Former MLB player Yasiel Puig is facing a new obstruction of justice charge in connection with his involvement in an illegal sports gambling operation. In November, Puig withdrew from an agreement to plead guilty to a felony charge of lying to federal investigators and changed his plea to not guilty.
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Puig pleaded not guilty to both charges Friday in Los Angeles, per the Los Angeles Times, and a trial date was set for April 25.
“We are disappointed that the United States Attorney’s Office has further entrenched itself in its unfair prosecution of Yasiel Puig,” Puig’s attorney, Keri Axel, said in a statement via the player’s Twitter account Friday. “There is no new conduct at issue: the new charge for alleged obstruction is based on the same unfounded allegations of the initial charge, all concerning a single Zoom interview.”
According to his original plea agreement, Puig began placing bets in May 2019 on sporting events through a third party. This third party — identified in court documents as “Agent 1” — worked on behalf of an illegal gambling business conducted by Wayne Joseph Nix, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In January 2022, federal investigators interviewed Puig and his lawyer. Puig allegedly lied several times, falsely stating that he only knew the third party from baseball and not through gambling. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Puig discussed sports betting with the third party hundreds of times via phone and text message.
“I want to clear my name,” Puig said in a statement released at the time he withdrew his guilty plea. “I never should have agreed to plead guilty to a crime I did not commit.”
Axel said at the time that “significant new evidence has come to light that prompted this change in plea.” As part of the original plea deal, Puig had also agreed to pay a fine of at least $55,000.
“At the time of his January 2022 interview, Mr. Puig, who has a third-grade education, had untreated mental-health issues, and did not have his own interpreter or criminal legal counsel with him,” Axel said. “We have reviewed the evidence, including significant new information, and have serious concerns about the allegations made against Yasiel.
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Per the initial charges, Puig allegedly lied about not knowing the person who instructed him to purchase $200,000 worth of cashier’s checks to be wired to one of Nix’s gambling clients. Puig falsely said that he placed a bet online through an unknown person on an unknown website, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. In March 2022, Puig admitted in a WhatsApp audio message that he lied to federal agents in January, per the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In a statement following his initial guilty plea, his agent Lisette Carnet said Puig “came to the interview feeling rushed, unprepared, without criminal counsel with him, and also lacked his own interpreter. Given his history growing up in authoritarian Cuba, government interviews are triggering and only worsen his ADHD symptoms and other mental health struggles, for which he is in treatment.”
In a motion for discovery filed Friday, Puig’s counsel said they “have raised the issue of selective prosecution with the government on multiple occasions” and are seeking “discovery relevant to show that similarly situated individuals of a different race and cultural background than Puig were not prosecuted.”
The motion continues: “The discovery to date has made clear that biases — whether explicit or implicit — affected the government’s view of the credibility of Puig and other Black men in the investigation. The evidence shows that the government was inclined to view Black men as untruthful and uncooperative and non-Black men as truthful and cooperative, despite evidence to the contrary, and when non-Black men made false statements, they were given the opportunity to correct or rehabilitate those statements, and were not charged.
Puig, 32, played for the Los Angeles Dodgers (2013 to 2018), Cincinnati Reds (2019) and Cleveland Guardians (2019) in his MLB career. On Dec. 8, 2021, Puig signed a one-year, $1 million contract with the Kiwoom Heroes in South Korea’s KBO League.
(Photo: David Berding / USA Today)