Details emerge in Dominican Republic’s investigation into Wander Franco
WHEN EVERYTHING WAS falling apart for Wander Franco, the incandescent star shortstop for the Tampa Bay Rays, prosecutors in the Dominican Republic allege he opened WhatsApp on his phone and sent a message to the teenage girl with whom he carried on a monthslong relationship and paid to remain quiet about it.
“My girl,” Franco allegedly wrote in Spanish. “If my team realizes this, it could cause problems for me. It is a rule for all teams that we cannot talk to minors, and yet I took the risk and I loved it.”
After a nearly six-month investigation, Franco was arrested on New Year’s Day for not appearing in court to answer a summons from a governmental child-welfare unit in his native Dominican Republic. Prosecutors later accused him of having sex with the 14-year-old girl when he was 21 years old and presented charges of commercial sexual exploitation and money laundering. He could face up to 20 years in prison and is reckoning with the possibility of his MLB career ending at age 22.
In a nearly 600-page document presented to the judge at a hearing this month and obtained by ESPN, prosecutors shared the evidence they have found in their investigation into Franco, underway since a formal complaint was first filed on July 10, 2023. The file includes transcripts of interviews with the girl and her relatives, messages between Franco and the girl, and more.
“There are serious questions regarding the authenticity of particular documents and references contained in the prosecutor’s confidential file, which was inappropriately disclosed to certain media outlets,” said Franco’s United States-based attorney, Jay Reisinger, in a statement to ESPN. “We are in consultation with Mr. Franco’s legal counsel in the Dominican Republic, and we intend to take the necessary legal measures in response.”
A spokesperson for the Puerto Plata Prosecutor’s Office said the office “declines to make any comment regarding an open investigation, as is the case with Wander Franco.”
For all of its salaciousness, Franco’s circumstances are rather straightforward: An All-Star with Hall of Fame aspirations and a nine-figure contract has allegedly committed a crime that could land him in prison for years. The story of the girl, unnamed by ESPN because these are sexual exploitation charges, includes alleged abuse not just from Franco but also her mother, who herself faces charges of money laundering based on gifts and payments from Franco.
In the document, the girl detailed a toxic relationship with her mother, who the girl said “see[s] me as an object to make money.” During an interview with a forensic psychologist, the girl said her mother drinks heavily and “gets violent.” By the time the complaint was filed against Franco, the girl had moved out of her home, away from the woman who raised her.
“I don’t see her as a mother,” the girl told the psychologist. “A mother doesn’t do what she has done with me.”
THE GIRL, now 15 years old, met Franco online, according to prosecutors. According to the documents, he “took her from her home” in Puerto Plata, on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, on Dec. 9, 2022, for two days. During that time, they had sex twice, prosecutors said, and started a relationship that lasted four months.
A cousin who grew up with the girl’s mother later told authorities that Franco would send a helicopter to Montellano, a town near Puerto Plata, to pick up the girl and bring her to see him. Other times, she said, Franco’s driver would ferry the girl from Puerto Plata to Franco’s hometown of Bani, a 3½-hour car ride. One time, the cousin said, the mother paid a taxi driver 16,000 Dominican pesos ($275) so the girl could meet with Franco in Bani.
Franco, the girl told the psychologist, was not shy about being seen in public with her. They went to “various social events,” she said, and she relied on his money “to be formal and groomed and not repeat clothes.” When her mother found out about the relationship, the girl said, “she suddenly started telling him that I needed things” and asked for 100,000 pesos a month.
“Since I was little, my mother has seen me as a way for her to benefit from both the partners she has had and my partners and it is something that I really dislike,” the girl said. “The way she did it with her partners was by telling them that I needed money for my education, the purchase of school supplies or some need related to me.”
For most of the final two months of their relationship last year, Franco was in spring training with the Rays. After the season began, the relationship strained, and she started seeing someone else. After she told Franco, they talked over WhatsApp, according to the file presented to prosecutors.
Franco wrote: “I would like you to forget everything you have learned to raise you my way.”
She responded: “And what is your way? Without love? Without respect?”
Franco replied: “There was more to it but you’re just a girl and you don’t know how to get along with me, that’s why you failed, but I’ll give you only one chance, you must be only for me. Don’t look at anyone, I know you’ve been with someone else, but no one will know how to use you the way I want.”
According to the documents, the girl said she was upset by the conversation and contacted a reporter, after which her mother filed the official complaint to prosecutors in the Dominican Republic. “I feel sorry because I didn’t want to hurt [Franco],” the girl said. “He was good to me.” About a month later, allegations of the relationship leaked on social media on Aug. 14, prompting Major League Baseball to investigate Franco. The league placed him on administrative leave for the remainder of the 2023 season.
Meanwhile, the girl’s relationship with her mother worsened. Another relative interviewed by authorities told prosecutors that the girl wrote a letter saying she was going to kill herself, alarming family members. She moved out of her home, prompting her mother to file a kidnapping complaint, according to sources. The mother alleged the girl once pulled a knife on her, but the girl said both sides of her family “know that she is the one who has always attacked me because she has alcohol problems and when she drinks and you don’t do what she wants, she gets violent.”
At a relative’s birthday party in August, the girl saw her mother, who she said was drunk, according to the documents. The girl said her mother threw a rock at her and called her a Spanish word for “c—s—er.” That same day, the cousin said, a person driving a Hyundai Sonata rolled by, recording the house. The mother called the cousin two minutes later and warned that people associated with Franco “were going to kill everyone here in the house,” said the cousin — who later realized that the car belonged to the girl’s mother.
In July and August, Franco had given the girl 2.7 million pesos (about $46,000) to support herself until college. With it, she bought an iPhone, an iPad, her school uniform, supplies and personal items. Her cousin helped her open a bank account to deposit the remainder, around $37,500.
Franco had furnished the girl’s mother with even more money. The mother’s receipt of monthly 100,000-peso payments from Franco — about $1,700 — and a new car (a 2023 Suzuki Swift) were discovered by prosecutors during a September raid. Authorities also found $68,500 in American dollars and another 800,000 pesos ($13,700) in her home.
The investigation continued, and in late December, police sought to question Franco, who had returned to the Dominican Republic in December after being placed on leave. They looked for him at his home and his mother’s, then at his uncle’s. Police told Franco’s wife he needed to appear at the prosecutor’s office on Dec. 28. He didn’t show. He did the same Dec. 29. When he finally met with authorities on Jan. 1, he was booked and remained in jail through Jan. 8, when he paid bail after the prosecution’s hearing a few days earlier for coercive measures, a pretrial procedure in which officials try to prevent the accused from fleeing, destroying evidence or intimidating accusers and witnesses.
AFTER THE ALLEGATIONS surfaced in August, the girl posted on social media: “Look, I’m going to tell you in confidence why I do all this. He used me and as you saw in the messages, he bribed me a lot and they took me out of the school I was in because of him, he has damaged my life and he has not even tried to fix it.”
She then deleted all her accounts.
Franco denied the allegations on Instagram Live that day and hasn’t spoken officially since; his only comments were during a break at the hearing, telling reporters, “It’s all in God’s hands.” Whether he is found guilty, he faces a potentially lengthy suspension from MLB, after which securing a visa to allow him to play in MLB could be more complicated, according to legal sources familiar with the matter.
Both the Rays and the league declined to comment for this story, citing the ongoing investigations.
It’s a dramatic fall for a player around whom the Rays thought they would build their franchise. Franco dropped out of school at 12 years old to pursue a baseball career full time. A switch-hitting shortstop with power and speed, and the nephew of former big leaguers Erick and Willy Aybar, he fetched a $3.8 million bonus in 2017 to sign with the Rays and debuted with them in 2021, just after he turned 20.
The Rays gave him an 11-year, $182 million extension that fall, just 70 games into his major league career. But his true breakout came in the 2023 season, when he was named an All-Star for the first time.
