Federal Prosecutors Charge Ippei Mizuhara With Stealing $16 Million from Shohei Ohtani
The Talented Mr. Ippei faces up to 30 years in prison for bank fraud.
In a downtown Los Angeles courtroom today, federal law enforcement officials announced that they were charging Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter and manager, Ippei Mizuhara, with stealing $16 million from the superstar baseball player to pay debts to an alleged illegal sports bookmaker.
It marked the latest bombshell in a stunning saga that threatened to drag the face of Major League Baseball into a sports betting scandal.
Federal investigators said emphatically today that Ohtani is a victim of massive fraud, and that he had no idea Mizuhara was stealing from him to gamble. They also said there was no evidence that Ohtani himself ever bet on sports, and no evidence Mizuhara bet on baseball.
In a 37-page complaint, authorities laid out truly jaw-dropping details about how they believe Mizuhara was able to allegedly steal so much money from Ohtani without him noticing. You can read the entire thing here for yourself.
But I will summarize the details here:
Federal authorities allege that Mizuhara accompanied Ohtani to a bank in Arizona to set up a checking account ending in x5848. Mizuhara translated for Ohtani when setting up the account details, then later changed the contact information on the account to his personal phone number and an anonymous email account that only Mizuhara had access to.
The account was almost exclusively funded by Ohtani’s payroll salary from the Angels.
Ohtani “received additional income from numerous sources, including endorsements and investments;” however, those funds were deposited into separate accounts that Mizuhara did not have access to.
Between November 2021 and January 2024, more than $16 million was transferred via wire from the x5848 account to bank accounts of associates of the alleged bookmaker.
The transfers from the x5848 account were made from devices and IP addresses associated with Mizuhara.
There is no evidence Ohtani ever accessed this x5848 checking account electronically himself from his phone or his computer, let alone wired money from it.
Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo of CAA, did not speak directly to Ohtani or regularly exchange text messages with him. Instead, he relayed messages to Ohtani through Mizuhara.
Ohtani’s domestic endorsements and related income were managed by Balelo/CAA, a professional bookkeeper, a financial manager, and a professional tax preparer and accountant.
Balelo and Ohtani’s money managers asked for access to the x5848 account and were told by Mizuhara that Ohtani wanted to keep that account private.
Ohtani believed Balelo and CAA, his money managers and bookkeeper were managing all of his accounts, including the x5848 account.
Mizuhara always accompanied Ohtani to meetings with his agents and financial advisors, none of whom spoke Japanese. When Ohtani was scheduled to meet with his tax preparer in October of 2022, only Mizuhara showed. He told the accountant that Ohtani was sick, and again denied the tax preparer access to the x5848 account.
Ohtani voluntarily gave investigators his phone to sift through. Investigators reviewed 9,700 pages of text messages between Ohtani and Mizuhara between 2020 and 2024 and found no discussion of sports gambling.
Investigators said that while Mizuhara transferred money out of Ohtani’s account to cover his losses, he never transferred his winnings into Ohtani’s account.
On Feb. 2, 2022, Mizuhara called the bank, impersonating Ohtani, and falsely stated he was attempting to wire money to the bookmaker for a car loan. The “call was unsuccessful and the bank froze all online transactions for the account.” Federal investigators have a recording of this call.
Mizuhara called the bank back the same day and spoke to another representative. He again falsely identified himself as Ohtani and was able to lift the freeze on the account by providing Ohtani’s biographical details. Federal investigators also have a recording of this call.
Records reflect that Mizuhara made “approximately 19,000 wagers between December 2021 and January 2024, nearly 25 bets per day on average. The wagers ranged in value from roughly $10 to $160,000 per bet, with an average bet of roughly $12,800. During this period, [Mizuhara] won $142,256,769.74, and lost $182,935,206.68, “leaving a total net balance of negative $40,678,436.94”
As Mizuhara slid further into debt, he stopped returning the bookmaker’s calls. On Nov. 17, 2023, the bookmaker texted Mizuhara: “Hey Ippie, it’s 2 o’clock on Friday. I don’t know why you’re not returning my calls. I’m here in Newport Beach and I see [Ohtani] walking his dog. I’m just gonna go up and talk to him and ask how I can get in touch with you since you’re not responding?”
Mizuhara responded a few days later, texting, “I’m gonna be honest, I ended up losing a lot of money on crypto the last couple years and I took a huge hit obviously with the sports too…. Just wanted to ask, is there any way we can settle on an amount? I’ve lost way too much on the site already…. of course I know it’s my fault.”
On or about Jan. 6, 2024, the bookmaker messaged Mizuhara saying, “you’re putting me in a position where this is going to get out of control. If I don’t hear from you by the end of the day today it’s gonna be out of my hands.” Mizuhara responded the same day, stating, “My bad man…. I just got back from Japan two days ago and I’m leaving tomorrow again…. I’ll be back in mid-January. To be honest with you, I’m really struggling right now and I need some time before I start to make payments.”
