Ohtani speaks through an interpreter for the same reason I'd use one if I were playing in a Spanish speaking nation: I understand what you're saying but I'm not comfortable speaking the language on television or being ridiculed for my accent or small grammatical errors or whatever.

The entire situation surrounding Ohtani this year has been a mess. At this point, I don't think we'd ever find out the truth about the betting scandal/interpreter scandal. A part of me wants to clear Ohtani of wrong doing, but the cynical other part of me, believes that Ippei was the fall guy. And the end of the day the MLB would not want to lose their Golden Goose, even if he bet on games.

Whoever handles his PR should be launched into the sun, they've done a terrible job. As a side note, I believe Ohtani does speak English, but is more comfortable speaking through an interpreter. There's nothing wrong with that, and while I do respect his privacy, Celebrities now aren't afforded the privacy they once were. Especially ones of his caliber. He's for all intents and purposes, the face of the MLB.

He seems to understand it and can speak English when he wants to - https://www.newsweek.com/video-shohe...mments-1609029

I would think this makes it less and less plausible he had no idea what his interpreter was saying in his public statements on the issue though.

I have met several pro athletes from other countries that play the I don't speak English card. It lets them not have to do interviews or interact with the bat shit crazy fans wanting autographs and pictures as much.

Ive met people who were born in the US and have lived here their entire lives who will selectively use the "I dont speak English" escape. I would too if I knew any other language well enough to pass.

Just heard on ESPN the amount is now 16 million

The story I read also claims that the interpreter was able to steal this insane amount of money by simply turning off the notifications that would have alerted Ohtani to the transactions.

I don't know who is expected to believe that. I guess maybe if you're a person who's never had a personal bank account you might believe it's that easy to steal millions of dollars from someone undetected.

But does a person who has a personal bank account and makes withdrawals from ATMs believe that? This one doesn't.

I can't really understand why anyone would believe banking regulations and security measures are so lax that simply turning off a notification will give you unrestricted access to someone's account. I access my account from new and multiple devices when necessary. I receive a security verification code each and every time. This code goes to both my phone and e-mail address. I highly doubt Ohtani has one single device he uses for his banking and that he would not receive personal notifications each and every time his account was accessed from a new device. He'd have to notice the notifications were turned off every time he expected to receive that code and couldn't access his own account.

Perhaps a stupid question, but

If Ippei made something like $300K-$500K from the ball team and Ohtani per year, it is realistic that he would even be able to rack up $16M of gambling debt? Obviously an illegal bookie is not really regulated, but I would think that, you know, after the first million of debt they would stop taking your bets and that for such large scale clients they would make sure you have some ability to actually pay. It does not make sense to me that they would allow such massively impossible debt without a guarantee or some contact with Ohtani. Surely the bookie knows the translator doesn't have that kind of cash himself.

duplicate post -

update just now -

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/f...th-bank-fraud/

Feds found Mizuhara embezzled over 16 million from Ohtani. He is in the process of taking a plea deal now.

"The U.S. Attorney's Office has obtained recordings of telephone calls in which Mizuhara allegedly spoke to bank employees and falsely claimed to be Ohtani, including providing biographical information, in order to ensure the bank would approve the wire transfers. Estrada also alleged that Mizuhara denied anyone else access to Ohtani's bank account, including his agent, accountant and financial advisor."

This is definitely an outline of how to not trust people explicitly, and understand you need to have checkers for the checkers when your finances are such that 16 million can go missing and it's not noticed. Imagine a situation like Elon, where if you did not have an army of accountants a literal half billion could walk away and you may not notice for a year. Certainly is a different life than I can understand, but I feel for the guy. I hope this pushes him to focus on building his english and being a bit more safe.

As someone who is authorized to make wire transfers and does so professionally, I do not believe this version of the story either.

For example, I have to submit my requests to an e-mail address. The request must come from my account and the bank will only call me on my approved phone number to confirm the wire request. The entire confirmation and phone call occurs on a recorded line. I then receive a receipt for the request via e-mail.

So, the only way for that version of the story to be true, is for the interpreter to be in sole possession of Ohtani's personal devices or for he himself to be authorized to draw on the account. We know that isn't the case because if it were, he wouldn't say he was impersonating anyone.

At some point I expect Ohtani's bank to chime in. I highly doubt they want other clients to think their funds are equally as vulnerable to seemingly lax security measures.

Is this not how it was discovered?

My recollection is that the bookie was bragging about Ohtani being a client to drum up more business as the wires were coming from Othani's account and he could show the sender to clients. A client was the initial whistleblower after the name was dropped to him.

