Yasiel Puig, when he was still a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2015. The Cuban-born player is … [+]
The Associated Press
Yasiel Puig’s wish to return to the majors – where he last played in 2019 – may not come true any time soon, if at all.
The 32-year-old Cuban-born outfielder will go on trial in federal court in Los Angeles April 25 to face charges of lying to federal authorities and obstruction of justice. Puig’s alleged crimes are connected to his involvement in an illegal gambling operation. Magistrate Judge Pedro Castillo will preside over the trial.
The obstruction charge carries a maximum federal prison sentence of 10 years, while the perjury charge has a statutory maximum of five years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, which is prosecuting Puig .
Puig entered into a plea deal last November and had agreed to plead guilty to lying to the feds during a Zoom call on Jan. 27, 2022. But less than a month after the Justice Department press release announcing the plea deal, Puig has backtracked. and said he would fight the prosecution.
“I want to clear my name,” Puig said in the Nov. 30 statement.
Earlier this month, Puig pleaded not guilty in federal court in Los Angeles but was hit with the count of additional obstruction in a substitute charge, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Both Keri Axel, Puig’s criminal defense attorney, and Lisette Carnet, her agent, made statements via Puig’s Twitter account after the obstruction charge was added.
“We are disappointed that the US Attorney’s Office has further strengthened its unfair trial against Yasiel Puig,” Axel’s statement read. “There is no new conduct at issue: The new indictment for alleged obstruction is based on the same baseless allegations as the first indictment, all relating to a single Zoom interview. By adding the additional count, they are trying to punish Puig for exercising his constitutional rights and stating the truth – that he is not guilty”.
“We attempted to show Puig’s exculpatory evidence to the US Attorney’s Office, yet our sincere requests were ignored. We are amazed why the Bureau would prefer to spend taxpayer dollars without attempting to examine our evidence,” Carnet said in his statement.
In the original plea deal, prosecutors say Puig began placing sports bets in May 2019 — when he was a member of the Cincinnati Reds — through a third party “working on behalf of an illegal gambling business run by Wayne Joseph Nix”. Nix was a former minor league baseball player who went into the bookmaking business after 2001, prosecutors said.
The settlement states that Puig accrued more than $282,000 in gambling losses by June 17, 2019, and that he later purchased two cashier’s checks for $100,000 each that were used to settle those debts. Puig then placed 899 bets on sporting events between July 4, 2019 and September 29, 2019 through websites affiliated with Nix’s gambling ring, according to Puig’s settlement.
Nix pleaded guilty in April 2022 to one count of conspiring to operate an illegal sports gambling business and one count of filing a false tax return. Sentencing is scheduled for March 8.
Federal authorities investigating Nix’s gambling ring interviewed Puig via Zoom in January 2022 and say the former Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder lied multiple times during the interview. The feds said in the plea deal that Puig was in the presence of an attorney, even though it wasn’t Axel.
When feds asked Puig about the third party Puig used to place bets through Nix’s gambling operation, prosecutors say Puig said he did not know the third party (identified in court documents as ” Agent 1″). Prosecutors also say Puig lied about cashier’s checks he used to pay off gambling debts.
“The officers also presented Defendant (Puig) with a copy of one of the cashier’s checks he purchased on June 25, 2019, made payable to Individual A, and asked defendant why he had sent the cashier’s check,” it reads in Puig’s plea deal. “The defendant falsely alleged that he placed an online bet with an unknown person on an unknown website which resulted in a loss of $200,000.”
Meanwhile, Puig’s legal team now includes prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, whose past clients include the families of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. Puig’s legal team filed a motion in federal court this month accusing federal investigators in Puig’s case of “implicit bias in the way they treat black witnesses.”
A representative for Puig and a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office did not respond to the emails. Puig played professional baseball in Korea last year. He attended the 2022 MLB winter games in hopes of finding a major league employer.
There have been other major federal perjury and obstruction cases involving former baseball players. In 2011, home run king Barry Bonds was found guilty by a federal jury in San Francisco of one count of obstruction in his trial connected to the sprawling BALCO steroid trafficking case. The conviction was later overturned by a federal appeals court.
In 2012, seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens was acquitted of all counts of federal perjury and obstruction of Congressional trial in Washington D.C. Clemens had been indicted by a federal grand jury after testifying before a congressional committee in 2008.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianred/2023/02/23/cuban-baseball-player-yasiel-puig-set-for-trial-on-federal-lying-and-obstruction-charges/
