As Astros fan Saul Malek read the criminal complaint alleging interpreter Ippei Mizuhara stole more than $16 million from Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani to pay his gambling debts, Malek was less stunned by the enormity of Mizuhara’s sports betting habit than by how familiar his behavior felt.

Malek, 26, is a recovering gambling addict. The rush he first chased with fantasy sports became problematic in college when he was connected with a bookie. Malek put $10 on the Royals to beat the Blue Jays. The Royals won, 15-5. Easy money. Malek won a $20 bet that weekend, underdog Bears over Steelers in overtime. Soon Malek started betting bigger — $50, then $100 — and losing. The wary voice in his head was drowned out by a more confident one claiming a big win was around the corner.

“Even if I were down thousands of dollars,” Malek said, “each game felt like the start of a new streak for me of getting back positive.”

That sort of sentiment is found throughout the 37-page criminal complaint against Mizuhara, who is charged with felony bank fraud and has been court-ordered to attend a program to treat gambling addiction. While the sums in Mizuhara’s case may be remarkable — nearly 25 bets per day, averaging $12,800, and a net loss of $40 million over two years — the behaviors exhibited are unfortunately universal, according to several problem gambling experts.

“I’d like to say it’s uncommon, but I’d be lying,” said Lia Nower, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University, “It’s becoming more and more common, actually.”

Nower, like the other experts interviewed, spoke generally about gambling trends because she is not involved in Mizuhara’s treatment. While the last national survey regarding the prevalence of problem gambling was released in 1999 (“At that point, we’re looking at riverboat casino and lottery,” Nower said), a Rutgers study conducted in 2021 found a prevalence rate of high-risk problem gambling of about 6 percent.

The gambling environment has changed drastically since a 2018 Supreme Court ruling struck down a federal law prohibiting sports gambling in most states. Sports betting is now legal in 38 states. It’s often just a click away, with more options than ever to bet on with in-game wagering. The commercial gaming industry is setting revenue records year after year.

Keith Whyte, 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 risen significantly since 2018.

“We think both the rate and severity of gambling problems are increasing in the United States,” Whyte said, adding, “That increase is mainly due to the massive growth of online sports betting.”

It’s unclear what betting experience Mizuhara had prior to meeting bookie Mathew Bowyer, but one of the more jarring parts of the Mizuhara criminal complaint is how quickly he started losing substantial sums. About a month after first using the illegal sports book, Mizuhara requested to pay his losses in smaller denominations — $15,000 on consecutive days — due to wiring restrictions. Two weeks later, he allegedly impersonated Ohtani to bank employees and sent his first payment, for $40,010, from Ohtani’s account.

Experts refer to the phenomenon of a new gambler almost immediately getting in over their heads as “telescoping,” and young men betting online are believed to be especially vulnerable.

“They’re playing in a lot more high-risk ways, with little experience,” Whyte said, “and there’s that telescoping effect where they seem to be going from initiation to problems in a very, very rapid timeframe.”

Within a few months of his first $10 bet, Malek had a conversation with his parents, who’d noticed the bank transfers leaving his account. They talked about the risks of sports betting, and Malek stopped for a bit — mostly because he’d run out of money to pay bookies. Then, one week, he realized his credit line with a bookie had reloaded despite not making a payment. He saw that as his chance to win it all back. He lost it all instead. That was Malek’s introduction to playing on credit. He started betting money he didn’t have. When Malek ran out of credit with one bookie, he’d block their phone number and find another bookie, hoping he’d win enough to pay back the previous bookie. When he ran out of bookies, he made a dating profile with photos of a woman he knew and used it to ask would-be suitors if they knew any bookies.

“It sped up pretty quickly,” he said.

Compulsive bettors often operate under the illusion of control, thinking that in sports betting, compared to a game of chance like slot machines, their expertise will give them an upper hand. Nower said problem gamblers, some of whom will have pre-existing vulnerabilities, will confront operant conditioning — the interval ratio reinforcement schedule tells them a win is coming, but they don’t know when — and develop erroneous cognition.

“You start to think you can control the outcome of random chance, which of course you can’t,” Nower said.

“The step of going from betting in a controlled manner and with resources you have and can afford to lose, versus tipping over into a loss of control, is very individual,” said Rachel Volberg, an epidemiology professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who studies problem gambling. “When we consider things like slot machines, the trigger there can often be a very large win early on in your gambling career. That seems to set your brain up to expect that it may happen again. You end up chasing after that and losing a great deal.”

