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00:00The federal indictment of Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Class A and Luis Ortiz has shaken Major League Baseball
00:05and raised serious questions about the growing intersection between sports and legalized gambling.
00:11Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say the two pitchers took bribes as part of a scheme to rig bets on individual pitches,
00:17a case that could carry massive legal and ethical consequences for the league.
00:21To help us understand what this indictment means legally and how it could change the way major leagues handle betting and data integrity,
00:28we're joined by sports and entertainment attorney Dan Lust, also the host of the Conduct Detrimental podcast and a leading voice on sports law.
00:37Dan, long time no see. How you doing, man?
00:40I'm good. Good. A pleasure.
00:42And let's just say, you know, my spider sense has been tingling that we're going to get more and more of these.
00:46So certainly happy to be on and, you know, appreciate the call.
00:50Anytime. Very interesting time in sports, especially around the legality and sports betting and how this impacts leagues and all of that.
00:56But Dan, from a legal standpoint, what stands out to you the most in this indictment?
01:01Are federal prosecutors essentially accusing these players of game fixing or is this being framed more as a fraud and bribery case?
01:09Yeah, it's a little bit of both.
01:10I think if you do the math, each guy's looking at three different charges, combination of bribery, fraud, money laundering.
01:17It's decades in prison is what these guys are looking at.
01:20But you asked me what stands out the most in this day and age in 2025.
01:24We have this technological component, you know, and for lack of a better term, it's when you hear in the news, the suspicious betting activity.
01:31And that's when, you know, these sites, these third parties can look at and see if something looks odd.
01:36If an odd amount of money is being wagered on a particular prop or particular event, and that's based on individual users, you know, normal tendencies, right?
01:45If someone's generally betting $100 a game and all of a sudden they're betting $10,000 on a particular event, you know, but that's the type of evidence that's just generally hard to overcome.
01:55So, again, everyone's innocent until proven guilty, but that technological component, that irregularity in the betting patterns, that's been hard to overcome in terms of the public sense.
02:07Yeah, I mean, that's what stands out to me.
02:09These are certainly the betting patterns, the text messages.
02:13It doesn't look good at the outset.
02:14Yeah, none of this looks really good.
02:16As you said, everybody is innocent until proven guilty.
02:19But we have to talk about this in terms of Major League Baseball as well, Dan, because the league, they have embraced legal sports betting through partnerships and then prop betting expansion in recent years.
02:29Does that increase the league's legal responsibility to monitor player activity or report suspicious wagering patterns?
02:36Yeah, I mean, I would think so.
02:38And I was, I speak at, obviously, and Dexter, you know, I'm on law school panels.
02:42I teach at law school.
02:43And we have this conversation about ethics.
02:45I think the toothpaste is out of the tube, so to speak.
02:47You're not pulling, you know, DraftKings, Vandal, you're not pulling these big markets off the table.
02:53And the question is, what does Major League Baseball do to combat this?
02:56And you could talk about, you know, individual player tops, be it, you know, Jonte Porter in the NBA or what's going on with Terry Rozier in the UFC with particular actors.
03:04The problem is that these bets are occurring with like, we'll call it like microprops, one player doing one thing that doesn't involve coordinated team activity.
03:12You know, and it's going to take major league baseball, the NFL, the NBA, one of these major sports to lay down the hammer on a particular actor and to show that this technological platform, this suspicious betting patterns, they'll catch anything, right?
03:25You can give your tip to somebody, right?
03:28To one, you know, bad actor on the other side.
03:30But if that person shares it with two, three, four, five people, and we can talk about Class A and Ortiz specifically here, you know, those betting patterns are going to get flagged.
03:38And that's going to go to Major League Baseball, to the NBA, to the NFL before the actual event itself occurs, because you have to put the bets in ahead of time.
03:46So, you know, I think Major League Baseball has to set an example at some point.
03:50And again, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but, you know, maybe this is the example that they found someone with their hand caught in the cookie jar, and they could set that example.
03:57But until that happens, I don't think players have gotten the message at this point.
04:01Yeah, it is going to be interesting to see how, if Major League Baseball has to win this situation, sets that example, how harsh of a penalty that could be.
04:08And that kind of goes to where I wanted to get next with you, Dan, which is if these allegations are proven true,
04:13what kind of penalties could Class A and Ortiz be facing, both in terms of federal sentencing and then also disciplinary action for Major League Baseball?
