On Thursday, Shohei Ohtani’s translator, Ippei Mizuhara, was charged in connection with his theft of millions of dollars from Ohtani. And it’s much worse that was originally thought.
While in Korea for the international series against the San Diego Padres, Ohtani and the whole Los Angeles Dodgers team found out that Ippei had stolen around $4 million from Ohtani. Ippei was then fired from his duties as Ohtani’s translator.
MLB, the FBI, and other federal agencies looked into the matter and on Thursday, charges against Mizuhara were announced.
In a 37 page criminal complaint, it was revealed that Ippei allegedly met Ohtani originally in 2013, and offered to be his translator went the Japanese super star starting playing in MLB in 2018. Ippei was imploded by both Ohtani, and the MLB teams Ohtani played with. Mizuhara had a hand in opening some accounts for Ohtani. Ohtani’s MLB salary was deposited in an account, and advertising and other revenue were in different accounts.
Mizuhara called the bank and impersonated Ohtani several times, guessed the answer to his security questions, and disabled the notifications about the account to Ohtani’s phone.
You can read the full complaint here
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24542204-usa-v-mizuhara-complaint
The total amount of money that Mizuhara allegedly stole from Ohtani was over $16M. When Mizuhara would win, the money from those bets would go into his personal account, and not back into Ohtani’s.
From December 2019 through January 2024, Mizuhara’s betting addiction led him to lose more than $183M. He had wins of over $142M, with $40.7M in loses, over some 19,000 wagers. The complaint does state that no bets on baseball were found.
Federal investigators have stated that at this time, Ohtani is a victim and is not being charged with anything. Ohtani willingly worked with investigators and turned over personal devices.
Ohtani has stated from the beginning that he had absolutely no knowledge of these actions, nor did he bet himself.
MLB has released this statement-
Ohtani and his team seemingly need some internal reflection on how they all missed such a huge amount of money lost. However, how Ohtani has carried himself through this all has been remarkable.
Ohtani struggled a little to start the season, but overall is batting .333 with three homers and a 1.012 OPS. Hopefully the worst of this story is behind him as he moves forward with his season and beyond, and that he gets a better, more conscientious team around him.