Interpreter who stole millions from Shohei Ohtani gets nearly five years in prison
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Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, has been sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for stealing nearly $17 million from the Japanese baseball player to cover debts.
Mizuhara, 40, previously pleaded guilty in June to bank and tax fraud. U.S District Court Judge John W. Holcomb handed down a sentence of 57 months, as sought by prosecutors. Mizuhara had requested a year and a half.
“The magnitude of the theft, the $17 million , in my view, is shockingly high,” Holcomb said. “Seventeen million is more than most people make in their lifetimes, in many, many lifetimes.”
Mizuhara was ordered to pay nearly that sum in restitution to Ohtani and a little more than $1 million to the IRS. The judge said at Thursday’s sentencing: “I hope that Mr. Mizuhara will be able to repay that sum. I really do hope he can.”
As to whether the repayment will happen, Holcomb added: “That remains to be seen.”
“We’re not going to have any comment,” Mizuhara’s lawyer, Michael G. Freedman, said while exiting the courtroom with his client.
Mizuhara is scheduled to surrender to authorities and begin serving his sentence on March 24.
“This case is a high-profile version of something that unfortunately happens all the time — an unscrupulous person takes advantage of the trust placed in them to victimize a vulnerable individual,” Acting U.S. Atty. Joseph T. McNally said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. “Mr. Ohtani is a victim in this case. He had money stolen from him, he was taken advantage of and he was preyed on by Mr. Mizuhara.”
The sentencing brings to a close a scandal that rocked the sports world last March, when the Dodgers fired Mizuhara amid an investigation into claims he had secretly gambled away Ohtani’s money. Mizuhara admitted to spending the money on bets with an illegal bookmaker, accruing large debts while also buying $325,000 worth of baseball cards and undergoing costly dental work.
During the sentencing, Mizuhara sat stone-faced, wearing a spotted tie and a dark-colored suit with his hair long, below the collar. He reiterated what he’d written in a letter to the judge, saying that he was “truly sorry to Mr. Ohtani for what I’ve done.”
“I know an apology will not fix the crimes that I’ve committed. This mistake will impact me for the rest of my life,” he said. “I have already begun to change and promise that I will continue to do so.”
Now that Ippei Mizuhara is under a microscope following allegations he stole millions of dollars from Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to cover gambling debts, key aspects of his biography have proved difficult to confirm or turned out to be false.
As part of his job as translator and de facto manager of Ohtani, Mizuhara served as a go-between between the player and his non-Japanese-speaking agents and financial advisors, according to Mizuhara’s plea agreement. Prosecutors in their sentencing memo said Mizuhara’s conduct harmed Ohtani’s reputation and goodwill.
Prosecutors wrote that even though there was “overwhelming evidence that showed that Mr. Ohtani had no knowledge” of Mizuhara’s activities, “several public figures continued to question how Mr. Ohtani did not notice that this one particular account was being mismanaged.”
“Let there be no doubt, Mr. Ohtani is truly a victim and has suffered, and will continue to suffer, harm,” the sentencing memo said.
In a letter to the judge ahead of sentencing, Mizuhara said he’d put his “heart and soul” into his work, taking on the role of driver, trainer, chef, off-the-field interpreter and support member for Ohtani over the years. But he also seemed to drag his former boss, writing that Ohtani paid him roughly $11,000 per year, which left him living “paycheck to paycheck.”
Mizuhara was an employee of the Angels, for whom Ohtani played from 2018 to 2023, and, later, the Dodgers, for whom Ohtani has played since 2024. Ohtani paid him separately for the additional work, according to the Department of Justice.
Mizuhara claimed to have had numerous offers to write books, do TV and radio interviews and appear in commercials, but said those were “shut down from Shohei and his company in Japan.”
Desperate for money, Mizuhara wrote, he began sports betting in an attempt to help himself financially.
“And before I knew it, the results were the complete opposite,” his letter stated. “My gambling debt had grown so much that I could not find any way to pay it but to use Shohei’s money.”
Freedman said in his sentencing memo that his client’s “long-standing gambling addiction … was uniquely exacerbated by his grueling work and exposure to high-stakes bookmakers in the world of professional athletes.”
Federal authorities said evidence supports Dodger Shohei Ohtani’s claims he was unaware of alleged illegal gambling by his interpreter and a victim of bank fraud. He can play ball.
Because Mizuhara is not a U.S. citizen, “it is virtually certain he will be deported to Japan following his incarceration,” Freedman wrote.
Mizuhara admitted he obtained the log-in details for Ohtani’s bank account in 2018, when he translated for the baseball phenom as he set up an account at a bank branch in Phoenix. Mizuhara started making illegal bets with an Orange County bookie in September 2021, before later falling deeply into debt, according to the agreement.
According to the plea agreement, Mizuhara used Ohtani’s password to sign into the bank account and then changed the registered email address and telephone number so bank employees would call Mizuhara, not Ohtani, to verify wire transfers from the account.
Mizuhara called the bank and impersonated Ohtani about two dozen times, according to the plea agreement. The interpreter made a number of sizable wire transfers, prosecutors said, including one for $500,000 to an associate of the bookmaker. Prosecutors said that Mizuhara used Ohtani’s money to purchase baseball cards between January and March 2024, hoping to later sell them for profit.
In a response to Mizuhara’s sentencing memo, prosecutors told the judge there was no evidence of a long-standing gambling addiction, “other than [Mizuhara’s] self-serving and uncorroborated statements to the psychologist he hired for purposes of sentencing.”
Ippei Mizuhara pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud Tuesday, admitting to stealing from Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to place illegal sports bets.
Prosecutors said the government looked at more than 30 casinos around the U.S. and only found evidence of Mizuhara spending $200 at the Mirage casino during a weekend in 2008. They found that Mizuhara had registered for FanDuel in 2018 but never placed a bet.
He only began betting online with DraftKings in 2023, prosecutors said, after already having stolen millions of dollars from Ohtani.
They also pushed back on his claims of living “paycheck to paycheck,” pointing out the $250,000 salary Mizuhara earned in 2023 while stealing millions of dollars and also the $85,000 he made in 2022. Prosecutors said Mizuhara had no loans, car payments or rent expenses. He’d used Ohtani’s debit card to pay his rent and Ohtani gave him a Porsche to drive, they said.
Mizuhara’s checking account in March 2023 had a balance of $30,236 and $195,113 in March 2024, according to prosecutors.
“Here, there is no doubt defendant feels ashamed from the international attention he received from his fraud scheme and web of lies, but instead of showing true remorse defendant appears to try to justify stealing millions of dollars from Mr. Ohtani,” prosecutors wrote. “Instead of using this opportunity to apologize and show true remorse, he has used it, in a public filing, to complain about his work and Mr. Ohtani.”
During the sentencing hearing, Holcomb said that Mizuhara’s letter undermined his attorney’s argument for a lesser sentence, stating that it “was filled with misrepresentations and omissions, important omissions of fact.”
“I really give it no credit,” Holcomb said.
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