If he was gaining more business and the debts were paid by the stolen money, then why on earth would he limit his betting? There was no debt owed to the bookie, he was paid in stolen money by Mizuhara. He obviously also had to leave a giant paper trail in his panic by sending wires as it was the only access. If he personally walked into a branch for cash he would have been found out immediately.

I had the opportunity to live this kind of lifestyle through the girlfriend I had at the time in Thailand. If you ever saw the movie, Crazy Rich Asians, that was the life I lived for about 7 years. I can tell you during that 7 years, the people I was around would never have any clue if $1 million, $5 million, even $50 million disappeared. These people were drowning in money and had no idea what they had. Every top business person in the country were friends with each other, the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra's daughter was my girlfriends BFF, etc etc. My gf would routinely spend $300K, $500K each week at the mall. $500 bowls of shark fin shop, Ms Louis Vuitton and Mr Gucci as close pals and on and on. Her sister went to England for university, so the family just gave me the Porsche to drive. This despite me not having a Thai drivers license, but it didnt matter. If anything happened, I was "outside" the law. Even when renewing my visa, I never had to leave the country on a visa run, they just gave my passport to the Head of Immigration, a friend of a friend, and gave me an extension automatically.

So many more examples, but the point is, none of these people or their friends had any clue how much money they had, where it was going, how it was spent. There was just an ungodly amount of money that never ran out. From that experience, I can easily see how Ohtani may not know where his money is going. It would be a full time job just for him to manage it. I ended the relationship through boredom, but my main takeaway on that experience is these people in the Top 1% of 1% of 1%, are clueless how the everyday people live. They live in their own world, and missing many millions was nothing of concern. Without a doubt, if my girlfriend was missing $16 million, she would have never known.

If you're handling your own account, then what you say is correct. However, if you've given someone else that you trust access to your account, either the notifications are going to that person or if they are going to you, you would probably ignore them. If what is now being reported is true, Ohtani gave complete access to his accounts to the interpreter who prevented anyone else from accessing them. His interpreter also impersonated Ohtani on the phone when talking to the bank about account activity.

It sounds like Ohtani had complete trust in his interpreter who used that to take advantage of him and steal a lot of money. The part that is hard to understand (as someone else pointed out) is how would a bookie allow so much debt to be built up by someone who clearly didn't make that much. Unless the interpreter was telling the bookie he was making bets for Ohtani (which I have not seen reported), it's hard to understand how he could be given that much credit to keep losing money. Also, if winnings were being deposited to a different account (owned by the interpreter) than where payments were coming from (Ohtani's), how would he explain that to the bookie? A way to cover the connection to Ohtani?

It seems they already are deeply involved and are unlikely to be able to talk about it until after trial.

The recordings and interviews are done and the Feds main charge is bank fraud and seeking up to 30 years. I don't even see an argument here if a conviction is made.

I don't doubt that people with a lot of money don't know the exact balance of their accounts. My point was that you can't manipulate someone's account by simply turning off a notification. Because like I said. practical banking security would force you to use only an approved device to access your accounts.

If you wanted to send a Venmo payment, for example, using any other device but your own personal device would mean a security notification and required code. It would be possible for you to divert those codes to your own contacts, but how would that be explained when the actual account holder attempts to access their account and can't?

Banking is secure. It isn't easy to steal money from someone unless they allow you to have unrestricted access to their accounts. But if that were the case, why would he need to impersonate Ohtani? A person with authorized access is treated the same as the account holder. These explanations do not add up.

Was it not the case that originally it was stated by Ippei speaking for Ohtani's team, now allegedly without Ohtani understanding for a day or two even though Ohtani actually knows English and it was front page news, that Ippei's debt was paid by Ohtani via a series of $500,000 wire transfers over an period of time? It's seemed to me that there was a debt at some point here. There was never a debt?

Maybe you should go join Mizuhara's defense team then, because if you were right then they would have used that argument. You can't even mildly compare your banking experiences to what this situation is. It is also insanely unlikely that Othani has all this in his personal account. It is assuredly in an business account possibly under an llc for tax purposes and interest. His personal account was likely not even part of this.

Mizuhara is not going to serve 3 decades to cover up gambling for not even his boss, but the guy the Dodgers hired him to translate for. So much stretching on this.

He has not been charged with a crime so I don't know that he needs a defense team.

My experience in wires comes from authorized access to business accounts. I can authorize the transfer of any amount of money on behalf of my employer without anyone else's authorization. But my employer gave me that authority and it's not something I can impersonate my way through otherwise.

He was charged with bank fraud.

