Chris Correa, a former scouting director for the St. Louis Cardinals who was fired for his role in hacking the database of the Houston Astros, pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Houston to five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer.
Chris Correa, a former scouting director for the St. Louis Cardinals who was fired for his role in hacking the database of the Houston Astros, pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Houston to five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer.
In a highly unusual situation for professional sports involving two teams that went to the postseason in 2015, Correa, 35 — who was dismissed in early July after the case emerged — now faces sentencing in April, with a maximum penalty on each count of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
No other members of the Cardinals organization were charged.
Hours after the plea, Major League Baseball issued a statement in which it said it was anticipating that federal authorities would “share with us the results of their investigation at the appropriate time.” After that, Major League Baseball added, “we will determine what further actions to take.” Those actions could include a fine assessed against the Cardinals or a loss of draft picks by the club.
According to court documents, Correa gained access to the Astros’ database from March 2013 through June 2014. 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.
The court filing shows that his pattern of unauthorized access fit neatly with the draft-driven calendar followed by baseball officials — including Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ general manager and Correa’s former boss in St. Louis, who oversaw the Cardinals’ drafts until leaving for Houston in December 2011.
According to the summary of the charges, a former Cardinals employee was told to turn over his Cardinals laptop and password to Correa. The former employee — most likely Luhnow or Sig Mejdal, now a top Astros analyst — used a “similar (albeit obscure) password” for his Astros email and other accounts, according to the court documents, and Correa used that password to breach the Astros’ system, known as Ground Control.
“They were watching what the Astros were doing,” Kenneth Magidson, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas in Houston, told reporters after Correa’s guilty plea.
He put the financial damages for all of Correa’s computer intrusions at $1.7 million.