Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, confidant, and best friend, is going to jail. The only questions left are when and for how long.
Unless you somehow were under a rock, on April 11th, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced that the office was charging Ippei Mizuhara with bank fraud, with a statutory maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison and/or up to $1 million in fines. The below press conference is an excellent summary of what you need to know.
The federal complaint, which is a public document, obtained from noted reporter Meghann Cuniff, goes into damning detail about how Mizuhara allegedly stole funds from the Dodgers pitcher/designated hitter by lying to his bank pretending to be Ohtani, while Mizuhara racked up gambling debts in a manner that frankly shocks the senses. For an excellent summary of the factual basis of the complaint, Eric provided an excellent summary here.
It is worth noting that Mizuhara, like Trevor Bauer before, like Julio Urias now, like you, like me, have the presumption of innocence under both the California and U.S. Constitutions, and the burden is on the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the current allegations are true. The entire complaint against Mizuara is attached below for you to read through at your leisure, I will analyze the important parts.
The most damning portion of the complaint is paragraph 19 on page 17 of the federal complaint. Chris Seymour, Special Agent of Criminal Investigations of the Internal Revenue Service (which is somehow the nerdiest yet most badass title I have ever heard), swore under penalty of perjury in the complaint the following while stating no bets were made on baseball:
Based on this review of the 35966 [Gambling] Records, I am aware of the following: a. The 35966 Records reflect approximately 19,000 wagers between December 2021 and January 2024 [by Mizuhara], and nearly 25 bets per day on average. The wagers reflected in the 35966 Records ranged in value from roughly $10 to $160,000 per bet, with an average bet amount of roughly $12,800. During this period, the 35966 Records reflect total winning bets of $142,256,769.74, and total losing bets of $182,935,206.68, leaving a total net balance of negative $40,678,436.94.8.
[emphasis added.]
Over three years, Mizuhara allegedly made about 19,000 bets, at the rate of about 25 bets per day, averaging about $13,000/bet. Likely some of you, maybe most of you have the following question: how did the hell did Mizuhara allegedly do of all of this betting?!? Honestly, the same way you eat a whale:
One bite at a time.
This case is personal to me for reasons that I must now disclose before going any further. In both private and public practice, my legal career, in part, has involved going after folks who have abused positions of authority and trust over accounts or the disadvantaged in probate cases. Granted, my exploits in prosecuting these cases have been with infinitesimally smaller dollar amounts, but the motivations behind said thefts usually are along these lines:
- Greed
- Envy
- Mistakes that got out of hand
Regardless of the motivation in the Ohtani/Mizuhara case, the complaint documents how Mizuhara allegedly used his position of influence as a friend, confidant, and interpreter to impersonate Ohtani in interactions with the bank. The government has recorded phone calls from the bank with audio of Mizuhara posing as Ohtani.
Even with all of the support around Ohtani, the main focal point was Mizuhara as he was hired to work for Ohtani as both assistant and translator. Generally, most people are afraid of the threat from the unknown. While said threat does exist, most of the time in cases like these the primary perpetrator, and the primary threat is from the friend, or the family member; i.e. the phone call is coming from inside the house.
Ohtani told the government’s investigators that he thought all his support staff had access to his accounts. The problem was that his support staff (his agent, his financial manager, etc.) did not and do not speak Japanese and their only point of contact was, shockingly, Mizuhara. As such, Mizuhara kept Ohtani’s other support staff from accessing the relevant bank accounts, including the bank account that Mizuhara registered for himself for his gambling winnings.
If you have the best alarm in the world and it does not go off, is that alarm effective? In this case no; but considering that Ohtani was bringing in so much money annually in endorsements and salary, Ohtani was in the fortunate position to not notice this problem with his accounts created by Mizuhara until it ballooned to gargantuan proportions.
In probate law, this scenario often falls under the umbrella of undue influence. In my practice, this scenario arises where the bad actor has complete control of the soon-to-be-decedent, and all interactions outside of the bad actor’s control have to go through a compromised gatekeeper.
Here, Mizuhara was the alleged compromised gatekeeper and he allegedly did everything that was charged in the federal complaint. From racking up the debt, to hiding the debt, to lying about Ohtani’s involvement with the debt, Mizuhara allegedly kept the blinders on everybody except the illegal bookies, including Matthew Bowyer, to rack up extraordinary losses using Ohtani’s money.
If the allegations are true, it would be the perfect storm of the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time as the proverbial wolf would be in charge of the henhouse. This case is one where Mizuhara’s actions likely prevented oversight of Ohtani’s accounts.
Accordingly, Mizuhara allegedly continued to bet on a scale unfathomable to the average person. His interactions with Bowyer are included in the complaint and they have the tone of someone hitting someone up for money and are eerily conversational considering the amount of money involved. Only when Mizuhara stopped paying did the tone of the interactions shift into something one would see on The Sopranos.
Per pg. 16, paragraph 16, section j. of the Complaint:
On or about January 6, 2024, BOOKMAKER 1 messaged MIZUHARA stating “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 [sic] 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.”
As you can see, the abuse of greatness is when remorse is removed from power.
Victim A
Unidentified but mentioned throughout the complaint as Victim A, which is Ohtani by inference (and stated explicitly in a separate press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office), who cooperated fully with the investigation and gave his phone to the government to examine. The government has also examined Mizuhara’s phone and made the following conclusions.
The government has concluded that Ohtani was entirely the victim in this case. The government concluded that Ohtani was the only signatory of the identified bank account. Moreover, the government concluded that the incriminating information was only found on Mizuhara’s phone.
Ohtani has repeated throughout this scandal that he did not permit Mizuhara to make these transactions. After reviewing almost 10,000 pages of text messages over four years, the government concluded that there was no discussion of gambling between Mizuhara and Ohtani, no indication that Ohtani knew about Mizuhara’s voluminous betting, no direction from Ohtani to have Mizuhara keep the rest of the Ohtani team in the dark about all of the gambling.
The government also concluded that the theory that Ohtani and Mizuhara were working together was not credible, in part, based on the above discussion, but also from the fact that Ohtani could have just made these transactions at his bank’s branch rather than have Mizuhara do them by the phone or added Mizuhara as a signer to the account. Neither of these things happened.
If anything, the government has Mizuhara’s alleged written confession after word of the LA Times investigation broke on page 36, paragraph 36, section b of the complaint:
On or about March 20, 2024, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating, “Have you seen the reports?” BOOKMAKER 1 responded, “Yes, but that’s all bullshit. Obviously you didn’t steal from him. I understand it’s a cover job I totally get it.” MIZUHARA then responded to BOOKMAKER 1, “Technically I did steal from him. it’s all over for me.”
[emphasis added.]
Federal authorities have charged Mizuhara with bank fraud, 18 USC § 1344, which carries up to a 30-year sentence and/or a $1 million fine. Needless to say, if (or more accurately, when) Mizuhara pleads, he will likely receive a reduced sentence. Mizuhara is expected to surrender to authorities and have his initial court date on April 12th in Los Angeles.
We will provide updates at True Blue LA as they become available.
