As Astros fan Saul Malik reads criminal complaint Marek, who accused translator Ippei Mizuhara of stealing more than $16 million from Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani to pay off gambling debts, was surprised by the severity of Mizuhara’s sports betting habits rather than shocked by the familiarity of his behavior.
Malik, 26, is a recovering gambling addict. His first craze for chasing fantasy sports went awry in college when he connected with a bookmaker. Malik placed a $10 bet on the Royals to beat the Blue Jays. The Royals won 15-5. Fast money. Malik won a $20 bet that weekend as the underdog Bears defeated the Steelers in overtime. Soon, Malik started placing larger bets—$50, then $100—but still lost. The cautious voice in his head was drowned out by a more confident voice that claimed a major victory was coming.
“Even though I lost thousands of dollars,” Malik said, “every game was like a new beginning for me and brought me back to a positive state.”
That sentiment is evident throughout the 37-page criminal indictment against Suwon. Charged with felony bank fraud and has been ordered by the court to enter a treatment program for gambling addiction. While the sums in the Suwon case may have been staggering—nearly 25 bets a day, an average of $12,800, and a net loss of $40 million over two years—the behavior on display, according to several problem gambling experts, was unfortunately Ubiquitous.
“I’d say it’s uncommon, but I’d be lying,” said Lia Nower, director of the Gambling Research Center at Rutgers University. “In fact, it’s becoming more common.”
Norvell, like other experts interviewed, spoke generally about gambling trends because she was not involved in Suwon’s treatment. While the last national survey on problem gambling prevalence was released in 1999 (“At that time, we were looking at riverboat casinos and lotteries,” Nower said), A study from Rutgers University A survey conducted in 2021 found that the prevalence of high-risk problem gambling was approximately 6%.
The gambling landscape has changed dramatically since a 2018 Supreme Court ruling struck down federal laws banning sports gambling in most states. Sports betting is now legal in 38 states. Often just a click away, there are more options for in-game betting than ever before.The commercial gaming industry is Set revenue record Year by year.
Keith White, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, which commissioned three surveys on gambling attitudes and experiences, said the risk of problem gambling has increased significantly since 2018.
“We believe problem gambling is increasing in both incidence and severity in the United States,” White added, “and this increase is primarily due to the substantial growth in online sports betting.”
It’s unclear what betting experience Suwon had before meeting bookmaker Matthew Bowyer, but one of the most disturbing parts of Suwon’s criminal proceedings is how quickly he began losing large sums of money. About a month after first using an illegal sportsbook, Suwon demanded payment of his losses in small denominations — $15,000 on consecutive days — due to wiring restrictions. Two weeks later, he allegedly impersonated Ohtani to bank employees and sent the first payment, in the amount of $40,010, from Ohtani’s account.
Experts call the phenomenon of new gamblers falling into trouble almost immediately “telescoping” and young people who gamble online are thought to be particularly vulnerable.
“The way they play is riskier, they have less experience, and there’s a telescoping effect where they seem to go from start to problem very, very quickly,” White said.
Within months of making his first $10 bet, Malik spoke with his parents, who noticed a bank transfer leaving his account. They talked about the risks of sports betting, and Malik stopped — mostly because he didn’t have the money to pay the bookmakers. Then, a week later, he realized that his credit line with a bookmaker had been reloaded despite no payments being made. He sees this as his chance to win it all back. Instead he lost everything. This was Malik’s introduction to the credit game. He started betting with money he didn’t have. When Malik ran out of credit with one bookmaker, he would block their phone number and find another bookmaker, hoping he could win enough money to pay back the previous bookmaker. When he ran out of bookmakers, he created a dating profile with a photo of a woman he knew and used it to ask potential suitors if they knew any bookmakers.
“It’s fast,” he said.
Compulsive bettors often operate under the illusion of control, believing that their expertise will give them the upper hand when it comes to sports betting compared to games of chance such as slot machines. Knoll said problem gamblers, some of whom have pre-existing vulnerabilities, will face operant conditioning – a spaced-ratio reinforcement schedule that tells them victory is coming, but they don’t know when – and develop false perceptions.
“You start to think you can control the outcome of random chance, but of course you can’t,” Noll said.
“The shift from betting in a controlled way and using the resources you have and what you can afford to lose, to Losing control is very individual. “When we think about things like slot machines, the trigger can often be a big win early in your gambling career. This seems to prime your brain to anticipate that it might happen again. You end up chasing it and losing a lot.
In theory, clawing back losses—increasing your bet to win back your money—is a way to quickly recoup your losses. In fact, it’s a great way to get into the pits. The tendency to chase losses requires access to more and more money or credit. Suwon has both. In addition to allegedly stealing Oh-gu’s account, Suwon frequently asked his bookmaker to “increase” (or extend) his credit limit.
