SerpApi.Org
ESPN is about to take baseball fans back inside one of the strangest scandals the sport has ever seen. This time, the story comes with a voice that has been silent until now.
On Monday, the network’s “30 for 30” account on X released a trailer for a new six-part podcast series called The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani. The show is set to premiere on July 28, 2026.
It will be hosted by ESPN investigative reporter Tisha Thompson. The series revisits how Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani’s longtime friend and interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, secretly took nearly $17 million from Ohtani’s bank accounts to pay off illegal gambling debts.
And right at the end of the trailer, listeners hear a voice that has not spoken publicly since being sent to federal prison:
“I’m Ippei Mizuhara, and you do have permission to record me.”
Ahead of the 2024 season, Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers — at the time, the richest deal in professional sports history.
Around that time, Thompson got a tip that millions of dollars were moving out of Ohtani’s bank account and into an illegal betting operation.
At first, Mizuhara said Ohtani had helped him pay off gambling debts. Then that story fell apart, and the truth turned into one of the strangest betrayals in modern sports.
Mizuhara placed more than 19,000 bets with an illegal bookmaker between 2021 and 2024 and drained nearly $17 million from Ohtani’s accounts to cover his losses — part of a gambling habit that produced a net loss of roughly $41 million, according to USA Today.
Prosecutors later said Mizuhara pleaded guilty to bank fraud and tax charges, was sentenced to 57 months in prison, and ordered to pay more than $18 million in restitution.
Ohtani, meanwhile, was cleared by both federal investigators and MLB and treated throughout as a victim.
What Makes ESPN’s New Series So Compelling
What makes ESPN’s new series different is that it is not just asking where the money went. It is asking who Ippei Mizuhara really was before everything fell apart.
Thompson has said the deeper question is not just about the theft, but about the man who stood next to Ohtani for years and stayed almost invisible to the public.
“Everybody wants to know about the money and what was Shohei’s role,” she told USA TODAY. “But for me, it was: Who is Ippei?”
To answer that question, Thompson dug into Mizuhara’s past. She traced his life back to his years interpreting for minor league baseball in Japan. She talked to people who knew him growing up, worked with him, and stayed by his side even after everything collapsed.
Thompson interviews Mathew Bowyer, the bookmaker who ran one of the largest illegal sportsbooks in the country and took Mizuhara on as a client. She also sits down with three federal agents who worked the case, including the IRS agent who combed through the bank transfers and the text messages between Mizuhara and Bowyer and Mizuhara and Ohtani.
Then there’s the tape. Listeners will hear, for the first time, the full 90-minute interview Mizuhara gave Thompson roughly 16 hours before the story broke — the only interview he has ever given about any of it.
“This is probably one of the most challenging and important interviews, if not the most important interview, I’ve done in my career,” Thompson said.
So, there are plenty of new developments and fresh perspectives that make the series so appealing, beginning on July 28 with the episodes ‘The Letter O’ and ‘The Interview.’
The series will be available on ESPN.com, the ESPN App, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, and iHeart.
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