Sports Agent Charged With Human Trafficking

According to the Miami Herald:

A California-based baseball agent and four assistants were indicted Tuesday, accused of financing and organizing a smuggling scheme to get Cuban baseball players out of the communist island.

Agent Gustavo "Gus" Dominguez of Total Sports International is accused of hiring four men to help him get 19 Cubans out of the island on Aug. 22, 2004, including several ball players -- some of them now playing for minor league teams in the U.S. -- and three children identified in the indictment only by their initials.

After bringing the players to Florida, the schemers allegedly moved them by van to California.

"In California, the defendants rented an apartment for the baseball players and provided food and clothing for them," according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office. "The defendants immediately began training and conditioning the baseball players and failed to present the baseball players to Customs and Border Protection for immigration processing in the United States."

The Indictment charges all five defendants with a conspiracy to bring aliens illegally into the United States, transporting the aliens in violation of law, and concealing and harboring the aliens from detection.

Although coaches have gotten in trouble under US immigration laws for their cross-border recruiting efforts, as Greg noted here, I believe this is the first sports agent to be so charged. Further support for the notion that students of sports law would do well to study up on immigration law.

Posted in: