Not long ago, Wander Franco was baseball’s top prospect, a generational talent with a future so undeniably bright that the cash-strapped Tampa Bay Rays gave him a rare mega-contract just 70 games into his MLB career.
Now, his future is in considerable doubt.
Franco was formally charged in his native Dominican Republic on Tuesday with sexual abuse and sexual exploitation against a minor, nearly a year to the day that an investigation into his alleged relationship with a then-14-year-old girl opened.
On Wednesday, prosecutors said Franco was being charged as well with human trafficking, according to ESPN. Franco faces up to a 20-year prison sentence for that offense.
His U.S. lawyer declined comment Tuesday, telling The Associated Press that Franco had not been formally told of the charges.
The past 12 months have been filled with graphic accusations against the once-budding baseball superstar, whom prosecutors claim paid the minor’s mother to consent to what ended up being a four-month relationship.
The teenager’s mother was also charged with human trafficking, according to Wednesday’s development.
Franco, who turned 23 in March, has not played in an MLB game since Aug. 12, first going on the league’s restricted list before being moved that month to an indefinite administrative leave.
That leave, under which Franco is still being paid, was most recently extended through Sunday as MLB continues its own investigation.
Although the deadline to press charges expired last Friday, Dominican law allows a judge to issue a 10-day extension, during which prosecutors can finalize their cases. Wednesday marked exactly one year since an initial complaint against Franco was filed.
The allegations against Franco became public through social media in August. More specifics from the allegations surfaced in January, when prosecutors submitted a 600-page document to a Dominican judge, according to ESPN, which obtained the filing.
The prosecutors’ evidence reportedly included claims that Franco had sex with the minor when he was 21; that the minor asserted her mother saw her “as an object to make money”; and that Franco would send helicopters and cars to pick up the minor so she could meet with him.
Toward the end of their alleged relationship, the minor was said to begin seeing someone else.
“I would like you to forget everything you have learned to raise you my way,” Franco allegedly wrote in a WhatsApp message to the girl at the time, according to the document obtained by ESPN.
He also allegedly wrote, “You’re just a girl and you don’t know how to get along with me, that’s why you failed, but I’ll give you only one chance, you must be only for me. Don’t look at anyone, I know you’ve been with someone else, but no one will know how to use you the way I want.”
In August, the girl shared allegations against Franco on social media before taking down her accounts.
“He used me and as you saw in the messages, he bribed me a lot and they took me out of the school I was in because of him, he has damaged my life and he has not even tried to fix it,” she wrote, according to ESPN.
Franco then denied the claims on Instagram Live.
Lauded for his elite bat speed, power to all fields and control of the strike zone, the switch-hitting Franco signed with the Rays as an international amateur for $3.8 million in 2017 and was 20 years old when he made his MLB debut in 2021.
A few months later, the shortstop reached an 11-year, $182 million extension with Tampa Bay. It was far and away the most-expensive contract ever handed out by the small-market Rays, who in the not-so-distant past had traded away franchise staples including Evan Longoria, Chris Archer and David Price.
Franco earned his first All-Star selection in 2023 and hit a career-high 17 home runs in 112 games before his season came to a sudden end. The switch-hitter has batted .282 with 30 home runs and a .795 OPS over parts of three MLB seasons.
It remains to be seen if he’ll ever play again.
“My girl,” Franco allegedly wrote to the minor in Spanish over WhatsApp at one point, according to ESPN’s January report on the 600-page document. “If my team realizes this, it could cause problems for me. It is a rule for all teams that we cannot talk to minors, and yet I took the risk and I loved it.”