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Hawaiian baseball coach Donny Kadokawa took the stand as one of the government’s key witnesses in their case against former Major League Baseball player Yasiel Puig.
In November 2022, Puig agreed to plead guilty to lying to federal law enforcement officers regarding bets that he placed with an illegal sports betting operation. He faces up to five years in prison. He would go on to change his plea.
In 2025, a federal appeals court agreed with a trial court ruling that Puig's plea deal had not been accepted by a court.
Kadokawa testified on Day 2 of Puig's trial.
The government claims Puig lied to federal agents in 2022 when he denied he had been involved with the underground gambling organization that the bookmaker, former minor league baseball player Wayne Nix, operated in Southern California.
Kadokawa testified that he had befriended Puig in early 2019 and, as a favor, agreed to place one or two bets on Puig’s behalf with Nix’s illegal gambling ring.
According to Kadokawa, Puig went on to demand that he place bets with Nix's group on tennis, football and basketball games on a nearly daily basis while slow paying on gambling debts that grew in only a matter of weeks. Kadokawa expressed concerns that Nix's group would hold him personally responsible for Puig's mounting debts, described in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“It was getting too out of hand for me,” Kadokawa said under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Juan Rodriguez. “I didn’t know where this was going.”
Kadokawa referenced the $237,000 Puig allegedly owed Nix in June of 2019.
"Nix wanted me to take care of it ASAP. At this point it was extremely aggressive.”
Nix pleaded guilty in 2022 to running a sports betting business in California but is yet to be sentenced.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
