Many fans said Shohei Ohtani was guilty of gambling on sports like his translator was but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Fans of other teams need to stop hating on a player just because they all hate the team collectively.
Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s former translator, was accused of stealing $4.5 million from Ohtani to pay off his gambling debts.
The Dodgers and Ohtani found out about the stolen money after game 1 of the Seoul Series in South Korea when Mizuhara said an article was coming out accusing him of theft and that it was true.
Almost immediately after the allegations came out many fans of other teams that aren’t the Dodgers started making conspiracy theories accusing Ohtani of being in cahoots with Mizuhara.
Fans asked how Mizuhara had access to Ohtani’s money without him knowing, which is one of the dumbest reasons fans gave as to why they think Ohtani and Mizuhara conspired with each other.
It’s called theft for a reason, when theft takes place for the most part the victim isn’t going to know it was also recently discovered that Mizuhara changed some settings on Ohtani’s bank account so that he wouldn’t be notified of transactions to and from his account.
It’s unfortunate because it feels like people started theories of Ohtani being involved with Mizuhara only because they wanted bad to come to him now that he was a Dodger. After all, so many people hate the Dodgers.
A lot of Dodger fans get the sense that had Ohtani still been an Angel these theories wouldn’t have been made or may have not been as bad to this magnitude.
Mizuhara was recently charged and found to have stolen a lot more than $4.5 million, but stole more than $16 million from Ohtani.
Dodger fans knew he was innocent and there was no evidence suggesting otherwise, well Dodger fans were right as Ohtani was found innocent and cooperated completely in the investigation.
Mizuhara is now facing official federal charges of stealing more than $16 million from Ohtani and is allegedly negotiating a guilty plea with prosecutors.
Similar things happened to former Dodgers starting pitcher, Trevor Bauer, when he was accused of sexual assault and everyone who wasn’t a Dodger fan jumped to conclusions saying he did it.
Ohtani was always innocent and the reasons fans were giving as to why he may have done illegal actions with Mizuhara were undoubtedly stupid.
Fans of other teams need to not be judge, jury and executioner while accusing players of malicious things only because they hate the team.
All the dumb little jokes fans made and the accusation of Ohtani gambling and helping Mizuhara can now end with the courts finding no wrongdoing on Ohtani’s part and the US Attorney, Martin Estrada claiming Ohtani was certainly the “victim” in this situation.
