Bookmaker linked to Shohei Ohtani's interpreter sentenced to over a year in prison

A Southern California bookmaker who took thousands of sports bets from the former interpreter for baseball star Shohei Ohtani was sentenced to just over a year in prison Friday.

Mathew Bowyer, now 50, had pleaded guilty a year ago to running an illegal gambling business, money laundering and filing a false tax return. He was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison.

He will later be subjected to two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $1.6 million US in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service, which his lawyer said he's already paid.

"The bottom line is, I am remorseful. I have made many poor choices in my life," Bowyer told the court before sentencing, his voice trembling.

Federal prosecutors wanted Bowyer sentenced to 15 months in prison for running the scheme that placed hundreds of millions of dollars in bets and netted thousands of dollars each day. They said Bowyer could have faced a longer sentence but shouldn't thanks to his significant assistance in their investigations.

The prosecutor declined to comment after Friday's hearing.

Diane Bass, Bowyer's attorney, wanted her client to be spared prison time entirely because of his "extraordinary acceptance of responsibility." In a letter to the court, the father of five from San Juan Capistrano, California, said he began gambling as a teen by playing poker and betting on video games, and it later spiraled out of control.

"It is so easy to gamble everything away and fall into despair," Bowyer wrote. "I am very sorry and embarrassed that I facilitated such dangerous risk-taking."

The case against Bowyer is part of a broader federal probe into illegal sports gambling that led to the arrest of Ohtani's former Japanese language interpreter Ippei