Words read by Astros fan Saul Marek criminal charges Interpreter Ippei Mizuhara claimed to have stolen more than $16 million from Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani to pay gambling debts, but Malek said the enormity of Mizuhara’s sports betting habit was outweighed by how close his actions were. I was surprised at how much I felt it.
Malek, 26, is a recovering gambling addict. Rush, which he initially followed in fantasy in his sport, became an issue in college when he had a relationship with a bookie. Marek bet $10 on the Royals to beat the Blue Jays. The Royals won 15-5. Money comes in easily. Marek won a $20 bet that weekend that the underdog Bears would beat the Steelers in overtime. Soon Malek started betting even bigger, $50, then $100, and started losing. The voice of alarm in his head was drowned out by a more confident voice claiming that a big victory was at hand.
“Each match felt like a fresh start for me to get back on a positive footing, even if I was losing thousands of dollars,” Marek said.
Such sentiments are evident throughout the 37-page criminal complaint against Mizuhara. charged with felony bank fraud He has been ordered by the court to participate in a treatment program for gambling addiction. The amount of money in Mr. Mizuhara’s case may be impressive, with nearly 25 bets per day, an average of $12,800, and a net loss of $40 million over two years. , several problem gambling experts have said that the behavior shown is universal.
“I’d like to say it’s rare, but I’d be lying. In fact, it’s becoming more and more common,” said Leah Nawar, director of the Center for Gambling Research at Rutgers University.
Nauer, like the other experts interviewed, was not involved in Mizuhara’s treatment and spoke generally about his gambling tendencies. Although the last national study on the prevalence of problem gambling was published in 1999 (“At that point, we were looking at riverboat casinos and lotteries,” Nawar said). rutgers research A study conducted in 2021 found the prevalence of high-risk problem gambling to be approximately 6 percent.
The gambling landscape has changed dramatically since the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 to strike down a federal law banning sports betting in most states. Sports betting is currently legal in 38 states. In-game betting offers more options than ever before, often with just a click. The commercial game industry Set a profit record Every year, every year.
Keith White, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, which commissioned three surveys into gambling attitudes and experiences, said the risk of problem gambling had increased significantly since 2018.
“We believe that both the incidence and severity of problem gambling are increasing in the United States,” White said, adding that “that increase is primarily due to the significant growth in online sports betting.” .
It’s unclear what kind of gambling experience Mizuhara had before meeting bookmaker Matthew Bowyer, but one of the more puzzling aspects of Mizuhara’s criminal charges is that he quickly began losing large sums of money. Thing. About a month after using this illegal sportsbook for the first time, Mr. Mizuhara requested that his losses be paid in small amounts ($15,000 for consecutive days) due to wiring restrictions. Two weeks later, he allegedly impersonated Otani to a bank employee and transferred his first payment of $40,010 from Otani’s account.
Experts call the phenomenon of new gamblers quickly creeping in on their heads the “telescope phenomenon”, and young men who bet online are thought to be particularly vulnerable.
“They have little experience and are playing in a riskier manner, and there is a stretch effect of going from introduction to problems in a very quick time frame,” White said.
Within a few months of his first $10 bet, Marek had a conversation with his parents. His parents noticed that bank transfers had disappeared from his account. They discussed the risks of sports betting, but Malek briefly stopped. The main reason is that there is no more money to pay the bookmaker. Then he noticed that a week later his line of credit with the bookmaker had been reloaded, even though he had not made any payments. He saw it as a chance to get it all back. Instead he lost everything. That was Malek’s introduction to playing in the credits. He started gambling money he didn’t have. When Marek lost credibility with one bookmaker, he blocked his phone number and found another bookmaker, hoping to win enough money to pay back the previous bookmaker. When the bookie disappeared, he created a dating profile with photos of women he knew and used it to ask suitors if they knew the bookie.
“I picked up speed pretty quickly,” he said.
Compulsive bettors often operate under the illusion of being in control, believing that their expertise gives them an advantage in sports betting compared to games of chance such as slot machines. there is. Nawar said some problem gamblers have pre-existing vulnerabilities, face operant conditioning, and interval-ratio reinforcement schedules that tell them they’re close to winning, but when? He said that he did not know what was going on and would develop erroneous cognition.
“You start to think you can control the outcome of chance, but of course you can’t,” Nawar says.
Rachel Volberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said: “The steps from gambling in a controlled way with the resources you have and can afford to lose to falling and losing control.” There are huge individual differences.” A person who studies gambling problems. “When you think about things like slot machines, winning very big early in your gambling career is often a trigger. That way your brain thinks it might happen again. It seems like you start to expect it, and you end up chasing after it and you end up losing something big.”
Chasing your losses, or increasing your bet to get your money back, is theoretically a quick way to make up for it. In fact, this is a great way to make the hole even deeper. The tendency to chase losses requires access to more and more money and credit. Mr. Mizuhara had both. Apart from the alleged theft from Ohtani’s account, Mizuhara also regularly asked bookmakers to “increase” (or extend) credit lines.
January 15, 2022: F— I lost everything (lol)… (to Bowyer) Could you please ask me if I can give you 50,000 yen? If I lose it, this will be the last thing I have for a while.
November 14, 2022: I’m not good at this sports betting thing. lol . . . Is there a possibility that we will collide again? You know, you don’t have to worry about me not paying.
December 9, 2022: Can I hit you 200 times at the end? When I return to America, I promise my mother that this will be my last request before repayment. Sorry to keep asking questions. . . .
June 23, 2023: I’m the worst (lol). . . I can’t take a break. . . . Can I press it one last time? I swear this is the last time I’ll use it until my balance drops significantly. . . . I promise this will be your last test for a while.
June 24, 2023: I have a problem lol. . . . Can I have one last bump at the end? This is real. . . .The end is really
“I imagine that if someone got a lot of money, they might believe they could borrow it, get it back, and get it back,” said Dr. Mark Potenza, a psychiatrist at Yale University School of Medicine. Ta. . “But when that doesn’t happen and you get deeper and deeper into the hole, you believe you can get your money back and things get more and more out of control.”
Compulsive gamblers are often not always satisfied with just breaking even. They’re looking for the thrill of action. As with any addiction, gamblers develop a tolerance and start gambling bigger, White said. Our bodies have not developed physical defenses against gambling addiction. “There’s not enough money in the world to make a gambling addict overdose,” White said. “It seems like it’s infinitely scalable, but if you’re going after it, it’s really hard.”
On March 10, 2022, two years before the gambling became public, Mr. Mizuhara sent a message to Mr. Bowyer requesting that the loan be reduced from $300,000 to $100,000. “300 would be too reckless,” Mizuhara wrote. However, this attempt to put up guardrails to minimize the harm caused by his habits did not last long. According to investigators, Mizuhara owed the bookie more than $1 million in May 2022, and continued to receive gambling restriction bumps after that — some at his own request. At other times, it was at the request of Bowyer.
“(Gambling problems) are rarely linear,” White said. “There are a lot of stops and starts. People try to cut their money, they take big losses, they win big. The downward spiral is still pretty consistent, but it’s not a smooth curve. Road There are many steps along the way.”
“These are all really, really sad stories,” Volberg added. “I have attended Gamblers Anonymous meetings and heard horrific stories. Mr. Mizuhara’s (story) is truly tragic.”
Reporters followed Mizuhara’s attorney, Michael J. Friedman, as he left the federal courthouse last week after Mizuhara’s trial. (APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images)
There are several safety measures available, but they are not required throughout the United States. Bettors can set limits on their bank accounts. You can install software on your mobile phone or computer that blocks betting. If you are betting on regulated books like DraftKings or FanDuel, you can implement a limit setting feature in your betting app to limit the amount you can bet within a certain period of time. “These features are used by a very small number of people, 4% to 6% at best,” Nower says. “It is really a pity.” (Mizuwon was betting with illegal bookmakers, which lacked protections like the self-regulatory option often required of legal sportsbooks.)
Several experts are calling for more federal aid for problem gambling. Mr. Nauer has been pushing federal regulators to set minimum standards in several areas of gambling, and state regulators to create uniform best practices for each state. Mr White said gambling policy needed to start educating children long before they bet, and building that framework required will and funding. Given recent changes in the gambling environment, Dr. Potenza said, “There is a need to gather information to protect vulnerable populations and promote public health.”
Mizuhara appeared in federal court last week, a day after prosecutors charged him with felony bank fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. He turned himself in to authorities and was released on $25,000 bail. He was also banned from gambling or entering casinos and ordered to attend a gambling addiction treatment program.
White’s advice for compulsive gamblers is to install a limit setting tool and then tell a friend. “Addiction breeds shame, stigma and silence,” he says. The National Council on Gambling Problems last year sent more than 325,000 calls and text messages to its national helpline, 1-800-GAMBLER. “This is still a tiny fraction of the 9 million people we think have a (gambling) problem,” White said. “But for some of his 325,000 people, it’s the first time they’ve ever told anyone in the world. The person on the other end of the phone is anonymous, but with that step everything else is possible. It will be.”
Before Marek’s senior year, his parents encouraged him to start attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings. He owed between his $20,000 and his $25,000 with his eight bookmakers and the bookmakers were gone. “I was like, what people describe as a dry drunk, and I just rolled my eyes. I didn’t have access.”
After the breakup, Malek told a Gamblers Anonymous leader how gambling had changed his life forever. He was suicidal. he couldn’t sleep. He was lying and cheating. “There was no real hope for his life the way he had been doing it,” he said.
He tried Gamblers Anonymous’ 12-step program and stuck to it.
Almost six years later, Malek is still paying off some of his debt. But now he speaker, who travels around the country talking about gambling addiction. He reads Mizuhara’s account and recalls his conversations with the bookmakers. The way he talked to them like they were old friends of his, as if he were just a nice, easy-going guy who was coping well with the fact that he was losing money he hadn’t had. .
(Top photo of Otani and Suwon: Dustin Bradford / Getty Images)