Finally, on March 20, 2024, when the story broke about Mizuhara’s involvement with the bookmaker, Mizuhara texted him, “Have you seen the reports?” The bookmaker responded, “Yes, but that’s all bullshit. Obviously you didn’t steal from [Ohtani]. I understand it’s a cover job I totally get it.” Mizuhara then responded to the bookmaker, “Technically I did steal from him. It’s all over for me.”
When this story first exploded into public view, I promised to keep an open mind and wait for the facts to come out. I should note here that these are just allegations, and Mizuhara is presumed innocent until his trial, though The New York Times reported yesterday that he’s working quickly to negotiate a guilty plea, perhaps to secure a lenient sentence. The feds said today he’s facing 30 years in prison.
If what investigators say is true, then we have some answers as to how and why this happened. And those reasons seem to be that 1) Ohtani trusted the people he hired to manage his money to… manage his money because he has no interest in the task, and 2) Those people did not have access to Ohtani’s checking account that held his baseball salary because Mizuhara denied it to them and they were all going through Mizuhara to communicate with Ohtani, and 3) Mizuhara was able to successfully impersonate Ohtani with Ohtani’s bank.
Reason number one is unfortunately a common tale for rich, young athletes. Tim Duncan was bilked out of $20 million by a financial advisor. John Elway and a business partner lost $15 million in a Ponzi scheme. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sued a money manager for costing him $9 million in bad investments and mismanagement in the ’80s.
Ohtani was also potentially an easy mark because he never seemed to care much about money. He left Japan for MLB two years before rules allowed for him to be a true free agent, and signed a rookie deal worth just $545,000 for each of his first three seasons, with only a $2.315 million signing bonus. Had he waited another 24 months, his contract would have probably been for at least $200 million.
When Ohtani signed that mammoth, 10-year contract for $700 million last off-season, he deferred $680 million. That checking account Mizuhara was allegedly stealing from was only going to receive $2 million dollars, less taxes, per year for the next decade. If that was the money Mizuhara was relying on to gamble, then the odd way Ohtani structured his contract absolutely knee-capped him.
Reason number two is completely unacceptable, and one wonders why Ohtani has not yet fired his agent and completely cleaned house. If nothing else, CAA could have gotten someone who speaks Japanese to approach Ohtani and tell him that if his tax preparers didn’t have access to the checking account with his baseball paychecks in them, that he could run into huge trouble with the IRS. Balelo said he trusted Mizuhara because he had no reason not to, but that was a catastrophic error, not just because it led to CAA’s top sports athlete getting defrauded, but also because Ohtani became perilously close to having his reputation ruined by a sports betting scandal, which would have cut off said agent’s gravy train.
Balelo even set up the interview with ESPN in which Mizuhara allegedly lied to a reporter and said Ohtani knew about Mizuhara’s gambling debts and paid them off (!!!!!!). When the story changed hours later, that Mizuhara actually stole the money from Ohtani, it made Ohtani look *awful.*
Jordan Montgomery just canned his agent, Scott Boras, today for the way his free agency was handled. Montgomery only getting a one-year deal is a quaint, first-world reason to fire your agent compared to this fiasco!
Reason number three is diabolical. If Mizuhara was truly able to impersonate Ohtani, one hopes that whatever bank was involved will review its policies going forward!
This could and should be a teaching moment for every team across MLB regarding how vulnerable even their star players are to predators and fraud if they don’t speak English. Something tells me that nothing will change, however, because that would require effort, money and sensitivity—something most of these teams are woefully unwilling to provide unless the league mandates it.
I know some people are never going to believe that Ohtani is innocent because they hate the Dodgers or they just love to hate in general. I’m guessing these people will also never bother to read the details in the complaint against Mizuhara, because conspiracies are fun and we live in a post-truth world.
I was cautiously skeptical until today. While I had no reason to believe Ohtani was a degenerate gambler, I’m also not naive to think that I know everything about people I don’t personally know.
But if what federal law enforcement says is correct, my jaw is on the floor as I sit here and realize the number of ways Ohtani was failed and victimized by people he trusted to have his back. Perhaps he was too trusting and naive, and maybe that will change. Maybe he will log in to his checking account once in a while to make sure his money is still sitting there.
If any of this is weighing on Ohtani personally, it certainly hasn’t hurt his on-field production. Through his first 15 games with the Dodgers, he’s hitting .333 with a .377 on-base percentage and a .635 slugging percentage, with three home runs. His 21 hits, 8 doubles and 40 total bases lead the majors, and his 12 extra-base hits through the team’s first 14 games were the most by any Dodger since at least 1901.
As for the talented Mr. Ippei, he’s set to appear before a judge in the coming days. Stay tuned.
OMG Molly. I’ll read the 30+ pages later. Your summary was clear and I agree with you. Just a stunning fail of Ohtani’s agent and advisors. What a terrible way to learn to be less naive. I’ll continue loving Ohtani and the Dodgers and You! Thank you so much for getting this out in the world.
I read through the whole complaint too, and was alternately riveted and horrified. Stay for the end where we learn about The Talented Mr Ippei’s baseball card purchases with several hundred thousand more in stolen money. Truly eye-popping on top of everything else.
What a thing to go through for Shohei and I agree: his team deserves to be cut loose.