{"id":259347,"date":"2023-02-12T13:13:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-12T19:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/?p=259347"},"modified":"2023-02-14T15:15:34","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T21:15:34","slug":"ben-crump-noted-civil-rights-lawyer-joins-legal-team-in-yasiel-puig-sports-betting-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/ben-crump-noted-civil-rights-lawyer-joins-legal-team-in-yasiel-puig-sports-betting-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Crump, Noted Civil Rights Lawyer, Joins Legal Team in Yasiel Puig Sports Betting Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yasiel Puig, the former Major League Baseball all-star who faces federal charges in connection to an illegal sports betting investigation, has added a high-powered attorney to his legal team.<\/p>\n

\"Crump<\/a>
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump speaks Saturday at a press conference for Yasiel Puig (standing behind him to the right) near the federal courthouse in Los Angeles. Puig has pleaded not guilty to charges he lied to investigators about placing bets in an illegal sports betting ring. (Image: KCAL-TV\/YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Saturday, Ben Crump held a press conference near the federal courthouse in Los Angeles to discuss the case of the one-time Dodgers slugger charged with lying to investigators and obstructing justice. Crump, best known for his work as a civil rights attorney, has represented the families of Tyre Nichols, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubrey, and Trayvon Martin.<\/p>\n

Last November, federal prosecutors announced a plea agreement<\/a> with Puig, saying he admitted he lied to investigators when he denied placing bets with a former minor league ballplayer who set up his own gambling ring. However, just before the hearing occurred, Lisette Carnet, Puig\u2019s sports agent, said she had discovered new evidence<\/a> that led to him pulling out of the deal.<\/p>\n

Crump accused prosecutors of making a spectacle out of Puig\u2019s case even though he was not an orchestrator in the scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe six people who were running the gambling ring, they have been charged, but Yasiel has gotten more of a press statement and release from this (US Attorney\u2019s) office than the people who were committing the heinous crimes that they were targeting,\u201d<\/strong> Crump said Saturday.<\/p>\n

Black Athletes Treated Differently, Puig’s Team Says<\/h2>\n

On Friday, Keri Axel, another lawyer representing Puig, filed a motion to compel the US Attorney\u2019s office to provide information Puig\u2019s team has requested. That includes interview reports from the past five years by the assigned investigators from the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service who questioned Puig in the case. Puig\u2019s team also wants records of communications between federal agents and other witnesses involved in the case pertaining to interviews and charging decisions.<\/p>\n

The US Attorney\u2019s office has denied the requests for those materials.<\/p>\n

The motion also notes that agents investigating the sports betting ring treated White suspects far differently than the Black athletes they also questioned in the case.<\/p>\n

Despite being the actual targets of the investigation, the Sand Islands Sports Agents \u2014none of whom are Black\u2014 were consistently treated respectfully by the government, even where they made material misstatements of fact to government agents or attempted to destroy evidence,\u201d the motion states. \u201cThe investigative agents gave these individuals multiple interviews to clarify their statements, and did not charge any of them with making false statements or obstruction of justice.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The motion notes an October 2021 interview of a Black athlete who was not Puig. In that interview, that athlete first could not recall whether he had placed bets more than three years before but, by the end of the questioning, remembered that he had.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government agent conducting the interview then spontaneously admonished him that it was a crime to make false statements and reminded him that Martha Stewart had been charged with a violation\u201d of federal law, the motion states. \u201cThe IRS agent never did this when interviewing non-Black individuals, even when their failures of memory were more intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n

About the Yasiel Puig Sports Betting Case<\/h2>\n

Puig allegedly made wagers through people connected to Wayne Nix<\/a>, a former minor league player who ran a sports betting ring out of Costa Rica. Nix pleaded guilty to his involvement last summer.<\/p>\n

According to authorities, Puig\u2019s betting with Nix began in May 2019, and within a month, he had lost $283,000. Prosecutors found that Puig paid down his debt by $200,000 and then subsequently made nearly 900 bets on basketball, football, and tennis matches between July and September of the same year.<\/p>\n

None of Puig\u2019s bets involved baseball games.<\/p>\n

\n

Axel and Carnet have also pointed out that Puig, born in Cuba and has a third-grade education, also suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. All of that, they said, contributed to challenges he faced during the January 2022 interview with federal authorities. Axel\u2019s motion accuses the government agents of ending the interview when Puig tried to use his phone messages to answer questions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Puig, 32, last played in MLB in 2019. Since then, he has played in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and South Korea. Last year for Kiwoom in the Korean Baseball Organization, he belted 21 homers and drove 73 runs while hitting .277 in 126 games.<\/p>\n

Puig is hoping to make a comeback in the majors. Spring Training starts later this month.<\/p>\n

Puig officially entered a not guilty plea in his case this past week. Had he gone through with the guilty plea, he would have paid a $55,000 fine and faced a prison term of no more than five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yasiel Puig, the former Major League Baseball all-star who faces federal charges in connection to an illegal sports betting investigation, has added a high-powered attorney to his legal team. On Saturday, Ben Crump held a press conference near the federal courthouse in Los Angeles to discuss the case of the one-time Dodgers slugger charged with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":259348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[84990,13766,80968,83706],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBen Crump Joins Legal Team in Yasiel Puig Sports Betting Case<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former baseball star Yasiel Puig is charged with obstructing justice and lying to authorities investigating an illegal sports betting ring\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/ben-crump-noted-civil-rights-lawyer-joins-legal-team-in-yasiel-puig-sports-betting-case\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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