superman7515
December 18th, 2016, 12:21 PM
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/15/news/mlb-cuban-baseball-main/index.html
There's a vast and vicious human trafficking network that supplies Major League Baseball with some of its top players.
It starts with the players, superbly talented young men who seek to escape the poverty of Cuba. And it ends with MLB teams that pay massive contracts to get them.
In the middle is an underworld of smugglers (http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/22/news/mlb-cuban-smuggling/index.html?iid=EL) that goes as far as teaming up with Los Zetas -- one of the world's most dangerous drug cartels.
At least 25 Cuban players have been brought into the United States by smugglers since 2004, according to court documents stemming from more than a dozen federal investigations.
In all, the players have paid smugglers more than $11.4 million of their salaries, according to court records.
The public sees a Cuban refugee land a free agent deal worth millions. But behind the scenes, these ballplayers owe their smugglers a hefty portion of their MLB paychecks. Sometimes their families are held prisoner until they sign extortive contracts that turn their smugglers into their sports agents, according to prosecutors and one player's own account.
Some of these details have been exposed in the past. In 2014, a lawsuit revealed how Cuban slugger Yasiel Puig survived a journey through Mexico's underworld before he signed a mega-million dollar deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers. And in November, federal prosecutors detailed the harsh life in Mexican stash houses, where smugglers threatened to shoot "kidnapped" ballplayers if they tried to escape.
It's a side of baseball MLB does not publicly acknowledge. But new details about this shadowy underworld will finally come to light next month when sports agent Bartolo Hernandez goes on trial in Miami for allegedly taking part in smuggling 17 Cuban players to secure them as clients...
There's a vast and vicious human trafficking network that supplies Major League Baseball with some of its top players.
It starts with the players, superbly talented young men who seek to escape the poverty of Cuba. And it ends with MLB teams that pay massive contracts to get them.
In the middle is an underworld of smugglers (http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/22/news/mlb-cuban-smuggling/index.html?iid=EL) that goes as far as teaming up with Los Zetas -- one of the world's most dangerous drug cartels.
At least 25 Cuban players have been brought into the United States by smugglers since 2004, according to court documents stemming from more than a dozen federal investigations.
In all, the players have paid smugglers more than $11.4 million of their salaries, according to court records.
The public sees a Cuban refugee land a free agent deal worth millions. But behind the scenes, these ballplayers owe their smugglers a hefty portion of their MLB paychecks. Sometimes their families are held prisoner until they sign extortive contracts that turn their smugglers into their sports agents, according to prosecutors and one player's own account.
Some of these details have been exposed in the past. In 2014, a lawsuit revealed how Cuban slugger Yasiel Puig survived a journey through Mexico's underworld before he signed a mega-million dollar deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers. And in November, federal prosecutors detailed the harsh life in Mexican stash houses, where smugglers threatened to shoot "kidnapped" ballplayers if they tried to escape.
It's a side of baseball MLB does not publicly acknowledge. But new details about this shadowy underworld will finally come to light next month when sports agent Bartolo Hernandez goes on trial in Miami for allegedly taking part in smuggling 17 Cuban players to secure them as clients...