Speaker 1the United States of America versus Ipe Mizuhara. Counsel, please state your appearances for the record. Good morning, Your Honor. Michael Friedman for Mr. Mizuhara, who's present with me on bond. In May 2024, less than two months after my story on Ipe and Shohei broke, Ipe appeared in court. It was quick, just five minutes long. The federal government had charged Ipe with bank fraud and tax fraud. He would plead guilty to both. After the hearing, Ipe left the courtroom. We're not going to have any comments, okay? He stared straight ahead as he walked towards the elevator. During our interview, he had told me things he had never told anyone else, not even his wife. But we had never met in person. As I walked next to him in the courthouse, I was pretty sure he didn't recognize me. So as we moved through the hallway, I said to him quietly, Ipe, it's Tisha. He slowly turned his head and looked at me for a moment before nodding just once as if to acknowledge me before turning his head back to stare over the crowd. It's the only time I saw him react to anything. I'm not sure if I'm the only one who's been so shocked by the fact that Ipe's been in the courtroom. I'm not sure if I'm the only one who's been so shocked by the fact that I'm in the courtroom. If there's a moment I can point to where everything seems to shift for Ipe, it was then. Before this moment, when Ipe had been the go-between for Shohei Ohtani and the media, the media had been respectful, appreciative. But now there was a kind of anger in the air. Reporters swarmed him, shoving microphones and cameras in his face. That image has stuck with me, this frenzy of people surrounding Ipe. All alone, trying to move forward through the crowd with his gaze never breaking. All of the consequences of this scandal falling firmly on him. And Shohei was nearly 400 miles away, preparing for a game against the Giants in San Francisco. Later that night, he would hit a home run and a double in a 10-2 victory. Investigative reporter Tisha Thompson, from 30 for 30 podcasts, this is The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani. Episode 6, Footnote.
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Speaker 1A couple of weeks before Ipe was due to be sentenced to prison, he submitted a letter to the judge. In the letter, Ipe describes his relationship with Shohei in the hope the judge might grant him a lighter sentence.
Speaker 4Honorable Judge John Holcomb, I am writing you today, before my sentencing hearing.
Speaker 1A voice actor is reading Ipe's words.
Speaker 4Sadly, I'm asking for your leniency in sentencing me and plead that your sentence be merciful and not punitive. I need to tell you what motivated me to act against the law. Since late 2017, I had been working with Shohei Otani as his interpreter slash manager. I can confidently say that I put my heart and soul into my work so Shohei can have the best career he can as a professional baseball player in the United States.
Speaker 1Typically, an interpreter for a major league baseball player communicates with coaches, teammates, and the media while helping the player navigate a new culture. But Ipe wrote he was responsible for much more.
Speaker 4I would also be running daily errands such as grocery shopping, checking his mailbox, fixing his bicycle, accompanying him when he went back to Iwate to visit his family, take his dog to the vet, take his dog to the groomer, drop off and pick up for his dinners he had with his peers while I wait in the car, helped coordinate Japanese and Japanese-speaking relationships, and U.S. lawyers for his marriage prenup and attended the meetings, etc.
Speaker 1Ipe told the judge that when a Japanese player comes to play baseball in the United States, they bring a number of staff with them. But Shohei only brought Ipe.
Speaker 4I was responsible for communicating with all of his endorsement companies and brokerage companies to set up his production days for commercials which occurred once per week in between the training. I would accompany him to all of his production shoots which gave me almost no true days off. The off-season was where it was much harder both physically and mentally.
Speaker 1He said that during the off-season, Shohei would train five to six times a week and part of Ipe's job would be to set up and clean practice equipment, track and film Shohei's routine, and be his training partner. He was also the go-between for Shohei and his personal pitching, hitting, and rehabilitation support staff. Ipe's salary when he started with the Los Angeles Angels was about $85,000.
Speaker 4I felt like I was getting severely underpaid, but I was afraid to speak up for myself as I was on a one-year contract every year and I didn't want to upset them and end up getting fired.
Speaker 1But the team didn't pay him in the off-season. So Ipe said in his letter that Shohei would pay him out of pocket during that time, just a little over $500 a week for round-the-clock help.
Speaker 4I had to live within a certain vicinity of Shohei so I can stay close by to accommodate his daily needs, especially in his early years in the United States. This meant that I had to rent a place near him, which meant the rent was not going to be cheap. On top of the hefty rent price, I needed to take care of my wife's expenses for her flights going back and forth from Japan and the United States.
Speaker 1Ipe's wife wrote the judge a letter as well. She talked about Ipe helping her through serious health problems and the death of her parents, while he financially supported her from abroad. And when she visited the U.S., Ipe told the judge she would also help Shohei.
