Shohei Ohtani breaks silence on interpreter scandal: 'I never bet on baseball or any other sports'

Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani spoke to the media on Monday for the first time since his translator, Ippei Mizuhara, was fired following accusations that he stole more than $4 million from Ohtani to cover his illegal gambling debts.

In a roughly 12-minute statement, Ohtani denied having ever bet on sports and said repeatedly that Mizuhara had lied to him throughout the process.

"I never bet on baseball or any other sports or never have asked somebody to do that on my behalf," Ohtani said through an intepreter. "And I have never been through a bookmaker to bet on sports.

Ohtani did not take questions.

This saga became public on March 20, with a bombshell ESPN report alleging that Mizuhara, Ohtani's longtime translator and friend, had been accused of a "massive theft" of Ohtani's funds to cover illegal gambling debts and was subsequently fired by the Dodgers.

ESPN spoke to Mizuhara on March 19 for 90 minutes and laid out the first public version of the story, claiming that Ohtani allegedly paid off Mizuhara's gambling debts via wire transfer to help Mizuhara make a clean break from gambling.

That story didn't last long, though. By the end of the day Mizuhara had recanted the whole thing, shortly after Ohtani's attorneys at Berk Brettler LLP released a statement disavowing Mizuhara's story.

"In the course of responding to recent media inquiries, we discovered that Shohei has been the victim of a massive theft, and we are turning the matter over to the authorities."

The change in the story from "Ohtani helped Mizuhara" to "Mizuhara stole from Ohtani" is hard to ignore. It's also hard to accept the explanation that Ohtani did not know about wire transfers from his own bank account totaling more than $4 million.

Those are likely just two of the many reasons MLB announced Friday that they've opened an investigation into this kerfuffle. Since then we've learned even more about Mizuhara, including that he appears to have lied on his resume about graduating from UC Riverside in 2007, as well as working for the Red Sox and Yankees.

Through all of this, Mizuhara has maintained that he never bet on baseball and that Ohtani had zero to do with gambling.

This is a developing story that will be updated.