Shohei Ohtani says he's cooperating with investigators. Yasiel Puig offers a cautionary tale.
LOS ANGELES — The baseball star went into his first conversation with federal investigators assured he was "not a target."
The lead prosecutor on a sprawling sports betting case, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jeff Mitchell, told the player's attorney that he didn't believe it was a federal crime to make payments to an illegal bookmaker, as the player was suspected of doing. Investigators were after "an unlawful sports gambling organization," Mitchell said, according to a court declaration reviewed by The Los Angeles Times.
In other words: The feds wanted the bookies — not the betters.
Despite those assurances, the player — former Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig — is currently staring down two federal charges for obstruction of justice and making false statements, after allegedly lying during his initial conversation with Mitchell.
The highly contentious case, involving a one-count plea deal Puig accepted and then backed out of, is still pending. But it is already a warning for other professional sports players — including Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani, a current Dodger who now finds himself in the middle of a betting scandal.
Puig's case shows how witnesses in federal investigations can become targets themselves if they are suspected of veering from the truth, and how foreign athletes — accustomed to other people talking, handling finances and negotiating unfamiliar cultural situations for them — can face additional pitfalls within the U.S. legal system.
Ohtani, speaking Monday for the first time,
