Ohtani’s former interpreter was given a jail sentence for stealing

According to a court document, a former translator was sentenced on Thursday to almost five years in jail for stealing $17 million from Los Angeles Dodgers player Shohei Ohtani in order to settle gambling debts.

According to a U.S. District Court, Central District of California sentencing document, Ippei Mizuhara, the former translator and de facto manager of the Japanese power-hitting pitcher, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, the punishment prosecutors had requested. Additionally, U.S. District Judge John Holcomb ordered Mizuhara to pay restitution of more than $18 million. Last year, Mizuhara entered a guilty plea.

Mizuhara’s attorney, Michael Freedman, remained silent.

In a written statement, acting U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally of the Central District of California claimed that Mizuhara had “exploited this dream job to steal millions of dollars from his friend and confidant.”

Mizuhara, 40, previously submitted a plea agreement in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles last year, entering a guilty plea to one count of felony bank fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return.

In order to pay off Mizuhara’s gambling debts, Mizuhara was charged with stealing about $17 million from a bank account that Ohtani had helped create in Phoenix in 2018 and moving the money to an illicit bookmaking business without the ballplayer’s knowledge.

Former U.S. Attorney E. Martin Estrada emphasized that there was no evidence of misconduct by Ohtani, who has stated that he was an unintentional victim of theft and has never placed a baseball wager or paid a bookmaker with knowledge, when he announced the initial bank fraud indictment last year.

Prosecutors claim that Mizuhara started gambling with an illicit sports book in late 2021 and suffered significant losses.

According to prosecutors, Mizuhara used over two dozen phone impersonations of Ohtani to trick bank staff into approving wire transfers from Ohtani’s account in order to pay off his obligations.

Last season, Ohtani became the highest-paid player in Major League Baseball when he agreed to a record seven hundred million dollar, ten-year contract with the Dodgers. The 30-year-old has been compared to Babe Ruth because of his skills as a pitcher and slugger.