04:23Yeah, so, I mean, we'll cross them at the same time, right?
04:25Like, Major League Baseball doesn't need a criminal conviction in order to suspend someone for life, right?
04:31To ban them and not just give them the Pete Rose status to ban someone from the Hall of Fame, to ban them as an active player.
04:36Class A is a two-time reliever of the year, a three-time All-Star.
04:39You know, he is a big name in Major League Baseball.
04:41Well, Ortiz certainly to a lesser extent, but if you're going to send that message, I mean, you've got to do it early and often.
04:48So, certainly from a Major League Baseball perspective, these players have been placed on administrative leave, paid leave.
04:54I don't expect either of them to be playing next year and moving forward, so that could be a lifetime ban.
05:00It could be a year or two, but I'm not rooting for it, depending on your perspective.
05:05But if these charges are found and there seems to be some credibility, I think a lifetime ban is certainly well within play.
05:12And on the criminal side, right, you just stack up these money laundering charges, these fraud charges, these, you know, these bribery charges.
05:18You're looking at decades in prison if you have a conviction.
05:21And certainly, you know, we'd be remiss to point out that both players have denied the allegations,
05:25and they said the payment transactions are for lawful activity.
05:30But, you know, this irregular betting pattern, I think, still stands out.
05:33So, it's going to be a very hard hill to climb.
05:36Obviously, again, innocent until proven guilty.
05:38But this irregular betting pattern, you know, these sites flag it for a reason.
05:41And it certainly could have false positives.
05:43But it seems like, from the evidence to do so far, this happened on a number of occasions.
05:47And on those occasions, when you match up the irregular bets to the actual pitches,
05:51the pitches themselves were irregular.
05:53So, it's just, it's a very hard battle at this point for both players.
05:57And, Dan, there's also some time going back on this, because we're going back to some of the stuff going back to as far as 2023 that we're seeing.
06:03So, there's a whole bunch of time that the feds have been looking at this
06:07and looking at both of these pitchers involved in this, allegedly.
06:10How, in your eyes, when you look at this, this isn't new for sports betting scandals in sports,
06:16but how does this case compare to historical sports scandals like Pete Rose, the 1919 Black Sox,
06:22or in the NBA, Tim Donahue, with his refereeing scandal in terms of the legal implications and the threat to a sports integrity?
06:29How does this one compare to some of those?
06:32Yeah, this is the interesting thing.
06:34And, you know, I tell my students all the time, like, people can blame, you know,
06:37the legalization of gambling for all these activities.
06:39But, you know, the truth is, like, this stuff has been happening for years,
06:42going back to Arizona State or Boston College or, you know, CUNY.
06:45Like, there's been point-shaving scandals for years.
06:48But it's the technology that's being able to catch it on this instance.
06:51And I will say, you know, Dexter, what I think is unique to this story and to the NBA story,
06:56and even to the John Tate-Porter saga that was a year prior, are these individual player props.
07:00Like, you can talk about Tim Donaghy, Pete Rose, the Black Sox scandal.
07:04Those are a team throwing the World Series or points being shaved off a game.
07:09Those are kind of traditional bets, money line bets, red bets, over-under bets.
07:13These are micro-player props that kind of, you could call them exotic bets.
07:17But those have really risen in this era of DraftKings and FanDuel in the legalization era,
07:22you know, in the last 10 years.
07:24So there really is no, like, you can bring up Pete Rose.
07:26Yes, it involved gambling, but it's one particular prop that's being bet on,
07:31be it John Tate-Porter, unders, or Terry Rozier, unders.
07:34That's one player dictating the result.
07:37So there really is no historical comp because player props weren't bet at this frequency
07:40up until, right, the last 10 years.
07:42So it's fairly new.
07:44But in that sense, it really doesn't involve, like, collaborative effort.
07:47If a pitcher, if the prop here for Class A or Ortiz is, will a pitcher throw,
07:51and this is what was alleged to be gambled on, right, will a pitcher throw a pitch under
07:5595 miles an hour, or will it be an off-speed pitch versus a fastball?
08:00Like, it doesn't require coordination of any of the other eight players in the field.
08:03It just requires the pitcher to make a decision.
08:06So, you know, that's very tough to police.
