The 'cottage industry' of smuggling exposes lax rules in the big leagues.
By Kevin Baxter, Times Staff Writer
July 1, 2007
MIAMI — Three hours out of the Florida Keys, within wading distance of
Cuba's north-central coast, a 28-foot speedboat slowed, its pilot cut
the engine, and the sleek hull slid silently to a stop on an ink black sea.
Rain squalls had passed, but a trailing band of storm clouds lingered,
hiding the moon — perfect cover for the night's illicit mission: smuggling.
The unusual contraband loaded aboard that night in 2004 wasn't dope; it
wasn't even the typical, ragtag human cargo of desperate asylum seekers.
But the value of even a small boatload of the smuggled goods could run
into the millions of dollars.
On Big Pine Key, a three-hour high-speed cruise across the Florida
Straits, Ysbel Santos-Medina waited to take delivery along a stretch of
beach about 30 miles north of Key West. The former truck driver and
small-time drug trafficker, a mastermind of smuggling logistics, had
arranged everything. His last responsibility would be forwarding the
goods to California.
Medina's contraband on that summer night represented the latest thing in
Caribbean region smuggling — five Cuban baseball players.
Today, top pitchers and shortstops have surpassed dope, rum and tobacco
as the commodities of choice for traffickers working the old Spanish Main.
Each of the smuggled ballplayers — former stars of domestic Cuban teams
— arrived in the U.S. hoping to follow in the cleat marks of previous
defectors such as pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez of the New York Mets.
Their crossing that night was financed, according to court documents and
testimony, with payments totaling $225,000 by an Encino sports agent who
would become the first agent ever convicted on federal charges of
smuggling athletes.
But this was no isolated episode. Since 2000, about 40 other Cuban
players have been spirited out of the island nation on similar smuggling
runs. Origins of this odd black market can be traced to the confluence
of three seemingly random elements:
• A crackdown on athlete defections by Cuban leader Fidel Castro's
government that has intensified over the last decade;
• Exceptions to federal immigration policy that apply uniquely to
Cubans seeking asylum;
• Uncertain enforcement of arcane rules by Major League Baseball dating
back 30 years that reflect baseball's efforts to conform with the U.S.
embargo on trade with Cuba.
Joe Kehoskie, a Syracuse, N.Y., sports agent who has represented more
than a dozen Cuban athletes, said the smuggling of baseball players "has
become a cottage industry," an example, he said, of "bare-knuckles
capitalism."
A rash of defections by prominent ballplayers during the 1990s prompted
Castro's government to impose restrictions on Cuban players and teams
engaged in international competition. Those restrictions became most
severe after the 2002 defection of pitcher Jose Contreras, now with the
Chicago White Sox.
Cuban authorities ordered widespread suspensions of players seen as
defection risks. Since then, only one is known to have defected at an
international event — while smuggling has soared.
"It's like somebody threw a switch," Kehoskie said. "They stopped
defecting at tournaments and they all started taking speedboats to Miami."
The timing of changes to Washington's policy added to favorable
conditions for smuggling.
Since the mid-1990s, Cuban immigrants — like others from Haiti or
elsewhere — have been turned back if intercepted at sea, but they are
allowed to remain in this country legally simply by reaching shore
anywhere in the U.S.
The unique rule for Cubans has led to some rough landings. One smuggling
run in the summer of 2004 ended when the pilot ran his boat
full-throttle onto a Florida beach, saving his passengers a return trip
to Cuba.
Major League Baseball's rules are more complicated, but equally
arbitrary as they apply to Cubans.
Under terms of the 1970s-vintage Kuhn Initiative, named after
then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, U.S. teams were barred from signing
players living in Cuba to contracts — an extension of State Department
bans on American companies doing business with Cuba.
Arriving on the shores of Florida makes a Cuban defector eligible for
U.S. residency, however, and subject to Major League Baseball's annual
amateur draft. The player then can negotiate only with the team that
selected him in the draft.
To encourage more-lucrative bidding wars, agents generally advise Cuban
players to seek residency outside the United States, allowing them to
negotiate with multiple teams as free agents under baseball's rules.
Contreras, for example, claimed Nicaraguan residency after his 2002
defection, then signed a $32-million contract with the New York Yankees.
Risks and rewards
It took two tries during the summer of 2004 for the five players in
Medina's boat to reach Florida.
A month earlier, the same players — along with 17 other Cuban passengers
— were intercepted approaching the Keys. Customs agents fired on the
speedboat, disabling its engine, then arrested the pilot and sent all
the passengers back to Cuba.
One of them was Yoankis Turino, a left-handed pitcher who, by his own
count, had been frustrated attempting to leave Cuba on 10 previous
occasions.
He testified in a Key West court this year that the last offer of
transit to Florida came in a phone call from someone named Javier,
inviting him to rendezvous with the speedboat at night off a Matanzas
beach on the north shore of Cuba.
"Javier said not to worry, that we would be able to make lots of money
playing baseball," Turino told the court.
The caller was really Medina, but Turino was ready to leave with Bozo
the Clown had he offered to get him out of Cuba. The pitcher, dropped
from his team as a potential defector, had missed two baseball seasons.
For the same reason, pitcher Francisely Bueno was bumped from the Cuban
Olympic team that summer. He and Turino had been teammates on Havana's
powerful Industriales — the Cuban version of the Yankees.
They joined other suspended defection risks — Allen Guevara, Osmany
Masso and Osbek Castillo — boarding Medina's boat in the darkness off
Matanzas.
