AP: MLB’s new unit probing player ID theft as well as drug use

Major League Baseball’s new investigative unit is at work on several probes that could lead to discipline while also dealing with the burgeoning business of player identity theft.

The department of investigations, established in January at the recommendation of former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, already uncovered evidence that Jordan Schafer, the top prospect in the Atlanta Braves’ farm system, used human growth hormone. Schafer was suspended April 8 for 50 games.

“There are several other investigations in the pipeline,” said Bob DuPuy, baseball’s chief operating officer. “You’ll be reading about them.”
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Still, they said their unit was spending more time on player protection issues, such as identity theft, than it was on drug probes.

In an interview Monday at MLB’s offices, [Dan] Mullin said there were about 500 instances in 2007 relating to investigations in which players were victims, which included instances ranging from fraud to stalking to phony pages on MySpace and Facebook. There is an ongoing probe of two people falsely claiming to be scouts.

“Some of them were full-blown identity thefts, where people are opening lines of credit in someone’s name, and some of them are just impostor cases,” Mullin said. “We had a case last year where a guy was posing as a player. He actually was dating a girl. She believed she was dating this major league player, shopping for real estate, shopping for cars.”