Major League Baseball is potentially under federal investigation by the DOJ for “recruitment of foreign players,” according to a Sports Illustrated special report earlier this month.
The migration of Latin American talent to Major League Baseball—particularly players from Cuba—has long been an unseemly business, shrouded in don’t-ask-don’t-tell secrecy. These exodus stories often come suffused with tales of bribes, kickbacks, side deals with smugglers, dubious immigration documents and middlemen skilled at working around immigration laws.
This baseball underbelly might soon be exposed. Sports Illustrated has learned that the U.S. Department of Justice has begun a sweeping probe into possible corruption tied to the recruitment of international players, centered on potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. What’s more, SI has learned that multiple alleged victims of smuggling and human trafficking operations have already given evidence to law enforcement agents or testified before a federal grand jury.
Sports Illustrated; Oct 2 2018
The Daily Beast follows this reporting up with an exclusive report out yesterday that the Major League Baseball tried to shut down the tell all book, Baseball Cop; The Dark Side of America’s National Pastime, by Eddie Dominguez, released August 28, that “dishes dirt on the sport’s most scandalous secrets, from doping to allegations of human trafficking.”
Eddie Dominguez is a retired Boston cop who was hired to help run the MLB’s Investigation Unit which was “gutted in 2014, and he was fired along with his two bosses and another lead investigator.”
Dominguez’s publisher Hachette, the report says, was hit with a “strongly worded five-page letter” the day before his book was set to hit the shelves alleging it was “defamatory,” demanding the book be halted immediately until it could be “fully fact-checked and vetted.” Dominguez himself says he received a separate letter sent to him calling him a “disgruntled former employee,” telling him they didn’t need to remind him why his job was terminated.
The MLB were playing hardball with their retained law firm Clare Locke, “which has boasted in the past about “killing stories.”
Clare Locke has earned notoriety for a certain type of case. Earlier this year, the firm represented now disgraced 60 Minutes boss Jeff Fager, former Today host Matt Lauer, New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush and American Media boss David Pecker in an attempt to influence stories about the men in prominent publications.
The Daily Beast; Oct 27 2018
In the book, Dominguez claims that baseball had become rampant with corruption, including human trafficking of Cuban baseball players, gambling, and widespread use of performance enhancing drugs.
In one chapter, Dominguez recounted how a network of middlemen worked to smuggle promising Cuban prospects into the U.S. with the help of fake identity documents and organized crime
The Daily Beast
The Pittsburgh synagogue massacre on Saturday has put a spotlight on the ‘alternative’ social media platform call “Gab.”
“Gab”, according to The Daily Beast, “has marketed itself as a home for extremists kicked off of other social-media platforms.”
[The alleged suspect Robert Bowers was wounded in the synagogue massacre and has been arrested and charged with 29 felony federal charges, according a New York Times report]
[Emphasis mine]
The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting has put new pressure on Gab, the niche social network where alleged shooter Robert Bowers and countless other white supremacists have been able to network and post their hate-filled messages.
Bowers was an active Gab user, even posting what appeared to be an announcement of the attack shortly before he allegedly shot and killed 11 people, and wounded at least six others, at the Tree of Life Synagogue.
Gab celebrated the attention it received after Bowers’ posts were found, claiming it was receiving a million hits per hour following the shooting.
…
Founded by Andrew Torba—a Trump supporter who was once kicked out of the prestigious Silicon Valley tech accelerator Y Combinator’s alumni network for calling his colleagues “cucks”—Gab has built catering to right-wing extremists into its business model.
The site even has a frog logo that echoes the alt-right favorite “Pepe the Frog,” and new users start with a profile picture cribbed from the “NPC meme” popular on far-right sites like 4Chan. In a March SEC filing, the company claimed to be positioning itself as a home for “conservative, libertarian, nationalist, and populist internet users.”
The Daily Beast; Oct 27 2018
According to a new report, Gab is about to be shut down.
“Late Saturday night, hours after Paypal had kicked Gab off its own platform, Gab’s Twitter account announced that hosting provider Joyent was also dropping the network over a breach of terms of service.”
Do you know your Zodiac constellations? Take the test.
OMG, ack! I sucked as bad on this one as I did on the last test we did!
Just watch …
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