Federal prosecutors recommended a 57-month prison sentence Thursday for Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, and released an audio recording in which they say he impersonates Ohtani in an attempt to wire money from Ohtani’s bank account.
In a separate court filing, Mizuhara’s attorney, Michael G. Freedman, said Mizuhara has suffered from a gambling addiction since he was a teenager and asked for an 18-month sentence.
Mizuhara was fired in March 2024 after an ESPN investigation uncovered he had sent millions in wire transfers from Ohtani’s account to an illegal bookmaker. He pleaded guilty to bank fraud and filing a false tax return in June, admitting that he stole nearly $17 million from Ohtani to pay off gambling debts to an illegal bookmaker. He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 6.
According to the prosecutors’ filing, Mizuhara called the bank and impersonated Ohtani on approximately 24 occasions in order to wire money from Ohtani’s account. In the recording, which prosecutors said was made Feb. 2, 2022, a bank employee asked Mizuhara to identify himself.
“Who am I speaking with?” the bank employee asked in the recording, which was first obtained by The Athletic.
“Shohei Ohtani,” Mizuhara replied.
Mizuhara told the bank employee that he could not log in to online banking. “I tried to make a wire transfer a couple of days ago. They told me that’s probably the reason, they transferred me to this number,” he said.
After Mizuhara recited a six-digit code she texted him for two-factor authentication, Mizuhara told her he needed to send $200,000 for a car loan.
“What is your relationship to the payee?” the agent asked.
“He’s my friend,” Mizuhara responded.
“Have you met your friend in person?” she asked.
“Yes, many times,” Mizuhara said.
“I just ask because we haven’t been able to verify the transaction,” the agent said before asking how Mizuhara received the wire information. Mizuhara told her he received it by email but later talked about it with the recipient in person.
“Will there be any future wires to your friend?” the agent asked.
“Possibly,” Mizuhara replied.
Prosecutors said the clip had been edited to redact the names of the bank and the person receiving the wires. ESPN reported in May that Mizuhara wired some of the money to the bank account of Ryan Boyajian, an associate of bookmaker Mathew Bowyer.
Prosecutors also recommended Mizuhara pay nearly $17 million in restitution to Ohtani as well as $1.1 million to the IRS.
In his filing, Freedman wrote that Mizuhara started gambling when he was 18 and visited casinos four to five times a week. At 22, he began playing online poker and betting on sports. While working for Ohtani at the Los Angeles Angels, Mizuhara’s gambling increased because of poker games hosted by other baseball players in hotel rooms, according to the filing. ESPN previously reported that Mizuhara met Bowyer at a poker game at the team hotel in San Diego in 2021.
Mizuhara placed about 19,000 bets with Bowyer over a two-year period and accumulated over $40 million in debt. Bowyer gave Mizuhara a startup credit of $20,000, Freedman wrote.
Freedman added that Mizuhara has been attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings three times a week.
Prosecutors wrote in a separate filing, however, that a gambling addiction “cannot fully explain defendant’s conduct because defendant used the stolen funds for numerous personal expenses that had nothing to do with gambling.”
“Ultimately, the government submits, the motivating factor behind defendant’s crimes was not a gambling addiction but rather greed,” prosecutors wrote.
In a letter also submitted to U.S. District Court Judge John W. Holcomb on Thursday, Mizuhara wrote that he felt like he was on call 24/7 and had almost no time off while working for Ohtani, who he first met while working as an interpreter for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in Japan.
“Usually when a Japanese baseball player makes the move to the United States, they would bring over multiple staff members to take care of various tasks such as a driver, trainer, chef, off the field interpreter/support member, etc. but I was the only person Shohei brought along so naturally I had to support him on most of the above mentioned tasks,” Mizuhara wrote.
The Angels, Ohtani’s first team in the U.S., initially paid Mizuhara $85,000 before increasing his salary to $250,000 in 2022, according to the prosecutors’ filing. When he moved to the Dodgers with Ohtani in 2024, his salary grew to $500,000. Ohtani also paid Mizuhara a separate salary and gave him a Porsche Cayenne, the filing states.
In his letter, Mizuhara wrote that Ohtani paid him roughly $2,500 a month from October to January and $125 to $130 a month from February to September. Mizuhara said he struggled to make ends meet because he had to live near Ohtani in California, pay for his wife’s travel between the U.S. and Japan, and rent accommodations while traveling with Ohtani to Japan in the offseason.
“All of these extra expenses were taking a huge toll on me and I was living paycheck to paycheck, I would have to borrow money from family and friends some months to make ends meet,” Mizuhara wrote.
Mizuhara added that his wife, Naomi, also helped support Ohtani. She cooked him meals, watched his dog and helped him with broken nails he suffered while pitching.
“She truly supported both Shohei and I to the best of her abilities throughout the years and she never complained through all of this as she knew my priority was to support Shohei to the best of my ability,” Mizuhara wrote.
Naomi told the judge in a separate letter that Mizuhara is her “only family” after recently losing her parents and other family members, as well as their family dog. Unable to obtain a green card until 2023, she described becoming “emotionally unstable” and developed hearing loss and alopecia areata due to stress.
“I deeply regret not being able to support him or notice his struggles during that time,” she wrote.
At the end of his letter, Mizuhara asked for mercy from the judge and apologized to Ohtani.
“Lastly, I truly admire Shohei as a baseball player and a human being and I was committed to devote my life so Shohei can be the best version of himself on the field,” Mizuhara wrote. “I want to say I am truly sorry for violating his trust in me.”
Mizuhara, a former business associate of Ohtani, allegedly deceived the baseball star into investing a significant amount of money in a fraudulent scheme. The scheme ultimately resulted in substantial financial losses for Ohtani, prompting the federal investigation and subsequent charges against Mizuhara.
The prosecution is pushing for a lengthy prison sentence in order to send a strong message about the seriousness of white-collar crimes and to deter others from engaging in similar misconduct. Mizuhara’s defense team, however, is expected to argue for a more lenient sentence, citing mitigating factors such as remorse and cooperation with authorities.
As the case unfolds, the outcome remains uncertain. However, one thing is clear – the federal government is taking a firm stance against those who seek to defraud and exploit others for personal gain. Stay tuned for further updates on this developing story.
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