Chasing losses — increasing bets to win back money — is, in theory, a way to make up ground quickly. In practice, it is a great way to get deeper in the hole. A tendency to chase losses requires access to more and more money or credit. Mizuhara had both. Aside from allegedly stealing from Ohtani’s account, Mizuhara regularly asked his bookie to “bump” (or extend) his line of credit.

Jan. 15, 2022: F— I lost it all lol … can you ask (Bowyer) if he can bump me 50k? That will be my last one for a while if I lose it.

Nov. 14, 2022: I’m terrible at this sport betting thing huh? Lol . . . Any chance u can bump me again?? As you know, you don’t have to worry about me not paying!!

Dec. 9, 2022: Can u bump me last 200? I swear on my mom this will be the last ask before I pay it off once I get back to the states. Sorry for keep on asking. . . .

June 23, 2023: I’m the worst lol . . . can’t catch a break. . . . Can I get one last bump? I swear this is gonna be my last until I get the balance down significantly . . . . I promise this will be the last bump for a while.

June 24, 2023: I have a problem lol. . . . Can I get one last last last bump? This one is for real. . . . Last one for real

“I would imagine that if someone has access to a large amount of money, they may believe that they can borrow the money, win it back and put it back in,” said Dr. Marc Potenza, a psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine. “Then when that doesn’t happen and they get deeper into a hole, they believe that they can win back that money and things spiral increasingly out of control.”

In many cases, a compulsive gambler is not necessarily satisfied by just breaking even; they’re chasing the thrill of the action. As with other addictions, gamblers build tolerance, Whyte said, so they start to bet bigger. Our bodies haven’t developed a physical defense to compulsive gambling. “There’s not enough money in the world to overdose somebody with a gambling problem,” Whyte said. “It is infinitely scalable, it seems, which is really tough if that’s the high you’re chasing.”

On March 10, 2022, two years before his gambling became public, Mizuhara messaged Bowyer asking to lower his line of credit from $300,000 to $100,000. “I’ll get too reckless with 300,” Mizuhara wrote. But this attempt to put a guardrail in place, to minimize the harm his habit could do, didn’t last long. Mizuhara owed his bookie more than a million dollars in May 2022, according to investigators, and he continued to receive betting-limit bumps — some at his request, other times offered by Bowyer.

“(Problem gambling) is rarely linear,” Whyte said. “There are a lot of stops and starts. People try to cut back, or they have a huge loss or big win. Even though the downward spiral is still pretty consistent, it’s not a smooth curve. There’s lots of bumps along the road.”

“These are all really, really sad stories,” added Volberg. “I’ve sat in Gamblers Anonymous meetings and listened to some horrific stuff. Mizuhara’s (story) is really a tragedy.”

There are some safeguards available, but they are not mandatory across the United States. Bettors can set limits on their bank accounts. They can install bet-blocking software on their phone or computer. If they are betting with a regulated book like DraftKings or FanDuel, they can implement limit-setting features in betting apps to cap how much they can bet in a given timeframe. “A very small percentage of people — we’re talking 4 percent to 6 percent at the most — even use these features,” Nower said. “It’s really unfortunate.” (Mizuhara was betting with an illegal bookie, which lacked any protections like the self-regulating options often required of legal sportsbooks.)

Several experts have called for increased federal support regarding problem gambling. Nower has lobbied for a federal regulatory agency to set minimal standards in several gambling areas, and for regulators from different states to put together uniform best practices across states. Whyte said gambling policy needs to begin with educating kids long before they place a bet, and it’ll take will and funding to build that framework. Given how much the gambling environment has changed recently, Dr. Potenza said, “We have to collect the information to make sure that we protect vulnerable individuals and promote public health.”

Mizuhara appeared in federal court last week, one day after prosecutors charged him with felony bank fraud, which carries a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. He surrendered to authorities and was released on a $25,000 bond. He was also barred from gambling or entering casinos and was ordered to enter a gambling addiction treatment program.

Whyte’s advice for any compulsive gambler: install limit-setting tools, then tell a friend. “Addiction breeds in shame, stigma and silence,” he said. The National Council on Problem Gambling fielded over 325,000 calls and texts to their 1-800-GAMBLER national helpline last year. “It’s still only a fraction of the 9 million people we think have (gambling) problems,” Whyte said. “But for some of those 325,000, that’s the first time they’ve told anybody in the world. It’s an anonymous person on the other end of the phone, but with that one step everything else becomes possible.”

