Ippei Mizuhara, who worked as baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter from his arrival in the States in 2018 until March 2024, was sentenced on February 6, 2025, to 57 months in prison and ordered to pay over $18M in fines and restitution. Mizuhara pled guilty in June 2024 to bank fraud and subscribing to a false tax return, stemming from embezzling over $17M from Ohtani to cover Mizuhara’s gambling debts.
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MORE: Shohei Ohtani’s Interpreter to Plead Guilty to Embezzlement From Superstar
As laid out in the plea agreement between Mizuhara and the U.S. District Court, Mizuhara was hired by the Los Angeles Angels in 2018 to serve as Ohtani’s interpreter and driver upon Ohtani’s arrival in the States. Mizuhara quickly became Ohtani’s assistant in other areas, including assistance with financial matters such as setting up a bank account, for which Ohtani paid Mizuhara personally.
Starting in the fall of 2021, Mizuhara started heavily gambling on sports, allegedly through an Orange County (CA) based illegal bookmaker named Mathew Bowyer. Mizuhara swiftly racked up huge losses. Mizuhara tapped into the bank account he had earlier assisted Ohtani in establishing to cover these.
(Mizuhara) recalled the password for the (bank) Account from when he assisted (Ohtani) with opening the account in 2018, and (Mizuhara) was able to successfully sign into the Account on (its) website. After obtaining access to the Account, (Mizuhara) changed the security protocols on the account without the permission or authorization of (Ohtani). Specifically, (Mizuhara) changed the registered email address and phone number on the account so (bank) employees would call (him), and not (Ohtani), when attempting to verify wire transfers from the (bank) Account.
In furtherance of the scheme, (Mizuhara) impersonated (Ohtani) and used (Ohtani’s) personal identifying information to trick and deceive (bank) employees into authorizing wire transfers from (the) account.
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Mizuhara kept Ohtani’s financial advisors in the dark as well.
When (Ohtani’s) sports agent and financial advisors asked defendant for access to the (bank) Account, (Mizuhara) falsely told them that (Ohtani) did not want them to access to the account because it was private. In truth and in fact as (Mizuhara) then knew, (he) did not want (Ohtani)’s sports agent and financial advisors to review the (bank) Account because he feared they would notice that (Mizuhara) stole millions of dollars from (Ohtani). Based on (Mizuhara)’s false statements of material fact, (he) fraudulently obtained more than $16,975,010 from the (bank) Account.
Mizuhara further stepped into it by trying to fool the IRS. By his admission, he underreported his 2022 income by some $4.1M, said amount coming from his access to Ohtani’s bank account.
The incident, isolated as it is due to its unique circumstances, serves to illustrate a disturbing trend as sports, both professional and at the de facto semi-pro level, otherwise known as collegiate athletics, grow ever more intertwined with legalized online gambling. In February 2025, MLB fired umpire Pat Hoberg for having a shared gambling account with an individual who bet on baseball. Hoberg did not bet on the sport. In 2024, the NBA banned player Jontay Porter for life due to his involvement with attempting to fix games. Current NBA player Terry Rozier is presently under investigation for the same. There are now investigations of the same gambling ring tied to the Porter and Rozier cases attempting to manipulate the outcome in games played by three different colleges. This is all going on as the NBA openly promotes gambling entities on its websites. Good money, but not a good look.
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The American Gaming Association estimates there will be $1.39B of legal bets placed on Super Bowl LIX between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles on February 9, 2025, in New Orleans. With numbers so large even politicians might perk up their ears, the question is not whether trouble will come but when and from whom.
