Bad Bets: The Shohei Ohtani & Ippei Mizuhara Investigation

By IRE Staff

There are two kinds of investigative stories: those that would have come out eventually through a lawsuit or law enforcement investigation. 

And those that only emerge because a reporter dug them up, tested their plausibility, asked hard questions and ultimately exposed wrongdoing so outrageous that it forced law enforcement to take action.

ESPN reporter Tisha Thompson received a tip in the fall of 2023 telling her to take a hard look at why the feds raided a home in San Juan Capistrano in early October 2023. Using public records, leaked documents, and interviews with reluctant sources, Thompson pieced together enough information to confirm the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California was conducting a secret investigation of illegal bookmaker Mathew Bowyer as part of a broader probe of bookies using Nevada casinos to launder money. 

Uncovering a federal investigation still under seal was, in itself, a big story. But a source then dropped a bombshell on Thompson. Bowyer, through an associate, had received multiple $500,000 wire transfers from baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani’s bank account to pay off gambling debts.

Thompson considered the anonymous allegation she received about the wires to be radioactive. Ohtani is one of the most famous people in the world. He signed a $700 million contract — the most lucrative contract in sports at that point — just months earlier. Major League Baseball had gone all-in on him with the hope he could help the sport capture a new generation of fans.

By January 2024, Thompson also realized the feds investigating Bowyer were unaware of Ohtani’s possible involvement and did not know about the wire transfers from Ohtani’s bank account. Uncovering details about a high-stakes criminal enterprise before law enforcement is one of the more uncomfortable positions a reporter can find themselves in, especially when meeting unnamed sources alone as Thompson did throughout the winter of 2024.

Thompson was initially told Bowyer received $16 million from Ohtani’s bank account, but sources would ultimately provide conflicting amounts about how much was bet or owed, with some stating it was $16 million, or $24 million, and even $40 million.

Finally, as Thompson neared publication, she learned from multiple sources that the feds had become aware that $4.5 million transferred from Ohtani’s account to Bowyer’s operation.

Two sources also told ESPN that Bowyer had been bragging in 2023 that he was Ohtani’s bookie. In January 2024, Thompson travelled to Southern California to knock on doors in search of documents proving the allegation. It was only then, as word began to spread within a small circle of people that ESPN knew about the wire transfers, that the feds became aware of Ohtani and his bank account.

But even then, according to sources, the feds did not take action, choosing to instead focus their investigation on the money laundering allegations against the casinos. It was soon after that Thompson made a critical breakthrough: meeting a source in the middle of the night who showed her wire transfers with Ohtani’s name and bank account information.

But with this big step forward, new problems arose. Ohtani’s name was spelled “Otani.” Remembering what happened during the CBS investigation of former president George W. Bush’s national guard service — in which reporters were duped by excellent forgery — Thompson and her editor Elaine Teng spent the next several weeks trying to prove or disprove the authenticity of the wires she had seen.

They determined Ohtani’s legal name is spelled Otani, and that the Dodger used both spellings when he first started playing professional baseball in Japan. At the same time, Thompson learned Bowyer was changing his story, claiming he never met Ohtani and it was instead Ohtani’s closest friend and interpreter Ippei Mizuhara who placed bets with his sportsbook, according to Thompson’s sources.

So, was it Ohtani betting or was it Mizuhara? And if it was Mizuhara placing the bets, was he doing it at Ohtani’s behest or for himself? And if Mizuhara was making the bets himself, how did an interpreter making less than $500,000 a year become more than $40 million in debt?

Those were some of the questions Thompson tried to answer throughout February and early March 2024. It was also during this period that Thompson pieced together critical details about how Ohtani’s money was funneled through the bank account of a reality-television star before being laundered at a famous Las Vegas casino.

By the end of February, Thompson realized many of her sources had lied to her. One of the hardest challenges was convincing enough sources — nearly all of whom faced serious risks or wanted to cover up their actions — to help her separate the lies from the truth.

