MLB Suspends Prized Dominican Prospect Who Faked His Death In Age-Cheating Scheme

David Severino was once one of the most prized young prospects in all of baseball after signing $2.8 million pre-deal with the Cleveland Guardians in December that would see him officially sign in 2029.

There’s just one big problem. David Severino does not exist.

The person who does exist is Daury David Severino Damaso, and Major League Baseball suspended him on Friday after uncovering an elaborate scheme to fake his age.

MLB Uncovers Complicated Age Cheating Scandal

The Guardians were under the impression that the player they signed was either 13 or 14 years old. Instead, Severino is 16 years old. But the controversy only gets more bizarre from there.

According to a report from ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez, Severino’s former trainer, Francisco Nieves, created the identity of David Severino Damaso, who he claimed was Daury’s younger brother.

The player’s parents went along with the scheme. But that was only the beginning.

Nieves and company created a fake, late-filed birth registration that showed a birthdate of Dec. 20, 2011. They also created falsified medical and school records in the name of David Severino.

Here’s where things get really weird.

Two years after the birth registration for David Severino was created, they also created a fake death certificate for Daury that showed he died of a respiratory illness on May 5, 2012, two years after he was born.

But if you’re going to create a scheme, you have to really sell it. So, Severino’s family also created a fake tombstone that they planted in a gravesite in La Romana, Dominican Republic.

“You have to have [guts] to do something like this,”  another of Severino’s former trainers told Gonzalez. “I’ve heard about false birth documents and stuff like that, but to put together what this guy did — that’s movie stuff. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that in the Dominican. In my life, I have never seen anything like that.”

Severino would have been eligible to sign a contract in 2027. He now must wait one year longer due to the suspension. Although the young player’s accomplishments become far less impressive when you realize he was competing against players 2-3 years younger than him.

“I had a scout tell me this Severino kid could really play,” one team executive told Gonzalez. “I went to see him, and the first thing I thought was, ‘There’s no way this kid is the age he says he is.'”

Coincidentally, the Cleveland Guardians were also the team with whom former starting pitcher Fausto Carmona became an All-Star in 2010. Two years later, Carmona was arrested by Dominican police who determined that he’d falsified both his name and age. Carmona was actually Roberto Hernandez, and he was more than three years older than he claimed.

Hernandez returned to the Major Leagues in 2013 with the Tampa Bay Rays before playing for four more MLB teams. But he never replicated his success of 2010 and was out of the league by 2016.