Bowyer reiterates claims that Ohtani did not bet after release of new recordings from Ippei interview

Minutes after Matt Bowyer opened an interactive chat with his Instagram followers Tuesday, Shohei Ohtani laced a low slider nearly 440 feet for a leadoff home run, his 23^rd of the season.  

Ohtani’s left-center blast was his 132^nd homer since he joined the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2024, the most by any Major League Baseball player in that timeframe. Marveling at Ohtani’s wunderkind talents, Bowyer informed viewers that he’s hoping to attend a Dodgers game this season, the former bookie’s first since his release from prison this spring.

Speaking to reporters through interpreter Will Ireton, the replacement for former translator Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani conceded that his return to the mound will be delayed. Despite a biceps injury, Ohtani remains the overwhelming favourite for National League MVP, as he bids to become the first player since Barry Bonds to earn league MVPs in four consecutive seasons. It’s the type of accolade Dodgers fans envisioned when Ohtani kicked off his “Big Blue” career at the 2024 MLB Korea Series, roughly 6,000 miles from Chavez Ravine.

Remarkably, Ohtani’s play has improved since the watershed event on 20 March 2024 that altered the course of his, Bowyer’s and Mizuhara’s lives immeasurably. On that day (Seoul time), Mizuhara told ESPN that Ohtani sent millions to accounts controlled by Bowyer to cover a portion of the interpreter’s gambling debts. Hours later, Mizuhara recanted the story as Ohtani’s camp claimed he was the victim of a massive embezzlement.

The incident received renewed attention this week as ESPN released new audio of the initial interview with Mizuhara. Bowyer, for his part, reiterated his prior views that he does not believe Ohtani wagered with his illegal sportsbook.

“He did nothing wrong, I don’t believe he gambled,” Bowyer said on Instagram Tuesday.

The rep to the stars

Eight days before the majority of Major League Baseball took the field for the first time in the 2024 regular season, Ohtani and the Dodgers faced the Padres in Seoul for a two-game series. By then, Tisha Thompson, an investigative reporter with ESPN, already spent months pursuing a tip on a major gambling story.

Multiple sources informed Thompson on allegations of wire transfers sent from a bank account bearing Ohtani’s name. In particular, Thompson learned of two wires of $500,000 each that were sent to accounts associated with Bowyer’s sports betting enterprise.

In the hours leading up to the opener, Thompson appeared to receive faulty intel that tied Ohtani to the payments. After Thompson contacted the representatives of Ohtani, she received a call from Hiltzik Strategies, a crisis management firm retained by the Dodgers’ star. Matthew Hiltzik, founder of the firm, subsequently connected Thompson with Mizuhara, Ohtani’s longtime interpreter. Hiltzik, a prominent crisis specialist, has represented the likes of Hillary Clinton, Ivanka Trump, Brad Pitt and Katie Couric, among others.

Bowyer, whose home was raided by federal agents the prior October, was eventually accused of accepting approximately $325 million in wagers from Mizuhara. While Mizuhara recorded gross winnings of $142.3 million, they were offset by losses of $182.9 million, resulting in a net debt of $40.2 million. Thompson, who won a 2024 Associated Press Sports Editors’ award for her coverage of the case, sought answers on the nature of the wire transfers.

Of the debts, Bowyer received payments for nearly $17 million, with the rest still outstanding to this day. Thompson’s 90-minute interview with Mizuhara before the game triggered a series of events that has left the public clamouring for the unvarnished truth.

The call

ESPN initially published a portion of Mizuhara’s comments two years ago, but did not release a more extensive version until the airing of Tuesday’s podcast.

Among the new details, Thompson revealed that she met with a confidential source at an undisclosed location in the middle of the night. There, she received information pertaining to bank routing numbers on an encrypted phone.

Two of the six-figure wires were transferred over the span of a month in 2023, Ohtani’s final weeks with the Los Angeles Angels. The first occurred on 14 September 2023, days before the Angels shelved Ohtani for the season. The second transpired on 2 October 2023, after the Angels’ season concluded.

Over the course of the call, Mizuhara appeared to paint a picture of the purported transactions, portions of which he later admitted to fabricating.

Ippei Mizuhara: Honestly, in the beginning I felt really uncomfortable…he went on– like nothing ever happened.  

IM: (Ohtani) knew the whole amount, and knew that we had to make several payments, because you can’t send more than $500,000 at a time. 

TT: Did you go to him and remind him? Would he do it of his own volition?

IM: No, I would do it with him every time.

TT: And it just became normal, it wasn’t awkward? Is that what you’re saying?

IM: For me, it was– it felt bad every time we did a wire.

TT: But he didn’t make a big deal out of it?

IM: No.

The shocking turn of events

Ohtani went 2-for-5 in the Dodgers’ 5-2 win, including an RBI single that completed a four-run rally in the eighth. At 10 p.m. Seoul time, roughly three hours after the end of the game, an MLB source told Thompson that Ohtani covered a portion of Mizuhara’s debts.

