Former St. Louis Cardinals Scouting Director Correa to Plead Guilty

Louis Cardinals scouting director who was sacked in July 2015 for his alleged role in hacking a Houston Astros database, pleaded guilty Friday to federal charges.

Correa’s sentencing is scheduled for April 11, the date of the Cardinals’ home opener. For his crimes, Correa faces five years in prison for each conviction and a $250,000 fine.

Jeff Luhnow, the general manager of the Astros, once held a prominent position with the Cardinals front office, and was responsible for numerous analytic advancements made within the Cardinals organization in terms of drafting and developing players.

“Unauthorized computer intrusion is not to be taken lightly”, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson of the Southern District of Texas said in a statement.

Correa was sacked in July of 2014 after media reports first surfaced of the hackings.

The Cardinals retained the Dowd Bennett law firm to handle an internal inquiry several months before the June 2015 disclosure that the FBI was investigating whether the team hacked into the Astros’ database. No other personnel associated with the Cardinals organization have been charged.

The Astros claim that there were multiple breaches into their database. Correa was then the Cardinals’ baseball development director, helping the team’s baseball operations department with analytics, and he became the scouting director in December 2014. Throughout 2013, Correa was able to access scout rankings of every player eligible for the draft and viewed a weekly digest page that described the performance and injuries of prospects the Astros were considering, according to officials. At the time, a lawyer representing Correa denied that his client was involved in any illegal conduct. “And, we are confident that Commissioner (Rob) Manfred will guide Major League Baseball through this process in the best way possible”.

Court documents said Christopher Correa guessed the password to the Astros’ database called “Ground Control”.

Correa got all of that information when an Astros employee who had previously worked for the Cardinals gave his Cardinals-owned laptop to Correa, along with the password.

Correa told the judge that his choices were “stupid” ones.