return that--but I don't think I'd be in any rush if it were Wyatt Langford or Jackson Holliday.

the refusal to authenticate the baseball by the stadium is pretty bush league. i wonder what they could do to get around that?

It’s definitely a dirty bit of business. Given how much the ball was worth if sold, it really underlines how bad the handling of it was.

He's waaaaaaaarmiiiiiing

Things I love: Teoscar Hernandez throwing sunflower seeds at him whenever they're in the same frame

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/business/shohei-ohtani-ippei-mizuhara-plea.html

The biggest unanswered question, imo, was "how would Ippei have taken that much money from Shohei without him knowing?" and the NYT report clears that up: https://t.co/QvDtdzj29r pic.twitter.com/mquNvwR8pi

— Alex Kirshner (@alex_kirshner) April 11, 2024

oh dear lol

Ippei Mizuhara has been charged with stealing $16 million from Shohei Ohtani

Investigators also relied on recorded phone calls from the bank in which Mizuhara falsely identified himself as Ohtani to "trick and deceive" bank employees into authorizing the transfers.

What the fuck these details are insane

"MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating, “Have you seen the reports?” BOOKMAKER 1 responded, “Yes, but that’s all bullshit. Obviously you didn’t steal from him. I understand it’s a cover job .. MIZUHARA then responded, “Technically I did steal from him. it’s all over for me.” "

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) April 11, 2024

Here's the complaint against Mizuhara. It's 37 pages.https://t.co/ZiewNKezAT

— Meghann Cuniff (@meghanncuniff) April 11, 2024

So yeah, that Ohtani statement where he was very unambiguous about what happened, because the forensic information backs up the story of the theft:

In an interview with law enforcement, Victim A stated that he did not authorize these transfers from the x5848 Account.

6. The transfers from the x5848 Account were made from devices and IP addresses associated with IPPEI MIZUHARA, an individual who was, until recently, employed as Victim A’s translator and de facto manager. Text messages on MIZUHARA’s mobile phone show that in September 2021 MIZUHARA began gambling with BOOKMAKER 1’s illegal sports book, and began losing substantial sums of money in late 2021. Bank A records show that during the same time period, the contact information on the x5848 Account was changed to link the x5848 Account to MIZUHARA’s phone number, and to an anonymous email account which is connected to MIZUHARA based on data found on MIZUHARA’s mobile phone.

g. On or about November 17, 2023, BOOKMAKER 1 messaged MIZUHARA stating, “Hey Ippie, it’s 2 o’clock on Friday. I don’t know why you’re not returning my calls. I’m here in Newport Beach and I see [Shohei] walking his dog. I’m just gonna go up and talk to him and ask how I can get in touch with you since you’re not responding? Please call me back immediately.”

On or about January 2, 2022, MIZUHARA asked BOOKMAKER 2 if BOOKMAKER 1 could “reload my account? I lost it all.”
BOOKMAKER 2 responded, “BOOKMAKER 1 bumped you 50k.”

On or about January 15, 2022, MIZUHARA told BOOKMAKER 2, “Fuck I lost it all lol . . . can you ask BOOKMAKER 1 if he can bump me 50k? That will be my last one for a while if I lose it.”

I can’t stop reading this, I’m in the horrors

On or about November 14, 2022, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating “I’m terrible at this sport betting thing huh? Lol . . . Any chance u can bump me again?? As you know, you don’t have to worry about me not paying!”

it gets so much better (worse)

OK, I'll come clean. Yes, the buy-in for our fantasy league is $16 million, and, yes, Ippei was in it last year. But it's not my fault he drafted Alek Manoah in the first round.

— Grant Brisbee (@GrantBrisbee) April 11, 2024

unreal. Unreal!!!!

The complaint alleges that Ippei placed about 19,000 bets between December 2021 and January 2024, all with Ohtani's money. The complaint says Ippei won $142,256,769.74 and lost $182,935,206.68, with a total net loss of $40,678,436.94.

