Famous Sports Gambling Addiction Stories
In March 2024, Ippei Mizhuara became a household name in the worst way possible.
That month, it was revealed that Mizuhara — who previously was best known for being Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter — had allegedly stolen nearly $17 million from Ohtani to fund his sports gambling addiction, which he had done at an illegal sportsbook operation in Southern California.
While Mizuhara’s story is a cautionary tale (30% of bettors experience problems), he’s not the first prominent sports figure to be brought down by a crippling addiction.
With his case in mind, let’s look at other sports figures who nearly lost it due to gambling.
Phil Mickelson
While Phil Mickelson is one of the most decorated golfers of all time, much of the conversation around the icon in 2023 was around his exploits off the links.
In August 2023, professional gambler Billy Walters published his biography Gambler: Secrets from a LIfe at Risk where he claimed that Mickelson considered a $400,000 bet on the 2012 Ryder Cup — a tournament in which Mickelson was playing.
Walters alleged that Mickelson bet 7,065 times from 2010-14, with losses close to $100 million.
Mickelson denied betting on the Ryder Cup but was candid about his gambling addiction, saying that he took responsibility for his addiction and therapy had a positive impact.
Although Mickelson’s gambling addiction likely didn’t have an impact on his financial health (he’s made more than $800 million across his career), he’s talked at length about how it left him distracted and impacted his ability to be present in the lives of people he cares about.
Charles Barkley
Charles Barkley was candid about his gambling addiction in an interview with Shanon Sharpe on the Club Shay Shay podcast, saying that “he loves to gamble” and has lost over $25 million.
Barkley said there’d be times where he’d be up $300,000 in a night, but would stay at the table in the hopes of winning $1 million, which he says almost never happened. He took two months off from gambling but has since resumed.
“I got such an elation when I won, but when I lost a million I was so depressed because of the money and because of the losing,” Barkley said.
In 2021, Barkley told Mickelson (possibly in jest) that he wants to be “dead broke” when he dies.
“Listen, everybody knows I like to gamble,” Barkley said. “I wanna be dead broke when I keel over, Phil. I don’t want to leave all that money for my free-loading family. I’ve been taking care of them my whole life. I wanna be dead broke at my last breath.”
Barkley has been able to laugh at himself and his gambling, as his poor daily betting picks became a recurring gag on Inside the NBA.
That said, Barkley’s sense of humor around his gambling addiction doesn’t change the fact that it’s a dangerous addiction that ruins lives.
Benjamin ‘Parlay’ Patz
When it comes to gambling, social media never tells the whole story. For every gambler posting a screenshot of their big win, there are countless big losses that are never shown.
No gambling personality embodied that sentiment more than Ben “Parlay” Patz, who rose to fame in 2019 as a 23-year-old gambling personality who won $1.1 million primarily from parlays, an especially addictive type of betting.
But while Parlay Patz was all positivity in public, there was a dark side lingering in the shadows. In 2020, he was arrested and charged with transmitting threats of violence directed at professional and collegiate athletes and their friends and families.
Patz sent more than 300 messages across multiple Instagram accounts to various MLB, NFL and college basketball players.
In 2021, Patz was sentenced to 36 months of probation in federal court after he pleaded guilty to one count of transmitting threats in interstate or foreign commerce. He had six months of home detention along with required pratique in a mental health treatment program.
The court also barred him from gambling. He hasn’t said anything publicly since.
Ippei Mizuhara
One of the biggest sports stories of 2024, Mizuhara went from being a baseball darling to public enemy No. 1 in a short period of time.
Mizuhara first entered the public eye thanks to his job as Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, as he was almost always next to the two-way superstar, with Ohtani even calling Mizuhara his best friend.
But then things changed quickly in March 2024 when Ohtani, Mizuhara and the Los Angeles Dodgers were in South Korea taking on the San Diego Padres. On March 20, ESPN reported that Mizuhara had been fired amid questions about the transfer of $4.5 million of Ohtani’s money to an illegal bookmaking operation, with an Ohtani spokesman saying that the money had been transferred to cover Mizuhara’s debt.
It was later alleged that Mizuhara had stolen nearly $17 million from Ohtani to cover his gambling debts at an illegal sportsbook run by Southern California bookmaker Mathew Bowyer.
According to court documents, Mizuhara regularly bet at Bowyer’s sportsbook using credit, and ended up sending texts like “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!!”
When he ran out of money, he’d steal money from Ohtani’s bank account, at one point calling Ohtani’s bank and impersonating him. Ohtani purportedly had no knowledge of the activity.
