Whew. Federal authorities have charged Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for baseball megastar Shohei Ohtani, with bank fraud for allegedly stealing more than $16 million from Ohtani to pay an illegal bookmaker. According to the charging documents, Mizuhara impersonated Ohtani in conversations with bank officials so he could make wire transfers to his bookie. Over 19,000 times! From late 2021 to early 2024 Mizuhara won $142 million and lost $183 million gambling. For those playing at home, that about 25 bets per day at an average of $12,800 per wager. And Ohtani, his agent, and other representatives suspected nothing. This is the official narrative we are being asked to accept. I simply refuse to believe that a US bank, given the requirements to report suspicious activity to the feds, simply shrugged off this volume and size of wire transfers. Consider it would be one thing to transfer $300,000 a day in a single wire and quite another to send $12K 25 times to the same account. Do that for 24 months straight and what else could that fact pattern be but settling gambling debts? I have to think another massive shoe has to drop in this matter.
Rare 100% win for liberty in George Sheetz vs. the County of El Dorado (Ca.) before SCOTUS this week. The county had forced Sheetz to pay a
$23,420 traffic impact fee as a condition of receiving a residential building permit. He paid it under protest and went to state court to complain that the fee was unconstitutional under the Takings Clause. California courts of course scoffed at that, but Sheetz and the Pacific Legal Foundation kept plugging away until, finally the Supreme Court agreed. Yay.
I have come to believe this as well.
Wal-Mart is starting to remove self-checkout from some stores. The cover story is that “feedback” from customers and associates is driving the change. That is obviously not true. It is shrinkage, “skip scanning” in particular. Consumers are utterly and completely tapped out, with inflation ready to surge yet again. The company has evidently calculated that it cannot wait any longer to try to preserve margins but what will be fascinating is how it spins the continuation of self-checkout in lower crime areas. Soon self-checkout could be the equivalent of not locking up baby formula.
Some $200b. in COVID helicopter money fraud prolly didn’t help on the inflation front either.
Hed of the week, crazy people edition:
Chances are you didn’t hear about the serial conman who was charged with stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a BLM front to fund his lifestyle and by guns. Well, he has just been convicted on four federal counts.
Hasn’t been a good week for NPR. The thing is, just about everything other mainstream outlet needs to have someone write the same thing.
Nor has it been a good week for anti-abortion activists, who really, really thought (if we take them at their word) that America wanted a total ban on abortions. To wit:
What U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake did in Arizona this week, only to have Donald Trump then endorse it the following day, is nothing short of mocking God. So, apparently, I now need to remind everyone of something that should be obvious to citizens in any culture worth saving: This devilish baloney has zero chance of making America great again.
Both Trump and Lake said that a ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court to uphold a near-total abortion ban dating back to 1864 needs to allow for more “reasonable” amounts of baby killing.
As I’ve long thought, a lot of these folks are primarily interested in a weird mix of piety signaling and victimhood.
Democracy will again be heavily fortified come November, citizen. Vote accordingly. Or else.