Remember that White Sox scouting scandal where several guys were signing players and skimming dough off the top? Well, the investigation continues and Nats GM Jim Bowden, and sadly, one of my boyhood idols Jose Rijo, are under scrutiny.
Anyone implicated could face felony fraud charges, sources familiar with the investigation said. Numerous MLB employees in the United States and the Dominican Republic are under suspicion in the probe, which allegedly involves the skimming of signing money allocated for Dominican prospects. Bowden, a 23-year veteran of MLB front offices and a general manager on and off since 1992, is the highest-ranking official known to be under investigation.
Part of me wonders how many scandals MLB can continue to absorb. This isn’t on the scale of the steroids crap — this is more of a power corrupts, pure greed situation. But if it starts involving GMs it could get very ugly.
Ah, wait, here’s another one involving a scout. This comes from SI.com:
Major League Baseball’s new investigative unit has identified at least one baseball scout in its new inquiry into illegal gambling, and continuing investigation may yield names of more scouts, sources told SI.com.Veteran Orioles scout Alan Marr was fired by his team sometime after his name was tied in some way to sports betting, and sources with knowledge of the investigation indicated that there could be a few other scouts linked, as well. Marr was a well-respected national crosschecker with the Orioles, a high position on the scouting totem pole that’s just below the scouting director.
Marr is credited with signing Joe Nathan (as an infielder) as an infielder out of Stony Brook University in New York.
Marr once recommended Frank Falzarano for a scouting job, and Falzarano, who was a scout with the Washington Nationals as recently as 2006, was charged with two felonies in a large gambling bust in New York in October 2006. Falzarano was dismissed from the Nationals about the time of his arrest. Cops told the New York Post that he handled wagers at a rate of more than $8 million a year. (Falzarano pleaded guilty to “attempted enterprise corruption,” a C felony, on March 6, 2007, and was sentenced to a “conditional discharge.”)
Your MLB investigative unit dollars at work.
1 response so far ↓
1 gary burnham // Jul 17, 2008 at 10:08 pm
this stuff doesn’t surprise me. I have been in the business of baseball a long time. There are a lot of very corrupt things that go on. Some scouts feel that they are extremely underpaid (about 35K per year) for what they do. Winter ball scouts and agents do this all the time (skim off the top of bonuses and salaries) I knew a player that thought he was getting 8K a month in winter ball but actually found out that he was supposed to get 10K a month. His agent told him he got him a contract for 8K. The agent then told the team to give him the 2K and give his guy 8k but dont tell him. The devil comes in many forms.
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