The Esmailyn Gonzalez fraud has claimed its first scalp: Jose Rijo, owner of a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic that the Nats have used to find and recruit players in that country.
Rijo’s departure comes in the wake of last week’s revelation, confirmed by Major League Baseball, that Washington’s top Dominican prospect had signed with the team under a false name and age. Rijo has denied any involvement in the fraud, in which a 20-year-old shortstop named Carlos Daniel Alvarez Lugo claimed he was a 16-year-old named Esmailyn “Smiley” González. In July 2006, the Nationals — with Rijo’s recommendation — signed Gonzalez, believed to be 16, to a $1.4 million signing bonus.
Rijo knew González for two years before the signing, and helped link his team — including Bowden — with his childhood friend, Basilio Vizcaino, with whom the Nationals negotiated during the signing.
Though Rijo is the first Washington employee to lose his job as a result of the scandal, the FBI investigation into Latin American scouting has landed others, Bowden included, in hot water. Last summer, the FBI began looking into both Bowden and Rijo as a part of the probe. Both have repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
Washington’s arrangement with Rijo was unorthodox. Most major league teams own their facilities in the Dominican. The Nationals rented theirs, thus supplying Rijo with a supplement to his regular salary.
Rijo’s complex, located in the hills outside San Cristobal, was supposed to become the epicenter of Washington’s new focus on international scouting. The González signing, which coincided with the team receiving a new ownership group, was designed as a bold entrance point into the high-stakes game of Latin American prospect-signing. But since then, the Nationals have kept a low profile in the Dominican Republic.
Will Rijo’s patron in the Nats organization, Jim Bowden, be next?
Meanwhile, the kid who made it all happen, Lugo, is full of apologies.
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