Major League Baseball has suspended a once-prized Dominican prospect after investigators uncovered an elaborate scheme to make him appear nearly two years younger than he is, including a fictitious death certificate and a planted gravesite tombstone, sources familiar with the investigation told ESPN.
The player had been known to teams as David Severino, a switch-hitting infielder. His real name is Daury David Severino Damaso. He was born April 2, 2010, and is 16 years old. The false identity listed a birthdate of Dec. 20, 2011.
The Cleveland Guardians agreed in December to a $2.8 million pre-deal with the player they believed was 13 or 14. Under that timeline, the agreement would have been finalized in 2029, when he would have been 17 and eligible to sign as an international amateur.
Both the name and the age were fake.
In 2023, trainer Francisco Nieves allegedly created the identity of a younger brother, David Severino Damaso, with the approval of the player’s parents, sources told ESPN. A late-filed fake birth registration was submitted under that name. Falsified medical and school records followed.
Two years later, a fraudulent death certificate was filed for Daury. It claimed he died of a respiratory illness on May 5, 2012, when he would have been 2. A fake tombstone was created and placed in a gravesite in La Romana, about 75 miles from Santo Domingo.
John Pereyra, a trainer who later worked with the player, called the scheme extreme even by the standards of a market long plagued by document fraud.
“You have to have [guts] to do something like this,” Pereyra told ESPN in Spanish. “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 said he trained the player for two years leading up to the Guardians agreement and did not know about the false identity. Near the end of 2023, after seeing him in a tryout, Pereyra purchased the rights to the player from Nieves for $20,000. He was told the boy was 11. When he later heard a brother had died young, he visited the gravesite himself and believed the story.
Several teams had already grown suspicious before MLB’s investigation. One international executive told ESPN a scout praised the player’s ability, but the first impression on seeing him in person was that he could not be the age listed. Another executive said the face looked older.
The Guardians terminated the agreement in May after learning the player was older than claimed. An MLB official declined comment, as did Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti. Nieves did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the player’s father.
The player’s actual age would have made him eligible for the 2027 international amateur class. The suspension will force him to wait an additional year before he can enter the market and sign. He had been competing against 12- and 13-year-olds; at his real age he would have been playing against 16- and 17-year-olds in the Dominican Summer League. One scout told ESPN that, in that setting, “He’s barely hanging on.”
Age and identity fraud remain common in the Dominican Republic, the largest pipeline of foreign-born MLB talent. Teams have for years struck illegal, nonbinding pre-deals with prospects well before they turn 16 — sometimes as young as 10 or 11 — according to league and team sources. That race to lock up talent at younger and younger ages has fueled both performance-enhancing drug use and document fraud.
The Guardians are not facing league discipline.
Pereyra still houses the player at his academy in Santiago and said he does not blame the teenager or the parents, citing the economic pressure in poor regions of the country. He said he does not know how he will recoup the money spent training the player and worries about the academy’s finances without the expected commission. His hope is that the player eventually signs a six-figure deal.
A scout told ESPN that if the player signs after serving the suspension, the bonus is more likely to be around $10,000.