Speaker 4She would cook him breakfast in the early years and periodically make him food for dinner, watch Shohei's dog while he was gone for baseball, even paid out of her pocket and learned to do nail protection work known as gel nail, since Shohei often suffered from broken nails while he was pitching.
Speaker 1In another letter to the judge, Ipe's mother revealed that she had been in a serious car accident and Ipe had taken responsibility for her care. That accident was the first time Ipe had been in a car accident. That accident happened around the same time Ipe started betting with the bookie, Matt Boyer. Ipe told the judge that as his debt grew, he felt like there was no way out except to tap into Shohei's bank account.
Speaker 4I felt terribly guilty about putting my hands on his money, but this was the only solution I could think of at the time.
Speaker 1The letters to the judge portray a man weighed down by both professional and personal responsibilities, who is struggling, and who is willing to stay afloat financially when his fixation on sports betting spiraled out of control. Reading the letters, I wonder, what was the relationship between the two men really like?
Speaker 4I am prepared to accept my consequences. I am asking for a little mercy from the court concerning my sentence you will hand down. Thank you very much. Lastly, I truly admire Shohei as a baseball player and a human being, and I was committed to devote my life so Shohei can be the best version of himself. I want to say I am truly sorry for violating his trust in me. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my letter. Sincerely, Ipe Mizuhara.
Speaker 1Ipe's sentencing hearing took place on February 6, 2025, about one year after the scandal became international news. Sitting behind me in the packed courtroom was Chris Seymour, the IRS special agent who had led the government's investigation of Yip He. Seymour told me that when he read Ipe's letter to the judge, he didn't see a man struggling with responsibility. It's like he was trying
Speaker 5to plead his case that I'm entitled to this. Maybe he wanted to get that out there, that it wasn't as fun being a translator as everybody would think it was. This is okay because I work a lot, or this is okay because I don't have a life because of this, or this is okay. And once you start going down that path, any criminal act is good by your eyes.
Speaker 1Seymour says he thought Ipe's letter did more harm than good in making his case to the judge because by sharing details of his day-to-day work, Ipe also revealed private information about Shohei's life, like Shohei's prenup.
Speaker 5He was divulging things that only he knew to the court. He had no right to do, in my opinion. Why would you do that? That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1During the sentencing hearing, Jeff Mitchell, the assistant U.S. attorney, picked apart Ipe's letter. He told the judge that Shohei was the one paying for first-class international airfare for both Ipe and his wife, that Shohei bought Ipe a Porsche Cayenne, which Mitchell estimated to be worth more than $100,000. And the feds discovered something else, too. Ipe told me that he had never, ever won while betting with Matt's book. Terrible. I'm never, I'm never going to do it ever again. I never won any money from there. But the feds say that's not true. Ipe did win. And when he cashed out, the money went into his personal account.
Speaker 6When Ipe won money from Boyer, Boyer put the money in Ipe's account. I didn't show his account. There was never any transfers from Ipe's account to Shohei. It never went that way. It was always. Ipe taking money from Shohei's account.
Speaker 1Mitchell portrayed Ipe as an opportunist who took advantage of Shohei's trust and generosity. He reminded the judge that Ipe impersonated Shohei on bank calls, spent $325,000 of Shohei's money on baseball cards, and wired millions of dollars from Shohei's bank account to an illegal bookmaker to pay off his debts. And then Mitchell revealed something new, something that the prosecution argued should leave no question about Ipe's motivation for stealing from Shohei. The dental work. What does the dental work say to you?
Speaker 6I was surprised. You know, I mean, the dental work was just so blatant and just so egregious.
Speaker 1Mitchell says Shohei told federal investigators that he had agreed to pay for dental work for Ipe in September 2023. So Shohei wrote Ipe a check to cover it for $60,000. But bank records show Ipe didn't use that check to pay for the dental work. Instead, he deposited it into his own bank account and used money from Shohei's private account without Shohei's knowledge to actually pay his dental bill.
Speaker 6When Shohei, out of the kindness of his heart, writes a check for $60,000 for dental work, then you deposit that money in your account and you steal it. I still use Shohei's debit card to pay for it. That was just, I was really surprised when I saw that.
