Somewhere in La Romana, seventy-five miles from Santo Domingo, a tombstone marks the death of a boy who never died. That detail is the only part of this story that still feels new.
According to sources familiar with MLB’s investigation, as reported by ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez, the Cleveland Guardians agreed in December 2025 to a $2.8 million pre-deal with a switch-hitting infielder they knew as David Severino. They believed he was 13 or 14. The money was supposed to become real in the 2029 international period, when the fake age would make him 17 and eligible to sign. His real name is Daury David Severino Damaso. He was born April 2, 2010. He is 16. The Guardians terminated the agreement in May once the age surfaced. MLB has now suspended him in a way that forces an extra year of waiting past his actual 2027 eligibility class.
The scheme, sources told ESPN, allegedly ran through then-trainer Francisco Nieves with the parents’ approval. In 2023 they created the identity of a younger brother named David Severino Damaso, complete with a late-filed birth registration listing Dec. 20, 2011, plus falsified medical and school records. Two years later a fraudulent death certificate was filed for Daury, claiming he died of a respiratory illness on May 5, 2012, at age two. Then came the gravesite prop in La Romana. Daury became David. The original boy disappeared on paper so the new one could hunt a bigger bonus.
I have watched Dominican age fraud long enough to expect creative birth certificates. I did not expect a planted headstone.
Trainer John Pereyra, who paid Nieves $20,000 near the end of 2023 for the player’s rights and trained him for two years without knowing the identity was fake, said it out loud: “You have to have [guts] to do something like this. 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.” Pereyra visited the gravesite and believed it. He still houses the kid. Nieves, the father, Chris Antonetti, and an MLB official all declined comment or did not respond.
The Face Already Told Every Scout the Truth
The documents were the elaborate part. The body language was not. One unnamed international executive told ESPN a scout hyped Severino, so he went to look himself. “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.’” Another executive was blunter: “The face was older. You could just tell he was older.”
They saw it. Teams still chased the pre-deal anyway, because the international amateur market has trained itself to treat projected 13-year-olds like futures contracts. A scout put the performance gap in the only terms that matter. Against the 12- and 13-year-olds he was supposed to match, Severino looked like a prize. Against the 16- and 17-year-olds he actually belonged with in the Dominican Summer League? “He’s barely hanging on.”
That single line explains the entire incentive. Dominate kids two years younger, cash the handshake, hope the paperwork holds. When it collapses, the suspension lands on the prospect. The adults who allegedly built the identity stay quiet. The next wave of underage pre-deals keeps moving because the pipeline has always run on hope and documents that can be bought.
A Kid Will Answer to Whatever Name the Adults Invent
Pereyra understood the power imbalance better than anyone. “When you have a kid,” he said, “and you tell him, ‘Look, your name is not Daury. If someone asks your name, you say, ‘David Severino Damaso’’ — [he will] do it.” Of course he will. The adults wrote the script, filed the death certificate, and planted the stone. Scouts now talk as if any future deal might land closer to $10,000 than the six-figure hope that once floated around him. The Guardians walk away without discipline. MLB gets its suspension. The market resets and pretends the next 13-year-old handshake is clean diligence.
I am not shocked that age fraud still thrives in the Dominican. I am finished pretending a multimillion-dollar pre-deal culture with children who cannot legally sign is somehow separate from the fake tombstone it produces. Severino waits the extra year. The stone in La Romana is still standing. The system that required it never even slowed down.
