One of the more surreal side stories to the rise of Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani is coming to a close.
Ohtani’s disgraced interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was sentenced to 57 months in prison today after pleading guilty to bank fraud and filing a false tax return last May.
Mizuhara’s Punishment
The sentence, which begins on March 24, is more than three times the length Mizuhara’s lawyers requested, though far below the maximum 30-year sentence for a federal bank fraud conviction.
Upon his release, Mizuhara will have three years of supervised release and could face deportation.
He also must pay Ohtani roughly $17 million in restitution — the amount the Department of Justice says Mizuhara stole from the two-way superstar to repay gambling debts.
The Backstory: Stealing from Ohtani
The Justice Department states that Mizuhara’s gambling woes began shortly after he started placing bets with an illegal bookmaker in September 2021.
Mizuhara, the government alleges, quickly racked up debts. Already in possession of Ohtani’s bank account information — he had interpreted for the then-Los Angeles Angels player in 2018 when he opened a bank account in Phoenix — Mizuzhara then used Ohtani’s password to gain full access to and control over the account, even impersonating Ohtani dozens of times on the phone.
Mizuhara, who worked for Ohtani since he joined the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in 2013, even bought roughly $325,000 in baseball cards in 2024 using the slugger’s bank account, hoping to resell them — an illicit side hussle, if you will.
How the Story Broke
The sordid story became public last March after ESPN was set to publish a report by investigative journalist Tisha Thompson that Mizuhara was in debt to an illegal bookmaking syndicate run by Mathew Bowyer that was under federal investigation.
The Ohtani camp initially covered up for Mizuhara, stating that Ohtani willingly transferred the funds to his interpreter to cover his debts. An Ohtani spokesman even gave ESPN a 90-minute interview opportunity with Mizuhara.
But as the network was set to publish its report, Ohtani’s spokesman disavowed the initial story and the Dodgers star’s lawyers issued a statement claiming that their client was “the victim of massive theft.” Mizuhara was also swiftly fired on that same day.
The revelations and inconsistencies in the Ohtani camp’s story threatened to tarnish the squeaky-clean reputation of the man who had become the global face of Major League Baseball.
But that danger has dissipated for the pitcher now that the Feds have thrown the book at Mizuhara.
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