Speaker 1This is one of the moments that incontrovertibly shows that Ipe stole from Shohei. That Ipe was capable of lying to Shohei. $120,000 is not $16 million, but it's the kind of behavior, along with Ipe's texts, that made the feds believe Ipe was capable of stealing millions from his boss. And Ipe doesn't deny that he did it. But in his letter, he asked the judge to consider the power disparity between him and Shohei, how hard he had worked for his demanding boss, how little he'd been paid, how much he wanted to do the right thing. The judge was unconvinced. He said Ipe's letter was misleading and left out important facts. The judge told Ipe, no credit, and sentenced him to 57 months in prison, almost five years, and nearly five times the sentence the bookie, Matt Boyer, received from the same judge. The judge ordered Ipe to pay more than $18 million in restitution to Shohei and the IRS, a sum he noted was more than most people make in a lifetime, and that Ipe attend Gamblers Anonymous. Shohei never attended any of Ipe's hearings, and his attorneys only participated in the case one time, to file a motion requesting that Ipe's baseball cards, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, go to Shohei. The judge agreed. Prosecutors tell me that cases like Ipe's happen all of the time. Someone gets in over their head gambling, and makes a mistake. He makes the fateful decision to steal from their employer, their friend, their family, someone who trusted them.
Speaker 7My office was doing dozens of these cases on a monthly basis, involving older adults, involving different victims, people who had much smaller amounts taken from them.
Speaker 1This is Martin Estrada, the former U.S. attorney who led the case against Ipe.
Speaker 7We did a lot of these cases, it just didn't get as much attention.
Speaker 1One of the challenges with sports betting is that its tells are hard to spot. Oftentimes, the people closest to the gambler have no idea it's even happening.
Speaker 7Confidants, lawyers, accountants, friends, taking advantage of others. This is happening to people all over the country, each and every day.
Speaker 1But Ipe's case was unique, not just because of the amount of money that was involved, but because of the volume of bets that he placed. 19,000 bets in two years.
Speaker 7That was shocking, clearly showed that this was completely out of control.
Speaker 1Ipe was betting at all hours, day and night. He averaged more than two dozen bets each day. And it makes me think about how my colleague, Tim Kuhn, describes Shohei and Ipe in the Angels Clubhouse.
Speaker 8They would sit at the table in the players' lounge and hold each other's phones up to each other and laugh.
Speaker 1They were together nearly all of the time. And Ipe was betting almost all of the time. All while apparently keeping the biggest secret of his life.
Speaker 8How could he hide such a big part of his life from the one guy that he was with constantly?
Speaker 1And how did he ever expect to get away with it? I think about his interview with me. Why talk to me? Who let him get on the phone with me? And why lie about what Shohei knew?
Speaker 8We have federal investigations to back up the fact that there's no reason to suspect Shohei. But there's just all this weirdness that preceded that that makes you wonder, how did this all break down?
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Speaker 1When I reached out to Shohei's team about this story, they first said Shohei learned about Ipe's betting when Ipe asked him for help and paid Ipe's gambling debts as a way to help someone important to him. His spokesperson told me that the interview with Ipe would help clear up any questions I had. Going into the interview, I said, I had anticipated that a smart PR guy could spin this into a story that made Shohei look really good. It would be a bit of a scandal, yes. Ipe would most likely get fired. But MLB's most valuable player would come out of it looking like a stand-up guy who bailed out his friend. And in the beginning, I did get a version of that story.
Speaker 10Why did you use his bank account instead of. Like him sending you the money, why use his.
Speaker 11But Ipe's story began to evolve when I pushed for details about
Speaker 1how the payments were made.
Speaker 10So you turn around and say to Shohei, here's the wire transfer information? Do you show it to him on your phone? Do you text it to him? Do you do it for him? Like, how does that go?
Speaker 12I did it on his behalf. Okay. It's a supervision.
Speaker 10So do you have access to his bank account?
Speaker 12No, I don't.
Speaker 10Okay. So when you say you did it on his behalf, explain to me how that works.
