6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

The New York Times uncorked a doozy today when they broke the story that the FBI is investigating the St. Louis Cardinals for hacking into the Astros' network and stealing proprietary player data.

The Astros hired Mr. Luhnow as general manager in December 2011, and he quickly began applying his unconventional approach to running a baseball team. In an exploration of the team’s radical transformation, Bloomberg Business called it “a project unlike anything baseball has seen before.”

Under Mr. Luhnow, the Astros have accomplished a striking turnaround; they are in first place in the American League West division. But in 2013, before their revival at the major league level, their internal deliberations about statistics and players were compromised, law enforcement officials said.

The intrusion did not appear to be sophisticated, the law enforcement officials said. When Mr. Luhnow was with the Cardinals, the organization built a computer network, called Redbird, to house all of their baseball operations information — including scouting reports and player personnel information. After leaving to join the Astros, and bringing some front-office personnel with him from the Cardinals, Houston created a similar program known as Ground Control.

Which suggests that Luhnow and others in the Houston front office didn't bother to change their passwords from their time at St. Louis. It also suggests that the Cardinals store their passwords in plaintext, which, why?

Fangraphs has a fine piece on the legal ramifications:

The primary law implicated by the Cardinals’ alleged hacking would appear to be the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The CFAA was originally passed back in 1984 to protect both the government and the financial industry from electronic espionage. The law was later expanded in 1996, however, to cover any unauthorized, remote access of another’s computer.
Under Section (a)(4) of the CFAA, anyone who “knowingly … accesses a protected computer without authorization” in order to “obtain[] anything of value” is subject to potential criminal liability for the hacking. Similarly, Section (a)(5)(B) of the law prohibits “intentionally access[ing] a protected computer without authorization,” should it result in any damage being inflicted on the computer’s owner.

The act provides for a five year sentence per instance of access, which could mean life imprisonment for ongoing spying. Also, the Electronic Espionage Act of 1996 makes the entire Cardinals organization possibly complicit in criminal activity, but only if the government can show high-level Cardinals knew or should have known about the matter.

But is that likely? As one of the commenters at a Facebook group observed, commissioner Rob Manfred has been pleased to use stolen evidence when it suited him; how hard can he really come down on the Cards? (Ignoring for the moment the consequence of criminal investigations, and assuming that there will be repercussions at the MLB commissioner's office.) One thing's for sure, there'll be a lot of billable hours among all parties.

Labels: astros, cardinals, front office, scams

ESPN/Los Angeles reports that Rodney Fernandez, an employee at Kendry Morales' former representation, Hendricks Sports Management, is accused of swiped $300,000 from Morales' bank account. This leads me to ask: why on earth would he let them do that? It certainly explains why he would switch to Scott Boras, or anybody, really.

Morales is currently the only Angel not at spring training, due to difficulties with immigration paperwork issues.

Labels: angels, scams

I got the most amazing spam today from someone purporting to be rattling the cup for the Aaron and Margaret Wallace Foundation, the proximate cause being Haiti earthquake relief. Interesting facts:

1. I could find no evidence of such a foundation at the Foundation Center's 990 finder, a search form that lets you look for the IRS 990 form for 501(c)(3) charities.
2. Nowhere on the purported "foundation's" website do they ever claim to be a 501(c)(3) charity.
3. Nor for that matter do they claim to have any experience at disaster relief. See also the Wyclef Jean Yéle Haiti foundation, which has similar problems and was, previously, principally a cultural and arts foundation.
4. Finally, they are connected — at the hip, it seems, as the whois record for the trust points to the same man — to one Abdul-Jalil, perhaps best known as the man who gave Lyman Bostock catastrophically bad financial advice (Bostock had no life insurance), in addition to making himself persona non grata throughout baseball for the shameful way in which he deported himself in the wake of Bostock's tragic, sudden death, asking for money from the Angels organization above and beyond his agent's commission. If he has ever worked as an agent for any other major league baseball player, I have yet to hear of it.

Abdul had some characteristics of being a shady operator in the past, but this stinks of rank opportunism. What a revolting display of naked greed masquerading as charity.

