By Brad Brooks
(Reuters) -A former interpreter was sentenced on Thursday to nearly five years in prison for stealing $17 million from Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to pay off gambling debts, according to a court document.
Ippei Mizuhara, the onetime translator and de facto manager of the power-hitting pitcher from Japan, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, the punishment prosecutors had sought, and also ordered by U.S. District Judge John Holcomb to pay restitution of over $18 million, according to a U.S. District Court, Central District of California sentencing document. Mizuhara pleaded guilty last year.
Michael Freedman, a lawyer for Mizuhara, had no comment.
Joseph McNally, acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, said in a written statement that Mizuhara had “exploited this dream job to steal millions of dollars from his friend and confidant.”
Mizuhara, 40, last year pleaded guilty to one count of felony bank fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return, according to his plea deal previously filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
Mizuhara was accused of embezzling nearly $17 million from a bank account of Ohtani’s that Mizuhara had helped open in Phoenix in 2018, and transferring the funds without the ballplayer’s knowledge to an illegal bookmaking operation to cover Mizuhara’s gambling debts.
Announcing the original bank fraud charge last year, former U.S. Attorney E. Martin Estrada stressed there was nothing to suggest wrongdoing by Ohtani, who has said he was an unwitting victim of theft and has never bet on baseball or knowingly paid a bookmaker.
According to prosecutors, Mizuhara began gambling with an illegal sports book in late 2021 and lost substantial sums.
To cover his debts, Mizuhara impersonated Ohtani over the phone on more than two dozen occasions to deceive bank employees into authorizing wire transfers from Ohtani’s account, prosecutors said.
Ohtani signed a record $700 million, 10-year contract to join the Dodgers last season, becoming the highest-paid player in Major League Baseball. The 30-year-old’s talents as a slugger and a pitcher have earned him comparisons to Babe Ruth.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Donna Bryson and Matthew Lewis)
