{"id":283342,"date":"2025-11-14T21:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T21:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/283342\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T21:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T21:21:08","slug":"illegal-bets-in-the-dominican-republic-come-under-scrutiny-after-arrest-of-mlb-pitchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/283342\/","title":{"rendered":"Illegal bets in the Dominican Republic come under scrutiny after arrest of MLB pitchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Cleveland Guardians pitcher Emmanuel Clase during a game against the San Francisco Giants in San Francisco on June 17, 2025.Jeff Chiu\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Baseball and bets go hand-in-hand in the Dominican Republic, 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 Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz. <\/p>\n

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 US$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

Cathal Kelly: Legalized gambling’s algorithms unveil the dark side of pro sports<\/a><\/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

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Cleveland Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz leaves Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday in New York.Yuki Iwamura\/The Associated Press<\/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 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 US$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 offered fans a 1-million peso ($21,860) wager on social media in favour of the team that went on to win the championship \u2014 he ended up with 15 million pesos ($327,913) on the line. That included a 2-million peso ($43,720) 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Cleveland Guardians pitcher Emmanuel Clase during a game against the San Francisco Giants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,462,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,82,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-283342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-mlb","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283342","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=283342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}