Ippei Mizuhara was sentenced to 57 months in prison on February 6, 2025. He also has to pay $18M worth of fines and restitution. Mizuhara, who embezzled over $17M to pay for gambling bills, pleaded guilty to bank fraud in June 2024.
According to the plea agreement signed between Mizuhara, the U.S. District Court, and Los Angeles Angels, Mizuhara had been hired by the Los Angeles Angels as Ohtani’s driver and interpreter in 2018, upon Ohtani’s arrival in America. Mizuhara became Ohtani’s assistant quickly, helping him with other matters, such as financial matters, like setting up a new bank account. Ohtani personally paid Mizuhara for this assistance.
In the fall of 2021, Mizuhara began to bet heavily on sports. This was allegedly done through Mathew Bowyer, an illegal bookmaker based in Orange County, California. Mizuhara quickly racked up massive losses. Mizuhara used the bank account that Ohtani had helped him establish to cover them.
Mizuhara recalled the password for the bank account from when he assisted Ohtani with opening the account in 2018, and Mizuhara was able to successfully sign into the Account on its website. After obtaining access to the Account, Mizuhara changed the security protocols on the account without the permission or authorization of Ohtani. Specifically, Mizuhara changed the registered email address and phone number on the account so bank employees would call him, and not Ohtani when attempting to verify wire transfers from the bank account.
To further the scheme, Mizuhara impersonated Ohtani and used his personal identification information to deceive and trick bank staff into authorizing a wire transfer from the account.
Mizuhara also kept Ohtani’s financial advisors in the dark.
When the sports agent of Ohtani, and the financial advisors requested access to the bank account, Mizuhara falsely claimed that Ohtani did not want the access because the account was private. As Mizuhara, at the time, knew the truth, he did not want to have Ohtani’s sports agent or financial advisors review the bank account because he was afraid they would discover that Mizuhara, had stolen millions of dollars from him. According to Mizuhara’s false statements of material facts, he, fraudulently obtained over $16,975,010 out of the bank account.
Mizuhara then tried to deceive the IRS. He admitted that he had underreported his income for 2022 by $4.1M. This amount was derived from Ohtani’s account.
This incident, although isolated due to its specific circumstances, illustrates a worrying trend in which sports, at both the professional and semi-professional levels, also known as collegiate athletics are becoming more closely linked to legalized online gambling. MLB terminated Pat Hoberg in February 2025 for sharing a gambling account with a person who betted on baseball. Hoberg didn’t bet on baseball. The NBA permanently banned Jontay Porter in 2024 for his involvement in attempting to fix matches. Terry Rozier, a current NBA player, is currently under investigation. The same gambling ring that was linked to the Porter and Rozier case is now being investigated for attempting to influence the results of games played by colleges in three different states. All this is happening while the NBA promotes gambling on its website. It’s good money, but it is not a great look.
American Gaming Association estimated that $1.39B in legal bets will be placed on Super Bowl LIX, between Kansas City Chiefs vs. Philadelphia Eagles, on February 9, 2025, in New Orleans. Even politicians would be astonished by the numbers. The question isn’t whether or not trouble will occur, but when and who.
