By AMY TAXIN, Associated Press

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California bookmaker who took thousands of sports bets from the former interpreter for baseball star Shohei Ohtani was sentenced to just over a year in prison Friday.

Mathew Bowyer, now 50, had pleaded guilty a year ago to running an illegal gambling business, money laundering and filing a false tax return. He was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison.

He will later be subjected to two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $1.6 million in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service, which his lawyer said he’s already paid.

“The bottom line is, I am remorseful. I have made many poor choices in my life,” Bowyer told the court before sentencing, his voice trembling.

Federal prosecutors wanted Bowyer sentenced to 15 months in prison for running the scheme that placed hundreds of millions of dollars in bets and netted thousands of dollars each day. They said Bowyer could have faced a longer sentence but shouldn’t thanks to his significant assistance in their investigations.

The prosecutor declined to comment after Friday’s hearing.

U.S. District Judge John W. Holcomb said the sentence could have been longer, but both the government and Bowyer’s lawyer sought reductions.

Holcomb said he was impressed by Bowyer’s recent efforts to assist gambling addicts and the overwhelming support shown by Bowyer’s family and friends, more than a dozen who were in the courtroom Friday, but said he felt some prison time was necessary due to the tax crime.

“Despite the significant mitigation, there are consequences for committing these crimes,” Holcomb said.

Diane Bass, Bowyer’s attorney, wanted her client to be spared prison time entirely because of his “extraordinary acceptance of responsibility.” In a letter to the court, the father of five from San Juan Capistrano, California, said he began gambling as a teen by playing poker and betting on video games, and it later spiraled out of control.

“It is so easy to gamble everything away and fall into despair,” Bowyer wrote. “I am very sorry and embarrassed that I facilitated such dangerous risk-taking.”

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The case against Bowyer is part of a broader federal probe into illegal sports gambling that led to the arrest of Ohtani’s former Japanese language interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, who is currently serving a nearly five-year sentence for bank and tax fraud after stealing nearly $17 million from the Los Angeles Dodgers player.

Authorities said Bowyer ran an illegal gambling business for at least five years in Southern California and Las Vegas and took wagers from more than 700 bettors including Mizuhara, who had long worked with Ohtani and was regularly seen by his side.

While Mizuhara’s winnings totaled over $142 million, which he deposited in his own bank account and not Ohtani’s, his losing bets were around $183 million — a net loss of nearly $41 million. Investigators said Mizhuara wagered on sports other than baseball. Authorities said Ohtani was a victim in the case.

Bowyer cooperated with investigators in their prosecution of Mizuhara and in a case against the head of a large sports gambling business, federal prosecutors wrote in court filings. They said his “significant, timely, and credible” assistance helped authorities obtain two separate convictions.

Since then, Bowyer has been addressing his own gambling addiction and helping others overcome theirs, Bass wrote in court filings. He has also repaid $1.6 million in taxes, she said.

Operating an unlicensed betting business is a federal crime. Sports gambling is illegal in California, while most states and the District of Columbia allow some form of it.

Sports-betting scandals have made headlines in recent years, including one that led Major League Baseball to ban a player for life last year for the first time since Pete Rose was barred in 1989.

The league’s gambling policy prohibits players and team employees from wagering on baseball, even legally. MLB also bans betting on other sports with illegal or offshore bookmakers.

The league last year banned San Diego Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano and suspended four other players for betting on baseball legally. Marcano became the first active player in a century banned for life because of gambling.

Rose, whose playing days were already over, agreed to his ban in 1989 after an investigation found that he had placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985 to 1987 while playing for and managing the team.

In Nevada, the case against Bowyer led gaming regulators to issue a $10.5 million fine against the Resorts World Casino on the Las Vegas strip. It was the second-largest fine handed down by the state’s gaming commission and settled a complaint accusing the casino of welcoming people with ties to illegal bookmaking.

By REBECCA SANTANA and ELLIOT SPAGAT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration plans to surge officers to Chicago for an immigration crackdown in its latest move to expand the federal law enforcement presence in major Democratic-run cities, according to two U.S. officials.

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The operation in the country’s third-largest city is expected to last about 30 days and could start as early as Sept. 5, a Department of Homeland Security official told The Associated Press on Friday. Another U.S. official said the timing for what could be a sustained immigration enforcement effort resembling this summer’s operations in Los Angeles is awaiting final approval.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been made public.

Chicago is home to a large immigrant population, and both the city and the state of Illinois have some of the country’s strongest rules against cooperating with federal government immigration enforcement efforts. That has often put the city and the state at odds with Trump’s administration as it tries to carry out his mass deportation agenda.

The Trump administration asked the military this week for use of the Naval Station Great Lakes, north of Chicago, to support immigration enforcement.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies would take part in the planned Chicago operation, according to the federal officials who spoke to The Associated Press. Unlike the recent federal takeover of policing in Washington, it’s is not expected to rely on the National Guard or military and is focused exclusively on immigration instead of being cast as part of a broad campaign against crime.

The Republican administration is likely to face resistance to any operation from the region’s top Democratic officials, as it has in California from Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, like Newsom, has been trading barbs with Trump and his allies.

