A wild new audio clip has emerged allegedly showing Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani being impersonated over the phone by his disgraced former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara.
Sam Blum of The Athletic reported on Thursday that federal prosecutors disclosed a nearly four-minute-long audio recording which they say showed Mizuhara attempting to push through a $200,000 wire transfer from one of Ohtani’s accounts. The prosecution says the recording was obtained from a bank, and they are using the recording to back up their claims that Mizuhara bypassed security measures by routing Ohtani’s bank account information to his own phone number and email address, Blum adds.
In the recording, you can hear a bank agent asking “Who am I speaking with?” to which Mizuhara replies, “Shohei Ohtani.” The agent then proceeds with a two-factor authentication process in which she asks Mizuhara to recite a six-digit security code sent to the phone number linked to the account. Federal prosecutors say that the linked number matched Mizuhara’s personal cell phone number.
When later asked by the agent as to the reason for the transaction, Mizuhara responded that it was for a car loan. Mizuhara also claimed in the recording that the alleged payee was his “friend.”
The full audio recording has been posted to SoundCloud, and you can listen to it at the link here. You can also read Blum’s full report on the Mizuhara situation here.
Mizuhara pled guilty last May to federal tax and bank fraud charges related to his theft of roughly $17 million in total from Ohtani (which Mizuhara allegedly used to pay off an illegal bookie). He is due to be sentenced on Feb. 6 and could be facing deportation too. On Ohtani’s end, he recently scored a legal victory over Mizuhara in an issue tangentially related to the fraud case.