Whether Franco can make a case to collect the $174 million Tampa Bay owes him for the final nine years of the contract remains unresolved. If Franco can’t play because he is imprisoned, the Rays could get out of the deal arguing clause 7.(b)(1) of the league’s uniform player contract, which states teams “may terminate this contract … if the Player shall at any time fail, refuse or neglect to conform his personal conduct to the standards of good citizenship.”
Until a trial — and that won’t come for months, as prosecutors have up to six months to investigate — Franco is free to leave the country, as long as he checks in with police once a month. Officials in the Dominican Republic are divided on how to approach Franco’s prosecution, according to sources. Some would prefer charges of statutory rape to the counts of sexual exploitation and money laundering. The judge in the case, Romaldy Marcelino, suggested Franco instead face counts of sexual and psychological abuse, suggesting the prosecution is being tougher on Franco because he is an MLB player. Sexual abuse convictions carry a two- to five-year prison sentence.
In the meantime, the girl awaits resolution.
“I just wanted to talk,” she told the psychologist, “because I want all of this to end.”
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Michael Rothstein
The Trump administration’s 2026 fiscal budget request to Congress eliminates major federal funding for traumatic brain injury (TBI) research and education, potentially undercutting efforts to address head injuries in sports, particularly at the high school and youth levels.
The White House’s proposed budget, released Friday, includes eliminating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention umbrella agency responsible for TBI research, including the $8.25 million marked for brain injury research and public education about the dangers of concussions. The CDC is facing $3.59 billion in budget cuts.
Although the president proposes the federal budget, it is up to Congress to approve a final budget bill, so the TBI program could be restored or moved to a different agency. The White House did not respond to an ESPN request for comment.
The budget proposal comes after the CDC on April 1 placed all five staffers devoted to administering the government’s main traumatic brain injury program on paid administrative leave, CDC employees told ESPN. Paid administrative leave means the workers are still government employees.
The budget cuts would “roll back decades of progress,” said Dr. Owen Perlman, a brain injury specialist and board member of the Brain Injury Association of America.
Among the items targeted is Heads Up, a concussion-prevention program for youth and high school coaches, athletic trainers and other sports officials. The CDC staffers put on leave administered the program. Forty-five states participate in the program to varying degrees, a CDC official said, asking not to be identified.
Staffers interviewed by ESPN declined to speak on the record, citing fears of administration retribution.
“We’re really worried about the hundreds of thousands of coaches who have to take this training,” the CDC official said. “This is really built in, and we’ve lost the whole team” behind the program.
Some Heads Up training is part of coaches’ and other sports officials’ state compliance requirements. The CDC official said hundreds of email queries are arriving every week asking how to comply as the federal program shuts down. The Heads Up website says more than 10 million people have participated in its online training programs.
Congress first approved TBI research funding in 1996. Legislation to keep the program going expired at the end of 2024, and a House bill to renew it has yet to advance out of committee.
In a 2018 CDC survey, 12% of adult respondents reported experiencing a head injury in the previous 12 months, including but not limited to sports-related activities. A follow-up study was being prepared when the staffers were placed on leave. The research data was part of a program to measure TBI prevalence and boost prevention, care and recovery efforts.
The Heads Up website remained active Monday but offered no clues regarding the program’s endangered status.
“In the last month, I don’t think the public has felt an impact,” a laid-off CDC employee said. “But when those websites, trainings and materials get pulled down or when they can’t be updated, I think that’s when the public will feel it.”
In the proposed White House budget, the National Institutes of Health would retain an institute devoted to overall brain research, although the name would slightly change. The institute focuses on medical issues such as stroke and migraines, and it’s unclear whether TBI programs would be absorbed into it.
Hospitals and universities conducting TBI research funded by the CDC are bracing for potential funding cutbacks.
“We might not [get] the next year of renewal or the next wave of funding. And that’s sad and scary and impactful for all kinds of people, including myself in this project,” said Christine Baugh, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine who is studying how parents decide whether to let their children play contact sports and whether brain-injury awareness campaigns influence their decisions.
