Although the harrowing tales of Yasiel Puig's journey are better known, the road that Rangers center fielder Leonys Martin took was equally dangerous. Eliezer Lazo is facing punishment for leading an organization that kidnapped Martin and, according to the AP, put over 1,000 others through "prison-like conditions" on their way to the U.S..
Eliezer Lazo pleads guilty to extortion of Cubans, including Leonys Martin
A convicted felon may have twenty years added to his sentence after pleading guilty to extortion of over 1,000 Cubans -- including several baseball players -- as part of a human trafficking ring.
Rick Yeatts
Lazo, a 41-year-old felon already serving time for Medicare fraud, pleaded guilty on Friday to extortion charges that could add up to 20 years to his current five-year sentence. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Davidson, many of those being smuggled were “crowded together in rooms of 20 or more under armed guard” where they “were restrained and beaten while relatives could hear the screams on the phone.”
In a report by Yahoo’s Jeff Passan, Charles Robinson and Rand Getlin, the details from Martin’s lawsuit tell a story of armed kidnapping and the young prospect being held hostage in Mexico while his family was sequestered in Florida. According to the lawsuit, Lazo -- along with several accomplices -- kept Martin and others captive as they waited for the prospects to be signed to contracts in MLB.
Martin’s lawsuit was a counter-suit against Lazo’s Estrellas del Baseball company. Despite having paid EDB over $1.2 million, the company claimed that Martin had agreed -- under, as he claims in the court filings, the duress of an armed guard -- to pay 35 percent of his earnings to them in exchange for the service they supposedly provided and was still on the hook for another $450,000.
For his part, Martin is having none of EDB’s claims, stating in his suit that “EDB was a non-existent ... entity that serves as a front for illegal activity, such as human smuggling and trafficking, kidnapping and extortion” run by Eliezer Lazo and an accomplice, Joel Martinez Hernandez. Lazo continued to try intimidating Martin into paying even while he was serving his current sentence.
It’s not clear that will stop or if Martin can legally get his money back as part of a seizure of Lazo assets, but as his lawyer explained it, “It’s still better than paying out an additional $4 or $5 million.”
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