Malek started going to Gamblers Anonymous meetings at his parents’ urging before his junior year of college. He owed somewhere between $20,000 and $25,000 across eight bookies and he had run out of bookies. “I was like how people describe a dry drunk, just white-knuckling. I didn’t have any access.”

After a breakup, Malek confided in a Gamblers Anonymous mentor about how betting had upended his life. He was suicidal. He couldn’t sleep. He was lying and cheating. “I had no real hope in life with the way I was going,” he said.

He tried the Gamblers Anonymous 12-step program, and he stuck to it.

Almost six years later, Malek is still paying off some of his debt. But he is now a public speaker, traveling the country talking about gambling addiction. He reads Mizuhara’s account and it brings back conversations he had with bookies, the way he spoke with them like old friends, like he was just a light-hearted, easy-going guy who was dealing just fine with the fact he was losing money he didn’t have.

(Top photo of Ohtani and Mizuhara: Dustin Bradford / Getty Images)

Dwight Freeney sacked dozens of different NFL quarterbacks throughout his 16-year NFL career, primarily spent with the Indianapolis Colts. So when the soon-to-be Hall of Famer was asked by Keyshawn Johnson on Johnson’s podcast, “All Facts No Brakes,” who were among the toughest quarterbacks for him to sack in his career, Freeney said his top choice would surprise some people.

“Tom Brady wasn’t easy,” Freeney said. “And the reason is because of how, from a system standpoint, they were getting rid of the ball in under two seconds. They knew the strength of our defense, and they knew what was going on. They said, ‘Look, I don’t care if you’re open or not, receiver, this ball is coming out.’

“I think when you’re playing against a guy like that, you better have your best move. And even if you have your best move dialed up, and you win on your best move, you still may not get there. It becomes very frustrating as a pass-rusher because you understand that this ball will not be in this man’s hand because he does not want to get sacked. I think he’s probably you know, one of the most underrated from that standpoint. People don’t talk about it enough.”

Freeney was often lined up opposite Brady’s offensive line during the height of the rivalry between Brady’s New England Patriots and Freeney’s Colts, which also featured another legendary quarterback in Peyton Manning. Brady and Manning were regarded as two of the best quarterbacks in the NFL and often pitted against each from Brady’s first Super Bowl title in 2001 through Manning’s retirement in 2016. 

Brady, of course, went on to win three more Super Bowls and solidify his status as the greatest NFL quarterback ever before retiring for good in 2023. He will start his next career as the lead NFL analyst for FOX Sports this coming fall. 

Freeney’s history with Brady actually stretches back to their respective college days. Freeney’s first collegiate tackle at Syracuse was in a non-conference game against the Michigan Wolverines, who had just put in their backup quarterback — a young Tom Brady.

“And fast forward years later, I’m still playing against the dude,” Freeney said.

Freeney had another name to offer in response to Johnson’s question as well, saying the late Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair was also difficult to sack for a very different reason than Brady.

“McNair was country strong,” Freeney said. “I would come around that corner, and I would hit him and I swear, I felt like he hit me back. I mean, it was like hitting a wall. The thing about him is he was also mobile, so he can also just be elusive and make you miss.

“When you’re trying to go and try to tackle that quarterback, you got to figure out what you’re gonna do, because you can go ahead and try to hit him as hard as you possibly can, but he’s gonna make you miss. So if you then say, ‘You know what, let me not go as hard as I can and try to wrap him up,’ then he’s gonna throw you off. Steve was a beast.”

Freeney said there are also two quarterbacks he wished he sacked but never got a chance to. One was Brett Farve, mainly due to Freeney’s limited opportunities against a quarterback who played most of his career in the NFC. The other was his old teammate Manning, again due to limited opportunities. When the Colts’ first-team defense would go up against their offense in practice, Freeney said if he got within five yards of Manning he would get “screamed at” by coaches not wanting to see their star quarterback get hurt.

Though Freeney never got a chance to sack Manning, his Colts teammate Robert Mathis did after the quarterback left Indianapolis for the Denver Broncos — and Mathis sent both Freeney and Manning a picture of the moment to gloat.

“It’s the greatest picture in the world,” Freeney recalled, laughing, “Peyton getting killed by Robert, and his face is all twisted up. It was awesome. That’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘We love you, Peyton, but we never got the opportunity hit you.’ And Robert finally did.”

