Guardians' $2.8M prospect suspended by MLB over crazy false identity plot

The Cleveland Guardians reportedly had agreed to a $2.8 million deal with a switch-hitting infielder named David Severino in December of last year.

Plenty of international free agent prospects agree to these handshake deals, and in this case, the deal wouldn't become official until 2029, when he'd be eligible to sign. However, a huge and crazy problem came up.

As ESPN's Alden Gonzalez reports, the prospect the Guardians thought was David Severino wasn't actually his name, and he wasn't actually 13 or 14 years old like they thought. Instead, he's an older player who reportedly had a lot of his information faked to appear younger in a crazy false-identity plot that's straight out of the movies.

Guardians prospect fakes identity, suspended by MLB

"The MLB investigation uncovered a series of extreme efforts by the player's handler to make him appear nearly two years younger than he actually is, including faking a birth certificate to create a new identity, falsifying medical and school records, filing a fraudulent death certificate, and even creating a gravesite scene, according to sources," Gonzalez reports for ESPN.

This is a crazy story, as the fake gravesite setup is one of the wildest ways an international prospect has tried to fake their age.

This isn't the first time a prospect has tried to appear younger than they actually are, but this might be the craziest story about such a prospect attempting to do so.

Severino's real name is actually Daury David Severino Damaso, and his fake identity was reportedly set up by his trainer, Francisco Nieves.

Instead of going by Daury Severino Damaso, he became David Severino Damaso, the prospect the Guardians had a $2.8 million handshake agreement with.

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"Two years after the birth registration had been made, according to sources, a fraudulent death certificate was filed for Daury," Gonzalez reports. "It said he had died of a respiratory illness on May 5, 2012, two years after he was born. A fake tombstone was created and planted in a gravesite in La Romana, a municipality in the southeastern part of the Dominican Republic, 75 miles from the capital of Santo Domingo."

This story is one of the wilder ones to come out of the international scouting market, one that, as Gonzalez notes, has "age and identity fraud run rampant..."

The future of Severino in the professional baseball world is obviously up in the air. Gonzalez did report that the Guardians won't face any discipline from MLB.

But Severino, who initially got a $2.8M agreement, is believed by one scout, according to Gonzalez, to now sign a deal for roughly $10,000, significantly less than he initially agreed to a deal with the Guardians for.

The switch-hitting infielder, with whom the Guardians initially agreed to a $2.8 million deal, has been suspended by MLB for falsifying his identity through a series of fake certificates, including a fake tombstone in a crazy story.

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