Potential risks and rewards were well-known. Despite severe news
censorship in Cuba, Contreras' $32-million contract was famous. So were
"El Duque's" $6.6-million signing bonus with the Yankees and Yuniesky
Betancourt's $2.8-million deal with the Seattle Mariners.
Finally, after reaching Big Pine Key the night of Aug. 22, 2004, it
looked as though five more Cuban ballplayers were about to realize
similar dreams.
First, however, they faced a three-day ride across the country to
Southern California in a rented van.
Dominican residency
In Los Angeles, the five newly arrived ballplayers were greeted at a
Cuban restaurant in the San Fernando Valley by Gustavo "Gus" Dominguez,
a former Cal State Northridge pitcher who was a professional baseball agent.
He had corporate apartments waiting for them in Woodland Hills. He
arranged for them to work out daily with the Pierce College baseball team.
All five signed representation contracts with Dominguez, co-founder of
Total Sports International. Court records would later show that the
contracts were postdated, falsely indicating they were signed a month
before the players even reached Florida.
Through Dominguez, the Cubans eventually auditioned for more than 30
scouts representing 23 major league teams. The players generated modest
interest — enough for some of them to take another big gamble.
In December, nearly four months after their night landing on Big Pine
Key, three of the Cuban ballplayers flew by private plane to Santo
Domingo in the Dominican Republic — a move that risked erasing the path
to U.S. residency gained by reaching Florida in the first place.
The three athletes each applied for Dominican residency, a process that
took nearly eight months. Finally, as official Dominican residents, they
were granted visas sponsored by major league baseball clubs and returned
to the United States.
While these Cuban ballplayers, like many others, openly shopped for
foreign residency, organized baseball took little notice. Such passive
response not only has helped foster a black market in smuggled players,
but it has contributed to baseball's inconsistent rulings.
Take for example the cases of Angels slugger Kendry Morales and highly
regarded Atlanta Braves player Yunel Escobar — both smuggled from Cuba
around the same time.
Morales landed an agent and obtained Dominican residency — approved by
the baseball commissioner's office — then negotiated a $10-million
contract with a $3-million signing bonus. Escobar's agent, however, made
no effort to gain foreign residency for his client, who wound up
relegated to the 2005 draft and signed for about $475,000.
Two players, same homeland, smuggled into the United States in the same
year, end up with very different results. Morales has bounced between
the Angels and the minor leagues. Escobar has been starting in the
Braves' infield.
"Baseball's policy might have made sense initially, but over time it has
morphed into a policy that punishes legal activity while rewarding
illegal activity," agent Kehoskie said.
Lou Melendez, vice president of international relations for baseball
Commissioner Bud Selig, defended baseball's policies and practices. He
said verifying all claims would require enlisting teams of private
investigators.
"You have to rely to a certain extent on the representations made to you
by the player and by the agent that's representing him," Melendez said.
But as Selig's point man on Cuban ballplayers, Melendez conceded that
continuing controversies over ballplayer smuggling could "require us to
take a good, hard look at the policy."
Going after the agents
Medina the smuggler could end up playing a pivotal role in forcing such
a reassessment.
Already his cooperation with law enforcement authorities has shaken the
world of baseball agents. His testimony this year helped convict
Dominguez of federal charges related to the Matanzas smuggling run.
The Encino agent's case has been closely monitored by other agents and
the Cuban exile community, where Dominguez is considered a heroic figure
for helping Cuban ballplayers.
"They're going to go after more agents," warned Juan Iglesias, a
Miami-based player representative who has worked with Cuban defectors as
well. "It's sad that they're using [Dominguez] as a steppingstone to
more things."
Secrets of the smuggling operation that landed Dominguez in legal
trouble began unraveling early in the 2005 baseball season when Medina
was intercepted on his way to a White Sox game in Chicago.
Confronted with evidence of past drug smuggling and insurance fraud,
Medina sought to avoid heavy prison time by telling federal agents what
he knew about sneaking in Cuban baseball players.
The information led authorities to Dominguez, but others also were
implicated. Medina testified, for example, that a Florida agent once
paid him $35,000 as a down payment to smuggle six other players. That
agent has not been indicted.
Success has been elusive for many ballplayers.
Guevara returned to South Florida without seeking foreign residency. He
works in construction. Masso was selected by the Arizona Diamondbacks in
the 2006 draft but never signed a contract. He went to work in a Florida
supermarket.
The three Dominguez clients who obtained Dominican residency fared only
somewhat better.
Despite his foreign residency, Castillo wound up in the amateur draft,
where he was selected in the 33rd round. He was the 987th player chosen
overall. Most recently, Castillo was pitching for a minor league team,
the Mobile (Ala.) BayBears.
Bueno signed a modest free-agent contract with the Braves and promptly
went on the disabled list. He finished that first season with a 1-7
record. This year he has pitched in the minor leagues for the
Mississippi Braves.
Turino was released in January by the Lincoln (Neb.) Saltdogs of the
American Assn. of Independent Professional Baseball.
He now works in a Los Angeles factory that makes electrical parts for
helicopters.
Dominguez, meanwhile, faces a federal prison term of three to five
years. His sentencing is scheduled for July 9 in Key West. It is unclear
how or whether the prosecution of Dominguez might affect the way sports
agents deal with future Cuban defectors.
In the meantime, smuggling boats keep crossing the Florida Straits.
"[Smuggling] people and baseball players — that's never going to be over
as long as the bearded one is over there," Miami agent Henry Vilar said
of Castro.
kevin.baxter@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-smuggle1jul01,1,317381.story
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