The Bookie

We can see the Pacific Ocean on the horizon and it's a perfect 75 degree day.

That's actually not bad, you hit it far, that was way better than anticipated. I'm here with Matt Boyer, the bookie, at the center of the show hay in E.P. gambling scandal. I would hit like a seven iron and just get it in the fairway. You actually have a good light up there. Oh, that's a good shot.

Yeah, buddy. Look at that. Matt's brought along his friend, Owen Hansen. Yeah, in the hole, baby. Owen is a former USC football player and was a prolific bookie himself before he spent

nine years in prison. I don't know when tell me golf courses like this are where they would target potential clients. So I asked them to pretend I'm someone they want to recruit. All right. So Tisha.

We're pretending. Okay.

“Owen and I are going to bet this whole if you want to join in on the action.”

What how much put it costs me?

Well, we're going to bet 10,000 closest to the pen. So I say 10,000. Um. Okay, well, if that's a little. Do people bulk at 10?

Of course. Almost everybody. Oh, let's do five. Or I don't bet that kind of money. Okay, well, what do you bet?

Not bet 300 bucks. Okay. Well, let's bet 300. We want any action we can take. What have they say?

A beer. It's not worth our time. Yeah. So I say 5,000.

What are you saying internally if I agree to?

I mean, we got them. Pretty much no. Even if we lose to you and golf, you're going to start betting sports with me. We got it right where we want them, you know. And really, it's about the relationship.

The golfing is we're not great golfers. Matt has done a lot of work building relationships here. It seems like he knows pretty much everyone working at this course. Thank you. What's the?

Did you ever play on my website? Yeah. Did you really? Yeah. Yeah.

Employees here didn't just bet with Matt Sportsbook. He says some of them worked for him as agents who recruited clients for his website. I had an agent that worked here. It was club cleaner, they're personally know the people coming in, they're excited from golf and he would just set him up on my website.

I would take the bets. I'm going to give him a cut. This is an expensive golf course. The Greens fees here are not cheap, but Matt says they let him play for free. I can't wait to see this shot.

If we had actually been betting on this hole, I'd be in trouble. That was nice and high. You're not on the green though. Matt's up next. Ooh, that's on.

You're on. Yeah, he's on. He comes within inches of hitting a hole in one. You know he's just 140,000 off of Owen. Correct.

I don't even know how much I owe you. 10. OK. So I owe you 10.

“How do you now hold that into the sales pitch for your website?”

For me, I would just say, Tisha is a great playing with you. Obviously, I played well. I got the best of you today. If you want an opportunity to try to win some of your money back, I own a sports betting operation.

Happy to give you an account. Love to do business with you. That says this pitch worked in a lot of settings, a bar, a party, or a poker game. Like the one where he met, he paid me Zahara. When did this poker game take place?

I believe it was 21, late in 21. So much of the story has focused on show-hate and e-pays relationship with their dynamic was and what really happened between them. But Matt Boyer is central to this story, too. Because he didn't just take the bets.

He carefully monitored e-pays account and tracked the betting, all while pocketing millions of dollars of show-hate Otony's money. Look, people against you, that's perfect. I'm ESPN investigative reporter Tisha Thompson, and this is the betrayal of show-hate Otony. Happy to give you an account of $3,000, $3,000, $3,000 for a poker game.

Episode 4, The Booky In 2010, the family of four in California goes missing, and the clues left behind, sending investigators on a year's long search.

“Is this a family on the run or is the truth far more sinister?”

From ABC Audio in 2020, this is what happened to the mixtaves, coming August 11th, wherever you get your podcasts, or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts or Had free episodes, early access to new episodes, and so much more.

Whatever they would take, $300,000 a hand that was betting in a box right every 30 seconds.

Crap civil, I won $3.2 million, and $38 minutes.

That's the biggest rush I've ever had, probably ever. Matt is 51 years old. We meet at his Spanish style house in a gated community in San Juan, Capustrano, California. When I first arrived, I spotted a number of luxury vehicles in his driveway, including a high-end range rover which easily costs more than $100,000.

He has tribal tattoos on both arms, perfect teeth, and wears tight fitting high-end clothes. Matt says gambling is in his blood. My family, they were all gamblers. My grandparents took me to race track, and it was a two-year-old. We would play yachts for money in their backyard, I mean, $1 or $2, whatever.

Both of his parents were bail bondsmen, and the seeds of his illegal betting operation go back to high school when he started taking action, as he calls it, small bets from other students.

