The Athletic: A former White Sox exec on skimming bonuses, team ownership, life after prison and more

On May 16, 2008, the White Sox fired senior director of player personnel David Wilder, along with two scouts, as the result of an FBI investigation into a bonus-skimming scandal in the Dominican Republic orchestrated by the trio. They were found to have defrauded the Sox organization of more than $400,000, receiving kickbacks from signing bonuses and contract buyouts of Latin American players. It was part of a wider investigation into the practice in Major League Baseball. Wilder eventually pleaded guilty to mail fraud in federal court, and in 2013, he was sentenced to two years in federal prison…..

Do you feel like you weren’t valued before you started skimming?

That’s the reason I started doing it. I got passed over for a World Series bonus. The (skimmed) money was negotiated from the buscones and taken from the buscones, not the kids. I oversaw the department and took charge of that. The judge said, you will get an extra year (than another scout involved) because you were in charge. But why didn’t they investigate all of baseball then? Everyone was doing this. Did people think we invented this? It’s everywhere. In the Dominican, at least.

I did two years for it. Yeah, it was wrong. I took money, but it wasn’t $400,000 — it was, maybe $175,000 personally over a couple years. I considered it the World Series bonus I never got. People may say, ‘Oh, sour grapes.’ But if you’re in your job and doing a great job and working hard and then you don’t get a bonus when they win?