Your speaking from the same point of information. Money was coming in obviously or we wouldn't be here. I am not personally a whale bookie in the state of California so I don't know how that works. Perhaps there was interest? If the Bookie thinks Ippei's debt is financed by Ohtani, what on earth would make him think he's not getting paid? Ohtani makes 16m in a week with deals and contracts.

I just don't get the conspiracy angle going on. This all seems clear as day but i'll just step out. I just put some news out there and everyone quickly donned their tin foil hats.

Looks like that just happened. Interested to see how this plays out. My guess is there's a plea deal to further avoid having to actually prove or disprove what happened.

From the LA Times:

“The complaint also alleges that Mizuhara spent about $325,000 at eBay and the retail site Whatnot on sports memorabilia. The federal agents say they found about 1,000 baseball cards in Mizuhara's car.”

“The complaint alleges that Ippei placed about 19,000 bets between December 2021 and January 2024, all with Ohtani's money. The complaint says Ippei won $142,256,769.74 and lost $182,935,206.68, with a total net loss of $40,678,436.94.”

.... I am so lost with what you think my question had to do with a tin foil hat conspiracy. My post also was before your news post and in no way whatsoever a reply to your later post? I think you are conflating what was actually said with something else...

That's interesting since I thought I read he was accused now of stealing $16 million from Ohtani. That leaves another $24 million unaccounted for.

If these numbers are right, would it still be a tin foil hat conspiracy to question or imply a question wondering how Ippei could place $325M in bets with Ohtani's money over several years and 19,000 bets without Ohtani ever knowing a thing? :rolleyes:

I apologize if I have something confused.

I was only getting frustrated on my favorite spot to not get frustrated, lol. I don't like getting in confrontational tete-a-tetes, so I just called it so I don't say more. I also, genuinely like you Greg so I don't want to argue in any way.

I will just wait for things to play out.

However, still tapping out on this thread.

The Athletic and LA Times have good coverage on this. The federal prosecutors outline in detail how Ohtani was a victim in this. For those of you that are paywalled at those sites here’s a tweet from The Athletic’s editor-in-chief which includes an image from a a key part of the complaint. Tons of evidence on the interpreter’s phone.

Just seems like some people want Ohtani to be guilty of something very badly. Can't imagine what the agenda is though, other than schadenfreude

Jealousy and resentment. Which I guess lead to schadenfreude at the end of the day. He should get some better financial advisors though.

I wonder if any of these cards the agents found are ones I need for my collection? And if I interpret the situation clearly, I believe this Mizuhara character was likely the individual behind buying all those overpriced T206 Evans cards on Ebay a few months ago.


Brian

I don’t think it is jealousy, resentment, or wanting him to be guilty to wonder how he and his financial advisors could not have noticed what appears to now be $325 million in bets over 26 months. That is a heck of a story. It seems like basic common sense to ask what happened there instead of accepting whatever his latest PR release says as 100% true.

When there's an evolving narrative it's natural to question where the truth starts and ends.

From something else I read about the investigation-

Text messages showed that after Mizuhara began losing large sums of money via gambling with an illegal sports book, the contact information on Ohtani’s bank account allegedly was changed and linked to an account with Mizuhara's phone number and to an anonymous email address connected to Mizuhara.

That’s what it would take to do what is alleged but as I said what complicates that is Ohtani actually wanting to access his account. He would not receive the requisite security verification codes and I would think at that point you’d notice you’ve lost access to your account.

I’m not saying Ohtani did something wrong by the way. I don’t know what happened. I’m only suggesting there is something missing from the explanation of access like Ohtani giving him the kind of authorization I was talking about or the interpreter gaining control of Ohtani’s devices as well. Typically this kind of theft occurs when someone is authorized and takes advantage of that privilege.

No story will please everyone. We live in a society where the truth is never the truth and regardless of the evidence amassed people can spout whatever nonsense they want with zero evidence. I'll call it the Aaron Rodgers Effect.

There were supposedly educated Americans saying the eclipse was a government scam and Biden was manipulating it.

Case closed.

I'm stupid, but can anyone point me to this evidence proving it is nonsense to wonder how a guy can spend 26 months not noticing $325,000,000 of bets in his name? I'm betting the answer is "No".

A big part of the problem is the story keeps shifting every week and there's almost no publicly visible evidence at all.

No one is even saying he's guilty of any wrongdoing - a couple are merely asking the blatantly obvious question that would be asked of anyone else in the world.

There is - or, well, was - a presumption of innocence in this country at one point.

Hard to believe right?

Sure he’s guilty because you have no facts either way and the story keeps shifting — in the media. The people who have been investigating it for law enforcement are going to prosecute the interpreter for massive theft

I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

Aaron Rodgers implicated Hilary Clinton today in the death of John Kennedy. There’s a story that keep changing! And I’ve seen zero evidence she’s innocent!!!!


