If you go to an agency in Barcelona looking for a simultaneous English or French interpreter, you should be prepared to pay around 560 euros for a full seven-hour day, and 150 euros more or less for each extra hour. It is approximately the same rate as those who work as freelancers for the European Union. Those at the United Nations in New York have a salary of around eight thousand euros per month, varying depending on professional reputation and the language in question.
Ippei Mizuhara, interpreter of the great baseball star Shohei Ohtani, has earned much more than that (he is now out of work), although somewhat irregularly. Specifically, he stole $40 million from his client to finance his gambling addiction. Between December 2021 and January 2024, he made 19,000 bets with which he won 142 million. The problem is that he lost 183 million, with no other choice but to return it, unless he wanted to risk what the mafias that control the sector wanted to do with him (according to the movies, cutting off his finger as an appetizer to see if he would wake up… ).
Mizuhara took advantage of his childhood friend’s good faith, shyness and naivety, or the fact that he sleeps for half the day (twelve hours). Also from the fact that when he arrived in the United States he did not speak a word of English, and even now he does not feel very proficient, especially when it comes to important negotiations. For example, the 700 million contract for ten years that he signed in the preseason with the Los Angeles Dodgers, receiving less in the first years and more in the last (the opposite of what is usually usual) to alleviate the bite of Tax authorities.
Baseball did not imagine that it would have a new Babe Ruth, but Ohtani is one, at the same time an elite hitter and pitcher. But instead of doing a Figo and changing the Boston Red Sox for the Yankees (the bambino’s affront in 1919), the Japanese star has left the Angels for the Dodgers, which is like going from Espanyol to Barça, at the end your contract. Not only for money (that too), but to win a World Series, which is where legends are made, without having to pack suitcases.
In any case, the last thing the Dodgers and the Major Leagues needed was for their great star, their poster boy, with an image whiter than snow, to be involved in an illegal betting scandal (eight members of the White Sox were accused of being paid for allowing themselves to win the 1919 final against the Cincinnati Reds). Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when an investigation by the North American Ministry of Justice, the FBI and Homeland Security determined that the player was the victim, and could not even imagine the vice of his friend and interpreter, who had opened his bank accounts, had the passwords to move money, and impersonated him to obtain authorization for large transactions.
The world’s most expensive performer was so hooked that he placed an average of twelve daily bets online (one for every hour his boss was asleep), on the results of games of any sport anywhere in the world except baseball (in which case the matter would have been more serious), with an investment that ranged from modest amounts such as ten euros to much more serious amounts such as up to 150,000.
Ohtani logically feels betrayed, but the loss of 40 million is only a small inconvenience in his life, nothing that will keep him up at night. He just got married, plays on the best team and is rich. And if he signs up for an English academy, he won’t even need an interpreter…
