{"id":282568,"date":"2025-11-14T12:49:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T12:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/282568\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T12:49:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T12:49:17","slug":"illegal-bets-in-the-dominican-republic-come-under-scrutiny-after-mlb-pitchers-arrested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/282568\/","title":{"rendered":"Illegal bets in the Dominican Republic come under scrutiny after MLB pitchers arrested"},"content":{"rendered":"

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) \u2014 Baseball and bets go hand-in-hand in the Dominican Republic<\/a>, where professional athletes, musicians and even legislators go public with their wagers.<\/p>\n

But for every legal bet in the Caribbean country, officials say there are countless more illegal ones.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a widespread, multimillion-dollar industry that has come under scrutiny following U.S. federal indictments of Cleveland Guardians pitchers<\/a> Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz. They are accused of taking bribes from unnamed sports bettors in the Dominican Republic to throw certain pitches and help those bettors win at least $460,000, according to an indictment unsealed Sunday in New York. Ortiz and Clase have both pleaded not guilty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The accusations have dismayed and embarrassed many in the players\u2019 native country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe case of Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz tarnishes the image of Dominican baseball players,\u201d said Jos\u00e9 de los Santos, a fan of Dominican and Major League Baseball. \u201cActions of that nature put Dominican and Latino players in the spotlight.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DR has 3,500 registered betting shops, and those are just the legal ones<\/p>\n

Sports betting shops are widespread in the Dominican Republic, a country of more than 11 million people where baseball is king.<\/p>\n

According to data from the Dominican Association of Sports Betting Shops, there are about 3,500 registered businesses, and countless more illegal ones.<\/p>\n

Quico Tabar, head of the country\u2019s national lottery who was tasked by the president to regulate gambling, recently stated in a public letter that officials have been working for years to regulate betting shops but that \u201ccircumstances beyond our control\u201d have not allowed that to happen. He did not elaborate.<\/p>\n

For Raymond Jim\u00e9nez, a self-described frequent sports gambler, it\u2019s all the same.<\/p>\n

He said he chooses the biggest and closest businesses that allow big wagers, regardless of whether they\u2019re legal or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know of any illegal betting shops,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Jim\u00e9nez said most bets in the Dominican Republic focus on sports including MLB, NBA and NFL games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been gambling since 1998, when I was underage,\u201d Jim\u00e9nez said. \u201cI used to jump the school fence to go into a betting shop at 14 years old. I\u2019ve heard everything, from athletes who sell themselves to gamblers to others who bet against them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gambling persists amid corruption<\/p>\n

Legislators in the Dominican Republic are debating a bill that would create a new entity to regulate and oversee gambling and establish penalties for non-compliance.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, chatter about the Clase and Ortiz cases<\/a> continues to dominate the news and social media, as does the case of Oscar Chalas, the Dominican Republic\u2019s former director of casinos and gambling. He reached a plea deal with prosecutors in late October and admitted responsibility in collecting money from illegal betting shops to allow them to keep operating.<\/p>\n

Chalas told a judge that each illegal shop paid up to $100 a month, but that he didn\u2019t remember the total amount collected because there were \u201cso many\u201d of them. He also claimed that a former treasury minister knew and approved of the scheme, according to local media reports.<\/p>\n

The pace of legal and illegal gambling is only expected to surge as local teams and fans prepare for the Dominican Republic\u2019s Professional Baseball League final early next year.<\/p>\n

One of the country\u2019s most famous public bets involving the local league took place earlier this year. Hall of Famer and former Red Sox star David Ortiz<\/a> offered fans a 1 million peso ($16,000) wager on social media in favor of the team that went on to win the championship \u2014 he ended up with 15 million pesos ($240,000) on the line. That included a 2 million peso ($32,000) bet with Dominican urban singer Bulin 47, but Ortiz forgave him after winning: \u201cYou\u2019re good to those who are poor,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/MLB<\/a><\/p>\n

Mart\u00edn Adames, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) \u2014 Baseball and bets go hand-in-hand in the Dominican Republic, where professional athletes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-282568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}