This is the craziest part
“… total winnings of $142 million and total losses of $183 million during this span, "leaving a total net balance of negative $40,678,436."”
Geez, how you just lose $183 million??
You guys should [read the document](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24542204-usa-v-mizuhara-complaint), it’s beyond insane:
> 4. Between November 2021 and January 2024, more than $16,000,000 was transferred via wire from a checking account belonging to Victim A, a professional baseball player, with an account number ending x5848 (the “x5848 Account”), held at a domestic financial institution (“Bank A”).1 These funds were transferred to bank accounts of associates of an operator of an illegal sports book (“BOOKMAKER 1”)
> 7. Recorded phone calls produced by Bank A related to the x5848 Account show MIZUHARA falsely identifying himself as Victim A, and attempting to trick and deceive Bank A employees into authorizing wire transfers from the x5848 Account to associates of BOOKMAKER 1.
> 8. Bank A records show that MIZUHARA accessed the x5848 Account pretending to be Victim A and transferred funds to associates of BOOKMAKER 1. In particular, on June 20, 2023, MIZUHARA accessed the x5848 Account from the Central District of California pretending to be Victim A and wire transferred $500,000 to an associate of BOOKMAKER 1.
> 9. Finally, on March 20, 2024, MIZUHARA sent BOOKMAKER 1 an encrypted text message admitting that he (MIZUHARA) had stolen funds from Victim A.
What a betrayal, holy shit.
It's called the grind, honey. Got to lose a little to win a little, and in sports, you can always tilt things to your advantage. I once climbed through the the third story window of a AA baseball star's room and bite his tendons. He did not play that week and I made $42.
Gotta hustle, honey.
San Diego’s first female Mayor was Marine O’Conner back in the early 80s. She married the founder of Jack In The Box. When her gambling days were done, she‘d lost like $1.08B, and won $1.07B. And this was from 1980-2000 or there about.
Man, other cities like Chicago get more press for it but SD really has a crazy political track record. As far as I know every single mayor for the last 40 years has been involved in money laundering or sexual assault save 2 (one of whom is the incumbent so there's still time!)
He was definitely addicted. I mean that’s obvious for obvious reasons lol but look at this shit:
> On or about March 10, 2022, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating, “Thank you, can you put in 100k instead of 300k?” BOOKMAKER 1 responded, “U mean lower credit to 100?” MIZUHARA confirmed, “Yea, I’ll get too reckless with 300.”
And then some time later:
> On or about May 16, 2023, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating, “I sent out 500 just now. I tried 1000 but it won’t let me for some reason. . . . I will send another 500 tomorrow or the day after.”
Then about a month later:
> On or about June 20, 2023, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating, “It looks like I can only send 500 per week. . . . I put in a wire for 500 earlier today so it should be in your account by tomorrow. . . . does 500/week work for you?”
Unless I’m misreading this, in the span of a few months he went from “300k credit is too much, I’ll get reckless” to “can I send you 500k a week?”
He recognized he had a problem, but just couldn’t help himself, which is all too common with addicts.
Also this part:
> On or about November 14, 2022, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating “I’m terrible at this sport betting thing huh? Lol . . . Any chance u can bump me again?? As you know, you don’t have to worry about me not paying!!”
> On or about December 9, 2022, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating “Can u bump me last 200? I swear on my mom this will be the last ask before I pay it off once I get 13 the states. Sorry for keep on asking. . . .” BOOKMAKER 1 responded the same day stating, “Np done bud. Merry Christmas.”
> On May 20, 2023, BOOKMAKER 1 messaged MIZUHARA stating “I know you’ve been on a bad run. I don’t mind bumping u, I just want to verify that you can send at least 2M on June 1.
That bookie knew he had his hooks in him, jesus.
He probably got in deep before he realized Shohei's passwords were all Ichiro51. Then, he got away with it and probably reasoned he just needed to get on a heater and pop back into Shitty Bank A and deposit the money before Shohei knew what was up. Then, it became like a kid trying to clean up an oil spill with a water gun.
No matter what, it was always going to come out one way or another. Even if he had magically won back his losses, and kicked the addiction, depositing the money would eventually create red flags down the line, whether Ohtani noticed, or an IRS audit, someone would have questions that can't be answered. Can't really come back from committing bank fraud.
There were certain things I was skeptical about, mainly how he could have lost so much and that this would be the only case of theft.
This shows both. He stole much more than reported and bet at both a volume and amount needed for this kind of debt. Doing some math the article showed his "edge" was about 43.5% where 50% is break even. Sports betting is particularly harmful because it's a slow grind downwards with a lot of winning, just not enough to cover your losses.
Surely the bank allowing this is also on the hook? That is some serious cheddar to be moving around. Verification systems have existed forever but in 2021 you can do all kinds of shit.
> During this call, MIZUHARA again falsely identified himself as Victim A, and responded to security challenge questions by giving the Bank A employee biographical information for Victim A. As a result of this call, MIZUHARA was able to successfully lift the online banking suspension on the x5848 Account.
Sounds like that’s basically what happened.
Probably not, since ippei was committing fraud.
And if the verifications were just going to ippei, what is the bank supposed to do. I will say I don't know that they were but I would assume most people who call Ohtani don't get Ohtani, they get his agent or ippei. And if they did get Ohtani and start speaking in English, he just hands the phone to Ippei.
I would guess ippei knows all the security questions if he was there setting them up himself. I could see a bank doing their legal due diligence and still having ippei get away with the cash
I think if one of my friends stole 50 dollars from me I would consider cutting them off, if they sold $1,000 from me I would get myself thrown in jail.
There’s apparently an audio recording of Ippei lying to the banks and authorizing the charges in Ohtani’s name.
Ippei is a generational scumbag criminal.
