Two MLB Pitchers Go on Trial in Brooklyn Over $460,000 in Prop Bets

$400,000 Came Off One Pitcher’s Deliveries

The case sits in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, before Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto. The indictment was filed under seal on 5 November 2025 and unsealed four days later.

Pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz are each charged with four crimes. Those include wire fraud conspiracy, honest services fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to influence sporting competitions by bribery. The first three of these crimes are punishable by up to 20 years. The bribery conspiracy count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

According to the charging documents, at least $400,000 of the money was taken from bets placed on Clase’s pitching between 2023 and 2025. At least $60,000 was taken from betting on Ortiz in June 2025. The superseding indictment filed in February said that the total winnings from the bettors involved in the scheme was a minimum of $450,000. The Associated Press, citing the charging papers, reports at least $460,000.

What the pitchers allegedly received was far smaller: several thousand dollars in payoffs. Clase was four seasons into a five-year, $20 million contract when the charges surfaced, averaging $4 million a year. The bettors’ take on his pitches equals about 10% of one season’s pay, a 15M calculation.

"As alleged, the defendants sold that trust to gamblers by fixing pitches," said US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. when the indictment was unsealed.

Both pitchers have pleaded not guilty and are presumed innocent. Their lawyers are expected to argue that the two varied pitch placement to beat hitters, not to serve bettors. Ortiz’s lawyer Chris Georgalis has said his client "is innocent of the charges related to two pitches he threw".

A third defendant, alleged bettor Robinson Vasquez Germosen, is also being tried alongside the pitchers.

The Markets at Issue Are Single Deliveries

US sports betting has been a state matter since the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on it in 2018. Since then, it has split down to the individual play. The alleged scheme here did not involve betting on the outcome of games. It involved betting on the speed and outcome of a single pitch. That is a market that can be influenced by a single player.

A Pennsylvania case of illegal payments involved the same type of market design. That has been an uncomfortable topic for the gambling industry for years. A starting pitcher cannot fix a result. He can miss a target by six inches, and systems built around match outcomes do not see it.

Pretrial rulings have narrowed the fight. Matsumoto admitted as evidence English translations of voice memos, videos, and Spanish-language text messages. Matsumoto temporarily blocked evidence that Clase allegedly owed taxes. The prosecution also told the court they would not have a key cooperating gambler testify.

15M counted the gap between unsealing and trial: 358 days.

What This Means

• Operators: the exposure is micro-props, not match markets. Books carrying pitch speed, first-pitch and single-delivery outcomes should look at stake caps and alerting before a verdict makes it a political question.
• Affiliates: anyone monetising US baseball props should assume the market list shrinks. Kentucky already has a proposal to restrict certain player wagers, so build landing pages that survive a state pulling pitch-level markets.
• Providers: integrity feeds priced around match outcomes miss a player blowing one target. Operators will start asking what you actually detect.

What’s Next

A month of trial puts a verdict in early December. A federal evidence rule on prior inconsistent statements changes on 1 December. Ortiz has a stay motion and a mandamus petition pending at the Second Circuit.

Source: US Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, "Two Current Major League Baseball Players Charged in Sports Betting and Money Laundering Conspiracy"