A person checks a cell phone while waiting to talk to representatives during an ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, hiring fair Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Pritzker said this week that Chicago doesn’t want military intervention to fight crime. On Friday, the Democrat noted that ICE is a civilian law enforcement agency and can legally operate in the city, “but we don’t appreciate when they mistreat our residents, many of whom have been here for decades.”

“We now have a president and a federal government that’s going after them, hunting people down and disappearing them off the streets,” Pritzker said after a school visit in the city’s south suburbs. “Men with masks are grabbing people off the streets and taking them away. That’s just shameful.”

The Department of Homeland Security said this week that it has made 5,000 immigration arrests in the Los Angeles area since launching a sustained crackdown in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area June 6. Authorities are undeterred by a temporary court order prohibiting racial profiling in Los Angeles, which the administration has challenged before the Supreme Court.

“Make no mistake: If you are here illegally, we will find you, arrest you and send you back. This is just the beginning,” Secretary Kristi Noem said when announcing the arrest milestone in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles operation has been marked by large, lightning-quick shows of force by heavily armed, masked agents in unmarked cars and civilian dress, often at Home Depots and car washes. The Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles said this week that 15% of Mexican citizens arrested so far work in construction followed by car washes at 13%, based on hundreds of interviews it has conducted.

Spagat reported from San Diego. Associated Press writer John O’Connor contributed from Springfield, Ill.

By SAM McNEIL

BRUSSELS (AP) — European defense ministers pledged Friday to ramp up support for Ukraine and increase pressure on Russia, a day after a Russian air assault on Kyiv killed 23 people and badly damaged a European diplomatic compound.

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Outrage over the attack propelled Europe’s leaders to condemn Russia even before Friday’s meeting and call for tougher measures on Moscow like seizing frozen assets, further sanctions and increasing support for Ukraine’s military and membership in the European Union.

“Everybody understands that, considering how (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is mocking the peace efforts, the only thing that works is pressure,” said Kaja Kallas, foreign policy chief for the European Union.

They also discussed European troops’ deployment in Ukraine to guarantee security and monitor a peace that seems distant as American efforts to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia appear stalled.

Kyiv’s European allies are looking to set up a force that could backstop any peace agreement, and a coalition of 30 countries, including European nations, Japan and Australia, has signed up to support the initiative. Kallas said that in terms of security guarantees for Ukraine, the U.S. is demanding that Europe carry “the lion’s share” of the burden.

Military chiefs are figuring out how that security force might work. The role that the U.S. might play is unclear. Trump has ruled out sending U.S. troops to help defend Ukraine against Russia.

On Thursday, two missiles landed about 50 meters from an EU diplomatic mission in Kyiv, shattering the office’s windows and doors but causing no injuries there. The EU summoned Russia’s envoy in Brussels, Karen Malayan, and told her that damages to the mission “are serious and constitute a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” said Anitta Hipper, an EU foreign policy spokersperson.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on airstrikes against Ukraine on Friday afternoon at the request of Ukraine and five European council members — Britain, France, Slovenia, Denmark and Greece. Two of Ukraine’s top envoys were set to meet Friday with the Trump administration regarding mediation.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Thursday’s attack on Kyiv.

She said that Trump “was not happy about this news, but he was also not surprised.”

Leavitt noted that Ukraine has also launched effective assaults on Russia’s oil industry in recent weeks.

“Perhaps both sides of this war are not ready to end it themselves,” Leavitt said. “The president wants it to end, but the leaders of these two countries … must want it to end as well.”

In Copenhagen, Kallas said defense ministers from across the 27-nation bloc discussed increasing sanctions on Russia, ramping up defense supplies to Ukraine’s army and European contribution to postwar security guarantees, which could include EU training missions into Ukraine once a ceasefire is in place.

At a news conference following the meeting, Kallas said that the ministers had discussed ways to work around Hungary’s refusal to back Ukraine. She said the EU has 6.6 billion euros blocked by Hungary’s veto that could potentially be sent to Ukraine via NATO’s new Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List approved by Trump.

On Thursday, the United States approved a $825 million arms sale to Ukraine that will include extended-range missiles and related equipment to boost its defensive capabilities.

Lithuania’s Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė said the attack on Kyiv on Thursday shows that hope now for peace is “naive” and that “all Putin is doing is really stalling, actually cheaply buying time to kill more people and to imitate sort of willingness to maybe stop his own murderous actions.”

She said Europe must deal with Russia more forcefully, like seizing frozen Russian assets.

“That is actually one power that we are not using enough yet,” she said. “Over 200 billion of Russian assets would be extremely helpful in both pumping this money in Ukrainian defense industry and buying American weapons.”

Simon Harris, Ireland’s defense minister, said more must be done to force Russia to end the war.

“It’s imperative that those of us in the European Union now consider further sanctions, what more measures can be taken to increase the pressure on Russia to end this brutal and aggressive war on Ukraine and the huge impact that that’s having on civilians,” he said.

European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen began a tour of EU nations bordering Russia or Belarus on Friday, including visits to arms factories and border installations. She met Friday with Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina and toured a drone manufacturer.