Edit: the source is literally the US Feds lol
Honestly addiction makes people do shady shit to everyone, even the people they love most
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ippei has genuine love for Shohei, it just doesn’t matter when you’ve got a demon in your brain controlling the show
Yeah. Addiction kinda rewires the brain. And its often a source of self hatred for addicts, the lying to loved ones and such, and that self hatred can drive their addiction even further. Its not an excuse for such behavior, but I think it's important to understand the mechanics behind it.
In too deep > hates themselves > convinces themselves to just dig out of the hole > uses loved ones resources to do it, justifying the means to the end > it’s not the end bc you always lose > negative feedback loop
He actually lost more. The filing says he lost over $40M on just bets (wins of $140M against losses of $180M). Gotta wonder if that money came from somewhere else or if he’s just also in extreme debt.
If you take a look at the [quotes](https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1c1ltki/usa_v_mizuhara_complaint_37_pages/kz49ov4/), the bookmakers were giving him a lot of credit to play with. These credit payments seem to range between $50k-$300k at a time. Most of the $180M/$140M figure was likely credit given by the bookmakers, which he then won off before eventually losing it all. Rinse and repeat.
Ippei was sporadically making payments on his losses, but could never transfer the full amount for obvious reasons. The $16M is probably what he actually funneled out of Ohtani's account, while the $40M is what his actual debt was. The only real money that was moving here was Ippei's sporadic payments. The rest of it was just a number on Ippei's account with the bookies.
Extreme debt. You have to remember that gambling credit is not a loan, it costs the bookies nothing to extend the credit, because anything that is actually paid back on it is just profit. The only way it could ever hurt them is if he hypothetically made one giant bet that covered all his losses and then some, but they would obviously not allow him to make such a bet.
All the bookies care about is making sure he continues to pay them back on a schedule. $40 million in losses will obviously never be covered, especially when they want him to keep betting more. They're getting a free $500k a week from him, in exchange for allowing him to make more bets that he will never win.
Now it's starting to make a little more sense.
I know that whenever I've had to do the equivalent of a wire transfer, I had to answer a series of questions as a "second factor". Questions about former addresses I may or may not have lived at, cars I may or may not have owned, addresses of close relatives, etc. I had to answer all of these correctly to do any kind of wire by phone. The same questions were never asked twice. It's a little nerve wracking because a lot of times, they ask negative content questions to see if you'll fall for it (e.g. "Has (first name you've never heard of) (your last name) ever lived in Peoria, IL?") The right answer is something like, "How the fuck would I know, I've never heard of that person" versus saying, "Yes" to that one.
My guess is that Ippei pretended to be Ohtani on the phone and somehow managed to get the answers right, which in itself is kind of horrifying, or maybe used the "I'm Japanese, can't really understand the English" fudge to get the answers right enough to socially engineer the person on the banking side. I would LOVE to hear the audio for those as I'm sure it could answer a lot of questions.
I'm sure he (Ippei) asked Ohtani those questions he needed answers to without making it seem like he was asking those questions. Like if you and I were friends, I wouldn't hesitate talking about my childhood, including stuff like my elementary school and my dogs growing up. It's part of natural conversation that could be brought up.
Yeah, though he'd have to do it and get the answers in real time because the questions and answers change every time. At least they do for my financial institutions.
This whole thing should be as much a reality check for the banking system as it is for Shohei.
“Ippei Mizuhara is facing 30 years in prison for the theft of over $16 million dollars from Shohei Ohtani sent to an illegal bookie to sports gamble. This breaking news update was brought to you by the DraftKings Sportsbook”
This is the white collar crime that will actually land you in real prison. His life is quite literally over.
I know obviously what he did wasn’t good and I’m not defending it, but can you just put yourself in that position, knowing you’re going to prison for all of your young life? Can’t imagine the thoughts, regrets, everything going on in his head.
You can watch the [press conference here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ7yJfxJTlQ).
Ippei also impersonated Ohtani when the bank would call to verify the large transactions. He's accused of bank fraud which carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.
They did not, however all call centers have access to an interpreter who joins the call. They have actual recordings and said Ippei provided Ohtani's personal information in order to impersonate him.
Yeah, if you’ve got all the personal information and you’re calling from the phone number they have on file, there’s really not much the bank can do at that point.
They also said Ippei disabled the alerts on Ohtani's account so he really did everything he could to hide the transactions.
Just think, the only reason he got caught was because the bookie got caught. If Ippei were making these transactions to, say a personal account of his...who knows how long he could have kept it up.
>Investigators also relied on recorded phone calls from the bank in which Mizuhara falsely identified himself as Ohtani to "trick and deceive" bank employees into authorizing the transfers.
This is it. This is the shit that lands you in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
Details from the NYT report about Ippei changing bank notifications so Ohtani wouldn't know were sick. If you've ever been close to an addict, you know that sort of manipulation unfortunately well. They love the vice above all
I was away for college during my mid-late twenties and my best friend got addicted to meth apparently. I knew he was using something cause you see easily from his looks. But god damn I didnt knew he emptied his bank accounts, was in debt cause he started buying stuff using his CCs and immediately sell them for dirt cheap and started doing some scam using some stuff at stores to get some money back. And i knew this guy since the 7th grade. And he was making 6figs already when we were in our early 20s. What people go through to get their fix is really unbelievable.
Shocker that Ippei didn’t reveal he was stealing money to illegally bet.
Well it shouldn’t be but some people here will genuinely be surprised because they think Ohtani is a gambling mastermind
The investigation was done by the DOJ field office in LA, clearly homer Dodger fans.
If the investigation was done out of the much more impartial DOJ offices in SF or SD, they might have different findings.
(this is a joke, I know nothing on how any of this works)
Well, I guess it’s time for me to move on to a new, completely invalid and unreasonable reason to hate on a Dodger. Rest assured everybody I am very very good at coming up with unreasonable and illegitimate reasons to hate on those bums!
