SANTA ANA (CNS) – Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in federal court in Santa Ana with prosecutors seeking more than four years in prison.
Prosecutors are advocating 57 months behind bars plus three years of supervised release for Ippei Mizuhara, who pleaded guilty in June to stealing nearly $17 million from the bank account of the Dodger designated hitter- pitcher to pay off illegal gambling debts.
Probation officials recommended 48 months and restitution of $16,975,010 to Ohtani and $1,149,400 to the IRS.
Mizuhara was expected to argue he committed the crimes due to a gambling addiction, prosecutors said.
“Even if defendant is addicted to gambling, it cannot fully explain defendant’s conduct because defendant used the stolen funds for numerous personal expenses that had nothing to do with gambling,” prosecutors said in court papers.
The prosecutors pointed to Mizuhara using the stolen funds to buy baseball cards worth a total of about $325,000, and when the defendant asked Ohtani for financial aid to pay for dental work the Dodgers star gave him a check for $60,000, but Mizuhara pocketed the cash and used the baseball player’s debit card to pay the dentist.
Also, Mizuhara did not sell off the baseball cards to pay his gambling debts to co-defendant Mathew Bowyer, who has also pleaded guilty and was scheduled to be sentenced April 4, prosecutors said.
“Further, and most compelling, when defendant actually won money from Bowyer (his bookie), he didn’t repay Mr. Ohtani or credit the account from which he had stolen the funds,” prosecutors said. “Instead, he instructed Bowyer to wire the money to defendant’s personal bank account (which the defendant had access to).”
Mizuhara’s motivation wasn’t addiction, it was “greed,” the prosecutors said.
“Indeed, the full scope of the scheme was years in the making,” prosecutors said.
Mizuhara got access to Ohtani’s bank account in September 2021 and changed contact information to his own devices, prosecutors said. He also started “impersonating” Ohtani when bank officials called to authorize wire transfers to Bowyer’s associates.
Mizuhara does not have the resources to repay Ohtani and has harmed him beyond that, prosecutors argued.
“Indeed, defendant’s conduct has harmed Mr. Ohtani’s greatest asset — his reputation and goodwill,” prosecutors said.
Even though authorities have worked to clear Ohtani of any speculation that he was aware of the crimes, “several public figures continued to question how Mr. Ohtani did not notice that his one particular account was being mismanaged,” prosecutors said.
“Further, to this day, major e-commerce websites sell merchandise that have turned Mr. Ohtani into a meme and suggest that he was involved in the criminal activity,” prosecutors said.
“To be clear, Mr. Ohtani is a victim. Mr. Ohtani did not speak English and none of his agents, accountants or financial advisors spoke Japanese. Mr. Ohtani relied on defendant to communicate with the outside world, including his financial advisors.”
Mizuhara “lied to the agents and financial advisors, and prevented them from protecting Mr. Ohtani, because defendant feared they would discover that he stole millions of dollars,” prosecutors said.
Mizuhara may be deported after he serves his time in prison, prosecutors said.
“Defendant betrayed Mr. Ohtani’s trust, causing him financial, reputational, and emotional harm,” prosecutors said. “Let there be no doubt, Mr. Ohtani is truly a victim and has suffered, and will continue to suffer, harm from defendant’s conduct. This kind of betrayal and greed calls for a significant term of imprisonment…”
To his credit, however, Mizuhara agreed to plead guilty early in the process and cooperated with authorities, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors discounted Mizuhara’s claim of a longstanding addiction to gambling, saying there’s scant evidence of him placing bets over the years. The defendant said in a letter to U.S. District Judge John Holcomb that he kept intending to “win and make (Ohtani) whole,” but prosecutor said he “deposited the money he won from (Bowyer) into his personal bank account, and not Mr. Ohtani’s account.”
Mizuhara said he was also overcome by expenses, such as renting in Newport Beach, which prosecutors also rejected.
“Defendant did not pay his own rent,” prosecutors said. “In fact, the evidence shows that he was using Mr. Ohtani’s debit card to pay his rent at the Villas Fashion Island Apartments in Newport Beach, without Mr. Ohtani’s knowledge or authorization.”
Mizuhara also claimed he was “living paycheck to paycheck,” but prosecutors pointed out he had a $250,000 annual salary in 2023 while he was also stealing millions of dollars from Ohtani. His salary in 2022 was $85,000, prosecutors said.
Also, Mizuhara, “had no loans, car payments, or rent expenses,” prosecutors said, adding Ohtani gave the interpreter a Porsche to use.
Prosecutors also contradicted Mizuhara’s claims that Ohtani “forced him to turn down opportunities to write books and appear in commercials,” noting that Ohtani “encouraged” him to do so and that Mizuhara wrote at least one book about the athlete.
Prosecutors also doubted Mizuhara’s claims of remorse, saying in his letter to the judge he appears to be attempting to “justify stealing millions of dollars from Mr. Ohtani.”
Mizuhara complained in the letter of the often banal nature of his job, saying he had to drive Ohtani “everywhere” during the off-season and was on call at all times.
“I felt like I was getting severely underpaid, but I was afraid to speak up for myself as I was on a one-year contract every year and I didn’t want to upset them and end up getting fired,” Mizuhara wrote in the letter.
In the letter to Holcomb, Mizuhara said he was “truly remorseful” for his crimes. He said he put his “heart and soul” into his work with the baseball star since 2017.
Mizuhara said usually when Japanese players sign on with a Major League Baseball team they bring several staff members over with them, but Ohtani only had Mizuhara working for him. So Mizuhara said he became a jack-of- all-trades for the athlete.
Mizuhara said it was time-consuming work that was exacerbated by the international time difference.
In addition to helping Ohtani with his conditioning he would also do errands such as grocery shopping, checking his mail, “fixing his bicycle… take the dog to the vet, take his dog to the groomer, drop off and pick up for his dinners he had with his peers while I wait in the car,” he wrote.
The work included translating for his endorsement partners and production shoots, he said. The off-season, he said, was “much busier and stressful” than the season.
Ohtani paid him about $11,000 annually, he said. The rest of his salary came from the baseball team, which was $85,000 in 2018 from the Angels, $87,000 from 2019 to 2021, and $99,611.16 in 2022, and $250,000 in 2023, he said.
Expenses for Mizuhara included flights for his wife back and forth to Japan every 90 days because she didn’t get a green card until 2023, he said. That meant paying rent in Japan as well, he added.
Mizuhara claimed he had to borrow money at times. When he met Bowyer he felt he “stupidly thought this might be an opportunity to help myself out financially and started to use his website for sports betting,” he wrote.
Instead of bailing him out he started drowning in gambling debt, he said.
“I felt terribly guilty about putting my hands on (Ohtani’s) money, but this was the only solution I could think of at the time,” Mizuhara said. “I definitely feel like I had a terrible addiction at the time and I only saw hope in life while I was gambling.”
Mizuhara said his wife was detained twice in the U.S. by customs and got deported once because her trips back and forth aroused suspicions.
“She was not able to come to the United States all of 2022 as a result, and now that I look back, I felt like gambling helped fill my void of not being able to see my wife for the whole year,” he wrote. “I feel terrible and really guilty for making her go through all of this.
“We always wanted to have kids and have a nice wedding one day, but we just couldn’t make it work because we didn’t have flexibility both time wise and financially. Shohei gave us a honeymoon ticket via Japan Airlines for the 2018 season, but we were never able to use it since I never got enough time off for it and we plan to return the ticket to him through our attorneys.”
Mizuhara said he admires Ohtani “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. I want to say I am truly sorry for violating his trust in me.”
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