Bookie who ran illegal sports gambling business used by ex-Ohtani interpreter faces sentencing

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California bookmaker who took thousands of sports bets from the former interpreter for baseball star Shohei Ohtani is expected to be sentenced in federal court on Friday.

Mathew Bowyer, now 50, pleaded guilty a year ago to running an illegal gambling business, money laundering and filing a false tax return.

Federal prosecutors want Bowyer sentenced to 15 months in prison for running the scheme that placed hundreds of millions of dollars in bets and netted thousands of dollars each day. They say Bowyer could have faced a longer sentence but shouldn’t thanks to his significant assistance in their investigations.

Diane Bass, Bowyer’s attorney, wants her client to be spared prison time entirely because of his “extraordinary acceptance of responsibility.” In a letter to the court, the father of five from San Juan Capistrano, California, said he began gambling as a teen by playing poker and betting on video games, and it later spiraled out of control.

“It is so easy to gamble everything away and fall into despair,” Bowyer wrote. “I am very sorry and embarrassed that I facilitated such dangerous risk-taking.”

The case against Bowyer is part of a broader federal probe into illegal sports gambling that led to the arrest of Ohtani’s former Japanese language interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, who is currently serving a nearly five-year sentence for bank and tax fraud after stealing nearly $17 million from the Los Angeles Dodgers player.

Authorities said Bowyer ran an illegal gambling business for at least five years in Southern California and Las Vegas and took wagers from more than 700 bettors including Mizuhara, who had long worked with Ohtani and was regularly seen by his side.

While Mizuhara’s winnings totaled over $142 million, which he deposited in his own bank account and not Ohtani’s, his losing bets were around $183 million — a net loss of nearly $41 million. Investigators said Mizhuara wagered on sports other than baseball. Authorities said Ohtani was a victim in the case.

Bowyer cooperated with investigators in their prosecution of Mizuhara and in a case against the head of a large sports gambling business, federal prosecutors wrote in court filings. They said his “significant, timely, and credible” assistance helped authorities obtain two separate convictions.

Since then, Bowyer has been addressing his own gambling addiction and helping others overcome theirs, Bass wrote in court filings. He has also repaid $1.6 million in taxes, she said.

Operating an unlicensed betting business is a federal crime. Sports gambling is illegal in California, while most states and the District of Columbia allow some form of it.

Sports-betting scandals have made headlines in recent years, including one that led Major League Baseball to ban a player for life last year for the first time since Pete Rose was barred in 1989.

The league’s gambling policy prohibits players and team employees from wagering on baseball, even legally. MLB also bans betting on other sports with illegal or offshore bookmakers.

The league last year banned San Diego Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano and suspended four other players for betting on baseball legally. Marcano became the first active player in a century banned for life because of gambling.

Rose, whose playing days were already over, agreed to his ban in 1989 after an investigation found that he had placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985 to 1987 while playing for and managing the team.

In Nevada, the case against Bowyer led gaming regulators to issue a $10.5 million fine against the Resorts World Casino on the Las Vegas strip. It was the second-largest fine handed down by the state’s gaming commission and settled a complaint accusing the casino of welcoming people with ties to illegal bookmaking.