Unanswered questions remain in Shohei Ohtani, ex-interpreter gambling probe
Ever see a house fire that emits no smoke? Perhaps, however, you could see this smokeless fire from miles and weeks away.
nypost.com
By Phil Mushnick
Ever see a house fire that emits no smoke?
Perhaps, however, you could see this smokeless fire from miles and weeks away.
From the moment $700 million international super-duper star Shohei Ohtani’s former pal, Ippei Mizuhara was busted for running up a Godzilla-sized sports gambling debt of at least $17 million with Ohtani’s money, executives in the banking, lending and brokerage businesses reached out to warn of a coverup-on-the-come.
In April, MLB quietly announced Ohtani has been exonerated. He had nothing to do with it, thus we were expected to believe Mizuhara was unilaterally granted millions of dollars in credits from bookies without their knowledge or even passing interest that his collateral was independent of his close friendship with Ohtani.
Ohtani’s “Play ball!” clearance by MLB triggered another round of “What the hey!” missives from those far more familiar with finance law than I, a mere home mortgage borrower.
One such contact is a senior executive and compliance officer/investigator — a button-down straight-shooter — in a large East Coast financial firm who asked for anonymity.
From the start — well before Mizuhara pleaded guilty to theft in a California courtroom — this fellow predicted that MLB would issue Ohtani a pass — one of those Rob Manfred Era automatic intentional passes. Following MLB’s exoneration of Ohtani, he continued:
“This is a completely obvious coverup for MLB’s biggest star.
“Whenever you transfer a cash amount larger than $10,000 in the U.S. banking system, it triggers a SARs — Suspicious Activity Report. This must be reviewed, reported and documented by multiple layers of bank management, from the branch system to the compliance department and even the legal department when there are multiple instances.
“These are must-comply matters.
“These are then required to be filed with FinCEN [the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network run by the U.S. Treasury] whenever fraudulent activities are even suspected.
“The pattern here screams ‘Fraud!’ Red flags everywhere.
“Or are we to believe that there were, say, 34 transfers of $500,000 [totaling $17 million] each to a known bookmaker or bookmakers and no one noticed? Impossible!”
Or are we to believe that the bookies waited until Mizuhara owed millions before trying to collect? What was his settle-up number, $5 million paid in $20 bills??
But MLB has already made its call: “After further review, the superstar is safe!”
