MLB Impeded Department of Health Investigation into Tony Bosch By Purchasing Stolen Records
By Jason Lisk
Major League Baseball impeded an investigation into Anthony Bosch by the Florida Department of Health, according to a report from ESPN’s Outside the Lines. Sounds like Alex Rodriguez is not the only one that has tried to impede things lately.
For those that don’t know, the Florida Department of Health was trying to investigate Anthony Bosch for practicing medicine without a license. Back in June, we wrote about the fantastic story of Porter Fischer, who was the whistleblower in the Biogenesis investigation and the man who originally took the documents that were provided to the Miami New Times.
Fischer was negotiating with MLB to provide the documents for them, but balked when the offer got up to $125,000.
It was then that he was going to turn the documents over to the Florida Department of Health. On his way to deliver them, he stopped for a spray tan (yes, really) and the boxes were stolen from his car.
Now, here’s where it gets really interesting, and this may be just the tip of the iceberg.
While they were trying to get Fischer to turn over the documents, MLB paid a man named Gary Jones, a friend of Fischer’s, $100,000 for providing four flash drives of documents. Five days after Fischer told MLB no in regard to providing documents, the theft occurred. On April 16th, MLB paid Jones an additional $25,000, and received the documents that had been stolen from Fischer’s car.
Rodriguez’ legal team had Jones provide an affidavit in September, acknowledging that he had acquired the stolen documents (that were going to be delivered to the Department of Health) and delivered them to MLB in exchange for money.
MLB officials claim several things, including that they did not know that the documents were stolen when they purchased them, and that they believed that Fischer and Jones were working together and Jones was Fischer’s agent.
Does that add up?
This one looks like it has the potential to get a lot more interesting, in a Watergate type way. MLB wants us to believe that a guy:
(a) turned down $125,000;
(b) was working with another guy to stage a break-in so that they could split $125,000; and
(c) They had no knowledge that the documents they purchased had come from that theft or reported theft.
I suppose that’s better than the alternative, which is that MLB made an offer of $125,000 for the documents, and when the original holder balked–and was going to turn them over to a state agency–they obtained them through other means. The fact that they had an alleged prior relationship with Jones, and made a previous payment, that the guy who MLB was trying to bargain with refused and then a theft occurred, and then the same guy they previously paid turns up with the stolen documents, does not look good. MLB better hope that all that turns up is that they just happened to acquire the documents without knowing where they came from, and that the worst charge is that they impeded a state investigation.