Ex-MLB player Yasiel Puig found guilty of obstruction and lying to federal officials
LOS ANGELES– A jury found former major league outfielder Yasiel Puig guilty of obstructing justice and lying to federal authorities investigating an illegal gambling operation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Friday.
The verdict came after a weeks-long trial that included testimony from Major League Baseball officials and Donny Kadokawa, a Hawaii baseball coach through whom Puig bet. Puig now faces up to 20 years in federal prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 26.
Puig, 35, initially pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to federal agents investigating an illegal gambling operation. He admitted in an August 2022 plea agreement that he suffered more than $280,000 in losses over a few months in 2019 by betting on tennis, football and basketball games through a third party who worked for an illegal gambling operation run by Wayne Nix, a former minor league baseball player.
Nix pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiracy to operate an illegal gaming business and filing a false tax return. He is still awaiting sentencing.
Authorities said Puig placed at least 900 bets on betting sites controlled by Nix and through a man who worked for Nix.
Prosecutors said that during a January 2022 interview with federal investigators, Puig denied knowing the nature of his bets, who he was betting with and the circumstances of paying his gambling debts.
But he changed his mind a few months later, announcing he was pleading not guilty due to “significant new evidence,” according to a statement from his lawyers in Los Angeles.
“I want to clear my name,” Puig said in the statement. “I should never have agreed to plead guilty to a crime I did not commit.”
The government argued that he intentionally misled federal investigators. They played audio clips of Puig speaking English in court and brought in expert witnesses to testify about Puig’s cognitive abilities, The New York Times reported.
His lawyers said Puig, who had a college education, had untreated mental health issues and did not have his own interpreter or criminal lawyer with him during the interview with federal investigators in which he allegedly lied.
Puig’s former attorney, Steven Gebelin, said that during the January 2022 interview, Puig tried to be helpful by answering investigators’ questions and that the interpreter struggled with Puig’s Spanish dialect, according to the New York Times.
Puig hit .277 with 132 home runs and 415 RBIs while appearing in seven major league seasons, the first six with the Dodgers, where he earned an All-Star selection in 2014.
Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully called Puig a “wild horse” for his antics and talent on the field from a young age, joining the MLB at age 22, a year after fleeing his home country of Cuba.
He played for the Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians in 2019 before becoming a free agent. He later played in the Mexican League and last year signed a one-year, $1 million contract with the Kiwoom Heroes of South Korea.
