The former translator for Major League Baseball great Shohei Ohtani turned himself in to authorities Friday morning, a day after he was arrested Federally accused of stealing more than $16 million Los Angeles Dodgers players engaged in illegal sports betting.
Ippei Mizuhara, 39, of Newport Beach, California, surrendered to law enforcement and was taken into federal custody. He is scheduled to make his first appearance in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon.
Suwon was charged with bank fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
Suwon’s attorney was not immediately available for comment Friday afternoon.
Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said at a news conference Thursday that Suwon opened a bank account for Daegu in 2018 and then served as his de facto manager, transferring Daegu’s Agents, accountants and financial advisors are excluded from this account. .
Estrada said Suwon committed a “massive defraud” against Ohtani to satisfy an “insatiable appetite for illegal sports gambling.”
“I want to stress this: Mr. Ohtani is considered the victim in this case. There is no evidence that Mr. Ohtani authorized the transfer of more than $16 million from his account to the bookmaker,” he said.
Ohtani, 29, came to the United States in 2018 to play for the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim. In December, he left for the Dodgers US$700 million, 10-year contract.
Estrada said Ohtani “fully cooperated” with the investigation and allowed access to his digital devices and personal information.
Estrada said Suwon did not bet on baseball and that he was “associated with illegal gambling activities.”
According to an affidavit filed in the criminal complaint, from November 2021 to January 2024, Suwon made unauthorized transfers of more than $16 million from Ohtani’s checking account. Federal prosecutors said in a statement that the bank account transfers were made through equipment and IP addresses associated with Mizuhara. statement.
Prosecutors said Suwon began gambling with an illegal sportsbook in September 2021 and began losing large sums of money a few months later.
Suwon is accused of placing 19,000 bets between December 2021 and January 2024, with the value of each bet ranging from $10 to $160,000, according to the affidavit.
Suwon’s winning bets totaled more than $142,256,000 and losing bets were approximately $182,935,000. His total losses were more than $40,679,000, the affidavit states.
During this time, contact information on Ohtani’s bank account was allegedly changed to connect the account to Suwon’s phone number and an anonymous email address associated with Suwon, prosecutors said.
He also called the bank, calling himself Ohtani, and deceived employees into authorizing wire transfers from the account to people associated with the illegal gambling business, prosecutors said.
The charges against Suwon center on wire transfers totaling at least $4.5 million from Ohtani’s account to a Southern California gaming company, said a person familiar with the interactions between Ohtani and Suwon. Under federal investigation. told NBC News.
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