DIANE BASS: So, Ippei called me. I was sitting in my car at the Trader Joe’s parking lot.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: This is Diane Bass, a criminal defense attorney in southern California.

 

DIANE BASS: And I answered the phone. He said, “This is Ippei Mizuhara and Matt gave me your number. I would like you to represent me.”

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Diane is the lawyer for the bookie, Matt Bowyer. She says this call from Ippei came as a complete surprise. Ippei had been fired by the Dodgers in South Korea and his plane had just landed in the United States.

 

DIANE BASS: The very first words out of my mouth, I didn’t think, I just blurted, “You came back?” This is, you know, my defense lawyer hat.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Shohei’s lawyers had said Shohei was a victim of theft and they were turning the matter over to the authorities. Diane says it was clear to her that Ippei didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.

 

DIANE BASS: Because (LAUGH) I knew he was gonna be indicted. And he’d been out of the country. So why would he come back? And he said, “Oh, I shouldn’t have?” I felt so terrible for him. And I said, “Well, no, your family is here. You did the right thing.”

 

TISHA THOMPSON: As a criminal defense attorney, Diane knew that what had just happened to Ippei was going to fundamentally change his life.

 

DIANE BASS: And I said, “I’m so sorry you lost your best friend.” And he said, “Well, it’s my fault.” You know? And he basically owned it. And then I just quickly said, “Look, I really wish I could represent you, but I can’t.” I had a conflict of interest, because Matt had given the government information about him.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: You hang up the phone with him. What are you thinking? What are you feeling?

 

DIANE BASS: I felt really badly for him. He sounded so sweet. I knew he was in a world of trouble.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Ippei was in a world of trouble. And it began as soon as he stepped off the plane at LAX. I’m ESPN investigative reporter, Tisha Thompson. From 30 for 30 podcasts, this is The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani, episode five: The Feds. (CHEERING)

 

REPORTER: Federal investigation (UNINTEL) about wire transfers, $4.5 million worth. Southern California bookmaker. And he has no idea.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: When Ippei’s plane from Seoul landed at LAX, there was a surprise waiting for him.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: Legal lesson for– for all (LAUGH) your listeners. Every international airport is considered a border. And at a border, restrictions on search and seizure do not apply. So the federal government have full license to conduct warrantless searches at the border.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: This is Martin Estrada. At the time, he was U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. And it was up to him to decide if there was enough evidence to bring charges in the Shohei-Ippei case.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: And so we needed to investigate, A, was Mr. Ohtani involved in this illegal conduct and, B, if he wasn’t, how did this happen and who wanna responsible?

 

TISHA THOMPSON: They needed to get to the bottom of what really happened between Shohei, Ippei, and Matt Bowyer’s illegal sportsbook. They needed Ippei’s phone.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: Often, the phones are quite a get. You would be surprised at what people have in their phones. It’s a treasure trove of information for investigators.

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: We had agents waiting. And we knew the he was coming in. And so, as a result, they do what they do. And– they ended up having a conversation.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: This is Chris Seymour. He was an IRS special agent in LA for more than two decades when agents intercepted Ippei at the airport. They take his phone?

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Voluntarily.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: He gives up his phone?

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Voluntarily.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Seymour had already been investigating Matt Bowyer for years. He was the lead agent at the raid on Matt’s house. And now it fell to him to investigate the alleged theft of Shohei Ohtani’s money, even though he admits, in the beginning, he didn’t even know who the guy was.

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Shohei who? I– I drove to downtown Los Angeles. They have a big image of Shohei on one of the buildings. It’s huge. It’s massive. And I was like, “Who’s that?” I’m that guy who had no idea who he was.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: But after getting hold of Ippei’s phone at the airport, it was Seymour and his team who read through nearly 40,000 texts between Ippei and Shohei.

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: There was a ton of information to process. So we had to break it into chunks. This person handles this. That person handles that. My focus was going through X amount of text messages and looking for anything that– would indicate who was doing what.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: And it was all in Japanese?