08:08It's very tough to find out because it's really just that one player as opposed to
08:12a coordinated effort, which you need on a point-shaving scandal, you know, in basketball
08:16or the Black Sox allegedly throwing the World Series way back when.
08:19Like, you need coordinated effort of every player on that team.
08:22So, yeah, I think it's hard to find a true historical comp to this.
08:26Yeah, it is.
08:26And that also is what makes it a bit scarier in this situation, too, right, because of
08:31the fact that you have a situation where it's just one player that can impact this.
08:37And it's just really scary.
08:38But you made a statement earlier in saying that the toothpaste is out of the tube here,
08:42which I would agree.
08:43So when you look big picture at this, Dan, it's the last thing for me.
08:47Do you believe this case could force a reevaluation of how leagues and sportsbooks handle micro-betting
08:53on individual plays or pitches, given how easy, as you just kind of pointed out, it could
08:58be to manipulate?
09:00Do you think this could, you know, maybe force a reevaluation of how leagues and sportsbooks
09:04handle this?
09:05I think you have to.
09:08And I think you could, you know, there is a comp for this.
09:09You could look at the NBA, right?
09:11Jonte Porter, who we've referenced a couple of times, was a two-way player.
09:14And for lack of a better term, that's basically like a minor leaguer being shifted between,
09:17you know, the G League and the pros.
09:19And at that period of time, you know, these websites offered lines on any active player.
09:23You know, the over-under line would be set at like one and a half, right, or a half a point.
09:26Will they score a point?
09:28And those players at the end of the bench that are on two-way salaries or, you know,
09:32minimum salaries, those players certainly have more incentive to bet because they're
09:36not making, right, like LeBron's salary and the tens of millions of dollars.
09:40They're on minimum salaries, and they might not even be in the NBA in the next year.
09:43So, you know, in the NBA in the wake of the Jonte Porter saga, I think tightened up their
09:47prop lines, right?
09:48They're only offering lines on, we'll say, the top eight guys in the rotation or seven guys,
09:51but they're not really putting in the guys at the end of the bench.
09:54You know, when you go to a Major League Baseball game now and, you know, you could
09:57just go on DraftKings and FanDuel, they offer live odds on any pitcher that has the ball
10:01in their hands.
10:02And who needs that, right?
10:03Do we need to be able to bet on every single pitch, fastball, curveball?
10:07Like, do we need that?
10:08Is that what brings gamblers to the table, the ability to live bet every pitch as opposed
10:13to betting, you know, the overall outcome of the game?
10:16So I think baseball is going to have to look certainly at what basketball has done, and
10:20I think football has to do the same in hockey and really kind of limit the amount of
10:25action to players, you know, that certainly aren't making the money.
10:29The interesting thing here, and Dexter, this is why there's some comms to Terry Rozier.
10:33Terry Rozier had made tens of millions of dollars in the NBA.
10:36Class A was a three-time All-Star, two-time reliever of the year.
10:38He had made his money.
10:39And that's what's a little dangerous.
10:41Like, Ortiz was not, Ortiz was closer to a minimum-level guy.
10:45So you kind of get it from that standpoint.
10:46But when guys making tens of millions of dollars make the decision to make a couple thousand
10:51in exchange for a bet, as is alleged here, that's got to be pretty scary.
10:56So baseball, I think, really has to look very closely at how they limit this action, and
11:02they have to find ways to disincentivize players for partaking in this activity.
11:05I think you hit the nail on the head there, Dan, in terms of guys who are making millions
11:09of dollars that are willing to then get in this.
11:11And the place that we didn't even get into, but it's another conversation for another day,
11:15is you wonder how this could then affect collegiate athletics, right?
11:19If players who are making millions of dollars on a professional level can be manipulated into
11:23this kind of behavior, then you wonder how it could affect amateur or college athletics.
11:28It shall be interesting to see.
11:29But a good conversation, Dan.
11:31We appreciate the time.
11:32Everybody check out Dan Lust, a sports and entertainment lawyer, one of the best in the
11:36business when it comes to talking about this.
11:38And Dan, I appreciate you joining us to give us your perspective legally on its whole situation
11:44with the baseball indictment of Emmanuel Class A and Luis Ortiz.
11:48Thank you so much, my friend.
11:50My pleasure.
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