Back in Seoul, Dodgers executive Andrew Friedman informed the players in a clubhouse meeting that Mizuhara’s debt were being repaid by Ohtani, ESPN reported.

At the meeting, Mizuhara apologised to the team, ascribing the large debts to his gambling addiction. On the drive back to the hotel, however, Ohtani apparently first learned that a substantial amount of money went missing from his account, according to published reports.

The Japanese star later stated that when he learned of the allegations of stolen money, he contacted his legal team, who advised him to let law enforcement handle the matter.

A victim of theft

By 2 p.m. ET (3 a.m. in Seoul), Ohtani’s attorneys from Berk Brettler LLP issued a statement that read: “In the course of responding to recent media inquiries, we discovered that Shohei has been the victim of a massive theft and we are turning the matter over to the authorities.”

By 3:30 a.m., in South Korea, the Dodgers terminated Mizuhara. Within the next half hour, he informed Thompson via phone that he lied during their previous call. This time, Mizuhara asserted that Ohtani had no knowledge of the gambling debts and did not transfer funds to the gambling enterprise. Thompson provided a detailed play-by-play of this second call on Tuesday’s episode, a conversation that was not recorded.

While Mizuhara was paid at least $300,000 a year by the Dodgers, he still needed a financial backstop to wager with the limits presented by Bowyer. At his peak, Mizuhara received limits of around $100,000 a bet with Bowyer’s sportsbook, the ex-bookmaker confirmed on Tuesday. According to a criminal complaint against Mizuhara, approximately three wagers totaling $233,386 were made on 26 October 2023, from the interpreter’s betting account with the illegal sportsbook.

In comments to iGB on Wednesday, Bowyer appeared surprised that Thompson’s initial call with Mizuhara was so expansive. Furthermore, Bowyer noted that he was “shocked” that Mizuhara even spoke with the ESPN reporter at all, especially “at that length”.

A source familiar with Hiltzik told iGB that while the firm had some skepticism with Mizuhara’s initial account, it did its best in providing Thompson with the most detailed, accurate information available at the time. In the end, it led to Mizuhara’s admissions of the crimes, the source explained.

A surreal press conference

After Mizuhara deboarded an international flight from South Korea on 21 March 2024, agents from US Homeland Security Investigations intercepted him at Los Angeles International Airport, where they seized his phone.

Four days later, Ohtani denied betting on sports at a terse press conference at Dodger Stadium, his lone public remarks on the case. Through a new interpreter, Ohtani asserted that Mizuhara had been “stealing money” from his account and “telling lies” about his knowledge of the repayments.

The world’s most famous slugger explicitly noted that he never agreed to pay the gambling debts or make payments to the bookmaker on his behalf.

“To summarise how I’m feeling right now, I’m just beyond shocked. It’s really hard to verbalise how I’m feeling at this point,” Ohtani said.

Potential deportation back to Japan

Identified in a criminal complaint as “Victim A”, Ohtani appeared before a team of investigators from IRS Criminal Investigations on two consecutive days ending on 3 April 2024, according to court filings.

As part of the joint investigation, an HSI special agent who is fluent in Japanese reviewed approximately 9,700 pages of text messages between Victim A and Mizuhara, Chris Seymour, a special agent for the IRS wrote in an affidavit.

Less than two weeks after Ohtani’s interview, federal prosecutors indicted Mizuhara on several charges, including bank fraud. At his February 2025 sentencing, Mizuhara apologised to Ohtani for betraying his trust.

According to US Bureau of Prison records, Mizuhara is scheduled to be released from prison in January 2029. Michael Freedman, Mizuhara’s attorney, declined comment. Following his release Mizuhara could face deportation to Japan, according to pre-sentence filings in his case.

A sworn affidavit

Back in the US, Seymour worked under Tyler Hatcher, who served at the time as special agent in charge of IRS-Criminal Investigation’s Los Angeles office. Hatcher has deep expertise in cases involving high-profile individuals. A bedrock principle at IRS-CI is that celebrities aren’t given preferential treatment.

“I don’t care if it’s Joe Smith off the street or Shohei Ohtani, they’re going to get the same treatment because they’re a victim and victims deserve that kind of treatment,” Hatcher told iGB last fall. “When he came in, he was unequivocally truthful with us,”

On 1 October 2025, IRS-CI held two lengthy interviews with iGB — one with Hatcher and the other with Seymour. Hatcher now serves as executive director of global operations at IRS-CI, managing international enforcement footprints and cross-border financial investigations.

Although Seymour rarely grants interviews with the media, ESPN has teased that he will appear on another episode later in the series. Within Mizuhara’s complaint, Seymour completed a 37-page sworn affidavit concluding that he found probable cause to determine that the interpreter committed bank fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344(2).

Seymour also devoted a large section to his position on why he found Mizuhara’s initial claims on Ohtani’s involvement to lack credulity. Prior to Mizuhara’s sentencing, federal prosecutors released a recording of a phone conversation between Mizuhara and a bank official. The audio featured a snippet where Mizuhara allegedly impersonated Ohtani in an attempt to secure a six-figure wire transfer.