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Yes. We had to use Google Translate to try to– to break through some of it.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: What were the text messages about?

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Just commonplace things, get something to eat, “Hey, we’re gonna do this,” or, “What time is this,” maybe a video game. But it was very mundane, vanilla I guess is a common word I would use.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Are you talking, like, a couple hundred texts a day, a couple thousand texts a day?

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: A lot. It was prolific is what I would say.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Was it employee-employer or was it two buddies? I mean, Ippei has said they were as close as brothers.

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: It was friends chatting.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: A lot of friends chat about betting.

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Didn’t see it.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Not one indication that someone was betting on something?

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Didn’t see it.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Seymour says they never found any texts between Ippei and Shohei about gambling or sports betting. But Ippei did talk a lot about betting with Matt Bowyer. When Ippei was still in South Korea, I had asked during our interview if I could see the messages between him and Matt. But Ippei told me…

 

IPPEI MIZUHARA: I deleted every text I had with Matt.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Seymour found two years’ worth of encrypted messages on Ippei’s phone. And he already had everything they’d found on Matt’s phone, which he had seized during the raid, like betting records and money transfers. By combining the two together, Seymour was able to create a timeline of what happened. When Ippei first starts betting, the conversation is pretty mundane.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: I had just been messing around with soccer.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: This is a voice actor reading Ippei’s messages.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: There are games on 24/7. Lol. I took UCLA, but they lost outright.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Seymour zeroed in on messages about logistics, like Ippei asking Matt how he wants him to pay off his debts and how to make a wire transfer.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: I apologize for the delay. I have never done a wire transfer.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: By January 2022, about three months after Ippei started betting with Matt’s sportsbook, Ippei asks if Matt would reload his account, because Ippei says he’s lost it all. Bowyer agrees and bumps him 50 grand. Thirteen days later, Ippei messages again.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: Fuck. I lost it all. Lol.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: So Ippei asks for another $50,000.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: That will be my last one for a while if I lose it.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: But the encrypted messages showed that instead of quitting, Ippei keeps betting. And Matt keeps extending him credit.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: Any way you can bump me a little bit? I need to wait a week to send another big wire.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: This pattern continues for months. Ippei says he needs just a little bit more, says this will be the last time. Matt gives him credit. Ippei loses, and loses, and just keeps losing.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: I’m terrible at this sport betting thing, huh? Lol. Any chance you can bump me again? As you know, you don’t have to worry about me not paying.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Matt told me that by this point in his relationship with Ippei, he had seen the wires and thought Shohei was paying for the bets. So he was willing to let Ippei get deep into debt.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: I swear on my mom this will be the last ask before I pay it off once I get back to the states. Sorry for keep on asking.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Matt writes back, “No problem. Done, bud. Merry Christmas.” Ippei’s messages to Matt are so casual, so relaxed. When you read them, there’s no hint at how high the stakes had become for both of these men. Because by May of 2023, Ippei owned Matt at least $2 million and was still asking for more credit bumps into June.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: I got my ass kicked again. Lol.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Matt writes back a long message telling Ippei that he’ll bump him, but adds, “It’s just imperative that the 500 is sent every week.” He means the $500,000 wires. Ippei responds…

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: I’m the worst. Lol. Can’t catch a break. Can I get one last bump? I swear this is gonna be my last until I get the balance significantly.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Matt gives him the bump. The next day, Ippei sends another ask.

