Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter of Shohei Ohtani, allegedly posed several times as the baseball player in order to gain access to his bank account and thus steal an amount exceeding $16 million.
The United States Department of Justice announced Thursday that the Japanese man faces several charges in this case which has been in the news for several months.
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Lawyer Martin Estrada detailed the case in a press conference, arguing that Mizuhara had “looted” Ohtani’s bank account in order to repay his gambling debts. It was also the interpreter who allegedly helped his friend to create a bank account in 2018.
Still according to the lawyer, he imitated Ohtani’s voice on the phone to approve transactions with book takers. The money earned would still have been transferred to Mizuhara’s personal account.
Jeff Passan, from the ESPN network, revealed that Mizuhara would have recorded nearly $40.7 million in losses ($183 million in lost bets and $142 million in won bets) on the 35,966 bets he would have made. . None of these would have been done on baseball.
“Our investigation revealed that because of the position of trust he held with Mr. Ohtani, Mr. Mizuhara had unique access to Mr. Ohtani’s finances. Mr. Mizuhara used and abused his position of trust in order to take advantage of Mr. Ohtani,” explained Martin Estrada.
On Wednesday, the “New York Times” reported that the ex-performer would plead guilty to “a series of facts related to illegal conduct.” Mizuhara was fired by the Los Angeles Dodgers on March 20, and Ohtani explained his side of the story five days later during a statement to the media.
2024-04-11 19:29:01
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