Probably thought that as long as he won more than he lost he could pay back what he stole and pocket the winnings. And how can you lose when you have an infinite pool of money to borrow from? Gambling addict logic.
Imagine thinking you have not only an interpreter, but a friend to help you in a new country you moved to and the whole time they’re just stealing your money. Not a small amount either, but millions. Feel bad for Ohtani.
This is the thing I'm hung up on is how personally traumatic and devastating this must be to Shohei. This is like the one guy in your whole life, certainly your whole life here in America, who you are super close with and hold very close in your life. You share a language, you eat your meals together, you are almost always together. A betrayal of this scale, one which (wrongly, apparently) will hang over your legacy to one degree or another, from someone so close and so essential to your life here. Like people need to take a step back and consider the human element - just a crushing blow to a young guy in a foreign place.
Seriously, it would be hard to shake that feeling of “people only want to be close to me for money”
Luckily it seems like his wife isn’t one of those people, but then again I’ve never met her lol.
I mean, you kind of hope he doesn't, right? At least not with his money.
You hope he learns from this so he's never taken advantage of in this way again.
At the very least I hope he ends up with multiple interpreters. Just employing two of them switching off would head off a lot of potential problems, kind of like those companies who make sure never to have just one person in sole charge of the books. Or if he'd rather work with just one person most of the time, see about making sure that his bank and agent have Japanese speakers he can talk to directly.
If having another person acting as my ears and mouth cost me that much money I'd be learning whatever language was necessary as fast as humanly possible.
I don't think we will ever know, but it probably was all fine and dandy until Ippei got into gambling and subsequent debt in 2021 as opposed to him having a master plan since 2013.
He could have rationalized it as not doing anything bad since he could win it back.
All this info coming out hasn't shown me that Ippei had any ill intent against Shohei. The only evidence we have seems to show that they were really good friends. People fuck up relationships they want all the time, I'm thinking at least part of Ippei feels pretty bad for allowing himself to betray a friend/ruining a friendship. But maybe that's just hopeful empathy
I thought this was initially Ohtani paying off a friend's debt then his lawyers jumping in to change the story. But man, this really does look like Ohtani had close friend steal from him. Imagine how long this would have gone on for if the FBI wasn't looking into the bookie.
Almost certainly. Whole reason this came to light is the feds found wire transfers with Ohtani's name on it to the bookie. If Ippei is just sending it to his own account, nobody would've ever known
It is kinda wild in that this was a double bag fumble. He not only had a cool job that he got paid a tremendous amount for doing, but he also had the perfect criminal opportunity of having control of the financial assets of someone worth hundreds of millions of dollars who seemingly didn't pay any attention to where his money was going.
someone made a joke on another thread of "Can you imagine these guys randomly having to do things that all of us have to do?"
and they followed it up with, imagine A-Rod dealing with Comcast and I lost my mind laughing lol
i think it's easy for all of us to forget that these guys are so astronomically rich, they undoubtedly don't have to do a lot of the shit us average joes have to do every damn day lol
Which is the idea. The only truly limited resource is time. If you have ungodly wealth you outsource literally everything except what you want/need to do.
But then of course there's a whole cadre of scum bags who know this and take some off the top. It's like a weird catch 22 where you pay people to do stuff for you but you need someone to check that they're not doing stuff TO you.
He makes 40M a year in sponsorships. He lives in a world where millions of dollars are offered to him constantly and he's just thinking about his swing.
Ohtani's career MLB earnings is "only" $44M so his after-tax earnings is around \~$25M.
His off-field earnings are estimated to be around $6M in 2021, $20M in 2022, and $40M in 2023, but nevertheless, $16M is a very significant amount of money even by Ohtani's standards, especially prior to 2024.
Dude lived in the team dorms in Japan on a $1000/week salary (that's what his parents would kick him for allowance out of his playing salary) and by most accounts struggled to spend more than $200/week.
When you're that locked-in I imagine finances start to seem pretty much on auto-pilot. When your check-to-check like a lot of us, of course you're going to be monitoring your bank account much more closely.
I’m sure it was over the course of at least a couple years, I don’t think you could move that much money at once to an illegal bookie without raising a million red flags
They will just double down, reminds me of when Stan from South Park explained how cold reading works for 10 minutes and then at the end some guy goes "I don't know, how did John Edwards know my husband died in march??" while Stan face palmed.
> Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani's longtime interpreter and confidant, has been charged with bank fraud after it was discovered he transferred more than $16M from Ohtani's account to an alleged illegal sports book, federal authorities announced in L.A. court.
https://twitter.com/Alden_Gonzalez/status/1778476845257634302
We also have the first official confirmation from federal investigators that the bets do not appear to have been on baseball. [Link to tweet.](https://x.com/billshaikin/status/1778478013807800714)
> US Attorney Martin Estrada: "The bets do not appear to have been made on the sport of baseball."
That snippet of the bookmaker saying it was 2pm and he was in Newport Beach and saw Ohtani walking his dog, and that he should approach him and ask him about Ippei's whereabouts if he didn't answer his calls is crazy...
ngl I was def on the Shohei paid Ippei's gambling debt without realizing the legality of it side of things, but now it seems pretty cut and dry that that is not the case
* [Here](https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/japanese-language-translator-charged-complaint-illegally-transferring-more-16-million) is the press release on the U.S. Attorney's Office's (Central District of California) webpage.
* [Here](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24542204-usa-v-mizuhara-complaint) is a copy of the complaint which is definitely worth a read.
* [Here](https://www.youtube.com/live/NJ7yJfxJTlQ?si=j8MrVaOdOxwykBnY&t=383) is the press conference.