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: I have a problem. Lol. Can I get one last, last, last bump? This one is for real. Last one for real.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Matt writes, “Done. I have the same problem. To be honest with you, Ippei, as long as you can guarantee the 500 every Monday, I’ll give you as much as you want, because I know you’re good for it.” In my interview with Matt, he said he felt like he understood Ippei’s psychology, that he could relate to struggling with a gambling addiction.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: And here Matt is in the messages essentially telling Ippei that he gets it, because he has the same problem. Ippei ultimately bet with Matt’s sportsbook for about two years. Martin Estrada, the former U.S. Attorney on the case, says in that time, Ippei did an extraordinary amount of gambling.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: I, myself, was shocked to see Mizuhara had bet on over 19,000 sports events over a few years. I mean, even if I wanted to I couldn’t do that many bets.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Reading the encrypted messages, some might see Matt as a predatory bookie preying on someone’s weakness. And Ippei is someone descending further and further into gambling addiction. But the federal investigators see it very differently.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: I’m not convinced he was just a gambling addict and had no choice. I think it’s more he got this great opportunity, but then he saw a bigger opportunity to enrich himself and took advantage of that opportunity.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Because, he says, investigators quickly realized Ippei wasn’t just using Shohei’s money for sports betting. What did the baseball cards say to you?

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: That’s a question. That’s a real question.

 

ANNOUNCER: Any time you get these jerseys on the field together, the blue against the black and the orange, it’s special.

 

ANNOUNCER: Yeah, it’s special…

 

TISHA THOMPSON: On April 2nd, 2024, the Dodgers were in the middle of a three-game series against the San Francisco Giants. The scandal had erupted less than two weeks earlier.

 

ANNOUNCER: Ohtani swings and misses at 98…

 

TISHA THOMPSON: The Dodgers would go on to win all three games. Shohei went three for 11 with a home run, a double, and two RBIs. (CHEERING)

 

ANNOUNCER: That’ll do it. Threw a good one and finished a good one. Dodgers beat the Giants…

 

TISHA THOMPSON: What we didn’t know is before those games, Shohei had spent the day in interviews with federal investigators.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: Before I’m gonna go on the record and say anyone is a victim, I’m gonna make real sure that they are, in fact, a victim.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Martin Estrada and his prosecutors needed to assess what Shohei may or may not have known.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: Mr. Ohtani was cooperative with the federal investigation from day one. That’s not often the case, even with people who have nothing to hide. People are worried about dealing with the Feds.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Investigators spent much of their time going through Shohei’s finances, trying to understand the complex network of bank accounts and people managing Shohei’s wealth.

 

JEFF MITCHELL: Shohei had bookkeepers. He had accountants. He had sport agents. And he had Ippei. And a tax specialist as well.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Mitchell was the lead attorney investigating Ippei. He says the money from Shohei’s endorsement deals and other investments in the U.S. was managed by a financial team lead by Shohei’s sports agent, Nez Balelo.

 

JEFF MITCHELL: He had that team in place the entire time, so he never, according to the people who we spoke to, he never, you know, was involved in checking the accounts on the day-to-day basis.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Shohei didn’t meet with his financial team very often. But when he did, he would bring Ippei, because no one on the financial team spoke Japanese.

 

JEFF MITCHELL: And it kinda makes sense. Like, you know, the bank records are in English. He doesn’t speak or read English, so he has a team for that.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Shohei told the Feds he generally didn’t ask too many specific questions.

 

JEFF MITCHELL: And when we asked him about checking on the status of your accounts, he would ask Ippei to ask the agents, to ask his team, you know, “What is my overall financial picture?” And then they would relay that to Ippei, who would then convey that to Shohei.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Ippei having knowledge about Shohei’s finances is very different from the typical interpreter-player relationship.

 

KOTA ISHIJIMA: Money was something that we never touched, we never saw.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Kota Ishijima, a former MLB interpreter, says she’s never heard of any interpreter other than Ippei becoming involved in a player’s financial affairs. And Mitch Lively, the other baseball player that Ippei interpreted for, says Ippei wasn’t part of his banking.

 

MITCH LIVELY: In my relationship with him, he didn’t access to any of my money.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: But Ippei wasn’t just an interpreter for Shohei. The Angels paid him to be an interpreter, but he also worked directly for Shohei himself as his personal assistant, according to the Feds. When Shohei arrived in the United States in 2018, Ippei helped him set up a Bank of America account. According to the Feds, Shohei’s salary from the Angels went into this account. Shohei was the only signatory, meaning no one but Shohei could legally withdraw money from it.

