Vander Franco case details revealed – El Nacional

Court documents reveal random interviews and alleged messages

ESPN

When everything was falling apart for Tampa Bay Rays star shortstop Vander Franco, prosecutors in the Dominican Republic allege that the player opened WhatsApp on his phone and sent a message to the teenager he had been having a relationship with for months, to keep her quiet about it. Paid up.

“My girl,” Franco wrote in Spanish. “If my team gets to know about this, it could cause trouble for me. It’s a rule for all teams that we can’t 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 in his native Dominican Republic for failing to appear in court to answer a subpoena from a government child welfare unit. Prosecutors later accused him of having sex with a 14-year-old girl when she was 21, and filed charges of commercial sexual exploitation and money laundering. Today, he’s out of jail after posting nearly $35,000 bail, facing up to 20 years in prison and facing the end of his MLB career at age 22.

file

In a nearly 600-page document presented to a judge at a hearing this month and obtained by ESPN, prosecutors shared evidence from their investigation into Franco, which has been ongoing since the formal complaint was filed on July 10, 2023. Interviews with the girl and her relatives, messages between Franco and the girl, and more.

The defense is charged

“There are serious doubts about the authenticity of certain documents and references contained in the plaintiff’s confidential file, which were improperly disclosed to certain media outlets,” Franco’s U.S. attorney, Jay Reisinger, said in a statement to ESPN. . “We are in consultation with Mr. Franco’s legal counsel in the Dominican Republic and intend to take the necessary legal action in response.”

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A spokesman for the Puerto Plata prosecutor’s office said the prosecutor’s office “declines any comment on open investigations like the Vander Franco case.”

For all his lasciviousness, Franco’s circumstances are pretty simple: 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 girl’s story, not identified by ESPN because it involves allegations of sexual abuse, includes alleged abuse not only by Franco but also by her mother, who faces money laundering charges based on gifts and payments from Franco.

the mother

In the document, the girl details a toxic relationship with her mother, who she says “sees me as an object to make money from.” During an interview with a forensic psychologist, he said his mother drank heavily and “became violent.” When the complaint was filed against Franco, he moved out of his home, away from the woman who raised him.

“I don’t see her as a mother,” the girl told the psychologist. “Don’t do what mother did to me.”

minor

According to prosecutors, the girl, now 15, met Franco online. According to the documents, he “took her out of his home” in Puerto Plata, on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, for two days on December 9, 2022. During that time, they had sex twice, prosecutors said, and began 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 take her to see her. Another time, she said, Franco’s driver took the girl from Puerto Plata to Bani, Franco’s hometown, a three-and-a-half-hour drive. Once, the cousin said, the mother paid a taxi driver 16,000 Dominican pesos ($275) so the daughter could meet Franco in Bani.

Franco, the girl told the psychologist, had no fear of being seen in public with him. He said he attended “few social events”, and relied on his money “to be formal and put together and not repeat clothes”. When her mother found out about the relationship, the girl said, “suddenly she started telling her she needed things” and asked her for 100,000 pesos a month.

“Ever since I was young, my mother has seen me as a way to take advantage of both her partners and my partners and that’s something that annoys me a lot,” the girl said. “The way he did it with his partners is by telling them that I need money for my education, purchase of school supplies or some need related to me.”

strained relationship

For most of the last two months of their relationship last year, Franco was in spring training with the Rays. After the season began, the relationship strained and she began dating someone else. After she told Franco, they spoke on WhatsApp, according to a file presented to prosecutors.

Franco wrote: “I want you to forget everything you learned so I can teach you my way.”

She replied: “And what is your way? Without love? Without respect?”.

Franco replied: “There was more, but you’re just a girl and you don’t know how to be with me, that’s why you failed, but I’ll give you only one chance, you have to 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 an official complaint with Dominican Republic prosecutors. “I’m sorry because I didn’t want to hurt (Franco),” the girl said. “He was good to me.” About a month later, on August 14, allegations of a relationship were leaked on social media.

By Jeff Passon and Juan Arturo Recio