In federal court last month, big-league steroid dealer Tony Bosch and his attorneys painted a sad picture of the price he had paid to help bring down his clients -- including the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez and the Milwaukee Brewers' Ryan Braun. The fake doctor had sacrificed everything, they said, ducking from hotel to hotel for months to avoid threats on his life.
The judge didn't buy the sob story and hit Bosch with a heavy four-year prison term for selling performance-enhancing drugs. And new court documents suggest Judge Darrin Gayles was right to be skeptical.
Bosch wasn't exactly staying in Motel 6 as he snitched on his ex-clients. In fact, last year he signed leases for one apartment on exclusive Fisher Island, while his girlfriend rented a $700,000 downtown condo.
See also: Tony Bosch and Biogenesis: MLB Steroids Scandal
The leases are the latest proof that Bosch took money that Major League Baseball had agreed to provide for his legal team and security detail and, instead, spent it on a luxury lifestyle, says the attorney who introduced the new docs.
"[They] made numerous and substantial payments for the benefit of Bosch that were wholly outside the terms agreed upon with MLB," writes Frank Quintero Jr., an attorney representing ex-pitching coach Lazer Collazo, whose criminal case as an alleged accomplice of Bosch's is ongoing.
Quintero has been hammering away at Bosch's use of MLB's money as evidence that his stature as a witness against Collazo is questionable. Last month, the attorney alleged in another filing that Bosch had used MLB's cash on fancy hotels, dinners, and strip club visits.
MLB paid millions to Bosch's attorneys -- including Susy Ribero-Ayala and her husband, Julio -- and his security team, headed up by Bosch associate Raj Badree, in exchange for Bosch's testifying against his former clients.
A baseball spokesman told New Times last month that if Bosch secretly used the cash for other reasons, they didn't know about it. "We have no knowledge of any improper usage of payments we made to Bosch's security firm," MLB's Pat Courtney said.
Quintero's new filing alleges that even after a new order from Judge Cecilia Altonaga, Ribero-Ayala and Badree have failed to turn over docs related to MLB's payments.
Ayala says that's untrue and promises to open up her books for the judge.
"The Ayalas will file a reply to the response filed by Mr. Quintero and will invite the Court to conduct an in camera inspection of all of our un redacted bank statements and credit card statements to put this issue to rest once and for all," Susy Ribero-Ayala tells New Times.
But Ribero-Ayala declined to talk on the record about Bosch's luxury apartment rentals.
On February 5, 2014, the documents show Bosch co-signing a lease for a Fisher Island unit with Badree, the security leader. They agreed to pay a $6,780 deposit for the condo, which is worth $1.09 million, according to property records. The rent? A cool $6,000 per month.
They signed the deal shortly after A-Rod dropped the last of his lawsuits against MLB and the players' union -- and just as Bosch was meeting with federal agents to build the criminal case that would ensnare seven of his cohorts.
Five months later, Bosch is mentioned in another eye-opening lease. This time, a woman Quintero identifies as Bosch's "common law wife" signed a three-month rental of a 24th-floor unit in Ten Museum Park, a high-end Biscayne Boulevard building. The unit, which is valued at $688,000, would rent for $3,900 per month for three months.
Where was all of that cash coming from? Bosch hadn't had a functioning business for more than two years and was so broke when he agreed to cooperate with MLB in 2013 that he listed just $100 to his name in a child support filing.
Quintero says it's obvious. "Monies from MLB were diverted... for the benefit of Bosch via various intermediaries," the attorney writes.
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