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Baseball

Alhambra 2, Salesian 1
Aliso Niguel 5, San Clemente 2
Anaheim 5, Century 3
Anaheim Canyon 6, Yorba Linda 1
Animo Inglewood 9, Compton Early College 3
Apple Valley 5, Ridgecrest Burroughs 1
Ayala 11, Alta Loma 3
Azusa 10, Workman 0
Beckman 3, Woodbridge 1
Birmingham 6, Cleveland 3
Bonita 13, Claremont 1
Buena Park 10, Garden Grove 4
California 3, Segerstrom 2
Camarillo 3, Royal 0
Carson 11, Venice 3
Castaic 1, Canyon Country Canyon 0
Chaminade 6, Alemany 1
Channel Islands 1, Carpinteria 0
Chatsworth 3, Taft 1
Citrus Valley 11, Redlands East Valley 3
Colony 4, Glendora 2
Cornerstone Christian 18, Bethel Christian 2
Corona 7, Corona Centennial 3
Corona del Mar 9, Laguna Beach 5
Corona Santiago 4, King 2
Covina 6, Charter Oak 1
Crenshaw 21, Hawkins 0
Crespi 5, St. Francis 3
Crossroads Christian 28, Grove School 6
Culver City 3, Palos Verdes 0
Cypress 11, Crean Lutheran 4
Damien 2, Rancho Cucamonga 1
Diego Rivera 7, Manual Arts 5
Dymally 16, University Pathways 4
Eagle Rock 8, Franklin 5
Eastvale Roosevelt 4, Norco 0
El Dorado 3, El Modena 1
El Rancho 3, La Serna 2
Esperanza 4, Brea Olinda 3
Fillmore 4, Malibu 3
Foothill Tech 10, Grace Brethren 3
Fullerton 4, La Habra 3
Gahr 7, Temecula Valley 4
Ganesha 31, La Puente 0
Garden Grove Pacifica 8, La Palma Kennedy 0
Granada Hills 5, El Camino Real 1
Hart 2, West Ranch 1
Harvard-Westlake 19, Loyola 2
Hemet 4, Elsinore 2
Heritage 8, Temescal Canyon 1
Highland 13, Lancaster 3
Hueneme 5, Nordhoff 2
Huntington Beach 11, Edison 1
Jefferson 6, Santee 0
JSerra 8, St. John Bosco 6
Knight 9, Eastside 3
LACES 6, Palisades 1
Laguna Hills 2, Irvine University 1
L.A. Jordan 19, Animo Venice 5
Lakeside 10, Rancho Verde 0
L.A. University 7, L.A. Hamilton 2
Lincoln 4, L.A. Marshall 2
Loma Linda Academy 9, Mesa Grande Academy 8
Lompoc 8, Morro Bay 2
Lompoc Cabrillo 11, Atascadero 1
Long Beach Poly 12, Long Beach Jordan 1
Long Beach Wilson 25, Compton 0
Los Alamitos 6, Fountain Valley 4
Los Osos 12, Etiwanda 2
Lynwood 4, Paramount 2
Marina 3, Newport Harbor 1
Mayfair 13, Dominguez 2
Millikan 16, Long Beach Cabrillo 2
Mira Costa 10, Santa Monica 0
Mission Viejo 6, Don Lugo 5
Monroe 6, Grant 2
Montebello 8, Los Altos 0
Moreno Valley 4, Riverside Poly 3
Mountain View 4, Gabrielino 0
Newbury Park Adventist 9, Santa Clara 3
North 8, Lawndale 4
Oak Hills 3, Serrano 0
Ocean View 6, Dana Hills 3
Orange Lutheran 5, Mater Dei 0
Palmdale 7, Littlerock 6
Paloma Valley 10, Orange Vista 0
Pasadena 4, Hoover 2
Pioneer Valley 6, Santa Ynez 0
Pomona 6, Bassett 0
Portola 4, Irvine 0
Quartz Hill 17, Antelope Valley 0
Rancho Christian 10, Vista del Lago 0
Redlands 3, Beaumont 1
Redondo Union 8, Peninsula 2
Riverside Prep 4, Hesperia Christian 0
Rosemead 13, El Monte 3
San Dimas 15, Northview 2
San Juan Hills 5, El Toro 0
Santa Ana Foothill 1, Villa Park 0
Santa Fe 9, Whittier 3
Santa Paula 5, De Toledo 0
Savanna 8, Magnolia 0
Servite 2, Santa Margarita 0
Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 8, Sierra Canyon 1
Sierra Vista 6, Nogales 4
Simi Valley 13, Oak Park 2
South El Monte 10, Pasadena Marshall 6
South Gate 2, L.A. Roosevelt 1
St. Bernard 19, St. Genevieve 2
Sultana 10, Hesperia 3
Sun Valley Poly 10, Arleta 0
Torrance 19, Wiseburn Da Vinci 0
Trabuco Hills 5, Capistrano Valley 3
Troy 10, Sonora 6
Tustin 4, Placentia Valencia 0
Upland 3, Chino Hills 2
Valencia 17, Golden Valley 3
Van Nuys 9, Vaughn 0
Vaughn 12, Fulton 10
West Adams 11, Angelou 1
West Covina 9, Diamond Ranch 2
Western 12, Santa Ana Valley 2
Westchester 4, Fairfax 2
Windward 8, Campbell Hall 5
Yucaipa 17, Cajon 8