 

JEFF MITCHELL: And the money was not touched for several years.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Shohei told the Feds he thought the money in that Bank of America account was being managed by his sports agent, Nez. Nez is a big deal at CAA, Creative Artists Agency, the biggest and most valuable agency in the world. Nez told the federal investigators that he asked Ippei about this account, but Ippei told him it was private and Shohei didn’t want anyone to have access to it.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: So Shohei’s sports agent was told there was a private bank account with millions of dollars in it that Shohei didn’t want anyone to know about. What did Nez think was going on with that account? Why would Shohei need it to be private? Nez Balelo declined our request for an interview.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: But according to the Feds, he never asked Shohei himself about the account and never hired a second Japanese speaker to double check what Ippei was telling him, even though he was managing tens of millions of dollars for baseball’s biggest star.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Instead, Nez Balelo told investigators he had no reason not to believe Ippei. But the Feds didn’t just take one guy’s word for it. They hauled in Shohei’s financial advisor, his tax accountant, and his bookkeeper. Two of them told investigators they asked the agent about the private account and Nez Balelo told them the same thing, “Shohei wants to keep that account private.” He just took Ippei’s word for it. What is your understanding based on your conversations of how much the agent understood?

 

JEFF MITCHELL: So the financial bookkeepers, and financial advisors, and the accountants were asking the sports agent for the account the ended in the 5-8-4-8 number. And then the sports agent would ask Ippei for it. And then Ippei would lie and say, “Shohei doesn’t want you to look at that.”

 

TISHA THOMPSON: The last four digits of the private bank account appear in court documents, 5-8-4-8. That’s the same bank account number I wrote down in my notebook when I saw the wire transfers. It’s the same Bank of America account that sent money to Matt Bowyer’s operation.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: And now the Feds had uncovered a damning detail. The bank account had been dormant since its creation and was accessed for the first time on the same day that Matt’s operation told Ippei he needed to start paying off his betting losses. The Feds spotted a $40,000 payment from the private bank account sent a month later and matched it to money received by Matt’s operation. They could also see the big $500,000 wire transfers starting in May of 2023.

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Although you see the name Shohei Ohtani as the sender, you know that’s just a bank account. You know that’s just– just a place where it originated from.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: These big transfers from Shohei’s accounts started just as Shohei’s salary with the Angles went way up from $5.5 million to $30 million. The account was suddenly even more flush with cash. And soon after, new charges began to appear. They began in January 2024 and continued until we broke the story about two months later.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: The charges were from eBay and another online marketplace called Whatnot. And the purchases were being sent to someone named Jay Minn (PH) at the Dodgers clubhouse. But when the Feds interviewed a Dodgers employee who handles the mail, the employee told them Jay Minn wasn’t a real person.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Ippei had told the employee that he was going to be receiving packages under that name. When Seymour opened them, along with boxes and briefcases he seized from Ippei’s car, he found they all contained baseball cards. What did the baseball cards say to you?

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: That’s a question. That’s a real question. There’s a lot of cards. And there was a lot of– some high-dollar ones in there. It was as if he had some other plan and that this was an escape strategy or this was– was his way of converting his loss, the gambling loss, and everything, and the funds into something that would be worth something in the future, almost like an investment.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: The charges for the cards totaled $320,000.

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: I think my– my favorite one would be– Yogi Berra. So I was like, “This is cool. This is an old Yogi Berra card. This is– this is actually really cool.”

 

TISHA THOMPSON: A Yogi Berra card could be worth nearly $200,000. Seymour also remembered seeing other highly collectible cards like a Juan Soto, which can fetch more than $300,000. But the value of a baseball card depends on a number of factors, including its condition and how rare it is.