People in high school started knowing that I loved a gamble, because I was very obvious

that a gamble almost anything. People would come to me.

“I want to bet in the lines this weekend, do you want to bet 20 bucks?”

Sure. After graduating, he worked as a commodities trader, but soon realized being a full-time bookie would make him a whole lot more money. I provided a service that was very functional for people, and I enjoyed it more. I'm proud of the fact that I was able to run a big operation.

Matt says much of his success came from using his connections to get into exclusive rooms, like the poker game where he met E. Pay in 2021. We went to the game that night, played the podries. We had really good seats, and of course I bet on the game. We sat with a couple other guys that I knew that were friends of a baseball player, and

they invited us to go to, you know, private poker game. That baseball player was David Fletcher. The Angels in Fielder, who was known to be an avid poker player, and buddies was show hey. Fletcher told me he invited one of Matt's friends to the poker game, and Matt tagged

along. The poker game was at a hotel where the Angels were staying in San Diego just a few miles from the stadium, and Fletcher knew Matt. He said he had played golf with him at a charity event once, and had heard he was a bookie. These guys had the private room, and they were already taken around playing poker when I got

there. How many people? Probably 13 people in the room. You know, somewhere just hanging out, having pizza, having a beer or whatever.

“I think I actually paid for the pizzas to be honest with you.”

Will you tell us the names of the baseball players that were in that poker room when you entered it? No. How many players? I can tell you that, there was, I believe, three actual players.

How many coaches? I think two. Matt says they played Texas Holden, and the stakes were in his words, "low." I think I had, like, maybe two or three thousand dollars in my pocket. By and West?

How quickly did you spot E.P.? Uh, I'll be honest, I didn't really even pay attention to it. I'm sitting here. A friend of mine was right next to me, and then he ended up coming over by us. And my friend is the one who recognized that he was looking at a betting website and approached

him to get him to come over to my website. My friend was doing what he knows what to do, which is to recruit business, and so I was just letting him do what he does. I was playing poker in just having fun. Matt says his agent left the game with at least one new client that night.

He paid me as a harer. The agent would be the one handling E.P.'s bets and money, and would get a cut in return. My operation had, like, 40 to 50 plus agents, and those agents' job is to facilitate their clients underneath that umbrella, and for that reason. The agent said E.P. up with an account on Matt's website.

Matt's sports book was based entirely online on a site hosted in Costa Rica. There's a whole cottage industry there of companies that will set up websites and calculate odds for American bookies. E.P. told me he did not realize Matt's sports book was illegal, and the fact that they gave him a line of credit with no money down didn't raise any red flags.

When did your ears perk up that this might be something that could become lucrative for you? I didn't even care.

“It was a no offense, but he's not a baseball player, right?”

So I didn't know to later what I was really dealing with.

At first, everything was pretty ordinary, but less than a month later, E.P. wanted more.

And he was producing so much action, Matt did something unusual.

So how quickly did you take over E.P.'s account?

“I think it was within 30 days, because once the numbers started getting higher, and there”

was a request for higher figures, that's when I got involved. He bumps his account, bumped it again, I bumped it all the way to 40, and then he lost, and then I required payment. When E.P.'s dead screw to $40,000, Matt told him it was time to pay. And the money arrived without too much trouble.

So now I have history, and now I have a proof of funds. But now was noticing that E.P.'s betting habits were some of the strangest he'd ever seen. I mean, he was absolutely banana as the amount of bets he was making, right? Listen, I gambled bigger than most, right?

And I sleep. You know, I have a life, too. He definitely was betting all night long, all the time.

I've never seen anything like it.

I've seen some wild stuff, but never like this. So walk me through what the bets were on. What he was betting was to me is the hardest thing to win at, soccer, mostly soccer. $100,000 draw Ukraine versus Turkey. $100,000 on Saudi Arabia, and I'm using bigger countries.

“Imagine, I don't even, I can't even, I can't even, Kazakhstan, you know?”

Like that. $100,000 on that, or $40,000 on a draw on this game. So when you're starting to see this betting behavior, how often are you monitoring his-- Every time. All day.

Metza's being a good bookie is about managing relationships and understanding his clients, their rhythms, and their patterns.

He says he saw through EPA almost right away.

Was EPA in your mind exhibiting gambling addiction behavior? But, absolutely. When did that become apparent to you? Very fast, within 30 days for sure. What are your feelings about profiting off of someone's obvious addiction?