While Mizuhara says he never bet on baseball, he displayed all the symptoms associated with a crippling gambling addiction. He bet more than he had and, when faced with the realization of how much debt he’d racked up, decided to bet more instead of working to settle his debt.
Mizuhara was charged with bank and tax fraud, with the bank fraud charge carrying a maximum of 30 years in federal prison, and the tax charge carrying a sentence of up to three years.
Mizuhara claimed that Ohtani had no clue about the gambling and never placed a bet.
Jontay Porter
If Mizuhara’s betting scandal was the top story of 2024, Porter’s situation was a close second.
In March 2024, ESPN reported that the NBA had opened an investigation into Porter for “multiple instances of betting irregularities.” About a month later, the NBA announced Porter received a lifetime ban after an investigation.
The investigation found that Porter bet on games and disclosed confidential information to sports bettors, limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes.
Prior to the Raptors’ game on March 20, Porter disclosed confidential information about his own health status to a bettor, with another Porter associate who was a bettor placing an $80,000 parlay on Porter’s stats to win $1.1 million.
The league also found that Porter placed bets on the NBA from January to March while with the Raptors and their G League affiliate. He bet $54,000 and, while none of the bets involved games he was playing in, he played three parlays that included a Raptors game. One of those parlays included the Raptors losing.
Porter’s scandal is a case of a gambling addiction resulting in someone losing everything.
Porter went undrafted in 2019 and spent parts of four years navigating through the basketball wilderness before latching on with Toronto. But he ruined his shot at following his lifelong dream because he couldn’t stop gambling.
Pete Rose
There’s perhaps no athlete who is more synonymous with gambling than Pete Rose.
On June 27, 1989, Major League Baseball published the Dowd Report, which used research from Special Counsel to the Commissioner John M. Dowd to show that Rose had bet on baseball while working as a player-manager for the Reds in 1987.
While Rose admitted to betting on football, baseball and horse racing, he told MLB that he never bet on baseball.
But Rose’s house of cards began to crumble as Dowd talked to more of Rose’s associates, with the report stating that Rose bet on 52 Reds games in 1987. On Aug. 24, 1989, Rose voluntarily accepted a permanent place on baseball's ineligible list, which makes him ineligible for the Hall of Fame.
Rose’s gambling addiction was back in the headlines recently thanks to Keith O’Brien’s book Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball.
“I think my reporting makes it clear that Pete Rose was addicted to gambling,” O’Brien told The Guardian. “A gambling addict is going to make choices that are destructive. I believe that is why Pete Rose ultimately did place bets on baseball.”
Rose is arguably one of the best players in baseball history (he’s the sport’s all-time leader in hits and games played, among other stats), but he ruined his chance to enjoy the fruits of his labor because of his gambling addiction. Not only did Rose’s gambling addiction ruin the rest of his career and deny himself a chance to make the Hall of Fame, but it also forever changed the way his accomplishments are remembered.
Craig Carton
For 10 years, Craig Carton was sports radio in New York City.
From 2007 to 2017, Carton was the co-host of Boomer and Carton, a morning radio show on WFAN with former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason. But his world came crashing down on Sept. 6, 2017 when he was arrested on criminal charges of securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit those offenses.
Carton was part of a four person group that defrauded $4.8 million from investors by falsely claiming that they had access to millions of dollars of face-value concert tickets through nonexistent agreements with concert promoters. While Carton proved that he bought the tickets, he also used investor money for gambling.
He was eventually convicted of fraud on Nov. 7, 2018 and served some time in prison before being released to a halfway house and eventual house arrest. He completed therapy as a part of his sentence and has since returned to the public eye, as he hosts The Carton Show on Fox Sports 1 and returned to WFAN in 2022 before leaving in 2023.
Carton has been open about his gambling addiction, as he hosts Hello, My Name Is Craig, a podcast where he helps listeners work through gambling addiction.
Art Schlichter
Art Schlichter’s gambling addiction started when he was young. While Schlicther was one of the top quarterback prospects in the country in high school, he also began betting on horse racing at the racetrack at Scioto Downs, a casino outside Columbus, Ohio.
He continued to go to Scioto Downs when he played at Ohio State and switched from betting on horse racing to sports during his junior year of college. By the spring of his junior year, he was thousands of dollars in debt.
The Indianapolis Colts ended up taking Schlichter with the No. 4 pick in the 1982 draft, where his gambling got even more out of hand. He blew his entire $350,000 signing bonus by midseason and ended up owing more than $700,000 to bookies.