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: I could tell that some of these were very high quality. They’re high graded.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: They had the plastic case around them and–

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Yeah, but they were also specialty type cards with a cork and with the– pieces of the fabric of the– jerseys. So– the– these were not just your dime store cards.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: When I spoke to Ippei’s high school friend, he told me Ippei had been an avid baseball card collector as a teenager. He would study the cards, memorizing facts and statistics about different players. And his friend remembered how Ippei would try to sell the baseball cards for a profit. I found one of Ippei’s best friends from middle school. And Ippei loved to go to the baseball conventions and buy baseball cards of his favorite players.

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: That– that makes sense.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: And he had Shohei Ohtani cards?

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: Oh, lots of ’em. Yeah.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: What did that say to you?

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: I expected that maybe he was trying to get Shohei to sign them for him at one point. I don’t– and my gut is telling me that that’s what he was trying to do with those.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Was there a smoking gun in Ippei’s case where you’re like, “There it is?”

 

CHRIS SEYMOUR: The– recording of him calling in to do the wires.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: You can’t just send a big wire payment out of a bank account without the bank asking a lot of questions. Since Shohei was the only signatory on the account, he was the only person who could authorize payments from it.

 

OPERATOR: This call may be monitored and recorded.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: This is a Bank of America recording from February 2022.

 

OPERATOR: Who am I speaking with?

 

IPPEI MIZUHARA: Shohei Ohtani.

 

OPERATOR: Thank you. How may I help you?

 

IPPEI MIZUHARA: So I tried to log into– online banking. And it tells me that it’s not available to me at this time and to call.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Seymour would track the Bank of America call to the same cellphone number I called when I interviewed Ippei.

 

OPERATOR: Could you tell me the name of the payee and the amount of the transaction please?

 

IPPEI MIZUHARA: It’s for $200,000.

 

OPERATOR: What is your relationship to the payee?

 

IPPEI MIZUHARA: He’s my friend.

 

OPERATOR: Okay. Have you met your friend in person?

 

IPPEI MIZUHARA: Yes, many times.

 

OPERATOR: Will there be any future wires to your friend?

 

IPPEI MIZUHARA: Possibly.

 

OPERATOR: What is the reason for this transaction?

 

IPPEI MIZUHARA: For a car loan.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Hundreds of thousands of dollars for a car loan? The bank employee doesn’t buy it and freezes Shohei’s account. But Ippei doesn’t give up. He calls back and gets a different bank employee. Like before, Ippei says his name is Shohei Ohtani.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: But this time, the bank wants him to answer security questions, things only Shohei should know. But because Ippei helped Shohei set up the account, because Ippei’s job is to pretty much know everything about Shohei, and because, by now, Ippei had linked his cellphone and his personal email to Shohei’s bank account, Ippei is able to provide answers that convince the bank employee to reopen the account.

 

JEFF MITCHELL: What I found to be the most– persuasive was when I heard Ippei in those– bank recorded phone calls.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: This is Jeff Mitchell, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case. The Feds found that Ippei impersonated Shohei on the bank calls 24 times.

 

JEFF MITCHELL: He’s trying to kind of authorize money and wire transfers outta Shohei’s account. And you could hear Ippei in his own voice, in perfect English say, “Hi. I am Shohei Ohtani.” And you know it’s not Shohei. So, you know, once we obtained those– I think that was, like, the last piece of evidence that– we waited for.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Shohei Ohtani could’ve said, “Ippei, just pretend to be me. Just get it done. I authorize you to do this. It– I don’t– I don’t wanna deal with it. You just deal with it.” Did you have to go through sorta that mental exercise of, did he have permission to do this? Even though technically he shouldn’t have said he was Shohei Ohtani, he is Shohei Ohtani’s personal assistant, representative. He does all of his banking. He does his driver’s license. He does all these things.

 

JEFF MITCHELL: You know, we had so much evidence at that point. So by the time we actually had the– the recorded phone call, you know, it– it wasn’t really, like, that– mental leap to kinda say, “Okay, now we, you know, have enough to prove our case.”

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Mitchell points to the larger body of evidence that the Feds gathered and one particular encrypted message that, to the Feds, was as good as an admission of guilt.

