Yasiel Puig's go-between with illegal bookie testifies he was haunted by slugger's debts
Donny Kadokawa is one of the key witnesses in Yasiel Puig's trial over charges the former MLB star lied to federal agents about his dealings with an illegal bookmaker.
by Edvard Pettersson, Court House News, January 21, 2026
LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Hawaii baseball coach testified on Wednesday how he got trapped between former Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Yasiel Puig’s insatiable sports betting needs and an illegal bookmaker whom he used to place bets with on behalf of Puig in 2019.
Donny Kadokawa took the stand as one of the government’s key witnesses in their case against Puig, who they claim lied to federal agents in 2022 when he denied he had been involved with the underground gambling organization that the bookmaker, Wayne Nix, operated in Southern California.
Kadokawa told the jury in downtown Los Angeles 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.
But within weeks, Puig demanded that Kadokawa place almost daily bets with Nix’s group on tennis, football and basketball games while he was extremely slow in paying his gambling debts.
“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.”
Because he didn’t know much about Nix and his partners in the gambling racket, Kadokawa testified, he was worried they would hold him responsible for Puig’s gambling debts and he feared for the safety of himself and his family.
Nix, a former minor league baseball player, pleaded guilty in 2022 to running a sports betting business in California — where sports gambling is illegal — that was used by high-profile athletes as well as coaches, broadcasters and analysts. He’s yet to be sentenced.
During the Internal Revenue Service and Homeland Security’s investigation of Nix and his cronies, they discovered that Puig had been one of his clients. Federal agents interviewed Puig in 2022, when he was playing in South Korea, but he denied that he had anything to do with Nix.
When he was charged with lying to the agents, he initially agreed to plead guilty. However, when the time came to enter a plea before Chief U.S. District Judge Donny Gee, who’s now presiding over his trial, Puig reneged on the deal.
Kadokawa, who runs baseball camps and clinics in Hawaii, testified that Puig had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt within just a few weeks, and that Nix was haunting him daily about getting paid.
“Nix wanted me to take care of it ASAP,” Kadokawa said in reference to $237,000 Puig owed in late June 2019. “At this point it was extremely aggressive.”
The illegal bookmaker allowed gamblers to bet on credit with the understanding that they collect their winnings, or pay their debts, in cash once a week. However, according to Kadokawa, Puig’s tardy payments while still demanding to place more bets with Nix was a constant source of stress and took up all of his time.
In early July 2019, Puig got two cashier checks of $100,000 each to pay another client of Nix who was owed money. Nix then gave Puig direct access to Sands Island Sports, a Costa Rica-based website Nix’s group used to facilitate their gambling business.
Prosecutors claim that from July 4 through Sept. 29, 2019, Puig placed another 900 bets on sports games with Nix.
Kadokawa admitted that he got a 25% commission of the net profit Nix made from Puig’s losses. He told the jury, however, that he handed most of that money back to Nix to cover some of Puig’s losses because he was worried that he’d be blamed for the unpaid debts.
In 2022, Kadokowo pleaded guilty to two counts of filing false tax returns. His plea agreement was filed under seal, and he’s yet to be sentenced, presumably because the government wanted him to testify against Puig before asking for a lenient sentence.
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Jan 27, 2026: Yasiel Puig denied illegal gambling during 2019 naturalization interview | Courthouse News Service