A crime planned from the first year of entering the U.S. six years ago
The behind-the-scenes story of the illegal gambling scandal surrounding Shohei Ohtani (LA Dodgers) and former interpreter Ifei Mizuhara has been revealed. Doubts have snowballed against Mizuhara after it was revealed that his bank account was the source of his illegal gambling funds. Ohtani has consistently maintained that he "didn't know" about everything involved. However, even former coach Joe Madden said, "Didn't you really gamble? I want to ask you." According to local media and U.S. investigation authorities, Ohtani was likely not really aware of it. The process that Mizuhara, who has been accompanied by Ohtani since he entered the U.S., has long planned has been revealed. Mizuhara was recently charged with bank fraud by U.S. federal prosecutors. There has also been circumstantial evidence and evidence that both Ohtani and the bank were duped to gain access to Ohtani's bank account. On the other hand, there is no evidence that Ohtani is involved in the process. Right after the incident, Ohtani agreed that the investigation authorities would investigate his mobile phone. The investigation authorities explained that after reviewing all 9,700 text messages exchanged between the two, there was no content related to Mizuhara's gambling nor to Ohtani's personal account. The same applies to Ohtani's personal search records and messages with others. Mizuhara made friends with Ohtani in 2013 when he was a foreign player interpreter for the Nippon Ham Fighters. When Ohtani entered the U.S. in 2017, he volunteered to be an interpreter. When Ohtani signed a contract with the Los Angeles Angels, he was hired as an interpreter by the club and as a personal manager and secretary by Ohtani. Ohtani, who was not good at English, relied on Mizuhara for all his personal chores. The two visited the bank in 2018 and opened Ohtani's annual salary account. In the process, Mizuhara managed Ohtani's annual salary account only by himself, and only opened accounts with income such as non-annual salary advertisements to Ohtani's agent. Ohtani was completely unaware of this. As a world-class superstar, Ohtani had a wide variety of income channels and spanned many areas around the world. That's why he wasn't even sure what the account in question was. Instead, the agent or accounting office received the information that had been compiled, and as mentioned above, the annual salary account was under Mizuhara's control. Mizuhara's email account also belonged to that account. Mizuhara accompanied them to every meeting involving money. None of Ohtani's agents, accountants, and officials could speak Japanese, as explained by Ohtani's agent Nez Bolero. Mizuhara's interpretation was the only one that relied on. The account used during the illegal gambling process was none other than Ohtani's annual salary account. It was also revealed that Mizuhara had repeatedly deceived bank employees as Ohtani during the remittance process. Even if everything was not planned, the conviction that Mizuhara had already prepared for this situation six years ago cannot be avoided. Mizuhara's past major league career has already been proven to be false, such as working as an interpreter for Hideki Okajima's Boston Red Sox in the U.S.