QUOTE=G1911;2426108]I'm stupid, but can anyone point me to this evidence proving it is nonsense to wonder how a guy can spend 26 months not noticing $325,000,000 of bets in his name? I'm betting the answer is "No".

A big part of the problem is the story keeps shifting every week and there's almost no publicly visible evidence at all.

No one is even saying he's guilty of any wrongdoing - a couple are merely asking the blatantly obvious question that would be asked of anyone else in the world.[/QUOTE]

I haven't seen anything indicating that bets were made in Ohtani's name so I'm not sure what you mean by that. I agree it's hard to believe that he wouldn't notice that so much money was missing from his account, but as someone else pointed out, it may not be that unbelievable when you have that much money and rely on others to manage your accounts for you.

[/QUOTE]

No one has accused him of any criminal act nor a morally wrong act? He’s not guilty because I say so - I haven’t even accused him lol. Can you read? No one is saying he’s guilty of any wrongdoing. Ranting about the Clintons, Biden and Aaron Rodgers has absolutely nothing to do with anything anyone has said.

A couple of us are asking how a guy can not notice for more than 2 years $325,000,000 of bets in his name, conducted with his money from his accounts. That’s a reasonable question to ask. It is not accusing him of being guilty whatsoever. That is a huge percentage of his worth and probably more money than he even has.

I really don’t know any simpler words to use to ask how a guy can spend 26 months not noticing what so today said to be $325M of bets in his name. That does not mean he did anything wrong or is guilty of anything, it is simply the obvious question when one hears this story. These are massive sums of money for Ohtani.

You are twisting the facts slightly.

Let's say I play blackjack and bet $100

Black jack

Now have $200

Bet $200

Bust

Now have $0

Total bets $300

If I had bet $20 or $50 each bet for as long as it took me to hit zero (because somebody has to pay the neon bill so that the pro gamblers can make a profit), then the total value of my bets mat have been in the thousands, all with just $100.


That number you mention as his number of bets came from a considerably smaller amount of money.

Of course it did, and no one has said otherwise. I have not seen the full dataset to use (as there is almost 0 publicly facing evidence). This clearly did not come from a small sum, relative to Ohtani’s wealth, as there was $40M of debt and Ippei apparently wasn’t winning overall. We are talking about massive sums of money that must have had to move in and out over 2+ years.

I'm not sure why you keep saying the bets were made in Ohtani's name. Everything I have read indicates that the interpreter was betting in his own name, but that the bookie knew he was getting money from Ohtani when he needed to. Apparently, when he won, the money was going into his own account so he wouldn't have always needed to pay from Ohtani's account every time he lost. I'm trying to understand how if he is charged with stealing $16 million from Ohtani but supposedly lost about $40 million net, where did the other $24 million come from?

There are different rules for different people though. Your experience sending wire transfers almost certainly differs from that of someone like Ohtani.

Nate Silver, founder of fivethirtyeight.com and an avid high-stakes gambler, had this to say on the matter:

I thought Ohtani's name was used by Issei? He was allowed to place $325M of bets and a $40M loss on a $300K salary without using Ohtani's name? Back to my actual, original question today in the transcript - is that normal or plausible? To have such a gigantic gap between wealth and bets and the bookie just being okay with that?

I don't know the other $24M details - like I've said the big problem here is the story changes every single week and there is almost no publicly available actual evidence. It's a little difficult not to question things when it's a new tale every week. I have no idea what is actually true, and neither does anyone else here despite what they may claim.

The information included in the charging document released today is the most that has been made public. I read an article that had excerpts from text messages between the interpreter and the bookie, and they all seemed to indicate that it was the interpreter betting for himself and asking for additional credit, time to pay, etc. Other places have said that some of the wire transfers showed Ohtani's name so the bookie knew that money was coming from him at times which presumably is why he was willing to extend so much credit to someone making nowhere near enough to afford it.

It definitely wouldn't surprise me if someone with as much money as Ohtani has would have different rules associated with how he could move money around. If the interpreter was able to successfully convince someone at the bank that he was Ohtani and wanted to be able to wire large amounts, after getting that done once he was probably able to do it repeatedly without as much oversight as you would expect.

Hence my use of "in Ohtani's name" ;).

It's not like $325 million just went missing from his account though. That's not how sports betting works. These were on average, 24 $17k wagers placed per day over the span of 26 months. The wagers are settled each day, win or lose. The bookie keeps a balance sheet and requires you to top off when your account gets low in order to continue betting. The actual money trading hands would have been much smaller than the total amount wagered.