On April 23, the National Academy of Sciences received orders to cancel work on two TBI workshops, one of which analyzed the risks of repeated head impacts on children. Both workshops had already been held. One of the workshop organizers, Dr. Fred Rivara, a pediatrics professor at the University of Washington, told ESPN that the cancellation affected funding for publishing the information, and he called the potential cuts “tragic.”
“That’s a perfect example of how this change in, or devastation of, funding at the CDC is impacting people,” Rivara said. “They want to know, for sports: What about these repetitive impacts? Are they bad for kids? It’s a perfect example of the impact of this.”
Traumatic brain injuries have lifelong repercussions on a person’s physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral health, Perlman said.
Even though some states fund TBI-treatment programs independently of the federal government, concerns are growing about a domino effect if Congress fails to renew funding.
“For many people with concussions or certainly moderate or severe brain injuries, there’s no endpoint,” Perlman said. “It’s a lifetime problem, and there needs to be lifetime funding for it.”
The first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs is complete. Eight of the teams that made the postseason bracket have moved on, and eight others have been eliminated.
Before the second-round series begin, ESPN’s experts have identified their picks for each matchup. Which four teams will move on to the conference finals?
More: Full schedule
Betting intel
Atlantic Division
John Buccigross: Panthers in seven
Ryan Callahan: Panthers in six
Cassie Campbell-Pascall: Panthers in six
Sachin Chandan: Panthers in six
Meghan Chayka: Panthers in six
Ryan S. Clark: Panthers in seven
Linda Cohn: Panthers in six
Rachel Doerrie: Panthers in six
Ray Ferraro: Panthers in six
Emily Kaplan: Panthers in seven
Tim Kavanagh: Maple Leafs in six
Peter Lawrence-Riddell: Panthers in six
Steve Levy: Panthers in six
Vince Masi: Panthers in six
Victoria Matiash: Panthers in six
Sean McDonough: Panthers in six
Mark Messier: Panthers in six
AJ Mleczko: Panthers in six
Arda Öcal: Maple Leafs in six
Kristen Shilton: Maple Leafs in seven
John Thoering: Panthers in six
Bob Wischusen: Panthers in six
Greg Wyshynski: Panthers in six
Consensus prediction: Panthers (20 of 23 picks)
Metropolitan Division
John Buccigross: Capitals in seven
Ryan Callahan: Capitals in seven
Cassie Campbell-Pascall: Capitals in six
Sachin Chandan: Capitals in six
Meghan Chayka: Hurricanes in six
Ryan S. Clark: Capitals in seven
Linda Cohn: Capitals in six
Rachel Doerrie: Capitals in six
Ray Ferraro: Capitals in seven
Emily Kaplan: Capitals in seven
Tim Kavanagh: Capitals in six
Peter Lawrence-Riddell: Hurricanes in seven
Steve Levy: Capitals in five
Vince Masi: Hurricanes in six
Victoria Matiash: Hurricanes in six
Sean McDonough: Capitals in seven
Mark Messier: Hurricanes in six
AJ Mleczko: Hurricanes in five
Mike Monaco: Hurricanes in six
Arda Öcal: Capitals in six
Kristen Shilton: Hurricanes in six
John Thoering: Capitals in seven
Bob Wischusen: Capitals in seven
Greg Wyshynski: Capitals in seven
Consensus prediction: Capitals (16 of 24 picks)
Central Division
John Buccigross: Stars in seven
Ryan Callahan: Stars in five
Sachin Chandan: Stars in six
Ryan S. Clark: Stars in seven
Linda Cohn: Jets in seven
Rachel Doerrie: Stars in six
Ray Ferraro: Stars in six
Emily Kaplan: Stars in six
Tim Kavanagh: Stars in seven
Peter Lawrence-Riddell: Stars in six
Steve Levy: Stars in seven
Vince Masi: Jets in seven
Victoria Matiash: Jets in seven
Sean McDonough: Stars in six
Mark Messier: Stars in six
Mike Monaco: Stars in six
Arda Öcal: Stars in six
Kristen Shilton: Stars in six
John Thoering: Stars in seven
Bob Wischusen: Jets in seven
Greg Wyshynski: Stars in six
Consensus prediction: Stars (17 of 21 picks)
Pacific Division
John Buccigross: Oilers in seven
Ryan Callahan: Golden Knights in six
Cassie Campbell-Pascall: Oilers in seven
Sachin Chandan: Oilers in seven
Meghan Chayka: Golden Knights in seven
