Ippei Mizuhara, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ former interpreter for star player Shohei Ohtani, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of bank and tax fraud following his actions while employed with the MLB franchise.
Mizuhara allegedly stole close to $17 million from Ohtani to pay off roughly $41 million of gambling debt. He made multiple $500,000 deposits into market accounts at Resort World casinos, based in California, which currently does not have legally licensed online sports betting. These accounts are linked to an associate of bookmaker Matthew Bowyer, who is currently under federal investigation.
How Mizuhara committed fraud
Back in 2018, Mizuhara assisted Ohtani with opening bank accounts in Arizona. One of these accounts received the superstar’s MLB salary, which led to Mizuhara siphoning funds by allegdly changing the security protocols, email, and phone number of the account to go directly to him instead of Ohtani.
These actions helped keep the wire transfers, verified by the bank, from being flagged for suspicious activity. Mizuhara then went on to impersonate Ohtani at the bank more than 20 times, per the former interpreter’s plea agreement. He’s also admitted to falsifying his tax returns in 2022 after Mizuhara began getting into gambling debt in 2021. Mizuhara underreported his income by more than $4 million.
He’s currently free on an unsecured $25,000 bond, or a signature bond, but he has to fulfill certain terms and conditions while awaiting his arraignment scheduled for May 14.
Ohtani awareness
Mizuhara’s gambling addiction while wagering on an unregulated sportsbook began in September 2021. This quickly turned into a large gambling deficit. Ohtani released a public statement back in March stating that Mizuhara had stolen the funds from his account without his knowledge. He followed this up by stating that he has never bet on baseball or any other sport, which includes asking somebody else to do it for him.
During the Dodgers’ trip to South Korea to open up the MLB season against the San Diego Padres in late March, Ohtani followed up with more comments on his lack of awareness surrounding Mizuhara’s alleged gambling addiction.
“I do want to make it clear that I never bet on sports or have willfully sent money to a bookmaker.” He went on to say, through Dodgers' manager of performance operations, Will Ireton, that Mizuhara, “has been stealing money from my account and has been telling lies. All of this has been a complete lie.”
Mizuhara finally confronted Ohtani after a team meeting with the Dodgers, telling Ohtani that he had been using his bank account to pay the bookmaker to pay off his gambling debt. He then proceeded to contact his representatives, who escalated it to the Dodgers organization and his lawyers. Ohtani’s final remarks were that he was “very saddened and shocked that someone who I trusted has done this.”
