RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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As new details come to light about Shohei Ohtani’s translator’s bank fraud, Ippei Mizuhara’s old interview reveals how the baseball star’s lifestyle impacted the scandal.
Shohei Ohtani is the face of baseball and the MLB. There has been no bigger star in recent memory. However, his career was severely threatened in 2024.
Payments from Ohtani’s bank account to a prominent bookmaker led to an investigation. If he had been found guilty of being involved with sports gambling, it could have potentially ended his career.
However, the investigation found that the Dodgers man was actually the victim of theft. And the person to blame was his translator, Ippei Mizuhara. An interview has now shed more light on the subject.
Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
Ippei Mizuhara shared how Shohei Ohtani’s lifestyle led to his poor decisions
Superstar athletes live in a different world to everyone else. They make hundreds of millions of dollars, and their lifestyle reflects that.
On ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast , an interview of Mizuhara from 2024 saw the interpreter explain that keeping up with that lifestyle is what led to his downfall.
“At the time, I couldn’t share this with Shohei, but it was hard for me to make my ends meet,” Mizuhara said. “I was kind of going paycheck to paycheck because I kind of had to keep up with his lifestyle…
“I didn’t want to go to him for help financially, stuff like that. So I was just trying to make ends meet on my side and I was in debt a little bit and stuff with, like, my parents and some friends.”
The translator revealed that he was making around $85,000 a year at the time, which he implied was not enough for him to stay out of trouble.
He is now paying for his actions, having been sentenced to 57 months in prison and instructed to repay Ohtani the $17 million that he stole.
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