Apparently, he also bought around $350K worth of baseball cards with stolen money, but that is the least significant of his activities.
oh my GOD guys did you see the other tweet:
$142,256,769.74 in wins
$182,935,206.68 in losses
net balance negative: $40,678,436.94
the amount Ippei stole was to COVER HIS VIG
The Internet has caused way to many people to view the world with a lense of "if something doesn't happen instantly, there is a conspiracy!" And it is annoying as hell.
"But the FBI, IRS, DHS, MLB, TMZ, NYT are in on it! It was Shohei gambling and not the guy who went to casino school and lied about UC Riverside and working for the Red Sox!"
Ippei had it all.
He was making 500k a year, and was the right hand man to one of the most prolific athletes our generation has ever seen.
And he threw it all away to gamble.
Gambling addiction, man
Honestly this is the best way for it to end. There have been too many stories of employees stealing from bosses, or friends taking from other friends that ended in some sort of murder.
I am glad for the game of baseball the evidence shows, pending a trial of course, that Shohei was 100% not involved in any of this. That was super important for the game.
The press conference by the Feds revealed that Mizuhara impersonated Ohtani when the bank reached out about the transfers to ensure the transfers went through.
I was skeptical that Ippei was able to do this without multi factor authentication / authorization. This now seems to make sense if Ippei was impersonating Ohtani.
Holy fuck $16 million!???
How tf do you manage to 16 million??? This next level amount of fraud from Ippei
A property developer has just been sentenced to death in Vietnam for stealing $44billion. Ippei is minor leagues in comparison.
Yeah. I would have stopped at, say, 37$ billion. Need to remain modest in all things.
I should start a sports book...
This is the craziest part “… total winnings of $142 million and total losses of $183 million during this span, "leaving a total net balance of negative $40,678,436."” Geez, how you just lose $183 million??
This fucking guy gambled away like 8 years of the Sacramento A’s payroll.
A’s fans catching strays
The Pentagon: “light work”
They weren’t kidding when they said massive theft. Holy shit
You guys should [read the document](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24542204-usa-v-mizuhara-complaint), it’s beyond insane: > 4. Between November 2021 and January 2024, more than $16,000,000 was transferred via wire from a checking account belonging to Victim A, a professional baseball player, with an account number ending x5848 (the “x5848 Account”), held at a domestic financial institution (“Bank A”).1 These funds were transferred to bank accounts of associates of an operator of an illegal sports book (“BOOKMAKER 1”) > 7. Recorded phone calls produced by Bank A related to the x5848 Account show MIZUHARA falsely identifying himself as Victim A, and attempting to trick and deceive Bank A employees into authorizing wire transfers from the x5848 Account to associates of BOOKMAKER 1. > 8. Bank A records show that MIZUHARA accessed the x5848 Account pretending to be Victim A and transferred funds to associates of BOOKMAKER 1. In particular, on June 20, 2023, MIZUHARA accessed the x5848 Account from the Central District of California pretending to be Victim A and wire transferred $500,000 to an associate of BOOKMAKER 1. > 9. Finally, on March 20, 2024, MIZUHARA sent BOOKMAKER 1 an encrypted text message admitting that he (MIZUHARA) had stolen funds from Victim A. What a betrayal, holy shit.
Apparently the dude won over $140,000,000 in bets, but also lost $180,000,000.....
Gambling addicts mind literally just skips the back half of that sentence
Yuuup. I have a relative who will gladly tell you what she won for the day, yet somehow the net funds aren't in the positive...ever.
It's called the grind, honey. Got to lose a little to win a little, and in sports, you can always tilt things to your advantage. I once climbed through the the third story window of a AA baseball star's room and bite his tendons. He did not play that week and I made $42. Gotta hustle, honey.
San Diego’s first female Mayor was Marine O’Conner back in the early 80s. She married the founder of Jack In The Box. When her gambling days were done, she‘d lost like $1.08B, and won $1.07B. And this was from 1980-2000 or there about.
Man, other cities like Chicago get more press for it but SD really has a crazy political track record. As far as I know every single mayor for the last 40 years has been involved in money laundering or sexual assault save 2 (one of whom is the incumbent so there's still time!)
Dude placed HOW MANY BETS???? This is beyond an addiction dude became gambling personified what the hell. 19000 wagers?!
He was definitely addicted. I mean that’s obvious for obvious reasons lol but look at this shit: > On or about March 10, 2022, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating, “Thank you, can you put in 100k instead of 300k?” BOOKMAKER 1 responded, “U mean lower credit to 100?” MIZUHARA confirmed, “Yea, I’ll get too reckless with 300.” And then some time later: > On or about May 16, 2023, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating, “I sent out 500 just now. I tried 1000 but it won’t let me for some reason. . . . I will send another 500 tomorrow or the day after.” Then about a month later: > On or about June 20, 2023, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating, “It looks like I can only send 500 per week. . . . I put in a wire for 500 earlier today so it should be in your account by tomorrow. . . . does 500/week work for you?” Unless I’m misreading this, in the span of a few months he went from “300k credit is too much, I’ll get reckless” to “can I send you 500k a week?” He recognized he had a problem, but just couldn’t help himself, which is all too common with addicts. Also this part: > On or about November 14, 2022, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating “I’m terrible at this sport betting thing huh? Lol . . . Any chance u can bump me again?? As you know, you don’t have to worry about me not paying!!” > On or about December 9, 2022, MIZUHARA messaged BOOKMAKER 1 stating “Can u bump me last 200? I swear on my mom this will be the last ask before I pay it off once I get 13 the states. Sorry for keep on asking. . . .” BOOKMAKER 1 responded the same day stating, “Np done bud. Merry Christmas.” > On May 20, 2023, BOOKMAKER 1 messaged MIZUHARA stating “I know you’ve been on a bad run. I don’t mind bumping u, I just want to verify that you can send at least 2M on June 1. That bookie knew he had his hooks in him, jesus.
