All Ball: Shotime, Crime and Punishment in LA, Vogel back in town
by Paul Teetor Only in LA could this rapid sequence of events happen. On Tuesday the Feds announced they had reached a plea bargain with Ippei Mizuhara, the interpreter for Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani who stole $17 million from the $700 million man to pay off his gambling debts. Then on Thursday, just two days later, Lionsgate Television announced that it is developing a scripted series based on Mizuhara’s real-life scandal. Mizuhara, 39, has agreed to plead guilty to one count each of bank fraud and signing a false tax return. He faces up to 33 years in prison and has to pay back the $17 million. Where he will get that kind of money – in or out of prison – is anybody’s guess. The charges are related to the gambling scandal that erupted two months ago, when Ohtani, baseball’s biggest star – and the most well-known athlete in the world – was dragged into a long-running investigation of an Orange County illegal bookie. Ohtani waited during five days of public silence before he finally declared that he was totally innocent of any crime and had never bet on anything in his life. If he had bet on baseball, he would have faced a year-long suspension — and possibly much longer. When…
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