Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani spoke to the media Monday for the first time since his former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was fired after he was accused of stealing more than $4 million from Ohtani to cover illegal gambling debts.
In a roughly 12-minute statement, Ohtani denied making sports bets and repeatedly said Mizuhara had lied in the process.
“I am deeply saddened and shocked that someone I trusted would do something like this,” Ohtani said through an interpreter at the beginning of his statement. He subsequently denied his involvement in sports betting in any way.
“I've never bet on baseball or any other sport, and I've never asked anyone to bet on my behalf,” he said. “And I have never used a bookmaker to bet on sports…
“I didn't know this was happening until a few days ago. …The bottom line is that Ippei stole money from my account and lied to me.”
Ohtani also denied intentionally repaying gambling debts.
“Mr. Ippei told the media and representatives of his campaign that I had repaid the debt on behalf of my friend,” he said. “Further interrogation revealed that Ippei had in fact told my agent that he had a debt and that I was repaying that debt.
“This was all a complete lie.”
Ohtani also told reporters that Mizuhara misled the Dodgers by telling the team that he had contacted Ohtani about the issue, when in fact he had not.
Ohtani said he first heard about Mizuhara's gambling allegations during a team meeting after the Dodgers played the San Diego Padres in South Korea last week.
“Until that team meeting, I didn't know that Ippei had a gambling addiction and was in debt,'' Otani said. “Obviously I never agreed to repay the debt or pay the bookmakers.”
Otani said that after the team meeting, he had a one-on-one meeting with Mizuhara at a hotel.
“And during that interview, it became clear that Ippei had admitted to using my account to send money to bookmakers,” he said. “At that moment, something absurd was happening, so I contacted my representatives at that point.”
At that point, Ohtani said he contacted the Dodgers and his attorney, who advised him to contact “appropriate authorities” because there had been “theft and fraud.”
“In conclusion, I would like to clarify that I have never bet on sports or knowingly sent money to a bookmaker,” he said.
Mr. Otani concluded by saying that he was entrusting the handling of the situation to his lawyer and that he was “fully cooperating with all investigations.” He didn't take questions.
The story broke on March 20, when Mizuhara, Ohtani's longtime translator and friend, was accused of “mass theft” of Ohtani's funds to cover illegal gambling debts and was fired by the Dodgers. It was made public by an ESPN report.
ESPN spoke with Mr. Mizuhara for 90 minutes on March 19, claiming that Mr. Otani paid off Mr. Mizuhara's gambling debts through wire transfers so that Mr. Mizuhara could completely quit gambling, and published a story for the first time. Announced.
But that story didn't last long. By the end of the day, Mizuhara recanted everything, shortly after Otani's attorney at Burke Brettler issued a statement denying Mizuhara's story.
“In the course of responding to recent media interviews, it was revealed that Shohei was the victim of a grand theft and we will be turning this matter over to the authorities,” the statement said.
The change in the story from “Otani helped Mizuhara'' to “Mizuhara stole from Otani'' cannot be ignored. It is also difficult to accept the explanation that Otani did not know about the wire transfers from his bank account totaling more than $4 million.
In light of the confusion, MLB announced Friday that it had begun an investigation into the situation. Since then, we've learned more about Mizuwon, including an apparent error on his resume about graduating from the University of California, Riverside and having worked for the Red Sox and Yankees.
Through all of this, Mizuhara has maintained that he has never bet on baseball and that Ohtani has nothing to do with gambling.
