Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani's former interpreter, has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges that he secretly transferred about $17 million from the player’s account to pay off his own gambling debts, court records showed Wednesday.
The plea agreement between federal prosecutors and Mizuhara, the onetime interpreter and de facto manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers' two-way star, was announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office in L.A., where the case was first brought last month.
Mizuhara incurred the debt through an illegal bookmaking operation — which Ohtani had no knowledge of — the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday.