- Bowyer says he saw Mizuhara’s problem gambling inside 30 days, then kept raising his betting limits.
- Prosecutors say the illegal book ran at least five years and at times had more than 700 bettors.
- Mizuhara placed at least 19,000 bets and finished about $40.68 million down, the sentencing record shows.
- Bowyer sent at least $9.3 million of the proceeds to a casino by wire to cover markers.
SANTA ANA, Calif. – Mathew Bowyer, the Orange County bookmaker who took Ippei Mizuhara’s action, said in an ESPN podcast episode released Aug. 4 that he recognized the interpreter’s gambling addiction within 30 days of taking his first bet. The federal sentencing record shows Bowyer kept raising Mizuhara’s betting limits on a regular basis for more than two years after that.
The Limits Went Up, Not Down
Mizuhara placed at least 19,000 bets with Bowyer’s business between September 2021 and January 2024 through one of the websites it used, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. His winning bets totaled at least $142,256,769 and his losing bets at least $182,935,206, leaving him owing approximately $40,678,436. The office’s sentencing announcement states that Bowyer increased Mizuhara’s betting limits on a regular basis during that period.
Bowyer described the volume as “absolutely bananas, the amount of bets he was making” in a new episode of “The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani”, the 30 for 30 podcast series. He said the interpreter was “betting all night long, all the time,” that he was “trying to dig out a hole,” and that he had never seen anything like it. Bowyer said he recognized the behavior because he is a compulsive gambler himself.
Nothing in the arrangement obliged him to act on that recognition. A licensed operator answers to a regulator that sets deposit limits, runs a self-exclusion registry and audits customer accounts. California licenses no sportsbook at all, so the only party positioned to watch Mizuhara’s losses accumulate was the party collecting them.
A Five-Year Book With More Than 700 Bettors
The business operated for at least five years until October 2023 and at times had more than 700 bettors, prosecutors said. It ran out of sites in Los Angeles and Orange counties and in Las Vegas, across several betting websites based in Costa Rica, with a call center where wagers could be placed and tracked. Bowyer hired agents and sub-agents, casino hosts among them, and their pay came out of what losing bettors actually settled up.
The operation violated the state statute against bookmaking, one of the provisions that shape California gambling laws in the absence of any licensing regime. Voters rejected both sports betting measures on the November 2022 ballot, Propositions 26 and 27, and no licensed sportsbook has taken a legal wager in the state since. The California sportsbooks reachable from the state remain operators based outside it.
In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors described the business as “a multi-year operation that raked in millions of dollars for [Bowyer] and his associates to gamble and live an extravagant lifestyle, often through the exploitation of people [Bowyer] recognized were addicted and extending themselves beyond their means.”
Where The Money Went
Between February 2022 and January 2024, Mizuhara paid at least $16.25 million at Bowyer’s direction into accounts Bowyer controlled, every dollar of it proceeds of the illegal book. At least $9.3 million of that money then moved by wire to a casino, covering markers Bowyer and his associates had run up.
Bowyer told ESPN he sometimes gambled “solely to turn a cashier’s check into cash, so that I could wash money,” and answered “Any and all” when asked which casinos he used. Law enforcement seized $257,923 in currency and $14,830 in casino chips in October 2023, both of which he agreed to forfeit under his plea agreement.
A licensed market makes that cash route visible. An unlicensed one does not, and the trail carried the case beyond gambling in California and into Nevada regulatory files.
Bowyer also reported $607,897 in total income to the IRS for 2022 while omitting $4,030,938 earned from the gambling business, including $3.8 million in wire transfers into one of his accounts.
Ohtani Was Identified As The Victim
The criminal complaint against Mizuhara identified Shohei Ohtani as “Victim A.” Prosecutors charged Mizuhara with stealing from Ohtani without his knowledge or authorization, and Ohtani was charged with nothing. Two of Bowyer’s other customers appear in the record only as “Individual B,” a professional baseball player for a Southern California-based club, and “Individual C,” a former minor-league player.
The Sentences On The Record
Bowyer’s August 2024 guilty plea covered three counts, running an unlawful gambling business, money laundering and subscribing to a false tax return. U.S. District Judge John W. Holcomb sentenced him Aug. 29, 2025, to 12 months and one day in federal prison and ordered $1,613,280 in restitution.
He has since been released from prison. The Nevada Gaming Commission voted unanimously on April 23 to add him to the state’s list of excluded persons, which bars him from every casino in Nevada.
Holcomb sentenced Mizuhara on Feb. 6, 2025, to 57 months in federal prison after a June 2024 guilty plea to one count of bank fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return. Announcing that sentence, the U.S. attorney’s office said the judge also ordered $16,975,010 in restitution to Ohtani and $1,149,400 to the IRS. He is still serving that term.