It sucks. Matt would know he himself admits to being a compulsive gambler, and he identified that same behavior in EPA. He was trying to dig out a hole, and that hole made him even more poor of a gambler because he's betting big payout stuff, right?

Knowing that probably going to lose, and that just digs a deeper hole.

“As a bookie, when you realize someone has a gambling addiction, what do you do?”

You try to control it so that you can make money off that person, but control it so they don't ruin themselves. Really? Really? If I sound unconvinced, that's because Matt is in the business of making as much money

as possible. But bookies can't make money if their clients don't have money. So Matt says it's all about finding the sweet spot. This is something every bookmaker that has a really good business will tell you. There's a very fine line I think I did about it or anyone.

Truly. And if a client did try to disappear or stop paying, Matt says he knew how to pressure them. He and Owen told me about it when we went golfing. There are so many ways that you can go about making somebody feel uncomfortable.

I had quite a number of people very concerned about me approaching you. But your reputation is perceived you. We were known as very dangerous individuals to be honest. I'm caught as modern day gangsters. That's true.

Do you walk around with a gun in your pocket? No, I definitely. It's just our persona. It's aura persona and I'll speak about when we're younger before we would go to your house and knock on your door at 11 at night and say where's the money?

That's aggressive. Whether you're coming there in a violent manner or not, they don't know that. When you have a guy standing behind you that's six foot five with tattoos across his face and tear drops, if he doesn't say a word, it makes you kind of a little concerned. At 11 at night, when the wife is answering the door, because her husband has a gambling

debt and isn't responding to phone calls, it's a tactic that can be very effective. How much of it is intimidation versus actually following through on the threat? I would speak for both of us 90% of us intimidation. You don't want to result in violence ever. You want to just get them so scared, whether it's sending flowers to the wife or anything

to make sure of them taking the trash out, their wife taking the trash out on us on a morning. But EPA was a good customer. That wasn't sure where the money was coming from and he had no idea how much an MLB interpreter made, but that wasn't his problem. He says he didn't care because EPA was paying up.

But once EPA's debts got into the millions, Matt needed EPA to step up and make bigger payments. EPA told Matt his bank of America account would only allow him to send $500,000 at a time

And that posed a problem.

“Bank of America no longer accepts my business.”

So Matt asked one of his best friends with a bank of America account to accept the money. "I had to use Ryan to help me with that." Ryan Boyazian Ryan is the fiance of real housewives of Orange County's Jennifer Petronti and he sometimes appears on the show himself.

Matt says Ryan agreed to help him by accepting payment for EPA's gambling debts into his bank

of America account and it was Ryan who first noticed that there was something

unexpected about EPA's wire transfers and he called Matt. I was sickly sitting in my office and I got a phone call and he said, "Are you sitting down?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Well, I just received $500,000 or a wire."

I said, "Okay, thank you. That's great." And he said, "It's show here, Tony. It's the name on the account and I just went, "What the fuck?" That was the holy shit moment.

“I believe 50% of athletes bet on sports.”

I mean, that's truly my opinion. And Matt Boyer's operation received that wire transfer from Showhail Otani's bank account. He assumed Showhail was involved in the betting, which he found surprising, but not out of the ordinary.

Showhail was a mega star, but it wasn't the first time a famous name had appeared in

Matt's book. He says he had many professional athletes on his roster of clients. I know you're not going to get me the names of any athletes. Did you have professional athletes who played for the NBA? Did you have professional athletes who were your client who played for the NFL?

Yes. NHL. Yes. NCAA. I'm sure.

MLB. Yes. All those leagues we just named were they active when they were betting with you. Both. But I would say betting on your own sport is going to be a problem, and that's definitely

not going to happen, right? Something like that. You would explicitly say do not bet on your own sport because to be honest with you, it was almost obvious they weren't going to, but I just made it very clear.

“Did you have clients that worked in sports broad casting or sports writers?”

Well, thanks for the question, yes, with you not allowing to ask any more questions in that area. Did you have clients that worked for ESPN? I don't want to answer that question. They're all human beings, they're all guys having fun, and they're all love sports, and they're all just doing what guys do, which is bad on sports.

It says the $500,000 wire transfers made him suspect E-Pay might not be the one betting after all. He thought maybe E-Pay was acting as a beard for Shohei. In betting Lingo, a beard is someone who places bets on behalf of someone else. I thought E-Pay was putting in bets either with or for Shohei attorney.

Mets as he had plenty of athletes who used beards. They just don't want to deal with a legal bookmaker and have something possibly come down the pike on their end, you know, if I got in trouble. When you saw Shohei attorney's name, what do you think is going on? I think he's betting.

