Shohei Ohtani’s personal interpreter fired, accused of “massive theft” to pay off gambling debts

It’s a wild ending for one of the highest-profile pairings in the translation/interpretation world.

For the last few years, it’s been hard to think of a sweeter gig in the translation/interpretation field than Ippei Mizuhara’s job. Mizuhara has been in the business for a long time, but a key turning point in his career came in 2013, when he was working as an interpreter for a foreign player with Japanese professional baseball’s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. That’s when Mizuhara happened to meet the Fighters’ highly anticipated rookie, a teenager named Shohei Ohtani.

Ohtani would become an instant all-star, and a few years later a Japanese Series champion. That success got him a ticket to head to the U.S. and play in Major League Baseball, and he took Mizuhara with him to serve as his personal interpreter. Shortly thereafter, Ohtani would become the most famous baseball player on the planet, the most accomplished two-way pitching/hitting phenomenon since Babe Ruth.

Having just signed a huge, long-term contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and constant endorsement offers coming in, Ohtani is financially set for life, and by extension so should Mizuhara have been, since Ohtani, like many Japanese pro athletes who achieve stardom overseas, prefers to speak through an interpreter for all of his interviews and public appearances. While there’s plenty of specialized jargon needed to discuss sports, it’s a less linguistically demanding topic than, say, high-end science or political debate. As an added perk, Mizuhara seemed to enjoy an easy-going friendship with Ohtani, if the atmosphere of their on-camera at-work interactions are anything to go by.

▼ Mizuhara interpreting for Ohtani at a game for the Anaheim Ducks, who play ice hockey right across the freeway from the freeway from the ballpark where Ohtani previously played for the Angels

But like with any profession, there are certain norms that have to be abided by in the interpretation field, and one of those is “Don’t steal millions of dollars of your client’s private funds to pay off your gambling debts.” Unfortunately, that’s what Mizuhara has been accused of doing, and he’s now reportedly been fired from his position as Ohtani’s interpreter.

According to multiple U.S. media outlets, Mizuhara became involved with an illegal southern California bookmaker named Mathew Bowyer. The interpreter racked up millions of dollars in gambling losses placing bets on soccer and other sporting events, though not baseball games, he asserts, saying “I never bet on baseball. That’s 100 percent. I knew that rule…We have a meeting about that in spring training.”

While Mizuhara’s gambling losses and the identity of who he owed money to aren’t in dispute, what happened next is murky. In speaking with American sports news network ESPN on Tuesday, Mizuhara said that since 2021, his gambling debt had grown to US$4.5 million. When Ohtani learned of this, Mizuhara said “Obviously, he wasn’t happy about it and said he would help me out to make sure I never do this again. He decided to pay it off for me.” A series of wire transfers were then made to Bowyer from Ohtani’s bank account, totaling at least one million dollars and described in the transaction documentation as a “loans.” In the Tuesday interview, Mizuhara claimed that Ohtani himself made the transfers directly, not wanting to give the money to Mizuhara to pass off to Bowyer out of concern that the interpreter might gamble it away first.

However, the following day, when ESPN approached a representative for Ohtani for comments regarding Mizuhara’s story, the baseball player’s legal team instead refuted Mizuhara’s claim that Ohtani had personally made the transfers, or that he had even known about them, saying “In the course of responding to recent media inquiries, we discovered that Shohei has been the victim of a massive theft and we are turning the matter over to the authorities.” An attorney for Bowyer, who is currently under federal investigation, also denied any direct contact between Ohtani and the bookmaker, saying “Mathew Bowyer never met, spoke with, or texted, or had contact in any way with Shohei Ohtani.”

Following these revelations, Mizuhara once again spoke with ESPN on Wednesday, withdrawing several of his claims, and now says that Ohtani never knew about his gambling debts nor agreed to help repay them.

Mizuhara described his gambling issues as an addiction, and there’s arguably some sympathy to be had for someone who, desperate for money and being so close to such a wealthy individual who he also perhaps saw as a personal friend, figured it wouldn’t hurt to take a little, especially if he believed he was going to be able to pay it back before anyone noticed it was missing On the other hand, it seems like if you feel close enough to someone to pluck a million or more from their bank account, you’d also feel close enough to ask. Mizuhara’s annual salary was also somewhere in the range of US$300,000 to US$500,000, according to Yahoo! Sports, which seems like it’s well above the threshold of earning enough to be responsible for your own finances.

Mizuhara’s departure is a sudden one, as he made the trip to Seoul to interpret for Ohtani during the Dodgers’ season opener that took place just this week. Technically, he appears to have been employed by the Dodgers organization, as reports are that it’s the team who’s fired him, though he was clearly hand-picked for the position by Ohtani himself. Who’ll be taking over interpretation duties for the star remains to be seen, but odds are there are going to be some new protocols put in place to separate his interpreter from his bank account.

Sources: ESPN, Los Angeles Times, Yahoo! Sports
Top image: Pakutaso
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