January 15, 2022: F- I lost everything, haha… can you ask (Bowyer) if he can give me 50k? If I lose it, it will be my last for a while.
November 14, 2022: Am I terrible at this sports betting thing? Ha ha. . . Will you ever touch me again? You know, you don’t have to worry about me not paying!
December 9, 2022: Can you give me the last 200? I swore to my mom that this would be my last request before I paid it off when I returned to the United States. Sorry to keep asking. . . .
June 23, 2023: I’m the worst haha. . Unable to rest. . . . Can I get the final shot? I swear this will be my last until my balance drops significantly. . . . I promise this will be the last bump in the road for a while.
June 24, 2023: I have a question haha. . . . Can I get one last last last bang? This is true. . . .The last one is real
“I think if someone had access to a lot of money, they might believe they could borrow the money, win it back and put it back,” said Dr. Mark Potenza, a psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine. “Then when that doesn’t happen, they get deeper into trouble and they believe they can win the money back and things spiral out of control.”
In many cases, compulsive gamblers are not necessarily satisfied with just breaking even; they seek the thrill of action. As with other addictive behaviors, gamblers develop a tolerance, so they start placing larger bets, White said. Our bodies have not developed physical defenses against compulsive gambling. “There’s not enough money in the world to keep people with gambling problems from overdosing on drugs,” White said. “It seems to be infinitely scalable, and if that’s the height you’re aiming for, it’s really hard.”
On March 10, 2022, two years before his gambling became public, Mizuhara sent a message to Bowyer requesting that his credit limit be reduced from $300,000 to $100,000. “It would be reckless if I wrote 300,” Mizuhara wrote. But this attempt to put up guardrails to minimize the harm his habit could cause didn’t last long. According to investigators, Suwon owed his bookmaker more than $1 million in May 2022, and he continued to receive betting limit increases — some at his request and some provided by Bowyer.
“(Problem gambling) is rarely linear,” White said. “There are a lot of stops and starts. People are trying to cut back or suffer big losses or big wins. While the downward spiral remains fairly consistent, it’s not a smooth curve. There are a lot of bumps in the road.
“These are very, very sad stories,” Wahlberg added. “I’ve been to Gamblers Anonymous meetings and heard some horrific things. Suwon’s (story) is such a tragedy.
Reporters followed Mizuhara’s lawyer, Michael J. Freedman, as he left federal court last week after a hearing. (APU Gomez/AFP via Getty Images)
There are some safeguards available, but they are not mandatory in the United States. Bettors can set limits on their bank accounts. They can install betting-blocking software on their phones or computers. If they bet using a regulated book like DraftKings or FanDuel, they can implement a limit setting feature in the betting app to limit the amount they can bet in a given time frame. “Only a very small number of people (at most 4% to 6%) even use these features,” Nower said. “What a misfortune.” (Suwon placed its bets with an illegal bookmaker that lacked any protections, such as the self-regulatory options typically required for legal sports betting.)
Some experts are calling on the federal government to increase support for problem gambling. Norvell lobbied federal regulators to establish minimum standards in several areas of gambling and lobbied regulators in different states to develop uniform best practices across states. White said gambling policy needed to start educating children before they placed a bet, and it would take the will and funding to build the framework. Dr Potenza said given the dramatic changes in the gambling environment of recent times, “it is important that we collect information to ensure we protect vulnerable groups and promote public health.”
Suwon 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 to all compulsive gamblers: Install a limit-setting tool and tell a friend. “Addiction breeds shame, humiliation and silence,” he said. Last year, the National Council on Problem Gambling received more than 325,000 calls and text messages to its 1-800-GAMBLER national helpline. “We think 9 million people have a (gambling) problem, and that’s still a small number,” White said. “But for some of those 325,000 people, this is the first time they’ve told anyone in the world. There’s an anonymous person on the other end of the phone, but once you take that step, everything else becomes possible .
Before his junior year in college, Malik began attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings at the urging of his parents. He owes between $20,000 and $25,000 to eight bookmakers and has exhausted all of them. “I was like what people describe as a drunk person, nervous. I didn’t have any access.
After their breakup, Malik confided in a Gamblers Anonymous mentor about how gambling had changed his life. He was suicidal. He couldn’t sleep. He is lying and cheating. “I have no real hope for life now,” he said.
He tried the Gamblers Anonymous 12-step program and stuck with it.
Almost six years later, Malik is still paying off some of his debt. But he is now a public speaker, traveling the country talking about gambling addiction. He read Mizuwon’s account and it reminded him of his conversations with bookmakers, where he talked to them like old friends, like he was just a relaxed, easy-going guy who handled the fact that he was losing money well. No.
(Top photo of Ohtani and Suwon: Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