Labels: history, scams

San Diego ambulance chaser Al Rava is back, and somehow managed to win a suit against the Oakland A's for a floppy plaid hat. (You may recall he as earlier embroiled in a lawsuit against the Angels for a Mother's Day tote. The ESPN story says you can collect $100 if you entered the Coliseum as one of the first 5,000 males that day. What a crock.

Labels: scams

As I suspected yesterday, fired Angels International Scouting Director Clay Daniels is the target of an MLB internal skimming probe. Daniels said he was "dumbfounded" when he discovered he had been fired, according to a report in the Times.

The international signing deadline is July 2.

Labels: angels, scams

Ken Rosenthal reports that the Angels have fired chief of international scouting Clay Daniels. It is not known whether this is in connection with the scout skimming scandal (how's that for alliteration?) currently embroiling the Dominican Republic; earlier, Jim Bowden resigned following a federal investigation into his connection with skimming.

Labels: angels, scams

A New York Post report indicates that Sandy Koufax may be among the victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

In case you missed it, the Wall Street Journal published Harry Markopolos' testimony before Congress (PDF), and fascinating reading it is, too, with a full accounting for his suspicions, how he validated them as far back as 2000, and how the SEC and the Journal refused to lift a finger to expose Madoff's fraud.

Labels: evil, ex-dodgers, scams

I was giving serious consideration to buying one of those star-spangled Angels hats that have been on display for Fourth of July weekend. As it turned out, I wasn't able to get one because the second deck team store was out of everything except for sizes 8 and 7 7/8 (much too big for my head), and there was no way I was going to enter the madhouse of the home plate store. (Forget the souvenir stands throughout the park — none of them had any, and they all told me to go to the main store.)

It turns out that it was just as well, because the hats were going for $35 (I assume they are the same price as the Mariners caps of the same provenance). But, they say, it's for a good cause: some fraction of that overpriced cap is going to charity, Welcome Back Veterans. The only problem, as U.S.S. Mariner relays, is that MLB can't be bothered to tell us just how much money will be going to that cause. Paul Lukas of Uniwatch went to the press conference announcing these babies, and boy did he get an earful:

All the materials related to this promotion say that “a portion of the proceeds” from the cap sales will go to the charity program [look at the last bullet point here, for example]. Can you tell us what percentage that portion is?

The reason I ask is that some fans — including many who have already expressed their opinions to me as news of this initiative leaked out over the weekend — may view this program as just another merchandising program to move product and generate revenue. So what portion of the cap proceeds will go to the charity? And if it’s not 100%, why not?

And man, you could practically hear them crossing my name off their Christmas card lists. MLB PR czar Rich Levin glared at me like I’d just hocked a loogie in his cappuccino or something. “The answer is that that hasn’t been determined yet,” he growled. “But this is a charity initiative — it isn’t about generating revenue.”

“I’m not suggesting otherwise,” I responded. “But there’s a certain level of cynicism out there among some fans, so I was giving you a chance to clarify…”

“We reject that,” he snapped. “We reject the cynicism.”

And that, my friends, was the end of that. No more questions, cue the photographers for glad-handing pics. Afterward, two gentlemen who were involved with the vets’ program (i.e., not MLB employees) approached me and said, “I thought it was a very good question, and I don’t think you got much of an answer.”

And there you have it.

Labels: scams, scumbags

Remember the Verizon Joke-of-the-Day scam? Well, AT&T just settled a class-action lawsuit over similarly irritating matters with their subscriber base. Since businesswire.com links have a habit of disappearing rapidly, I forward a link to thirdpartycontentrefund.com and count my lucky stars that I am not an AT&T subscriber anymore... not that Verizon is any shining example in this regard.

Labels: haha, scams, tech

Earlier in the month Helen suddenly started getting annoying garbage text messages sent to her phone from a "joke of the day" service that she never signed up for. Imagine our surprise to discover that Verizon was actually charging us $10 a month for this. We called Verizon today and the droid answering the phone claimed she could do nothing about the fraudulent charge (though as I write this, they seem to be changing their tune, though only after we threatened to move to AT&T). We apparently are not the only ones to have been hit by this, as Metroblogging LA ran into the same thing just a couple of days ago.

Labels: scams, tech