Speaker 12In that first interview, Ipe said Shohei didn't just know about
Speaker 1the payments, he took part in them. He said he and Shohei didn't know that what they were doing might be illegal. He told me all of this with Shohei's crisis spokesperson listening in on the phone. But not long after the interview ended, that same spokesperson called me back in a panic, giving me a new version of events. Ipe had lied, he said, and Shohei knew nothing about any of it. Jeff Mitchell and Rachel Agras on behalf of the United States. When Jeff Mitchell stood before the judge during Ipe's sentencing, he told the judge that Ipe created an international incident when he left the United States. He lied to me during our interview, that the interview sent shockwaves around the world and led to speculation that Shohei may have been involved with the gambling, that MLB even opened up its own investigation into Shohei because of what Mitchell described as Ipe's false statements. Mitchell told the judge, no matter how many times the government stands up and tells the world that Mr. Otani is a victim and that there is no evidence that he was ever involved in the gambling. People still refuse to believe it. These voices persist. Even though Ipe pleaded guilty, these voices persist in part because of the utter strangeness of the 24 hours before and after the interview. What I was being told kept changing so quickly and so dramatically. The feds say that when Ipe was talking to me that first time, Shohei didn't know anything about it. And then hours, after the interview, after Shohei made his Dodgers debut, the team's management and Ipe told the whole team in a locker room meeting that a story was coming out about Ipe's gambling addiction. But because Ipe was talking during the meeting, no one translated for Shohei. And the feds say that it was only then, only when Shohei asked Ipe about what he had said, that Shohei learned what was going on. For the first time. Think about that. Ipe did the interview. He and Shohei laughed together in the dugout. The Dodgers won their game. And the Dodgers told the whole team, all before Shohei learned that an ESPN investigative reporter was working on the story. And when he did find out, it was Ipe who broke the news. Ipe controlled the communication in every direction. The court records even show that Nez Bolelo, Shohei's agent, told the feds he did not speak directly to Shohei or regularly text with him. Instead, when Nez needed to talk to Shohei, he went through Ipe. Agencies are supposed to protect their clients. And this was the biggest client in the game. Why did Ipe have such unfettered access to the superstar and his money?
Speaker 8I have seen and talked to people who don't understand how the agents allowed this to happen.
Speaker 1Tim says there have been a lot of tough questions directed at Shohei's sports agency.
Speaker 8There are people that have told me they don't understand why Otani is still working with CAA. Why wouldn't he divorce himself of that? Because they had a hand in making him vulnerable and in allowing this to take place.
Speaker 1$16 million of your money has been sent to a bookmaking operation, which would violate MLB policy at bare minimum, which would mean you're now going to be under MLB investigation. That's a big allegation.
Speaker 8Right. Yeah. And I think that there was this breakdown between the guys who are supposed to handle the money and the guy who has the money.
Speaker 1I've requested an interview with Shohei's agent, Nesbolelo. He declined. I've requested interviews with the Dodgers, the Angels, MLB. They all declined too. David Fletcher, the infielder who was at the poker game where Ipe met Matt Boyer, has not responded to my calls since the story broke. He told me in an earlier conversation that he knew Boyer, but he had never bet with him. In May 2024, MLB also opened an investigation into him after we revealed he was one of Matt Boyer's clients. Fletcher was sent down to the minors that season. I've written Ipe letters in prison. He hasn't replied. I continue to ask for an interview with Shohei. I've told his people it's a standing offer. But during Ipe's trial, when I called for comment, Shohei's crisis spokesperson told me that Shohei will never speak about what happened with Ipe ever again. There's no
Speaker 8benefit to him addressing it at this point. If I'm putting myself in Shohei's shoes, given what has happened since this went down, why would I need to talk about Ipe?
Speaker 1And as soon as Ipe was charged, Shohei went on a record-breaking winning streak.
Speaker 82024 really seemed like he was a guy on a mission. Like he attacked the season, is what it feels like. As good as he has been, this was a different gear. This was something literally we'd never seen before.
Speaker 1350 home runs and 50 stolen bases in
Speaker 8the same season. It had never been done before.
Speaker 1In just about six months after his public split with Ipe, Shohei and the Dodgers capped off the season by winning the World Series.
Speaker 13There's a shot, right center field, and Otani lights the fire. A lead-out home run. Start the party, Los Angeles. Your Dodgers have won the World Series.
Speaker 1And then what do they do the next season?
Speaker 8Well, they do it again.
Speaker 13The Dodgers stand tall and win back-to-back titles.
Speaker 8In the career of Shohei, Ipe is just a dot on a timeline now. He's just a person from his past. Ipe's in prison. Shohei can add to that erasure by ignoring him.
Speaker 1Ipe is serving time at a minimum-security federal prison in central Pennsylvania. He will become eligible for parole in 2029. Mitch Lively, one of the players Ipe interpreted for in Japan, told Tim he's been thinking about Ipe now.
Speaker 8Do you wish you could call Ipe right now? And ask him?
Speaker 14Straight up? Yeah, but I wouldn't ask him that because I'm sure that's heavy on his heart. I would just ask him how he's doing, honestly. "How you doing, man?" That's what I'd want to ask him. "You need anything? Can you help me when I need you? What can I do for you?"
Speaker 1Ipe's punishment doesn't end when he gets out of prison. He faces another three years of probation, and because he is a Japanese citizen convicted of a crime, convicted of a felony, he will most likely be deported.
Speaker 15He's going to be a pariah in Japan, not just because of what he did, because of who he did it to.