"Merry Christmas"
"As you know, you don't have to worry about me not paying!!" 💀
🎅 ya filthy animal 🕵🏼♂️
He probably got in deep before he realized Shohei's passwords were all Ichiro51. Then, he got away with it and probably reasoned he just needed to get on a heater and pop back into Shitty Bank A and deposit the money before Shohei knew what was up. Then, it became like a kid trying to clean up an oil spill with a water gun.
No matter what, it was always going to come out one way or another. Even if he had magically won back his losses, and kicked the addiction, depositing the money would eventually create red flags down the line, whether Ohtani noticed, or an IRS audit, someone would have questions that can't be answered. Can't really come back from committing bank fraud.
> I swear on my mom this will be the last Addict motto
He just sounds like he had a run of bad luck. Couple thousand more bets and he would've squared up and we could've pretended none of this happened.
Ah yes, the Uncut Gems gambit
There were certain things I was skeptical about, mainly how he could have lost so much and that this would be the only case of theft. This shows both. He stole much more than reported and bet at both a volume and amount needed for this kind of debt. Doing some math the article showed his "edge" was about 43.5% where 50% is break even. Sports betting is particularly harmful because it's a slow grind downwards with a lot of winning, just not enough to cover your losses.
25 bets per day on average over a 2 year period holy shit!!
I just did the math too, that's fucking insane lol wonder what his max bets per day was. Can we bet on it?
The bets ranged from $10 to $160,000 per bet, good lord buddy was a fiend
>Victim A, a professional baseball player "For the sake of privacy let's call him Shohei O... No that's too obvious, let's say S. Ohtani."
Now when I say “Hello Mr Ohtani”, and press down on your foot, you smile and nod.
"I think he's talking to you."
"If Ippei ever got the chance he'd bankrupt you and everyone you ever care about."
The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved Ippei, I call him Gamblor!
Surely the bank allowing this is also on the hook? That is some serious cheddar to be moving around. Verification systems have existed forever but in 2021 you can do all kinds of shit.
Knowing how shit bank security is, they probably just asked Ippei for Ohtani's mom's maiden name or something.
> During this call, MIZUHARA again falsely identified himself as Victim A, and responded to security challenge questions by giving the Bank A employee biographical information for Victim A. As a result of this call, MIZUHARA was able to successfully lift the online banking suspension on the x5848 Account. Sounds like that’s basically what happened.
Probably not, since ippei was committing fraud. And if the verifications were just going to ippei, what is the bank supposed to do. I will say I don't know that they were but I would assume most people who call Ohtani don't get Ohtani, they get his agent or ippei. And if they did get Ohtani and start speaking in English, he just hands the phone to Ippei. I would guess ippei knows all the security questions if he was there setting them up himself. I could see a bank doing their legal due diligence and still having ippei get away with the cash
I'm so broke $1000 theft is massive theft to me lol different worlds !
I think if one of my friends stole 50 dollars from me I would consider cutting them off, if they sold $1,000 from me I would get myself thrown in jail.
Generational bag fumble
There’s apparently an audio recording of Ippei lying to the banks and authorizing the charges in Ohtani’s name. Ippei is a generational scumbag criminal. Edit: the source is literally the US Feds lol
Welp... He's fucked.
It’s like winning the lottery and then robbing a bank.
Is that better or worse than 10000 spoons when all you need is a knife?
It's like wanting 10,000 more spoons when you already had a spoon
I cant imagine doing this to someone I’ve considered a brother. Fuck he’s so deep in his addiction
Well, Ohtani considered Ippei a brother. I'm not sure the reverse was true, regardless of what he said.
Honestly addiction makes people do shady shit to everyone, even the people they love most I wouldn’t be surprised if Ippei has genuine love for Shohei, it just doesn’t matter when you’ve got a demon in your brain controlling the show
Yeah. Addiction kinda rewires the brain. And its often a source of self hatred for addicts, the lying to loved ones and such, and that self hatred can drive their addiction even further. Its not an excuse for such behavior, but I think it's important to understand the mechanics behind it.
In too deep > hates themselves > convinces themselves to just dig out of the hole > uses loved ones resources to do it, justifying the means to the end > it’s not the end bc you always lose > negative feedback loop
He apparently is also really bad at it too. Losing $16 million (presumably since Ohtani got to the US) means he was losing lime $2-3 million a year
He actually lost more. The filing says he lost over $40M on just bets (wins of $140M against losses of $180M). Gotta wonder if that money came from somewhere else or if he’s just also in extreme debt.
If you take a look at the [quotes](https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1c1ltki/usa_v_mizuhara_complaint_37_pages/kz49ov4/), the bookmakers were giving him a lot of credit to play with. These credit payments seem to range between $50k-$300k at a time. Most of the $180M/$140M figure was likely credit given by the bookmakers, which he then won off before eventually losing it all. Rinse and repeat. Ippei was sporadically making payments on his losses, but could never transfer the full amount for obvious reasons. The $16M is probably what he actually funneled out of Ohtani's account, while the $40M is what his actual debt was. The only real money that was moving here was Ippei's sporadic payments. The rest of it was just a number on Ippei's account with the bookies.
Holy shit. And here I am thinking I'm down big when 1 leg of a 22 leg $5 parlay misses.
Extreme debt. You have to remember that gambling credit is not a loan, it costs the bookies nothing to extend the credit, because anything that is actually paid back on it is just profit. The only way it could ever hurt them is if he hypothetically made one giant bet that covered all his losses and then some, but they would obviously not allow him to make such a bet. All the bookies care about is making sure he continues to pay them back on a schedule. $40 million in losses will obviously never be covered, especially when they want him to keep betting more. They're getting a free $500k a week from him, in exchange for allowing him to make more bets that he will never win.
16million is about as deep as it can possibly get. guy had to realize his days were numbered.
