[laughs]

You really do forget.

You know, my colleague Alden Gonzalez, who is one of our national baseball reporters but covers the Angels and the Dodgers pretty regularly, we interviewed him, and we did this great interview with him.

And a lot of it's in the podcast, but one of the things that didn't make the podcast that I really keep thinking about is how in the beginning when Shohei was first with the Angels at spring training, his first season, he, you know, he didn't play great right away.

It took him a minute.

And Alden said that there was a reporter...

I wasn't there, but Alden was there.

And a lot of that had to do with Shohei

So when you get the initial tip about the millions of dollars, as you mentioned, being transferred from Ohtani's account to the ille- legal bookmaking, what is going through your head knowing Shohei Ohtani is one of the biggest stars that's, that's in the baseball scene?

Yeah, I mean, you can imagine.

We get tips about all kinds of things at the ESPN investigative unit, and sometimes they, you know, they flesh out and they become a real story.

And sometimes we do a lot of work and we say, "Yeah, no, there's nothing here." In this case, it was...

And, and whenever I get a tip, I, you know, I write down everything the person says.

But this was such a stunning accusation because up until I get this tip, we had never heard a whisper of scandal about Shohei Ohtani.

I mean, he, he, as we say in the podcast, he had a reputation for being squeaky clean.

Yeah.

But that story changed less than 24 hours later.

We are about to hit publish When all of a sudden I get a panicked phone call from the crisis spokesperson who says, "Wait, wait.

Don't publish.

Ippei lied." I get on the phone with Ippei and I say, "Ippei, did you lie to me?" And he says, "Yes." He says that Shohei knew nothing about the gambling, that he knew nothing about laying the bets with the bookie, and that he did not offer to pay and that it was all Ippei.

Was Ippei, in your mind, exhibiting gambling addiction behavior?

As for Ohtani's legacy, it's largely remained unscathed by the scandal as he and the Dodgers look to three-peat as World Series champions this year.

Shohei Ohtani, instead of crumbling under the pressure and the magnifying glass a scandal like this can bring to an athlete, doesn't crumble.

He goes off and wins not one, but two World Series.

How did you decide what was true and what wasn't?

Well, that's why we are excited to finally be able to tell the full story on 30 for 30's new podcast, The Betrayal of Shohei Otani.

Nicely done.

Because episode one primarily, well, you know, got to tell you what this is about.

Episode one primarily sets up what I knew going into that interview, how I got the tip and the homework I did, so to speak, interviewing sources, trying to get documents, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

And then I do the interview with Ipe.

And fans will get to listen to the interview and will know what I know when I'm doing that interview.

Was he a con man all along or was he just a guy who got in trouble?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and so I went into that interview not expecting a written statement because Shohei Ohtani's, uh, crisis spokesperson wanted me to talk to Ippei.

I had, um, come to Shohei, Shohei Ohtani's team, and I seen some of these wires, $500,000 wires that are being sent from Shohei Ohtani's bank account, and the crisis spokesperson confirms that, yes, millions of dollars have been sent.

Um, and so that said to me, okay, my sourcing's really good.

And, um, I said, "Well, I wanna talk to Shohei Ohtani," obviously.

Someone else, and they gave me Ippei Mizuhara, the interpreter.

This was not a surprise to...

Right.

They, they have-

have-You know, MLB's golden boy.

They're, they're this phenom who's never had a whisper of scandal attached to him, and they're confirming that his bank account has sent money to an illegal bookmaker, and they're giving me Ippei to explain what went down.

So Ippei and I do what ultimately ends up being a 90-minute phone call.

He is in Seoul, South Korea, getting ready for the Dodgers opening game against the Padres in, uh, what was the, you know, opening game of that season, uh, for the regular season.

And I'm in where... on the East Coast where I live, and when... for me, it's 10:00 at night.

For him, it's the morning of that game.

Did it happen? Like, do you believe that there's any sort of, uh, cultural transition, uh, transition issue where the translator runs a good much of your life and it might be plausible that half a million dollars could somehow move because he's running the entirety of your life?

At any point in time, were you going into it to hunt and peck to see, is he covering for Shohei?

Oh, I absolutely ask him that.

I mean, I had been tipped off that Ipe was prepared to say that he was the one betting and Shohei was covering his bets.

I was told that as early as January.

So I spend the next couple of weeks into months with my editor, Elaine Tang, and I, we really tried to...

Figure out, well, what the heck's going on? Because Matt Boyer, the bookie said he has plenty of clients who are athletes who have had accounts that they either share with a friend or they or they have a beard.

And that's, you know, lingo for.

Well, I mean, I read the affidavit and it sure seems like, you know, Ohtani got ripped off.

Mm.

And that Ippei Mizuhara pleaded guilty.

He turned over his phone.

He cooperated with federal investigators.

He pleaded guilty.

And, um, in the podcast, we're gonna show you that it's more than just what he said and it's more than just the bank account.

There's other evidence that the feds uncovered that led them to believe that this was more complicated than a man who had a terrible gambling addiction, which is how Ippei's attorneys, uh, presented it in court.

But did he almost get away with this?

Mm.

And that Ippei Mizuhara pleaded guilty.

He turned over his phone.

He cooperated with federal investigators.

He pleaded guilty.

And, um, in the podcast, we're gonna show you that it's more than just what he said, and it's more than just the bank account.

There's other evidence that the Feds uncovered that led them to believe that this was more complicated than a man who had a terrible gambling addiction, which is how Ippei's attorneys, uh, presented it in court.

But did he almost get away with this?

Well, what did you learn that you wanted to make sure that people found out in this 30 for 30 podcast that wasn't already available in the public?

Yeah, I mean, I think what.

What I personally really wanted and what we finally have the opportunity to do is we have the time and the space to let people listen to the interview I did with ePay.

Let me just sort of remind people what was happening so folks remember when this interview happened.

I had gotten a tip about Shohei Ohtani's bank account.

Um, and the late part of 2023, this is around the same time that he's signing with the Dodgers with that at the time record breaking deal, $700 million over 10 years.

And, you know, I, I, I do, we at the investigative unit, we do not just report a rumor.

Do you think that this scandal in any way will tarnish his legacy?

Wedding allegedly organizes a manhunt for Acevedo Garcia, tapping a whole cast of characters from his network.

It includes, like, a former youth hockey player up in Canada who's paying this crime blogger to post a picture of Jonathan and to call him a rat and a snitch, and to basically put it out into the world that the hunt is on for this guy.

There is a whole number of people who are enlisted.

They go all the way to Saudi Arabia.

They go down to Colombia.

Then there's a group of commercial sex workers, a madam, who is brought in, and she connects Ryan Wedding with a woman in Orlando who is born in Colombia, and he offers to pay for plastic surgery and to pay off her mortgage if she'll lure Jonathan to a restaurant in Colombia.

And maybe that's why this story is catnip to people, because on paper, it sounds like a movie, and surely is going to be one.

The reason why everybody wants to make a documentary out of itis just the facts alone.