Absolutely. But Matt noticed something strange, something that added real doubt about whether Shohei was involved. He says he noticed bets rolling in while Shohei was playing baseball. I've been at Angel Games when he was on the mound and throwing pitches and bets are

being placed. So how could that happen?

Still amazing what he does on the mound.

I mean, he is the most talented baseball player I've ever seen. But if he could get on a website on the mound and throw a ball 100 miles an hour, then he is Godzilla for sure. That doesn't mean that he wasn't partners on the account, doesn't mean that he wasn't aware.

I mean, everyone knows they were like best best friends. I mean, best friends. They were together more than a husband and wife ever are.

And I was close with a lot of Angel's players that would verify that these guys were inseparable. I mean, literally. So in my mind, that's something best buddies would do. You gamble together, you hang out together, Matt says at this point, he's guessing Shohei has to at least be aware of you pays betting if not outright involved with it.

I'm giving this guy so much credit on watching the balance just decline. But I don't know if it's Shohei or Tony and I don't know if it's Hepe.

In my interview with Hepe, he told me he sent Matt's operation a total of $4.5 million.

But Matt says, that wasn't true. It was actually a lot more money. He says his operation received $16 million from Shohei's bank account. I mean, let's be honest, $16 million Shohei or Tony is not a lot of money. It's a lot of money to any human being, right?

“But to him, all people in the world, it's a lot of money, but it's not, right?”

Matt assumed he'd hooked the biggest player in baseball. How many people do you think you told Shohei Otani was your client? Probably 30 to 40 people. For Matt, it was a form of advertising, telling people your Shohei Otani's bookie. But having an athlete that famous connected in any way to his book was also risky.

Holy shit, you know, this is good and bad, right?

I mean, my first-hand stink is great, I just got paid, my next-hand stink is this

could be a problem for me. Why? It's a professional athlete, the biggest, in my opinion, the best baseball player ever set foot on the planet. And yeah, on the green side of me is like, this is great, this guy could lose $50 million

and afford it. But Matt didn't actually know who his client was, and he didn't care. His goal as the bookie was to make as much money as possible. And if he could claim he had hooked a wealthy, well-known athlete, that's great for business.

“And as you go, so sure, he told people that Shohei was his client?”

But then the other side of his is, okay, now I'm going to have eyes on me, more eyes than it there, he had.

It's a high-risk business, and Matt told me he always knew he would get caught one day.

Were you the biggest bookmaker in the United States in September 2023? Volume-wise, I have to be. What is your mindset at the end of September? Well, I was getting wire transfers that were drastically high. My business was the biggest it's ever been.

I was flying on private jet, having caviar and being treated like your Paris Hilton. Matt was gambling with so much money at the casinos that they would also comp him gifts, like $40,000 brightening watches and luxury purses for his wife. In the best sweets in the best table in a nightclub or at the nicest restaurants, $8,000 dinners, I had a $14,000 dinner at Gisoba, at Caesar's Palace, for four people.

The nicest wines you can ever imagine, I'm not even really a wine drinker, I mean, who spends $14,000 in a dinner? When you were doing this at one point with Joe Hayo Donnie's money. Absolutely. When does it get tense?

Well, once I'm ready, it was when I got tense, because the minute I walk out my driveway in the 29 agents and eight AR rifles in my chest, I realized that I now just lost my business. The internal revenue service in the Department of Homeland Security rated Matt's house on October 5, 2023. I opened the door of a G-wagon and I was literally putting my son in his car seat.

I think I strapped the second buckle when I heard trees. I thought it was a joke, I thought I was like fucking friends of mine, fucking with me. It allowed me to grab my son and then they asked me, "Who's in the house?" And I said, "Fuck in my mind, 'cause now I'm thinking of my poor wife."

“And then I watched her come out handcuff crying, which I'll never forget.”

At this stage, Tisha, I know the party's over. It says they handcuffed him and began to seize anything they thought could be connected to his business. Could you see what they were taking? Oh yeah, that table in there was a pile of cash, gold bars, casino chips, versus jewelry,

watches. Of course, they were rifling through my office, grabbing all files of like paperwork of casino receipts, all my sports, but tickets, anything that's a tax-related thing, anything that they could find that is going to be evidence. All of the things that wound up on the search warrant inventory that I first learned about

when I got the tip. But Matt wasn't being raided just because he had any legal sports book.

He needed to wash that money, to launder it, to make it look like he came by it honestly,

and to do it, he went to Vegas.