— Laura J. Nelson 🦅 (@laura_nelson) April 11, 2024

hope he feels bad, Ohtani's gonna have to play for 20 years to make that up

that's ~20 bets a day for three years. did this gambling operation have an app or something?

It’s crazy. Ippei also said that he lost a lot of money on crypto in one of his texts to the bookie.

the best part is how ippei apparently spent $325k on ebay buying baseball cards with the intent of reselling them later (for a profit???)

I have to say I am stunned the forensic evidence showed Ippei did this.

I cannot stress enough how bad his management and financial team comes across here. "Agent 1" has apparently never spoken or texted with him using a non-Mizuhara interpreter or in English, despite employing his own interpreters to communicate with other clients.

— Jarrett Seidler (@jaseidler) April 11, 2024

yea I mean I like Ohtani as much as anyone but it pretty clearly seemed like a coverup, glad to be wrong on that

I have to say I am stunned the forensic evidence showed Ippei did this.

i don't really get that though - if shohei has his bff interpreter available 24/7 why would you employ your own? xp

we need to figure out how to preserve the "this is all a conspiracy to cover up ohtani gambling on sports" section of this thread in a polystyrene cube for eternal reflection

#freeippei truther Shasta is going to be devastated

i don't really get that though - if shohei has his bff interpreter available 24/7 why would you employ your own? xp

if you brought your own translator that's a pretty big signal to shohei that you don't trust his translator

kinda funny seeing people saying stuff like "I think some of y'all owe Shohei Ohtani an apology"...like come on. he's a once-in-a-generation talent who seems to break records every game he plays, he's gonna make a billion dollars playing baseball and he's also pretty handsome, the man can take it

if you brought your own translator that's a pretty big signal to shohei that you don't trust his translator

easy to say now with the benefit of hindsight, but would you really have been willing to question shohei about the guy who he's seen playing catch on christmas with, who shohei spends every hour of his (limited) waking day with and who you suspect could probably get shohei to drop you as an agent if he wanted to?

Ok but why didn’t the agent keep pressing on that account? Like are secret accounts exempt from tax returns or something? That’s blatant malpractice on their side, sorry.

Like literally this would have come to light years ago if someone at CAA had sacked up and asked Ohtani directly for access to the account, which he assumed they were already handling for him

This guy really sounds like Colonel Parker the more I hear about him

in america taxes are handled from W-2s - IRS never asks for any info about bank accounts.

in the grand scheme of things, ohtani's angels pre-2023 payroll account ($3M in 2021, $5.5M in 2022 on a pre-tax basis) is a minnow compared to his endorsement accounts. it didn't start getting big until ohtani pulled in $30M in 2023 which it also seems is when ippei really got in the hole

i'm just saying there was a 0.001% chance for upside and a 99.99% chance for downside for that agent to go behind ippei's back in this scenario, without knowing what we know now

The report says that CAA asked about it and flagged up the danger of Ohtani’s tax returns not containing all relevant information. Ippei attending meetings without Ohtani present seems like something they should have flagged up as a problem.

i dunno, i'm sure ohtani is not the first big leaguer client they've had who skipped a meeting about filling out their taxes.

the language about risks re: inaccurate returns is just standard language any accountant would say in that situation (because it's true, and also not that big a deal - just file an amendment later!)

Thankfully nothing bad happened when nobody followed up

thankfully we all have the benefit of hindsight to look at this with!

i think anyone w/ an understanding of how megastar celebrities are typically treated by people around them would not find it surprising that people at CAA were apparently unwilling to imply to ohtani that his best friend wasn't trustworthy. i'm not excusing CAA nobody needs to do that for a sports agency but what i am saying is that it's very standard for people who surround a money generator on the order of ohtani's magnitude to take the approach of doing whatever possible to not upset the apple cart. it's why the kinda people who can actually say uncomfortable or true things to super duper famous people are incredibly valuable, most people are far more interested in protecting their relationship w/ the person