Ippei Mizuhara leaves the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and Courthouse in Santa Ana, California, on February 6, 2025. The former interpreter to Shohei Ohtani, who admitted stealing almost $17 million from the Japanese baseball star to pay off illegal gambling debts, was sentenced to 57 months in prison on February 6. Mizuhara was also ordered to pay restitution of more than $18.1 million in his sentencing in federal court. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
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More than two years after news broke that a Los Angeles Dodgers interpreter had lost a significant amount of superstar slugger Shohei Ohtani’s money by sports betting with an illegal bookmaker, new details about the enigmatic Ippei Mizuhara have come to light.
In a six-part podcast released this week, ESPN’s Thisa Thompson narrates her long conversation with Mizuhara before he recanted his admissions in a stunning reversal.
While the legal case centered on millions of dollars stolen from Ohtani’s accounts, Mizuhara’s initial confession details his perspective and some notable, later debunked, claims.
Los Angeles Dodgers’ Former Interpreter Ippei Mizuhara Idolized Team
Among the details that have emerged from ESPN’s reporting was that Mizuhara favored the Dodgers as a fan while growing up.
“Mizuhara’s childhood friends remembered what the future interpreter was like in high school,” ESPN reported. “One recalled that Mizuhara loved the Dodgers because of Hideo Nomo but switched his allegiance to the Seattle Mariners when Ichiro Suzuki came to MLB.”
That baseball fandom makes the irony of his eventual role with the Dodgers even more striking. And it recalls Mizuhara’s journey to become a high-profile interpreter for the greatest ever Japanese baseball player.
As numerous reports confirmed shortly after Mizuhara took back his initial confession, he seems to have lied about numerous aspects of his biography in his journey to translate for Ohtani first with the Los Angeles Angels and then with the Dodgers.
“Our university records do not show a student by the name of Ippei Mizuhara having attended UC Riverside,” a school spokesman told The Athletic’s Sam Blum.
Mizuhara also initially told Thompson that he and Ohtani were closer than brothers and that he was embarrassed to ask the superstar player for financial help, which he never actually did.
Los Angeles Dodgers’ Former Interpreter Fabricates Biography Before Joining Shohei Ohtani
Whatever Mizuhara did to secure his position as Ohtani’s interpreter, he certainly seems to have taken advantage of it.
In explaining why he spoke out just before Mizuhara’s confession went live in 2024, Ohtani revealed that he was totally unaware of the gambling debt or the confession’s details because Mizuhara was able to mislead him via translation and access his bank accounts without his knowledge.
Mizuhara evidently became one of Ohtani’s closest day-to-day confidants and, given his willingness to bend the truth earlier in his career and his interest in Japanese Dodgers stars, it now appears he might have targeted Ohtani specifically.