A former interpreter was sentenced on Thursday to nearly five years in prison for stealing $17m from Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to pay off gambling debts, according to local media reports.
Ippei Mizuhara, the one-time translator and de facto manager of Ohtani, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, the punishment prosecutors had sought, and also ordered by US district judge John Holcomb to pay restitution of over $18m, the City News Service reported.
Mizuhara, 39, pleaded guilty to felony bank fraud and subscribing to a false tax return last year, according to his plea deal previously filed in US district court in Los Angeles.
Mizuhara was accused of embezzling nearly $17mfrom a bank account of Ohtani’s that Mizuhara had helped open in Phoenix in 2018, and transferring the funds without Ohtani’s knowledge to an illegal bookmaking operation to cover Mizuhara’s gambling debts.
Announcing the original bank fraud charge last year, former US attorney E Martin Estrada stressed there was nothing to suggest wrongdoing by Ohtani, who has said he was an unwitting victim of theft and has never bet on baseball or knowingly paid a bookmaker.
According to prosecutors, Mizuhara began gambling with an illegal sports book in late 2021 and lost substantial sums.
To cover his debts, Mizuhara impersonated Ohtani over the phone on more than two dozen occasions to deceive bank employees into authorizing wire transfers from Ohtani’s account, prosecutors said. Ohtani signed a record $700m, 10-year contract to join the Dodgers last season, becoming the highest-paid player in Major League Baseball.
The 30-year-old’s talents as a slugger and a pitcher have earned him comparisons to Babe Ruth.