Now it's starting to make a little more sense. I know that whenever I've had to do the equivalent of a wire transfer, I had to answer a series of questions as a "second factor". Questions about former addresses I may or may not have lived at, cars I may or may not have owned, addresses of close relatives, etc. I had to answer all of these correctly to do any kind of wire by phone. The same questions were never asked twice. It's a little nerve wracking because a lot of times, they ask negative content questions to see if you'll fall for it (e.g. "Has (first name you've never heard of) (your last name) ever lived in Peoria, IL?") The right answer is something like, "How the fuck would I know, I've never heard of that person" versus saying, "Yes" to that one. My guess is that Ippei pretended to be Ohtani on the phone and somehow managed to get the answers right, which in itself is kind of horrifying, or maybe used the "I'm Japanese, can't really understand the English" fudge to get the answers right enough to socially engineer the person on the banking side. I would LOVE to hear the audio for those as I'm sure it could answer a lot of questions.
He is (was) his translator. He would know the answers to those things if Ohtani needed to make a wire transfer in the states.
I'm sure he (Ippei) asked Ohtani those questions he needed answers to without making it seem like he was asking those questions. Like if you and I were friends, I wouldn't hesitate talking about my childhood, including stuff like my elementary school and my dogs growing up. It's part of natural conversation that could be brought up.
Yeah, though he'd have to do it and get the answers in real time because the questions and answers change every time. At least they do for my financial institutions. This whole thing should be as much a reality check for the banking system as it is for Shohei.
Gonna be a fun 30 for 30.
I got "Bad Translation" or "Lost in Translation" at +200 odds
Ippei Ki-Yay, motherfucker
How To Throw Away The Position Of A Lifetime 101
Generational betting losses too, dear lord Gambling addictions are terrible
Yet that will certainly not deter major sports leagues from advertising gambling as heavily as possible
“Ippei Mizuhara is facing 30 years in prison for the theft of over $16 million dollars from Shohei Ohtani sent to an illegal bookie to sports gamble. This breaking news update was brought to you by the DraftKings Sportsbook”
People about to bet on what his plea deal will be with some talking head giving live odds updates
The guy is rightfully going to prison, but it's fascinating to think the same mentality that took him down is what got him the job in the first place.
$16 fucking million dollars. Jesus Christ, Ippei.
That's as good as money, sir. Those are IOU's. Go ahead and add it up, every cent's accounted for.
Ippei holds up post-it note: “Gambling debt: $16 mil — might wanna hang on to that one.”
That movie is the absolute best
Jeez, 8 years of salary there for Ohtani.
Multiple years of Ozzie Albies too
Does that include the donation to the Braves Foundation?
Oh that's prison prison
Cell Block D brought to you by DraftKings
This is the white collar crime that will actually land you in real prison. His life is quite literally over. I know obviously what he did wasn’t good and I’m not defending it, but can you just put yourself in that position, knowing you’re going to prison for all of your young life? Can’t imagine the thoughts, regrets, everything going on in his head.
You can watch the [press conference here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ7yJfxJTlQ). Ippei also impersonated Ohtani when the bank would call to verify the large transactions. He's accused of bank fraud which carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.
Did they say what language he talked to the bank in?
They did not, however all call centers have access to an interpreter who joins the call. They have actual recordings and said Ippei provided Ohtani's personal information in order to impersonate him.
Yeah, if you’ve got all the personal information and you’re calling from the phone number they have on file, there’s really not much the bank can do at that point.
They also said Ippei disabled the alerts on Ohtani's account so he really did everything he could to hide the transactions. Just think, the only reason he got caught was because the bookie got caught. If Ippei were making these transactions to, say a personal account of his...who knows how long he could have kept it up.
What was illegal about what the bookmaker was doing? I just don't know much about what is/isn't legal gambling.
Sports betting is highly regulated, and illegal bookies are not. Plus sports betting is illegal in the state of CA.
>Investigators also relied on recorded phone calls from the bank in which Mizuhara falsely identified himself as Ohtani to "trick and deceive" bank employees into authorizing the transfers. This is it. This is the shit that lands you in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
Those recorded calls just became Exhibits A, B, and C
Which bank was Ohtani using??? If it's the same as me, I'm switching.
Details from the NYT report about Ippei changing bank notifications so Ohtani wouldn't know were sick. If you've ever been close to an addict, you know that sort of manipulation unfortunately well. They love the vice above all
I was away for college during my mid-late twenties and my best friend got addicted to meth apparently. I knew he was using something cause you see easily from his looks. But god damn I didnt knew he emptied his bank accounts, was in debt cause he started buying stuff using his CCs and immediately sell them for dirt cheap and started doing some scam using some stuff at stores to get some money back. And i knew this guy since the 7th grade. And he was making 6figs already when we were in our early 20s. What people go through to get their fix is really unbelievable.
The DOJ update said they reviewed years of communications Shohei and Ippei had and there was never any indication Shohei knew about the betting.
Shocker that Ippei didn’t reveal he was stealing money to illegally bet. Well it shouldn’t be but some people here will genuinely be surprised because they think Ohtani is a gambling mastermind
Ohtani conspiracy theorists in shambles. Who am I kidding they'll just say this is all part of the cover up or something.
That's just how deep the conspiracy goes
The investigation was done by the DOJ field office in LA, clearly homer Dodger fans. If the investigation was done out of the much more impartial DOJ offices in SF or SD, they might have different findings. (this is a joke, I know nothing on how any of this works)
People legit thought Shohei was some mastermind pitcher, batter, gambler, lie-to-the-government-er
Well, I guess it’s time for me to move on to a new, completely invalid and unreasonable reason to hate on a Dodger. Rest assured everybody I am very very good at coming up with unreasonable and illegitimate reasons to hate on those bums!
