Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Los Angeles Dodgers player Shohei Ohtani (right) and interpreter Ippei Mizuhara attend the game between the Los Angeles Rams and the New Orleans Saints at SoFi Stadium
It’s been a couple of years since the Dodgers fired Ippei Mizuhara after discovering the longtime interpreter for Shohei Ohtani had fleeced him out of a fortune. He did so to cover the money he owed to a bookie, and the man who took his bets says he’s never encountered someone who’s gambled as much as he did before things fell apart.
In 2018, the Angels turned plenty of heads after securing the talents of Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese sensation who’d made a name for himself in his native country thanks to his ability to get things done in the batter’s box and on the pitcher’s mound.
There were plenty of adjustments that came with moving to the United States, and the team decided to make the transition smoother by hiring Ippei Mizuhara to serve as his dedicated interpreter.
The duo spent more than five years basically connected at the hip whenever Ohtani was in public, but things took a very unexpected turn when the Dodgers (who retained his services after signing the superstar) announced he’d been fired in 2024.
His dismissal was linked to an investigation concerning a bookie who received more than $4 million wired from one of Ohtani’s personal accounts, and we eventually learned Mizuhara had siphoned significantly more to cover his gambling debts.
The bookie in question has not been shy about discussing his role in the scandal, and he recently opened up about the habits that caught him off guard after he started accepting bets from Ohtani’s former right-hand man.
The bookie who handled bets Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter placed says he’d never encountered that level of degenerate gambling before
Mizuhara is currently serving a 57-month sentence at a federal prison in Pennsylvania after pleading guilty to bank fraud after he was caught impersonating Ohtani to steal $17 million from his accounts (he is slated to be released in 2029).
The bulk of that sum was used for the many bets he placed with Mathew Bowyer, the California-based bookie who served a prison sentence of his own for his role in the scheme.
According to ESPN, Bowyer is no stranger to questionable wagering habits as a self-admitted “compulsive gambler,” but during a recent conversation with the outlet, he said Mizuhara was on another level when it came to his attempts to make money and the lengths he’d go to while trying to recoup it after he lost, saying:
“He was absolutely bananas, the amount of bets he was making. He was trying to dig out a hole, and that hole made him even more poor of a gambler because he’s betting big payout stuff.
Listen, I gambled bigger than most, right? I sleep, you know, I have a life too. He definitely was betting all night long, all the time. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“A bookie being blown away by your betting habits” has to be near to top of the list when it comes to the signs you probably have a gambling problem, but as we know by now, Mizuhara wasn’t able to admit that was the case until it was too late.