For roughly 20 months, the FBI and Justice Department were investigating the St. Louis Cardinals for hacking into the internal database of the Houston Astros.
Former Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa was sentenced to 46 months in prison last July for what amounted to 12 counts of corporate espionage.
Monday afternoon, Major League Baseball announced it had concluded its investigation into the hacking scandal. The Cardinals have been hit with the following penalties from commissioner Rob Manfred:
- A $2 million payment to the Astros, which must be paid within 30 days.
The Cardinals' two highest picks in the 2017 draft are being awarded to the Astros.
- Correa has been placed on the permanently ineligible list. He's banned from baseball.
The Cardinals surrendered their first-round pick to sign qualified free agent Dexter Fowler earlier this offseason, which means their second- and third-round picks will go to Houston. Those are the 56th and 75th overall selections.
"The Houston Astros support MLB's ruling and award of penalties," the team said in a statement. "This unprecedented award by the Commissioner's Office sends a clear message of the severity of these actions.
MLB says it found no evidence a Cardinals employee other than Correa hacked into the Astros' database, so no one else with the team has been disciplined. The club has been fined because ultimately, this happened on their watch. Manfred said he found Houston "suffered material harm" that is "not amenable to precise quantification."
"We respect the Commissioner's decision and appreciate that there is now a final resolution to this matter," Cardinals chairman and CEO Bill DeWitt said in a statement.