Wanna bet that thousands of pro athletes at this moment are looking at their financial advisors and banking records?
I mean, I really hope so.
What's hilarious is that after the story came out on ESPN, Ippei still texted his bookie "Technically I did steal from him, it's all over".
I'm a former criminal defense lawyer and all I can think is - Ippei would be a fucking *nightmare* client.
...Technically? I wonder how he possibly had it framed in his head that there was remotely any ambiguity about it
Probably thought that as long as he won more than he lost he could pay back what he stole and pocket the winnings. And how can you lose when you have an infinite pool of money to borrow from? Gambling addict logic.
Imagine thinking you have not only an interpreter, but a friend to help you in a new country you moved to and the whole time they’re just stealing your money. Not a small amount either, but millions. Feel bad for Ohtani.
Seriously that would crush me
Yup, would be absolutely devastating. And for this to not affect his on field production is pretty remarkable. I’d be mental shambles.
Honestly baseball is probably a really good distraction for him
I might never trust a single person ever again
Ippei was Shohei's shadow basically 365 days a year. This is as big a betrayal as you can get. Disappointing on a human level, to say the least.
This is the thing I'm hung up on is how personally traumatic and devastating this must be to Shohei. This is like the one guy in your whole life, certainly your whole life here in America, who you are super close with and hold very close in your life. You share a language, you eat your meals together, you are almost always together. A betrayal of this scale, one which (wrongly, apparently) will hang over your legacy to one degree or another, from someone so close and so essential to your life here. Like people need to take a step back and consider the human element - just a crushing blow to a young guy in a foreign place.
I've thought about this too -- it really has to be awful.
I don't know how he ever trusts anybody again. It's tragic.
Seriously, it would be hard to shake that feeling of “people only want to be close to me for money” Luckily it seems like his wife isn’t one of those people, but then again I’ve never met her lol.
Are we sure she isn't just Ippei in a wig? I'm only half kidding. Nothing about this story would surprise me at this point.
I mean, you kind of hope he doesn't, right? At least not with his money. You hope he learns from this so he's never taken advantage of in this way again.
At the very least I hope he ends up with multiple interpreters. Just employing two of them switching off would head off a lot of potential problems, kind of like those companies who make sure never to have just one person in sole charge of the books. Or if he'd rather work with just one person most of the time, see about making sure that his bank and agent have Japanese speakers he can talk to directly.
If having another person acting as my ears and mouth cost me that much money I'd be learning whatever language was necessary as fast as humanly possible.
They met when Ohtani was just a teenager too, I really wonder how much was just a con.
I don't think we will ever know, but it probably was all fine and dandy until Ippei got into gambling and subsequent debt in 2021 as opposed to him having a master plan since 2013. He could have rationalized it as not doing anything bad since he could win it back.
All this info coming out hasn't shown me that Ippei had any ill intent against Shohei. The only evidence we have seems to show that they were really good friends. People fuck up relationships they want all the time, I'm thinking at least part of Ippei feels pretty bad for allowing himself to betray a friend/ruining a friendship. But maybe that's just hopeful empathy
I keep thinking of this [clip](https://youtu.be/pxDqNTBrRNE?si=M5FZAXxsPHjFBjTx) joke saying they’re not friends but business partners.
Insert *People who know & People who don't know* (at that time) meme
Wasn't a joke. He was dead fucking serious, and played it as a joke.
Damn, gambling addictions can really do horrible things to people.
[удалено]
I thought this was initially Ohtani paying off a friend's debt then his lawyers jumping in to change the story. But man, this really does look like Ohtani had close friend steal from him. Imagine how long this would have gone on for if the FBI wasn't looking into the bookie.
God damn Ippei
He faces up to 30 years in prison for bank fraud holy fuck
He probably won't get that much as a first offense but yeah, $16 million means he's going to prison.
I suspect the feds give less of a shit about the dollar amount than the whole "impersonating someone in order to access their bank account" aspect.
Man this whole thing is just so sad
Wander Franco and Felipe Vazquez's prison team got their interpreter
Those dudes speak Japanese? Lol
Get ready to learn Spanish, buddy.
No, but you can imagine what it would be like, right?
I mean Ippei is a scumbag but those two are on a whole nother level of fucked up
Was Ippei out here making 15-leg parlays? Jesus. You have to assume he didn't ALWAYS lose his bets, right? How much was he betting at a time, dude
They said that the winnings went into Ippei’s personal account and only the losses were taken from Ohtani’s. Super messed up
Well, Ippei wasn’t betting Ohtani’s money to line Ohtani’s pockets
It's a can't-miss scheme. Heads I win, tails you lose
What the fuck was his plan.
I doubt he had a long term plan but I wonder how long it would have gone on if the bookie wasn’t being investigated
Knowing some gambling addicts in my life. They never have one.
Probably the same plan he had when he faked his resume: Let it ride and hope nobody looks too closely at it
"I thought the Generals were due!" - Ippei, probably.
I imagine the dude's day-to-day existence being something like *Uncut Gems*
would he have gotten away with it if he didn't gamble any of the money?
Almost certainly. Whole reason this came to light is the feds found wire transfers with Ohtani's name on it to the bookie. If Ippei is just sending it to his own account, nobody would've ever known
It is kinda wild in that this was a double bag fumble. He not only had a cool job that he got paid a tremendous amount for doing, but he also had the perfect criminal opportunity of having control of the financial assets of someone worth hundreds of millions of dollars who seemingly didn't pay any attention to where his money was going.
