Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani opened the 2024 season going 2-for-5 with an RBI and a stolen base in a 5-2 victory over the San Diego Padres to kick off the MLB schedule. Hours later, the face of Major League Baseball found himself involved in a scandal that has captured attention across the globe.
The saga began on March 20 when the Dodgers fired interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, who was Ohtani’s longtime friend and interpreter since he began his MLB career with the Los Angeles Angels. What followed was a series of headlines that started with Ohtani’s clamp claiming Mizhara committed ‘massive theft’ against Ohtani, taking $4.5 million from him to cover gambling debts.
However, detailed reporting by ESPN’s Tisha Thompson revealed a much different story. In the days leading up to the story’s first breaking, Mizuhara had interviewed with ESPN for a story that was going to report Ohtani was paying off his interpreter’s gambling debts. However, the AL MVP’s campaign later refused that story hours before it was published, claiming Ohtani knew nothing of the gambling debts and the money was stolen.
Amid an ongoing MLB investigation launched on Friday by the league’s Department of Investigation, with the IRS Criminal Investigation Los Angeles Field Office also inquiring into Mizuhara and his illegal bookmaker, new details have emerged on the former MLB interpreter.
Who is Ippei Mizhuara?
As first reported by Helen Jeong of NBC Los Angeles, inaccuracies have been found in Mizhuara’s public biography. Amid increased scrutiny of the former Dodgers and Angels staffer, further inquiries have found that despite his stating that he graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 2007, the university has no records even showing that Mizuhara attended there.
“Our university records do not show a student by the name of Ippei Mizuhara having attended UC Riverside.”
Additional information listed in Mizuhara’s biography was also found to be inaccurate. As a member of the Angels, the interpreter’s profile said that he worked for the New York Mets in 2012 as an interpreter for Hideki Okajima. The biography also claimed that Mizuhara was Okajima’s interpreter in 2010 for the Boston Red Sox.