In the affidavit, Seymour wrote that he did not “find it credible that Mizuhara would have made repeated false statements to Bank A employees by pretending to be Victim A ” if Ohtani “authorised” the wires.

Added skepticism

In addition, the investigator did not find it credible that Ohtani would have repeatedly approved the transfers as Mizuhara “continued incurring gambling debts” to a bookmaker.

Mizuhara told ESPN that Ohtani consented to pay the debts from the account in question, but the interpreter chose to deposit his gambling winnings into his own personal account, which drew further skepticism. Compounding matters, the government accused Mizuhara of modifying Ohtani’s account to link alerts to his personal phone and an anonymous email address connected to him.

“Once you reset those passwords, once you reset all of that, you have a level of authentication or confirmation, that’s very cunning,” Seymour told iGB. “It’s contrived, it’s methodical — it’s thought out.”

When asked if the newly released recording sheds additional light on the case, an MLB spokesman referred iGB to a league statement from June 2024:

“Based on the thoroughness of the federal investigation that was made public, the information MLB collected, and the criminal proceeding being resolved without being contested, MLB considers Shohei Ohtani a victim of fraud and this matter has been closed,” the league wrote at the time.

The Dodgers did not respond to a request for comment.

The dreaded black book

Bowyer, 51, is nearing the one-year anniversary of his sentencing. Both Bowyer and Mizuhara learned their fate at a Southern California courthouse in Santa Ana before US District Court Judge John Holcomb. Earlier this week Bowyer returned to the building for a volunteer appearance, where he consulted with more than a dozen convicts on how to navigate the challenges of prison.

“I just gave them the plan to get out of prison as fast as I could and get home to my family,” Bowyer said. “They seem to be very grateful.”

Following his guilty plea on illegal gambling, tax fraud and money laundering charges, Bowyer received a sentence of 12 months and one day. After his early release from prison, the Nevada Gaming Commission placed Bowyer into the state’s exclusion list, or “black book”, permanently banning him from any state-licensed casino.

Three entities — Resorts World Las Vegas, Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts — have agreed to multimillion-dollar fines for anti-money laundering violations related to Bowyer. A fourth, The Venetian, has reached a preliminary deal with the Nevada Gaming Control Board on a $7.2 million Bowyer-related AML fine, with a hearing scheduled next month before the Nevada Gaming Commission.

All told, the four entities will pay a combined $34 million in penalties to the state of Nevada if the Venetian settlement is approved as-is. Bowyer appears to be one of the most handsomely comped VIP bettors in the famed history of The Strip.

“Basically, Ippei was financing my Vegas lifestyle at the highest possible level,” he told Rolling Stone last year.

Business on the golf course

ESPN’s six-part series, entitled “The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani”, will run through 11 August. Next week, ESPN will air the fourth episode, The Bookie, one that will focus on Bowyer’s role in the case.

Bowyer told viewers on Instagram that ESPN interviewed him for around 12 hours across multiple days of recordings. The interviews, Bowyer noted, included footage of Thompson following him on the golf course. Now retired from bookmaking, Bowyer formerly used the course as a recruiting tool for potential clients. Prior to Tuesday’s event, Bowyer told the audience that he had a 40-minute chat with Thompson earlier that night.

An avid golfer, Bowyer has been paired in the past with Charles Barkley and Travis Kelce at celebrity golf tournaments. At the start of the broadcast, Bowyer zoomed into an autographed pair of Tiger Woods’ cleats from The Masters. Bowyer received the memorabilia as a comp from a Vegas casino.

Bowyer’s proximity to a number of Ohtani’s former Angel teammates led to a segue on Tuesday night about the team’s environment for gambling. After all, Bowyer said he met Mizuhara at a 2021 team poker game. The ex-bookie previously indicated that Ohtani never attended the game. Based on numerous conversations Bowyer had with Ohtani’s teammates, he received the impression that the pitcher-outfielder had an extreme aversion for betting.

“He wouldn’t gamble $5, so you don’t just start gambling $40 million,” said Bowyer of Ohtani.

Lingering questions

Nearly a full decade after the historic PASPA ruling, California and Texas are among a minority of states that do not offer regulated sports betting. Bowyer has continually stated that underground bookies will still flourish if the nation’s most populous state legalizes the activity – the ability to offer credit provides a decisive advantage in his estimations.

Although the first episodes give viewers a front-row seat to Mizuhara’s lone comments on the mysterious case, there still appears to be unresolved questions nearly 30 months later. The most puzzling may be if Ohtani had any inkling prior to 2024 Opening Day that Mizuhara faced considerable financial straits.

As Ohtani enters the peak of his career, he has already joined Babe Ruth as the only two players in MLB history to notch at least 500 strikeouts as a pitcher, while crushing more than 200 home runs at the plate. While Bowyer is fairly confident that Ohtani did not place a single bet with his enterprise, he, like many, is questioning what Ohtani might have known before the events of 20 March 2024.

“I’ll say this as I said from Day 1, there are only two people in the world who know one million percent of the truth – and that’s Ippei and Shohei,” Bowyer said Tuesday.