Former Major League Baseball All-Star outfielder Yasiel Puig is facing a potentially lengthy prison sentence following his conviction for lying to federal officials about an illegal California gambling ring.
On Friday a California jury found Puig guilty of one count of obstruction of justice and one count of making false statements. According to evidence presented at a 13-day trial, Puig made hundreds of wagers with an illicit California sports betting enterprise, resulting in gambling debts in excess of $1 million.
Puig, 35, is scheduled to be sentenced on 26 May. He faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison on the obstruction of justice charge and five years on the false statement charges. Puig remains free for now on his own personal recognisance.
Puig placed the wagers with an enterprise run by Wayne Nix, a former minor league pitcher who is awaiting sentencing for conspiracy in operating an illegal sports gambling business. The Nix case triggered a multi-year investigation into the anti-money laundering protocols at several major casinos across the Las Vegas Strip.
In an interview with federal investigators, Puig falsely said that he never discussed sports betting with a sub-agent of Nix, when in fact he discussed sports wagering hundreds of times, prosecutors alleged. Puig’s attorneys maintained that he never intended to lie to investigators and that he was confused during the interview because of his lack of understanding of English.
In the bookmaker’s own case, Nix is expected to be sentenced in the coming months, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
Heavy wagering on non-baseball sports
Puig’s conviction is the culmination of an extensive case that began in November 2022 when a federal grand jury indicted the former Los Angeles Dodgers All-Star. Beginning in 2019, Puig started making sports wagers through Donny Kadokawa, a sub-agent of Nix.
In June 2019, Puig withdrew $200,000 from a Bank of America branch in Arizona, then purchased two cashier’s cheques for $100,000 each, according to prosecutors. They said Kadokawa and another individual instructed Puig to make a cheque or wire transfer payable to Joseph Schottenstein, a Nix gambling client who received the $200,000.
Over a 14-week period through September 2019, Puig placed an additional 899 wagers on tennis, football and basketball games through Nix-affiliated websites, according to prosecutors. During a January 2022 interview with federal investigators, Puig stated that he never discussed gambling matters with Kadokawa.
Puig told investigators that he only knew the sub-agent from his dealings in baseball. Instead, prosecutors said, the two discussed sports gambling hundreds of times either via text message or on the phone. After initially pleading guilty to lying to federal officials, Puig withdrew the plea in December 2022 and went to trial.
Next steps in Nix case
Nix, meanwhile, has seen his sentencing date postponed several times since a guilty plea in 2022. Following Nix’s plea, former MGM Resorts president Scott Sibella pleaded guilty to failure to file a suspicious transaction report over activity related to Nix. At sentencing in May 2024, Sibella received one year of probation and a $9,500 fine.
After his departure from MGM, Sibella later joined Resorts World Las Vegas in a similar capacity. Last year, RWLV agreed to a $10.5 million fine from Nevada regulators stemming from allegations that the resort allowed bookmaker Matt Bowyer to gamble at the casino. Bowyer, who had ties to Nix, is the bookie who accepted approximately $325 million in wagers from Ippei Mizuhara, the ex-interpreter for baseball star Shohei Ohtani.
According to a 2024 non-prosecutorial agreement with the US Justice Department, the MGM Grand accepted $4,079,830 in cash in illicit proceeds from Nix’s gambling business. Beyond Puig, Nix received payments for gambling losses from a professional football player, an MLB coach and a baseball analyst, according to prosecutors. Two other prominent sports figures surfaced in reports as betting clients of Nix: Hall of Fame basketball player Scottie Pippen and Maverick Carter, the business manager for LeBron James.
Four court filings in the Nix case, dated 15 January 2026, remain under seal.
Matt Rybaltowski
Matt is primarily responsible for long-form feature coverage on complex sports betting scandals. He also provides coverage on finance, M&A and other technological developments.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/sports-betting/yasiel-puig-convicted-gambling-bookie/
