Shohei Ohtani has secured a quick victory in his latest legal move against his former interpreter.
Sam Blum and Evan Drellich of The Athletic report this week that the Los Angeles Dodgers star Ohtani will recover about $325,000 worth of baseball cards that were fraudulently purchased by his disgraced ex-translator Ippei Mizuhara. Federal prosecutors said in a court filing Monday that Ohtani holds a “superior interest in the property.”
“Ohtani holds a valid pre-existing interest in Forfeitable Property as title to the Forfeitable Property was vested in Ohtani at the time of the commission of the acts which gave rise to the forfeiture,” the filing read in part.
Just last week, the three-time MVP Ohtani requested a hearing from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California for ownership of the cards. The federal investigation against Mizuhara had found that Mizuhara bought the cards from online marketplaces with the intent of re-selling them and used funds that he fraudulently obtained from Ohtani’s bank account in order to fund the purchases. The cards were then seized from Mizuhara in connection with his federal fraud case (full details here).
The hearing requested by Ohtani had been scheduled for Dec. 20, but prosecutors now say that the hearing is no longer necessary. Meanwhile, Mizuhara is set to be sentenced on Jan. 24 on federal bank and tax fraud charges related to his theft of nearly $17 million from Ohtani. Mizuhara had pled guilty to the charges back in May and has now had his sentencing date delayed twice (first from Oct. 2024 to Dec. 2024 and now from Dec. 2024 to Jan. 2025).