“Everyone there pretty much knew I was a legal bookmaker.”

That would go to a casino with money he'd made from his business and exchange it for chips. Then he'd gamble with it, sometimes he'd win, sometimes he'd lose, and when he cashed out, the money would look like gambling winnings. Sometimes I would gamble solely to turn a cashier's check into cash so that I could wash money.

Let's say a lot of 70 grand. I brought 500,000. I got 430 coming to you, right? They can't give me back a check for 500,000, not the one I brought, but they can give me 430,000 in cash.

And that's clean money?

Well, it's all in a legal system.

He just proved that you brought 500,000, and you returned with 430 in cash. Now is it clean? I mean, obviously, if you're investigated by the FBI and they see that it's still gotten gains, it's not clean. But bank wise, you now have a check from a casino, it's good as a cashier's check.

Which casinos did you use to launder money? I mean, it all, every one. What put Matt in the Fed's crosshairs was his activity at one particular casino. Resorts world less Vegas. And that's where his friend Ryan Boyazian comes back into the picture.

Ryan, we take the money he received from Showhaze account and forwarded to his account at Resorts world. He would then withdraw some of that money in chips and give them to Matt. Then they gamble. And if they had anything left when they were done, they would cash out and leave with

a clean money. I want to make sure I'm totally clear. The money that you are accused of laundering in Resorts world was that only Showhaze

“or was that other clients money plus Showhaze money?”

Mostly Showhaze, truthfully. Matt was so open about what he did that he even joked about it on an episode of the real housewives of Orange County with Ryan. After we broke the story, our reporting on Ryan and Matt's operation, including screenshots of our story from ESPN.com, became a plot line in the show.

A reality star on real housewives was trying to parse what I'd been investigating for months. And a story from the sports world was becoming a pop culture phenomenon. For the first time, people who didn't care about baseball were asking me about Showhaze. Ryan is declined all of my requests for an interview and his criminal defense attorney was very clear.

Ryan is not a bookmaker. Ryan cooperated with the feds and was given immunity for his testimony. And a few weeks after the raid, Matt also decided to cooperate with the feds with the whole P would get a reduced sentence and return. But they seized his assets and he says he was broke.

Matt still owed people money and some of his clients still owed him money. So Matt got in touch with one particular client who owed him millions. Reach out to EPA to meet with him because we had a large balance. And I knew that in truth that I'm going to owe a shit ton of money. EPA was deeply in debt with Matt Sportsbook.

Matt says on top of the 16 million EPA had already sent, his accounts still owed $24 million

more.

“It's an unbelievable number, how on earth would anyone allow someone to owe them $40 million?”

But the money had been flowing, EPA kept paying, until he did it. EPA stopped paying, just when Matt needed the money more than ever. That's a moment where I don't know what it is, but I'm not sure what it is, but I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure what it is.

I'm not sure what it is, but I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure what it is.

I'm not sure what it is, I'm not sure what it is. That's a moment where I kind of knew things were out of control because he wasn't responding. In an effort to get EPA's attention, Matt texted him, saying he could see Shohei walking his dog, and if he paid didn't call him back, Matt would go up to Shohei and ask him how he could get in touch with EPA.

Where were you when you made that text? Here at the house. Have you ever seen Shohei Otani? I was not the person that saw, but I have a friend of mine that was 10 feet away from him.

So the threat was real? Oh, well, not a threat. The conversation of potentially talking to Shohei was real. I took advantage of that moment to just get him to respond, which he responded and called me.

That's all I wanted.

to send a wire transfer for obvious reasons because now everything's out in the open and I didn't want anyone else to get more trouble. So I just wanted to sit down with him without telling him what was going on because if I'm telling him what's going on without the government's permission, then that's a problem.

“Had you met with him in person since the poker game?”

Yeah, like passing, like for example, I'll go to the Angel's games and we have dug out

seeds and he'd be there and say hi, but never like we didn't have a relationship where

we go for a walk and talk or he was very little words. So you're seeing him for the first time one-on-one? Yeah, I just remember he was clearly a $24 million to me and his mind and he was still both outside himself a little bit. That was when I started to know there was a problem because he was just like, "Oh god, man, I'm just so bad at this. I can't pick a winner."

Like it was more like Blasad, you know, he was whining a little bit but it was like whining just like I would if I lost a bat. You know, it wasn't like, oh I owe you 24 million in my life so over. It was like, oh, I just can't win. You know, sorry, I can't get you some money right now. That kind of thing.