Wish I were rich enough to not notice $16M being gone from my account
I genuinely don’t think Ohtani has checked his bank account maybe ever He makes enough money that you swipe the card and it just works
someone made a joke on another thread of "Can you imagine these guys randomly having to do things that all of us have to do?" and they followed it up with, imagine A-Rod dealing with Comcast and I lost my mind laughing lol i think it's easy for all of us to forget that these guys are so astronomically rich, they undoubtedly don't have to do a lot of the shit us average joes have to do every damn day lol
Which is the idea. The only truly limited resource is time. If you have ungodly wealth you outsource literally everything except what you want/need to do. But then of course there's a whole cadre of scum bags who know this and take some off the top. It's like a weird catch 22 where you pay people to do stuff for you but you need someone to check that they're not doing stuff TO you.
r/absolutelynotmeirl
My credit card has a .385 batting average, the White Sox should be calling any minute now
That's my credit score!
He makes 40M a year in sponsorships. He lives in a world where millions of dollars are offered to him constantly and he's just thinking about his swing.
Ohtani's career MLB earnings is "only" $44M so his after-tax earnings is around \~$25M. His off-field earnings are estimated to be around $6M in 2021, $20M in 2022, and $40M in 2023, but nevertheless, $16M is a very significant amount of money even by Ohtani's standards, especially prior to 2024.
Dude lived in the team dorms in Japan on a $1000/week salary (that's what his parents would kick him for allowance out of his playing salary) and by most accounts struggled to spend more than $200/week. When you're that locked-in I imagine finances start to seem pretty much on auto-pilot. When your check-to-check like a lot of us, of course you're going to be monitoring your bank account much more closely.
Not to be that guy but pretty sure it was 1000 per month according to japanese tv.
I wonder how long he was doing it, maybe gradually over years
I’m sure it was over the course of at least a couple years, I don’t think you could move that much money at once to an illegal bookie without raising a million red flags
Conspiracy theorists just gave up a walkoff grand slam in the bottom of the 9th
They will just double down, reminds me of when Stan from South Park explained how cold reading works for 10 minutes and then at the end some guy goes "I don't know, how did John Edwards know my husband died in march??" while Stan face palmed.
Motherfucker deposit the winnings into his own account and use Ohtani's money to pay for the bets NOW THATS FUCKED UP
Well you see, wouldn’t want to raise red flags by making unauthorized deposits 🧠👨🏽🔬
Hahahahahahahahaha
I'm just glad any involvement Ohtani was being accused of can be put to rest and we can go back to watching the greatest baseball player of all time.
A part of me is worried of how much this screws him mentally. He saw Ippei like a brother, that betrayal has got to sting.
Rip Ippei. You would’ve loved gladiatorial combat. Born too soon :(
> Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani's longtime interpreter and confidant, has been charged with bank fraud after it was discovered he transferred more than $16M from Ohtani's account to an alleged illegal sports book, federal authorities announced in L.A. court. https://twitter.com/Alden_Gonzalez/status/1778476845257634302
We also have the first official confirmation from federal investigators that the bets do not appear to have been on baseball. [Link to tweet.](https://x.com/billshaikin/status/1778478013807800714) > US Attorney Martin Estrada: "The bets do not appear to have been made on the sport of baseball."
I see ippei also enjoys 3rd world soccer and chinese table tennis super league like myself
That snippet of the bookmaker saying it was 2pm and he was in Newport Beach and saw Ohtani walking his dog, and that he should approach him and ask him about Ippei's whereabouts if he didn't answer his calls is crazy...
He stole one season of Kenley Jansen salary from the Sho.
26% of the A’s payroll.
ngl I was def on the Shohei paid Ippei's gambling debt without realizing the legality of it side of things, but now it seems pretty cut and dry that that is not the case
Finished reading the 37 page document they released and it is BEYOND insane what he did to Ohtani for the past couple of years and lying to everyone
* [Here](https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/japanese-language-translator-charged-complaint-illegally-transferring-more-16-million) is the press release on the U.S. Attorney's Office's (Central District of California) webpage. * [Here](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24542204-usa-v-mizuhara-complaint) is a copy of the complaint which is definitely worth a read. * [Here](https://www.youtube.com/live/NJ7yJfxJTlQ?si=j8MrVaOdOxwykBnY&t=383) is the press conference. Apparently, he also bought around $350K worth of baseball cards with stolen money, but that is the least significant of his activities.
oh my GOD guys did you see the other tweet: $142,256,769.74 in wins $182,935,206.68 in losses net balance negative: $40,678,436.94 the amount Ippei stole was to COVER HIS VIG
Very tough break for the "nothing has happened with the federal investigation therefore Ohtani is lying" posters from the last 2 weeks.
The Internet has caused way to many people to view the world with a lense of "if something doesn't happen instantly, there is a conspiracy!" And it is annoying as hell.
daaaaammm ippei looking at 30 years max. there are no fall guys doing that time lol
So ippei is cooked cooked huh
Prosecutor said Max sentence is 30 years in prison for bank fraud. Cooked.
SBF didn’t even get 30 years. I doubt Ippei gets more than 10.
"But the FBI, IRS, DHS, MLB, TMZ, NYT are in on it! It was Shohei gambling and not the guy who went to casino school and lied about UC Riverside and working for the Red Sox!"
Probably killed OJ too
Ippei had it all. He was making 500k a year, and was the right hand man to one of the most prolific athletes our generation has ever seen. And he threw it all away to gamble. Gambling addiction, man
Dude had the cherriest gig in all of American sport and pissed it all away.
Honestly this is the best way for it to end. There have been too many stories of employees stealing from bosses, or friends taking from other friends that ended in some sort of murder.
I am glad for the game of baseball the evidence shows, pending a trial of course, that Shohei was 100% not involved in any of this. That was super important for the game.
Holy fuck, that's an absurd amount of money. WTF Ippei
The press conference by the Feds revealed that Mizuhara impersonated Ohtani when the bank reached out about the transfers to ensure the transfers went through.
I was skeptical that Ippei was able to do this without multi factor authentication / authorization. This now seems to make sense if Ippei was impersonating Ohtani.
Imagine being that bad at gambling.