ESPN’s upcoming “30 for 30” podcast revisits the moment investigators and reporters first discovered an apparent financial connection between Shohei Ohtani and the illegal bookmaking operation that later helped expose Ippei Mizuhara’s massive theft.
In a preview for “The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani,” ESPN investigative reporter Tisha Thompson recounts meeting a nervous source in a parking lot in the middle of the night after learning that a paper trail connected Ohtani’s bank account to bookmaker Mathew Bowyer.
The source handed Thompson a phone containing documents sent through an encrypted application. Each image would disappear after 30 seconds, leaving her only enough time to take handwritten notes.
The first document showed a $500,000 transfer dated Sept. 14, 2023. A second showed another $500,000 payment on Oct. 2.
Both included the same banking information.
“Later, after I drive away, I will stare at the jumble of letters and numbers I scribbled into my notebook, and I’ll realize it’s routing information,” Thompson says in the series. “I just saw wire transfers from a bank account at Bank of America, and there’s a name attached to the account: Shohei Ohtani.”
The two payments, totaling $1 million, provided the first direct financial link between Ohtani’s account and Bowyer’s operation. At that stage, however, Thompson did not know who had authorized the transfers or why they had been made.
The story changed almost immediately.
Another source contacted Thompson with the name of Ohtani’s longtime interpreter, Mizuhara, who initially claimed that he had accumulated the gambling debts and Ohtani had agreed to pay them. Mizuhara withdrew that account the following day, beginning a dramatic sequence that led to his dismissal by the Dodgers and a federal investigation.
Authorities ultimately determined that Ohtani had no involvement in the gambling. Mizuhara had gained access to the baseball star’s bank account, impersonated him during calls with bank employees and transferred nearly $17 million to cover his debts without Ohtani’s knowledge.
Mizuhara pleaded guilty to bank fraud and filing a false tax return. He was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison and ordered to pay restitution to Ohtani and the IRS. Major League Baseball closed its investigation in June 2024 after concluding that Ohtani was a victim of fraud.
Bowyer also pleaded guilty to operating an illegal gambling business, money laundering and filing a false tax return. He later explained that Mizuhara began betting with him after the two met through a poker game involving Angels personnel.
The six-part podcast will also include audio from Thompson’s 90-minute phone interview with Mizuhara, conducted approximately 16 hours before ESPN published its original report. It remains the only extended interview Mizuhara has given about the scandal.
The parking-lot exchange captures the uncertainty at the beginning of the investigation. Thompson had found transfers bearing the name of baseball’s biggest star, but not yet the evidence explaining that the money had been stolen by someone Ohtani trusted.
The first two episodes of “The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani” are scheduled to debut July 28.