“This is EPA and it up sending him $1.25 million.”

Is part of your agreement with the federal government where you allowed to continue to collect bats? Oh, I don't know. Yeah. We even asked them directly if we could receive some of the outstanding balance and forward it to them to go against my restitution or taxes or anything and they said absolutely not.

So in meeting with him and talking about how much money he owed you were you in violation of that agreement, I imagine. During our day on the golf course, Matt told me he regrets that last meeting with EPA. To be honest with you, I probably would get house arrest if I didn't do that, which of course is for $1.25 million, which I had to give all of the government anyway, really makes no sense

now. I would have wish I could do it all over again.

I've played golf all of my life, but I will never look at a course the same way again after

spending the day with Matt Boyer. It starts off so innocently, a beautiful course, maybe a few beers, and then hey, you want to make it better on this whole. But as I look around at the people working and playing around me, I wonder how many of them are in trouble and it can happen anywhere. On a golf course at a bar or at a poker game, you are a potential mark a target. This is a multi-million dollar operation looking for any opportunity to hook

you. Are you wearing the bright-ling watch? This is the one I got from Results World for my birthday. Is that the one the feds to? I got it back. I have never met anyone who knew that they were going to get in trouble to the degree that you've gotten in trouble and embraced it. I have no choice, I sure. Because I know I'm going to come out of the same bigger and

better. Matt seems to view this as just another chance to reinvent himself. Are you truly done gambling? No. I'll probably gamble the rest of my life. I mean, no question. So, Gamla is anonymous. I go to Gamla's anonymous. I go into therapy. I go to therapy. Going to prison. This is a tough moment. For me, the moment is going to be really tough when I have to walk into prison. Leaving my boy, leaving my kids. That's the hard part.

The reality of prison time doesn't seem to hurt his game. You dropped that right into the

“hole. That's for birdie by the way. How's that like a fortune?”

How far away was that? It's like 14 and 15 feet. He's on a history.

He's never played like this for the record. You bring up the best of me to show.

You did put me in prison though. I'm just teasing you. I'm teasing you. We begin with breaking news here at 11. The Orange County book, he connected to an illegal gambling operation linked to Dodger Star. So, hey, Otani, it's heading to prison about an hour. Matt was sentenced to 12 months in one day. That extra day made him eligible for early release. One reason he received a lighter sentence was because of the information

he gave the government about this case. Matt had a unique vantage point. He was at the center of this scandal. He communicated with E.P. about the bets and he tracked them as they came in. When he thinks back on it, it's the volume that he can't shake. Let's be real. $17 million over two-year period, 19,000 when he drips and less than two

I bet probably more bets than E.P. did to be honest. But I was watching the games,

“watching my phone. It's a lot of work. So, how does a person not even notice that?”

But remember, Matt's as he never met Shohei. His interactions were only with E.P.

And he paints a picture of E.P. as an unsophisticated gambler who was in over his head. Someone needed to talk to Shohei. So, we needed to investigate, A was Mr. Otani involved in this illegal conduct. And B, if he wasn't, how did this happen and who was

“responsible? The feds would use the information Matt gave them to tell a very different story”

about who E.P. is, not hapless and unlucky, but calculated. Someone who wanted payback.

Mitsuhara was given this golden opportunity. He basically got the keys to the castle,

but it wasn't enough. That's next on the betrayal of Shohei Otani. Yeah, yeah. It's just short.

“The betrayal of Shohei Otani is based on reporting by me, Tisha Thompson,”

was support from Tim Qun and the E.S. P.N. investigative unit.

Our producer is Carrie Antonis. Our senior producer is Max Green. Our senior editorial producer is Prethi Varathon. Our associate producer is Gus Navarro. Story editing by Audrey Quinn, Elaine Tang, Eric Neill, and Mike Drago. Additional editing by Rebecca Hudson. Our archival producer is Jennifer Welock. Our line producer is Katherine Sanky.

Production managers are Jason Swartz and Sheena Williams. Fact checking by John Masterbaradino with David Sabino. Additional production support by Scott Harbus. Additional editorial review from Masa Miwa. Original music by Allison Layton Brown and John Delore. Sound design by John Delore. Chris Buckle is Vice President of ESPN investigative enterprise

and digital journalism. Marcia Cook, Brian Lockhart, Heather Anderson, and Burke Magnus are executive producers for 30 for 30. David Roberts, Mike Foss, and Roxanna Scott are executive producers for ESPN. [BLANK_AUDIO]