Softball

Academic Excellence 22, Big Bear 2
Angelou 22, Manual Arts 5
Animo Venice 24, Animo Robinson 7
Apple Valley 8, Serrano 3
Arleta 20, Monroe 0
Ayala 4, Colony 0
Bassett 5, La Puente 4
Beaumont 3, Citrus Valley 0
Beckman 12, Laguna Hills 2
Bernstein 24, Belmont 2
Bethel Christian 22, Cornerstone Christian 14
Bishop Conaty-Loretto 13, St. Genevieve 4
Bonita 4, Alta Loma 2
Bravo 12, Franklin 2
Burbank 5, Burbank Burroughs 3
Cajon 4, Redlands 0
Canyon Springs 11, Banning 1
Carpinteria 9, Hueneme 6
Charter Oak 9, Northview 0
Chavez 16, Grant 3
Compton Early College 14, Dominguez 4
Costa Mesa 10, Orange 1
Covina 10, West Covina 2
Crescenta Valley 4, Arcadia 0
Culver City 8, Mira Costa 4
Diamond Ranch 9, San Dimas 7
Dos Pueblos 4, Ventura 0
Downey 2. Lakewood 1
Eagle Rock 17, Lincoln 1
Eastvale Roosevelt 7, Corona Santiago 2
El Camino Real 9, Taft 2
El Monte 8, Rosemead 6
Faith Baptist 20, Santa Clarita Christian 1
Fullerton 8, Sunny Hills 5
Ganesha 19, Edgewood 2
Garden Grove 11, Godinez 1
Garden Grove Santiago 25, Bolsa Grande 1
Garey 9, Pomona 1
Glendale 5, Hoover 0
Granada Hills 4, Birmingham 0
Granite Hills 14, Adelanto 7
Hemet 7, Valley View 6
Irvine 6, Irvine University 0
King 17, Corona 2
King/Drew 14, Locke 0
La Canada 6, San Marino 3
La Habra 8, Troy 0
Legacy 2, Garfield 1
Loara 12, La Quinta 8
Lompoc Cabrillo 6, Atascadero 2
Marquez 18, Torres 1
Mayfield 2, Chadwick 1
Maywood Academy 20, Sotomayor 16
Moreno Valley 10, Rancho Christian 0
Mountain View 17, Gabrielino 3
Muir 19, Pasadena 2
Norco 12, Corona Centennial 2
Ocean View 15, Westminster 4
Orange Vista 1, Paloma Valley 0
Providence 11, Harvard-Westlake 7
Ramona Convent 10, Sacred Heart of Jesus 9
Redondo Union 2, Palos Verdes 0
Ridgecrest Burroughs 11, Hesperia 5
Rio Mesa 22, Santa Barbara 5
Riverside Poly 3, Temescal Canyon 2
Riverside Prep 12, CIMSA 2
River Springs Charter 24, Public Safety 13
San Clemente 5, Dana Hills 4
San Fernando 12, Van Nuys 0
San Marcos 8, Buena 3
Santa Ana 13, Estancia 2
Santa Ana Calvary Chapel 17, Saddleback 1
Santa Monica 16, Peninsula 3
Segerstrom 16, Katella 5
Sierra Vista 2, Duarte 1
Sonora 4, Buena Park 0
South East 15, Narbonne 3
South Gate 5, Bell 2
Southlands Christian 23, Samueli Academy 8
Sultana 7, Oak Hills 4
Torrance 11, North 3
University Pathways 29, Dymally 9
USC-MAE 22, Animo Bunche 16
Verdugo Hills 5, North Hollywood 2
Vista del Lago 1, Rancho Verde 0
Washington Prep 14, LA Jordan 4
West 2, El Segundo 1
Wiseburn Da Vinci 15, Lawndale 1
Xavier Prep 12, Cathedral City 4
Yucaipa 10, Redlands East Valley 1