In March 1983, with bookies breathing down his neck, he went to the FBI and gave information that helped arrest the bookies.
He was suspended for 13 months by NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle and was released by the Colts during the 1985 season because they thought he was gambling again.
From there, Schlichter bounced around the NFL before joining the Arena Football League, but he didn’t last long in either league because of his gambling addiction. He briefly worked in radio in Las Vegas but was fired after he was caught stealing checks from his boss.
He spent most of the 1990s gambling away money he didn’t have and ended up spending a combined 10 years in jail between 1995 and 2006.
In 2011, Schlichter pleaded guilty to federal charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and filing a false tax return after he gambled away money that people had given him under the pretense of buying prime seats for Ohio State football games. He tested positive for cocaine in 2012 while under house arrest and was eventually sentenced to 10 years, seven months in federal prison.
Schlichter’s gambling addiction left him in a constant state of rock bottom, as he consistently manipulated and swindled those around him along with ruining his career.
Tim Donaghy
The only referee to be caught gambling in North American professional sports, Tim Donaghy bet on games across at least three different NBA seasons. While he used information from other refs to bet on games across the league, he also bet on the spread in games he was officiating.
Donaghy disclosed inside information to the mob and received a total of $300,000 to pass inside information to bookies during his time as a referee. Donaghy pleaded guilty to two federal charges in 2007 and was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
Like every person on this list, Donaghy lost everything due to his gambling addiction, but he was in the unique position of being able to determine the outcome of games.
Donaghy’s gambling addiction also hurt other referees, most notably referee Scott Foster. While Foster exchanged 134 calls with Donaghy during a period where he was betting, the NBA’s investigation proved that Foster did nothing wrong. Still, that association lingers around Foster.
Clinton Portis
While Portis was one of the best running backs in the NFL in the 2000s and earned nearly $45 million in his career, his post-playing days have brought strife due to his gambling addiction.
Although some of his problems stem from mismanagement by his associates, he also racked up a $200,000 debt with MGM in 2011 that went unpaid for years. In total, court filings in 2015 revealed that Portis owed nearly $5 million to various debtors.
Portis’ problems with the MGM stem from him gambling with money he didn’t have, as he expected to pay the debt off once Washington paid him the $8 million he was owed for the 2011 season. But then Portis was cut a month later, leaving him in a financial lurch.
Portis eventually reached an agreement with the casino to pay his debt in installments, but he ran into problems again in 2019 when he was accused of defrauding the league's health program by filing a total of $3.9 million in false claims. Portis ended up pleading guilty in 2021 and was sentenced to six months in prison and six months of house arrest.
Felipe Hernández
Like Schlichter, Hernández gambling addiction was brought to light because of concerns about his personal safety. On July 5, 2021, Hernández, a midfielder for Sporting Kansas City, disclosed to his team that he was concerned about his safety due to his gambling debts.
MLS’ investigation of Hernández found that he had placed bets on two MLS matches. Neither match involved Sporting Kansas City, and officials determined that he didn’t have any inside information on any of the teams playing in the matches.
He was officially suspended on Oct. 8 2021, but was reinstated ahead of the 2022 season. While Hernández’s gambling addiction didn’t end his professional career, it temporarily compromised his personal and professional career enough that he feared for his life.
Amit Patel
As a member of the Jacksonville Jaguars financial department, Amit Patel had plenty of power when it came to distributing the team’s money. With little to no oversight, he took advantage of that system by embezzling more than $22 million from the team over a four year period, with most of the funds going to fuel his gambling addiction.
Patel stole the money by creating fraudulent charges on the club’s virtual credit card and tried to cover his tracks by sending falsified files to the team’s accounting department. While he used some of the money to buy cars, a condo and designer clothes and watches, his lawyer said that Patel gambled away 99 percent of the money he stole.
“Almost the entirety of the funds Mr. Patel used from the VCC were spent on the gambling websites and efforts to win money back, with the anticipation he would repay the funds with the winnings and make the Jaguars whole,” his lawyer said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Patel’s compulsive gambling only exacerbated the situation, and he continued to misappropriate funds in an effort to have gambling winnings offset his significant losses.”
In another interview with The Athletic, Patel described his addiction as a “mental demon” and that he had been addicted to gambling since the late 2000s. He says that he gambled most of his money with DraftKings and FanDuel, with the latter adding 10 percent to his account for every $600,000 he spent.
Patel’s gambling addiction ended up taking everything from him, as he was fired from his job and sentenced to more than six years in prison.
Image by Ashley Landis / Associated Press