Speaker 1Jason Cosgrave is an American baseball writer based in Tokyo.
Speaker 15It's one thing to be famous for a crime of this magnitude, but it's another thing to be famous for a crime of this magnitude where you're robbing the most famous person in the country, one of the most beloved people in the country.
Speaker 1Jason says the backlash against Ipe in Japan has been almost universal.
Speaker 15In Japan, a lot of times if the scandal is bad enough, you sort of just get erased in a way.
Speaker 1When Tim went to Japan to report on Shohei, he found it difficult to get anyone to talk about Ipe. "I've run into it too. I've reached out to dozens of people in my effort to better understand Ipe, and there's an intensity to their refusals that's hard to explain. Japanese broadcasters won't even let us know or let us use their sound of Shohei playing baseball in Japan because they don't want to be included in a podcast about Ipe." It's almost as if people want to erase Ipe from Shohei's legacy altogether.
Speaker 15He was part of a book. There were some pages in some children's book that he was in. This is Ipe Mizuhara.
Speaker 1There's a Japanese children's book about Shohei called Let's Play Baseball, The Shohei Otani Story. The first edition includes an illustration of Ipe standing next to Shohei at what looks like a Dodgers press conference. But in later versions that have come out since the scandal,
Speaker 15I think they took that out.
Speaker 1Ipe's been erased. Shohei now just stands next to a blank wall. It's happening in the U.S. in small ways as well. Ipe's high school in Diamond Bar had a profile of him posted on its famous alumni page. It's since been scrubbed from their website. And when you look at Shohei's Instagram, there are no longer any photos with Ipe. Almost from the moment they arrived in the U.S. from Japan, Shohei and Ipe were presented to the world as friends, close friends. Ipe even told me that they were as close as brothers. But looking back, what little we know about their relationship actually comes from Ipe. In one of the few times Shohei did comment on their relationship back in 2024, it at first sounds like Shohei, speaking through Ipe, is making a joke. But now, after everything we've learned, this moment hits differently.
Speaker 7How did you develop your relationship with Ipe? Yeah, we're
Speaker 16not
Speaker 7friends or anything. We're just business partners.
Speaker 1When I think back on it, Ipe had an extraordinary power as Shohei's interpreter. There's an intimacy to him. There's an intimacy to interpretation. Ipe not only decided what words most appropriately captured Shohei's ideas, but the subtext, too, whether he was being funny or ironic, sincere or emotional. For six years, everything the English-speaking world heard and therefore believed about Shohei came from Ipe. Ipe constructed Shohei for us. Now reading Ipe's letter about the realities of his life working for Shohei and seeing Ipe open up to Shohei, and seeing Ipe erased by Shohei's success, I wonder, was this ever even a friendship? On November 3rd, 2025, the Dodgers were back in their home stadium in front of tens of thousands of fans, celebrating a second consecutive World Series win. Hello, hello. A year after his first World Series speech, Shohei takes the mic again. Without an interpreter.
Speaker 16I want to say that I'm so proud of this team. And then I want to say you guys are the greatest fans in the world. And then I'm ready to get another ring next year. Let's go. Let's go.
Speaker 17If he would have not succeeded, if he would have not succeeded, if he would have not succeeded with the Dodgers, this betting scandal would have consumed his entire career.
Speaker 1This is my ESPN colleague, Alden Gonzalez.
Speaker 17Now, the more he performs on the field, the more this feels like it's becoming a footnote in his career. Ipe has faded, and this has faded further and further into the background because of what Shohei Otani has done on the field.
Speaker 1Shohei Otani is 32 years old and only three years into his career, and he has a 10-year contract with the Dodgers.
Speaker 17And I think with every home run he hits, and every shutout he throws, every MVP he gets, this moves further and further down that story. The day that Shohei Otani announces his retirement from Major League Baseball, how many graphs into that story is the Ipe betting scandal going to be?
Speaker 1If things go well for Ipe, he'll be leaving prison sometime in the spring of 2020. And if things go well for Shohei, he'll be starting another record-breaking season with the Dodgers. Ultimately, only they know what really happened between them, in their friendship, and if they were ever even friends to begin with. I've talked to one of them, and we know he lied to me, while I've been told the other won't go on the record about it again. And as long as people keep betting on Shohei's success, and Shohei keeps winning, he'll never have to say Ipe's name ever again.
Speaker 14The Betrayal of Shohei Otani is based on
Speaker 1reporting by me, Tisha Thompson, with support from Tim Kuhn and the ESPN investigative unit. The Betrayal of Shohei Otani is based on reporting by me, Tim Kuhn and the ESPN investigative unit.
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