A St. Louis Cardinals executive is going to do time for hacking into the Houston Astros’ player scouting database starting in 2013.
A federal court judge in Houston sentenced former Cardinals scouting director Christopher Correa to 46 months in prison for illegally logging into the Astros’ personnel database and downloading pages and pages of confidential information, BuzzFeed’s Lindsey Adler reported Monday. Correa used former Cardinals scouting executive and current Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow’s credentials to access the information.
Correa learned Luhnow’s credentials when the Astros GM turned in his computer upon leaving the Cards in 2011. Luhnow used a password similar to “Eckstein123” (referring to former Cardinal David Eckstein), which he used in St. Louis, and first accessed the Astros’ system on March 8, 2013. Correa continued to use it throughout the year, downloading documents before the 2013 Major League Baseball Draft, during the draft and on the day of that year’s trade deadline. Correa even logged into Luhnow’s email a year later to obtain the new password to the database after it was changed.
The Cardinals likely will face some sort of punishment now that Correa has been sentenced, as commissioner Rob Manfred previously said the league would wait until it had access to all the facts out of the trial. The league said in a statement Monday that it’s already looking into the case.
“Now that the criminal process has been completed, Commissioner Manfred has asked the Department of Investigations to conduct a complete investigation of the facts in this matter, including requesting information from the appropriate law enforcement authorities,” MLB said, per Adler. “The Commissioner hopes that the investigation can be completed promptly to put him in a position to take appropriate action.”
Thumbnail photo via Jeff Curry/USA TODAY Sports Images