Ryan S. Clark: Golden Knights in seven
Linda Cohn: Oilers in seven
Rachel Doerrie: Golden Knights in seven
Ray Ferraro: Golden Knights in seven
Emily Kaplan: Golden Knights in seven
Tim Kavanagh: Golden Knights in six
Peter Lawrence-Riddell: Golden Knights in six
Steve Levy: Golden Knights in seven
Vince Masi: Oilers in six
Victoria Matiash: Golden Knights in six
Sean McDonough: Golden Knights in seven
Mark Messier: Oilers in seven
AJ Mleczko: Golden Knights in six
Mike Monaco: Oilers in six
Arda Öcal: Oilers in six
Kristen Shilton: Oilers in seven
John Thoering: Golden Knights in seven
Bob Wischusen: Golden Knights in seven
Greg Wyshynski: Oilers in seven
Consensus prediction: Golden Knights (14 of 24 picks)
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Greg Wyshynski
The Los Angeles Kings will not bring back Rob Blake, the team’s general manager and vice president of hockey operations, after a fourth straight first-round playoff exit.
Blake didn’t have a contract beyond the 2024-25 season. The status of coach Jim Hiller, who has two years left on his contract after Blake elevated him to head coach this season, will be in the hands of the next general manager.
Blake, 55, was elevated to the job in April 2017 after serving as assistant general manager under Dean Lombardi beginning in 2013-14, the last time the Kings won the Stanley Cup.
In eight seasons as GM, Blake’s teams made the Stanley Cup playoffs five times. However, Los Angeles failed to advance past the first round each time, getting swept by the Vegas Golden Knights in 2018 and then being eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers for four straight postseasons, including the Kings’ Game 6 elimination last week.
The Kings had a .557 points percentage in the standings during his eight seasons as general manager, as Blake attempted to bridge the team’s two Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and 2014 to the next wave of stars like 22-year-old forward Quinton Byfield.
“On behalf of the entire organization, I would like to thank Rob for his dedication to the LA Kings and the passion he brought to his role,” Kings team president Luc Robitaille said in a statement. “Reaching this understanding wasn’t easy and I appreciate Rob’s partnership in always working toward what is best for the Kings. Rob deserves a great deal of credit and respect for elevating us to where we are today. He has been an important part of the Kings and will always be appreciated for what he has meant to this franchise.”
Blake’s tenure with the Kings saw them take big swings in acquiring key players, sometimes at a significant cost. In 2022, he shipped defenseman Brock Faber, a runner-up for rookie of the year last season, to the Minnesota Wild for winger Kevin Fiala, who tied with Adrian Kempe for the lead in goals this season for Los Angeles. He signed veteran forwards such as Phillip Danault and Warren Foegele as free agents and swung trades for players such as winger Viktor Arvidsson and defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov.
His most notorious trade was the one that sent three roster players to Winnipeg for center Pierre-Luc Dubois in 2023 and getting him on an 8-year, $68 million contract as the potential successor to franchise center Anze Kopitar. But Dubois was a one-and-done bust in Los Angeles and was flipped to the Washington Capitals for goalie Darcy Kuemper last offseason. Blake saved face on that one: Kuemper is a finalist for the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s top regular-season goaltender. Blake also traded away franchise goalie Jonathan Quick and young defenseman Sean Durzi, now a steady hand for the Utah Hockey Club. Blake also traded draft assets to dump the contract of goalie Cal Petersen, whom the GM signed to a regrettable 3-year, $15 million deal.
In moving on from Blake, the Kings are also parting ways with a franchise icon. He spent 14 seasons of his Hall of Fame career with Los Angeles, and his No. 4 is retired with the team.
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