By Chris Brown / STL Baseball Today | @cbrown_STLBBT | March 16, 2016, 2:15 pm CT
By Ron Cogswell / CC Image / No changes
JUPITER, Fla. • As the Cardinals continue to await any potential punishment from Major League Baseball in the hacking of the Houston Astros database, the team employee responsible will now have to wait a little longer to find out how long he’ll spend behind bars.
The federal sentencing for Chris Correa was delayed for a second time last week, and the former Cardinals scouting director is now scheduled to have his sentencing hearing on June 6, Robert Patrick of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Wednesday.
In January, Correa pleaded guilty to five counts of unauthorized access to computer information. As Patrick writes, Correa “admitted accessing accounts of three Astros employees, viewing emails and information about aspiring major leaguers in the Astros’ proprietary database called ‘Ground Control.'”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Chu estimated during the January sentencing that the value of the information Correa gained access to was $1.7 million dollars, an amount which, under federal sentencing guidelines, means the former Cards executive could face three to four years in jail.
[Related: Complete coverage of the Astros Hacking Investigation and fallout]
At his hearing, Correa told U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes that he originally trespassed the Astros’ system “based on suspicions that they had misappropriated proprietary work from myself and my colleagues.” “So you broke in their house to find out if they were stealing your stuff?” Hughes said.
Correa did said he found Cardinals information in the system, and told Cardinals “colleagues” of that finding, according to his court transcript.
Cardinals GM John Mozeliak expressed confidence in January that no other team employees would be implicated in the matter, though he did acknowledge the possibility of sanctions from MLB. Commissioner Rob Manfred has a broad range of potential options at his disposal to punish individual clubs in such circumstances, and its not clear what form or severity of discipline the club might eventually receive.
