Defense expert attributes ADHD to Yasiel Puig's responses in sports betting investigation

LOS ANGELES (CN) — Yasiel Puig is a poster child for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a neuropsychologist testified Friday at his trial on charges the former Major League Baseball outfielder lied to federal agents investigating his involvement with an illegal bookmaker.

Dr. Paola Suarez was the first witness called by Puig’s attorneys after the government rested its case on the ninth day of trial.

Suarez told the jury in downtown Los Angeles that she diagnosed Puig with ADHD as well as with post-traumatic stress disorder that she said stemmed from the trauma he endured when he was kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel and held for ransom as he was trying to flee Cuba.

Those cognitive conditions could have been triggered during his January 2022 interview with federal agents and prosecutors, Suarez testified under questioning by Charles Harrison, one of Puig’s lawyers.

The number of people at the video-conference interview, including Puig’s own attorneys and a translator, would have been overwhelming and stressful for someone with ADHD and PTSD, and make it difficult from them to draw correct inferences of what was going on.

“It would be like not being able to make sense of what is in front of them,” Suarez said.

Puig, 35, is accused of obstruction of justice and of making false statements when he was questioned about his participation in the sports betting operation of Wayne Nix, a former minor league pitcher who operated an unlicensed gambling business in Southern California — where sports betting is illegal — that was used by high-profile athletes.

His attorneys have argued that the interview during which Puig was supposed to have lied was “a game of foreign language telephone” conducted through a Zoom-style web conference with all the participants in different locations.

Puig either wasn’t sure about or couldn’t remember the events that had taken place three years earlier in 2019, with the intervening fog of the pandemic lockdown, Jose Nuño, also one of his attorneys, told the jury during his opening statement last week.

“Confusion doesn’t equal a crime,” Nuño told the jury.

Suarez testified that Puig showed all the symptoms of ADHD when she evaluated him in 2023, including fidgeting, constantly looking at his phone during their meeting and not being able to wait for her signal before starting on a test.

“The hyperactivity was very obvious, and the impulsivity was very obvious,” she said.

The former LA Dodgers slugger wasn’t a target of the government’s investigation of Nix’s organization when he agreed to do a voluntary interview in 2022.

Criminal investigators with the Internal Revenue Service and Homeland Security testified earlier that they were initially more concerned with possible organized crime involvement and with money laundering, as well as the integrity of professional sports, when they started investigating Nix.

After Nix started cooperating with the government, he provided them with names of his clients, which included numerous high-profile baseball, basketball and football players in addition to Puig, and the IRS and Homeland Security investigators “went down the list” to talk with the players and verify Nix’s story.

Puig played for the Dodgers from 2013 to 2018, and his purported involvement with Nix’s illegal betting business started in 2019, after he had been traded to the Cincinnati Reds. Nix wouldn’t let his clients place bets on sports in which they themselves participated, and Puig isn’t accused of betting on baseball games.

In 2022, Puig had agreed to plead guilty to lying to federal agents and to pay a fine of at least $55,000. However, when it was time to enter the plea before Chief U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee, who’s now presiding over his trial, Puig changed his mind and refused to go through with it.

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