HOW YURI GOT STUNG
Downfall began after he rejected A-Rod’s offer, says court filing
MAJOR LEAGUE Baseball officials and law-enforcement authorities had already launched investigations into Biogenesis when Alex Rodriguez and his half-brother, Joe Dunand, showed up at Yuri Sucart’s home in December 2012, shortly after A-Rod fired his cousin as his personal assistant, and offered to settle their simmering employment dispute if Sucart would sign a confidentiality agreement and a contract.
Sucart and his wife, Carmen, both refused to sign, according to papers filed Friday in Miami federal court by Sucart’s attorney, Edward O’Donnell IV. But shortly after that meeting, Sucart was contacted by a good friend of Dunand’s identified in court papers as “J.A.” who told Sucart he wanted to obtain performance-enhancing drugs for a friend.
J.A. turned out to be a confidential source for both government agents and MLB investigators and his “friend” turned out to be an undercover agent, according to the motion filed by O’Donnell that asks U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga for a reduced sentence. The papers do not explain what role, if any, Rodriguez played in setting up the December 2012 request for drugs by the MLB and law-enforcement source.
Sucart, Rodriguez’s driver and personal assistant from 1993 to 2013, was charged with seven counts of distributing steroids and human growth hormone in the sprawling Biogenesis indictment unsealed in August 2014. He pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiracy to distribute HGH and is scheduled to appear Thursday before Altonaga for sentencing.
The court papers say Sucart supported his wife and three children for two decades by working for 20 years as his cousin’s personal assistant. The court papers say Sucart was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Carmen Sucart told the Daily News in November that Rodriguez treated her husband like “a slave.”
Sucart’s job status became shaky in February 2009, after Sports Illustrated reported that Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids six years earlier. Major League Baseball officials quickly banned Sucart from clubhouses and other team facilities after Rodriguez told reporters his cousin had helped him obtain a product in the Dominican Republic that contained a banned substance.
“Yuri could no longer drive A-Rod to practice, bring his bags to the locker, travel with the team or stay at the same hotel where they stayed,” the filing said. “To this day, he can’t even attend a home Marlins game with his sons.
“A-Rod’s longtime assistant and confidant Yuri protected A-Rod. In exchange A-Rod promised to support Yuri and his wife for life.”
Sucart began to feel financial pressures after Rodriguez reduced his salary in April 2012; the pressure grew when Rodriguez fired his go-fer without any explanation or severance package in October 2012, the motion says. Sucart’s daughter, then attending college in New York, had to leave school. One of his sons had to drop out of a private high school in Miami.
“It became obvious and known to many that the Sucarts’ financial situation wasn’t good,” the motion said.
O’Donnell’s motion says Rodriguez, Dunand and four other people came to Sucart’s home in late 2012 and presented the cousin and Carmen with an employment contract and a confidentiality agreement that presumably would bar the Sucarts from sharing what he had seen as a longtime A-Rod insider with the press and public. The couple refused to sign.
“Shortly after that meeting, on Dec. 3, 2012, J.A. calls Yuri on his cell phone and said he’d like to meet up with him in Miami the following day. Yuri knew J.A. because he is one of Joe Dunand’s good friends. Yuri hadn’t spoken to J.A. in five years. J.A. is the confidential source for Major League Baseball and the confidential source in this case,” the motion said.
“J.A. tells Yuri that a friend of his, the undercover agent, needed some PEDs for her cousins who are with a minor league baseball team. When Yuri Sucart leaves the meeting J.A. can be heard on the phone telling Joe Dunand that the meeting is going better than planned and Yuri is going to introduce him to the doctor. Joe Dunand then tells J.A. they’re listening to the conversation and J.A. hangs up the phone.”
An attorney for Sucart later sent Rodriguez a letter in December 2012 demanding $5 million and a “life estate.”
Rodriguez would later tell the Drug Enforcement Administration the letter was an attempt to extort money from him but the lawyer, Jeffrey Sonn, told the Daily News it was an attempt to resolve an employment issue. By then, MLB’s Biogenesis probe was well underway and Rodriguez knew that Biogenesis founder Tony Bosch was a target of the investigation. “Yuri, even after he was accused of being a steroid mule for you, kept your confidences of all your activities while you played for the Rangers and the Yankees,” Sonn wrote.
Rodriguez entered into a confidential settlement with Sucart in June 2013, agreeing to pay his cousin a total of $900,000. Rodriguez would have likely been called as a witness if the case against Sucart had proceeded to trial.
O’Donnell was unavailable for comment. Dunand and Rodriguez attorney James Sharp did not return calls from the Daily News.
O’Donnell’s motion asks Altonaga to impose a reduced sentence of eight to 14 months incarceration on Sucart when he appears in her courtroom later this week and requests home confinement rather than prison. The document notes that Sucart suffers from numerous health problems. Doctors inserted a pacemaker into Sucart during open heart surgery in January; O’Donnell also wrote that he suffers from a brain tumor.
Sucart, who was also hospitalized with an infected toe in May, also suffers from kidney disease, arthritis, depression and other conditions. He has also been prescribed more than two dozen medications during the past year.
O’Donnell’s filing said Sucart nearly died when he was held in the Federal Detention Center in South Florida because he did not receive his medication and did not receive adequate medical care.
“Mr. Sucart’s condition was so severe that doctors believed he would not live and were a day away from removing both of his legs because of the circulation issues as a result of the lack of medical treatment he was receiving,” the papers said.