The translator at the center of a massive sports-betting scandal
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with stories about current events and trending topics. And it’s not just the stories, either. We also show you—in every lesson—we also show you how to use one new English expression or phrasal verb. And these are great because every single one of these English expressions can help you communicate an idea in English. And that’s what this is all about, right?
Today’s story is about a translator for a sports star. Ippei Mizuhara translated for Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese baseball star who now plays in Los Angeles. And he, the translator, stands accused of stealing over $16 million from Ohtani, and using it to pay off sports gambling debts.
It’s a wild story. In the second half of the lesson, I’ll show you how to use the English expression “caught up in.”
This is lesson number 673, so that means the full lesson—the transcript, the quizzes, translations, exercises, activities, all that is available at PlainEnglish.com/673. That is thanks to JR, the producer.
Ready to get started? Here we go.
The translator at the center of a sports betting scandal
Plain English listeners first learned about Shohei Ohtani in April 2018, lesson number 37. He was Japan’s best baseball player — a superstar at a young age.
He dominated in Japan and then came to play for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim when he was just 23 years old. The Angels are the L.A. area’s second-most popular team (out of two). Ohtani became one of the best players in Major League Baseball, but the Angels are a bad team, so it seemed like his talent was wasted . When Ohtani’s contract ended at the end of last season, he became a free agent . That meant that any team could bid for his services .
And did they ever bid. The highest bidder was the Dodgers, the other team in the L.A. area. The Los Angeles Dodgers are one of baseball’s biggest brands and one of the most successful teams in recent years . The Dodgers agreed to pay Ohtani an eye-popping sum of money : $700 million, extended over twenty years. That’s a bigger contract than any other American athlete has ever signed, in any sport. Seven hundred million dollars!
So this year, 2024, is Ohtani’s first year with the Dodgers. And the Dodgers, by coincidence , opened the Major League Baseball season with two games in South Korea on March 20 and 21. This was going to be a big moment for Ohtani and for baseball. His first game with the Dodgers would be an international showcase game , back in Asia.
But a scandal ruined his Dodgers debut . Just hours after the first game, a story broke that Ohtani’s translator had paid millions of dollars to settle gambling debts . Ohtani speaks Japanese and employed a translator to help him interact with the media, talk to his teammates and coaches , and to navigate life in the United States. Ippei Mizuhara was born in Japan but had lived many years in California. He had worked for Ohtani in Japan and for Ohtani’s entire time in the U.S.
Speculation started immediately after the story broke. Was Ohtani, one of baseball’s biggest stars, caught up in illegal gambling ? Did Ohtani make the bets himself? Did he and Mizuhara bet on games that the baseball star was playing in? Did the scandal go deeper than just these two?
The Dodgers immediately fired Mizuhara. Ohtani doesn’t speak much English and was stuck without his longtime friend and translator. He didn’t say much on the topic at the beginning. He initially said he had authorized payments to cover Mizuhara’s debts; then, he changed his story and said that he was the victim. The scandal cast a shadow on his debut with the Dodgers, on the series in Seoul, and on baseball’s new season.
Now, American prosecutors have charged Mizuhara. Here’s what they say happened. They say that Mizuhara is the one who bet on sports and that Mizuhara illegally transferred $16 million from Shohei Ohtani’s account to an illegal sports bookmaker in California.
They say Ohtani was the victim in the case and he didn’t know what his friend and translator had done. They reviewed communications between the two of them and found no evidence that Ohtani had any idea that Mizuhara had been placing bets . When Mizuhara won, the money went into his own account, not into Ohtani’s.
So it does appear, from the charges, that Ohtani was the victim here. So this raises two questions : first, how could Mizuhara have had access to that much of someone else’s money? And second, how could Ohtani not have noticed sixteen million dollars go missing ?
Prosecutors say that Mizuhara began wagering 2021. Every week that he was down—meaning, every week he had lost money—he had to transfer money to cover his losses to the bookmaker. To do that, he impersonated Shohei Ohtani in phone calls with the bank. And he changed the email address and phone number on Ohtani’s bank account to his own, so that he, Mizuhara, and not Ohtani, would get account alerts when money left Ohtani’s account.
Text messages show that for two years, Mizuhara won some bets and lost some bets—but mostly lost on balance . He placed an average of 25 bets per day, for amounts ranging from $10 to $160,000 each. He regularly had to wire large amounts to the bookmaker to cover his losses : $40,000 one week, $100,000 another week, then $300,000. At one point, he got so far behind that he couldn’t pay the full balance with wire transfers without hitting the bank’s transfer limit. He had to pay in weekly installments of half a million dollars each. And remember: this is all money from Shohei Ohtani’s account.
Text messages show the translator growing frustrated with his losing bets and pleading with the bookmaker to increase his line of credit , sometimes multiple times per week. He once told the bookmaker he was asking for an increase for the last time—and then asked for another increase as his losses mounted .
In total, he won $142 million in wagers and lost $183 million, leaving a net loss of almost $41 million. He didn’t have a chance to pay all his debts. He stopped making his weekly payments. The bookmaker grew frustrated, then angry, then threatening . The bookmaker threatened to approach Ohtani on the street.
After the story broke in the media, Mizuhara seemed to admit the whole thing to his bookmaker. Mizuhara’s last text message said this: “Technically I did steal from [Ohtani]. It’s all over for me.”
So how did Ohtani not know what was happening? That is probably the biggest mystery, but there are some clues in the reclusive star’s behavior . Ohtani doesn’t seek the spotlight and he doesn’t live a flashy lifestyle . He lived in a dormitory in Japan long after he was making very good money; he gave it all to his parents and lived off a $1,000 per month allowance .
He came to the U.S. at age 23. Under baseball’s rules, Ohtani would have been eligible to make a lot more money if he had just waited two more years. But he decided to move early, forgoing tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars. So maybe he doesn’t care much about material wealth?
Maybe. But the most likely explanation is simply that he relied on other people to handle the business so that he could devote his full attention to his training. This is common. Sports agents often have departments that handle finances , publicity , sponsorships , and other off-the-field matters for their stars.
The problem in this case is that Ohtani’s agents, who were supposed to be looking out for him—the agents communicated with Mizuhara, the translator. And often Ohtani wasn’t present in meetings or copied on messages. That means a critical safety net wasn’t available for Ohtani. Nobody at his agent’s office spoke Japanese.
Jeff’s take
Ohtani will be fine. He signed that huge contract and he makes a lot of money on endorsements and such. He’s not strapped for cash by any means . But still, $16 million is twice his final annual salary with the Angels, so it’s a significant amount of money, even for him.
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