I am extremely skeptical of all of this. The story has already changed, from I paid off his debts to he committed fraud and stole the money.
Also, how do you not notice $4.5m missing? He must have accountants and money managers. And most questionable, why would your interpreter have the access and ability to transfer millions of dollars?
It’s 100% him just covering for the interpreter, who he was good friends with. He paid off the debts and now Ohtani’s PR folks are trying to fix it all by throwing the interpreter under the bus. They probably told Ohtani he has to go along with it to protect his career
Or he was using the dude as a gambling proxy. He's in this situation because the bookie outed him. If all he wanted to do is bail out his bro, there's a hundred ways to do that while keeping his hands clean.
Face it, the dude got blackmailed, the feds caught wind of it, and the bookie talked.
Not only that but why/how would an interpreter have any access to bank accounts? That seems way more unlikely than Ohtani using him as a fall guy for betting.
Regardless, I hope the truth comes out one way or another.
It could be both that his friend had a bad gambling habit and went into debt and he participated himself.
Either way we'll never hear the actual truth, Ohtani is equivalent to Jesus in Japan now so if the dodgers or California punished him in any way every Japanese sponsor of the MLB would be in an uproar.