Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani’s Interpreter and Friend, Stole $16 Million to Pay Only a Portion of His Gambling Losses
Speaking of sports gambling scandals, here’s Tim Arango and Michael S. Schmidt, reporting for The New York Times:
Ohtani has many other accounts, of course — he earns more money
from endorsements and business deals than he does from his
lucrative baseball salary. But it was this account, solely for
Ohtani’s baseball earnings, that Mizuhara would scheme to take
control of and then, as he fell deeper into a gambling addiction,
pilfer for years, according to prosecutors.
Mizuhara changed the settings of the account so alerts and
confirmations of transactions would go to him, not Ohtani. Drawing
on phone recordings obtained from the bank, prosecutors said
Mizuhara had also impersonated Ohtani to gain the bank’s approval
for certain large transactions. And whenever one of Ohtani’s other
advisers — his agent, tax preparer, bookkeeper or financial
adviser, all of whom were interviewed for the federal
investigation — inquired about the account, Mizuhara told them
that Ohtani preferred the account to remain private.
Between November 2021 and January this year, Mizuhara stole $16
million from the account to feed his “voracious appetite for
illegal sports betting,” according to E. Martin Estrada, the U.S.
attorney in Los Angeles.
Sounds like the plot from a Coen brothers movie. At every step where anyone tried to check with Ohtani on this bank account, they went through Mizuhara as a translator.
This being a baseball story, the criminal complaint was stuffed with numbers:
19,000 bets.
$142,256,769.74 total winning bets.
$182,935,206.58 total losing bets.
That’s 20-some bets per day, for years, for nearly $20,000 per wager on average. Just the frequency alone, setting aside the high stakes, is staggering.
It’s good to know, though, that Ohtani was oblivious to all of it.
★
Speaking of sports gambling scandals, here’s Tim Arango and Michael S. Schmidt, reporting for The New York Times:
Ohtani has many other accounts, of course — he earns more money
from endorsements and business deals than he does from his
lucrative baseball salary. But it was this account, solely for
Ohtani’s baseball earnings, that Mizuhara would scheme to take
control of and then, as he fell deeper into a gambling addiction,
pilfer for years, according to prosecutors.
Mizuhara changed the settings of the account so alerts and
confirmations of transactions would go to him, not Ohtani. Drawing
on phone recordings obtained from the bank, prosecutors said
Mizuhara had also impersonated Ohtani to gain the bank’s approval
for certain large transactions. And whenever one of Ohtani’s other
advisers — his agent, tax preparer, bookkeeper or financial
adviser, all of whom were interviewed for the federal
investigation — inquired about the account, Mizuhara told them
that Ohtani preferred the account to remain private.
Between November 2021 and January this year, Mizuhara stole $16
million from the account to feed his “voracious appetite for
illegal sports betting,” according to E. Martin Estrada, the U.S.
attorney in Los Angeles.
Sounds like the plot from a Coen brothers movie. At every step where anyone tried to check with Ohtani on this bank account, they went through Mizuhara as a translator.
This being a baseball story, the criminal complaint was stuffed with numbers:
19,000 bets.
$142,256,769.74 total winning bets.
$182,935,206.58 total losing bets.
That’s 20-some bets per day, for years, for nearly $20,000 per wager on average. Just the frequency alone, setting aside the high stakes, is staggering.
It’s good to know, though, that Ohtani was oblivious to all of it.