I'll admit it. When the Shohei Ohtani gambling story broke in March 2024, I was one of the biggest doubters.
I've spent my career in baseball clubhouses. I know how players guard their money. I've seen Japanese players with their interpreters and how close they are. I've seen the wall-like circle around a superstar that guards every aspect of their life. So when $17 million disappeared from Ohtani's bank account and showed up in a bookie's hands and the explanation was "his interpreter did it, and he never notices," my reaction was probably the same as yours.
How could he not know?
"The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani," the new six-episode ESPN 30 for 30 podcast dropping July 28, is made for people like me. Investigative reporter Tisha Thompson, who
broke the original story, retraces it from the first anonymous tip to Ippei Mizuhara's prison sentence with access nobody else has. She is the only reporter Mizuhara ever spoke to about this.
She got the bookie, Mathew Bowyer, on a golf course days before he reports to prison, cheerfully demonstrating how he recruits marks. She got the U.S. attorney, the prosecutor and the IRS agent who built the case, on the record, walking us through it. Encrypted texts are read by voice actors, but the recordings from the bank where Mizuhara impersonates Ohtani are real. So it the recording of Mizuhara trying to explain away a $17 million federal crime.
I went in a skeptic. Six episodes later, I came out with more sympathy for Ohtani than I expected, and a much darker view of everyone around him.
Four moments from the podcast really stuck with me.
Start with the dental work. In September 2023, Ohtani agreed to pay for Mizuhara's dental works and wrote him a check for $60,000. Mizuhara deposited the check into his own account. Then he paid the dentist with Ohtani's debit card, from a private account Ohtani didn't know he could access. He stole twice off one act of generosity. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Mitchell tells Thompson even he was surprised by how blatant it was. That's not a desperate gambler covering up an addiction. That's a man who had learned to lie to the man he called his best friend's face and gotten comfortable doing it.
Then the baseball cards. As the walls closed in, Mizuhara spent about $325,000 of Ohtani's money on high-end baseball cards, including a Yogi Berra and Juan Soto card, and had them shipped to the clubhouse under a fake name, "Jay Min." The IRS agent who opened the boxes thinks it was an escape plan, a way to convert stolen money into something protable. Here's where the podcast's reporting is so impeccable. Thompson tracked down Mizuhara's childhood friends, who remember him flipping baseball cards at conventions as a teenager in Diamond Bar, California. They recall him haggling over prices and always hustling.
Then, there is Bowyer, who describes his own predation with something close to pride. He tells Thompson he recognized Mizuhara's gambling affliction within 30 days. Asked what a bookie does when spots an addict, his answer is chilling in its honesty. He said you control it so you can keep making money without ruining him.
The encrypted messages the feds found show that control. Mizuhara begging for one last credit bump, then one last, last, last bump, swearing on his mother he'd stop. Bowyer answering "Done, bud. Merry Christmas." He kept extending a man he knew was spiraling until he reached more than $40 million in credit. Bowyer said he told 30 to 40 people Shohei Ohtani was his client. He was feeding Mizuhara's addiction and advertising the baseball star to promote his own business.
And finally, the interview. The podcast's centerpiece, and worth the listen on its own. Episode two plays Thompson's conversation with Mizuhara in March of 2024, hours before the story broke, the only interview he ever gave on this. Listen to him try to explain it away. He thought the sportsbook was legal. He didn't recall anyone saying he couldn't use one. Ohtani knew about the debts, sat with him while they wired the money. Every answer smooth and sounding rehearsed, until Thomson pushes on the details and the story wobbles. Hours later, it collapses entirely, and Mizuhara reverses nearly everything in a string of one-word answers. Weeks after that, in an encrypted message to his bookie, he settles the question himself. Technically, he writes, he did steal from Ohtani.
Investigators read nearly 40,000 texts between Ohtani and Mizuhara and not one mentioned gambling. Mizuhara impersonated Ohtani on calls to the bank 24 times. You hear him call himself Shohei Ohtani.
And in 2024 when Mizuhara told the Dodgers in the clubhouse about the ESPN article coming out, nobody translated for Ohtani. He had to ask Mizuhara what he had told the team, learning that his translator/friend had stolen from him and was likely facing prosecution from the man himself.
Thompson, to her credit, keeps asking the uncomfortable questions that the federal case resolved on paper, but never really answered.
Ohtani's isolation made the crime possible. His financial team asked about the mystery account for years and accepted "Shohei wants it private" from the one man who had a motive to say so. His own agent communicated with him through Mizuhara. The series left me wondering how it's possible the biggest star in the sport was caught in a system that someone was able to rob him blind.
Mizuhara is serving 57 months in federal prison. Bowyer 12 months and a day. And Ohtani, through a spokesperson, says he will never talk about any of it again.
For six years, everything the English-speaking world knew about Ohtani passed through Mizuhara first. Every joke, every answer, every word came through Mizuhara. Then Thompson replays one of the few glimpses we ever got of the relationship, from 2024, when Ohtani was asked through Mizuhara, how the two of them became close.
"We're not friends or anything, we're just business partners," Mizuhara translated for Ohtani.
At the time, the press laughed it off like a joke. It might be the only honest thing Ippei Mizuhara ever said for Ohtani.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani' is eye-opening look at how MLB star was robbed | Opinion
