Leo Nunez faces jail time - 美國職棒

SANTO DOMINGO -- The Florida Marlins pitcher known as Leo Núñez will be
criminally charged in his home country for using a false identity, after
making a startling confession earlier this week to Dominican authorities: his
real name is Juan Carlos Oviedo, the prosecutor’s office said Friday.

The relief pitcher, who returned home Thursday, was placed on Major League
Baseball’s restricted list and removed from the Marlins’ roster.

Jacqueline Lamarche, spokeswoman for the Dominican Attorney General’s
Office, said Oviedo faces jail time if convicted but did not know when he
would be charged. With a false identity and possible conviction on his
record, he could have problems obtaining a United States visa to return.

His team bio says the pitcher, who turned pro in 2000 when he signed with the
Pittsburgh Pirates, was born in 1983 and is from Jamao del Norte. But the
player now says he was born a year earlier, and he’s from Bonao. Núñez?
His best friend.

Oviedo called the Dominican consulate in Miami on Sept. 7, saying he was
living under a false name and wanted to resolve the problem with his
identity, consul general Manuel Felipe Almanzar told The Miami Herald.
Alarmed, Almanzar alerted his country’s attorney general’s office and the
Dominican Central Elections Board, which regulates identity papers and emits
birth certificates.

The president of the elections board and a representative from the prosecutor
’s office flew to Miami to meet with the National League pitcher.

“He came in and made a sworn declaration saying that he was not from Jamao
al Norte but from Bonao, a town in the Dominican Republic, and that when he
was young – still a minor and a prospect about to be signed – a coach who
managed his league recommended that he assume another name, one of a person a
year younger, so that he could get a better contract,” Almanzar said. “So
he became Leonel Núñez Morales, who was his best friend since childhood.
That made it easier for him, because Leonel was 16, which was an appropriate
age for a Dominican baseball player.”

Major League Baseball has been dogged by problems with false identities and
fudged birth certificates from Dominican players for years. MLB opened an
office in Santo Domingo in 2000, in part to work more closely with the
elections council on reviewing forged documents.

A crackdown that resulted from post 9-11 visa scrutiny found more than 500
players with fake names or ages. Most of them were from the Dominican
Republic, where teams lure young players with signing bonuses and shun older
players.

One Padres player was named “Isabel” – his younger sister.

"To get very nice signing bonuses, you need to be signed at 16 years old,’’
said Edward Mujica, the only other Hispanic reliever in the Marlins’
bullpen. “At 17 years old, you maybe lose $100,000 or $150,000 when you
sign [compared to a 16-year-old with the same skills]. And if you’re like
18, you might sign for $5,000 and maybe they give you an opportunity."

In 2008, MLB offered amnesty to foreign-born players who confessed to working
under false names or birth certificates, but Oviedo apparently did not come
forward.

The penalty for a minor-league player found later to be in violation was a
one-year suspension. No specific penalty was given for any major-league
player found in violation; the punishment would be decided by the commissioner
’s office.


On Friday, investigators in the Dominican Republic arrested Héctor
Bienvenido Peña at his home in La Vega, a central province, for providing
false birth certificates to Oviedo and several other people.

“Major League Baseball should be investigating these documents and checking
whether the name is fake,” said Félix Suriel, who heads the Dominican
elections board office in Miami. “It seems to be negligence by the very
people who receive the fraudulent birth certificate. If a person came here to
my office with a fake I.D., I’d put their name in a computer and immediately
see the face of the other person. The teams don’t have a company they can
hire to do these things? It’s a big problem with all the players, not just
from the Dominican Republic but all over Latin America.”

The pitcher told investigators that he came forward “voluntarily” because
he was beginning to have problems: the Marlins had discovered his secret.

“He told human stories of family members who had died and he could not go to
the funeral under the name Juan Carlos Oviedo, because everyone in the
Dominican Republic knows him as Leo Núñez,” the consul general said. “He
couldn’t just show up at the wake as the relative of some Oviedo. That would
be a problem.”

Oviedo produced his real identity papers, and the consulate issued a passport
under his real name. He flew back to Santo Domingo with his new passport
under his own name, Almanzar said.

His demeanor was calm and he showed up at the meeting without an attorney, he
said.

“He’s had success with a false name, and he wants to fix it,” Almanzar
said. “I sat there with my mouth open. You have to understand: I am a fan! I
go to the Marlins games to see him pitch.”

Oviedo earned $3.6 million last year. He ranks seventh in the National League
with 36 saves, and stood to earn in the neighborhood of $5.8 million next
season.

The right-hander has 92 saves for the Marlins, third on the team’s all-time
list, since being obtained from the Kansas City Royals in a 2008 trade for
Mike Jacobs.

Outside the United States, the Dominican Republic is the single largest
source of major-league players. For many young Dominican prospects, a signing
bonus and professional contract is a way out of poverty. It also means a
payday for their trainers, known as " buscones." In an effort to garner the
attention of professional scouts, players have resorted to steroids and age
and identity fraud.

"You hate to see it because he’s a good kid," Marlins manager Jack McKeon
said. "I think sometimes they get bad information."

At the start of the current season, 86 Dominican-born players appeared on
major-league rosters. That means one of every 116,000 people in the country
are playing in the big leagues, according to calculations by Keith Winters,
an anthropologist who studies baseball in the country.

“Baseball is everything,” Winters said in an e-mail. “Baseball allows
Dominicans something to hang their hat on. The men want to be ball players [
peloteros] and the women all want to date a pelotero.”

Miami Herald staff writer Clark Spencer contributed to this report.

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