It was within this complicated landscape –—where ESPN had a solid storyline developing within conflicting source accounts — that ESPN made the calculated decision to start asking a larger circle of sources about Ohtani’s connection to Bowyer. Still concerned that the simple act of asking questions could start rumors that would return to us as fact, we purposefully never asked about Mizuhara’s possible involvement.

Thompson learned from sources that the day after ESPN contacted MLB and the FBI, the LA Times began making calls asking about why Ohtani’s bank account sent wire transfers to a bookmaker. 

But Thompson also learned that the LA Times had not asked any questions about Mizuhara and appeared unaware of his involvement. Thompson contacted Ohtani’s agent on March 18. During a series of phone calls with Ohtani’s newly hired crisis communication spokesperson, Thompson revealed that she had seen wire transfers and that sources had told her at least $4.5 million — and up to $16 million — had been sent from Ohtani’s account. Ohtani’s spokesperson eventually confirmed the $4.5 million but denied any larger amounts.

After Ohtani’s camp told Thompson it wasn’t him but a “close friend” who placed the bets and got into debt, Thompson revealed she was aware of Mizuhara’s possible involvement and would like to interview both Ohtani and Mizuhara.

Ohtani’s camp made Mizuhara available for an interview with Thompson that began at 10pm on March 19.

On March 20, just as ESPN was preparing to publish a story based on Thompson’s reporting and the Mizuhara interview, Ohtani’s attorneys sent ESPN a statement calling the wire transfers a “massive theft” of Ohtani’s assets. 

Multiple sources from the Dodgers organization and Ohtani’s camp told ESPN that Ohtani discovered millions of dollars were missing from his bank account after Thompson interviewed Mizuhara, and after the team held a locker room meeting at which Mizuhara and the Dodgers announced ESPN would soon be publishing its story.

This locker room meeting took place at roughly the same time Ohtani’s attorneys were waking up in California to the news that Mizuhara had told Thompson that it was Ohtani, and not Mizuhara, who had physically sent the money from his bank account to pay off Mizuhara’s gambling debts.

By stating it was Ohtani who had made the physical payments to the bookie on behalf of his friend, Mizuhara had potentially implicated Ohtani as an accessory to a money laundering operation.

Immediately following the accusation of “massive theft,” Thompson conducted another

interview with Mizuhara that produced a damning series of statements from the interpreter. He told Thompson he had lied to her in their initial interview, that Ohtani had no knowledge of his gambling debt and had not participated in transferring money to the illegal bookmaker. 

Federal prosecutors used published portions of these conflicting interviews as the impetus for launching an investigation of Mizuhara two days after ESPN published its first story on March 20.

On March 22, a few hours before the feds seized Mizuhara’s phone, ESPN published a second story detailing the “zigzagging, 48-hour journey that played out on two continents” as ESPN tried to cull the lies from the truth before publishing its initial investigation.

On April 30, Thompson published a third story, becoming the first to connect the federal

raid of Bowyer’s home to a larger investigation of money laundering by illegal bookmakers at casinos, naming Resorts World Las Vegas as the key casino under investigation. 

In that story and another published May 8, Thompson revealed how Bowyer laundered Ohtani’s money first through a bank account owned by Boyajian, the cast member of the Real Housewives of Orange County, and then through casino chips at Resorts World Las Vegas. The details she first reported in her investigative stories were later confirmed in a federal complaint against Bowyer that was unsealed in August 2024 after he pleaded guilty to bookmaking and money laundering charges.

Despite the lies, the conflicting information, and the high risks involved, Thompson and ESPN successfully reported out accurate details about a criminal enterprise that even the feds did not know. She obtained information from documents that remain under seal, and uncovered information only known to a small number of people involved in a secret federal investigation.

After the feds charged Mizuhara with stealing from Ohtani, Ohtani’s spokesperson told Thompson that, when she first called for comment, she knew more about how much had been stolen from Ohtani’s bank account than even Ohtani or his closest advisors knew at the time.