 

JEFF MITCHELL: He confessed. You know, Bowyer, at one point, said, “Well, it’s not like you stole the money, right?” And then Ippei replied, “Actually, no, I– I really did steal the money.”

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Mitchell was paraphrasing, but the exact words Ippei used in the message are important. Here is the actual exchange. It happened right after our story broke. Ippei wrote Matt…

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: Have you seen the reports?

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Matt responded, “Yes, but that’s all bullshit. Obviously, you didn’t steal from him. I understand it’s a cover job. I totally get it.” But Ippei wrote back…

 

VOICE ACTOR FOR IPPEI: Technically, I did steal from him.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: What does Ippei mean by, “Technically, I did steal from him?” Is he trying to claim he didn’t exactly steal from Shohei or is it a confession? “Technically, I did steal from him.”

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: Good morning. My name is Martin Estrada. I’m an United States Attorney based here in Los Angeles. We are here to announce today the filing of a federal criminal complaint against Ippei Mizuhara, a person who until recently was employed…

 

TISHA THOMPSON: On April 11th, 2024, just three weeks after we broke the story, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Mitchell filed a court document. It contained a 36-page affidavit signed by IRS Special Agent Chris Seymour that laid out the government’s case against Ippei Mizuhara. And it was Martin Estrada who announced to the world just how much trouble Ippei was in.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: The federal complaint filed just a few minutes ago charges Mizuhara with bank fraud for allegedly stealing more than $16 million from Mr. Ohtani. According to the complaint, Mr. Mizuhara stole this money largely to finance his voracious appetite for illegal sports betting.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: The charges meant Ippei was now facing up to 30 years in federal prison.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: Mr. Mizuhara is expected to make his appearance in the next coming days. And he’ll make his appearance in this district.

 

FEMALE VOICE UNIDENTIFIED: All right. Thank you very much.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: Mizuhara was given this golden opportunity. He basically got the keys to the castle. He got that opportunity, but it wasn’t enough.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: How do you describe Mizuhara? Who is he really in your mind?

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: I think he is a fraudster. He’s a person who saw a chance to take advantage. He went and befriended Ohtani as soon as he signed his contract, saw an opportunity, seized that opportunity, and took advantage of this guy who was really relying on him as a Sherpa to get through the United States and understand the customs here.

 

MARTIN ESTRADA: Ohtani– was a victim, clear victim not just of a gambling fraud. There were other things Mizuhara was doing too. So he basically treated Ohtani like his personal piggy bank, which in my view, especially with all the opportunity that Mr. Ohtani gave to him, is inexcusable.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: The evidence the federal investigators gathered in their case is damning, impersonating Shohei on the phone to the bank, raiding Shohei’s private bank account, using his money to buy baseball cards and to pay off gambling debts. Who would do this to their best friend? People who have spent a lot of time observing and covering Shohei and Ippei have always believed that they were close, inseparable.

 

MALE VOICE UNIDENTIFIED: If Shohei Ohtani was there, Ippei was there. If Ippei was there, Shohei Ohtani was there. I don’t know that I ever saw them a part.

 

MALE VOICE UNIDENTIFIED: The portrayal was that Mizuhara and Ohtani are best friends, long time best friends, right?

 

MALE VOICE UNIDENTIFIED: They were beyond friends. There was something there that was like a brotherhood.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: Even Ippei told me they were like brothers.

 

IPPEI MIZUHARA: He’s best– he’s best friends. And we are like brothers. I mean, (UNINTEL) every day. I spend more time with him than my wife (LAUGHTER) probably. So, I mean, he was like family to me.

 

TISHA THOMPSON: But what if even that isn’t true?

 

MALE VOICE UNIDENTIFIED: How did you develop your relationship with Ippei?

 

(Foreign Language Not Transcribed)

 

INTERPRETOR FOR SHOHEI: Yeah, we’re not friends or anything. We’re just business partners. (LAUGHTER)

 

TISHA THOMPSON: That’s next on The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani.