Fraud of the Day

Major League Baseball All-Star Game MVP Melky Cabrera is the most recent recipient of a 50-game ban handed down by the league office, after testing positive for testosterone -- a no-no under the league's performance enhancing drug policy. Normally that's where the story ends, barring appeals. However, the New York Daily News has discovered a bizarre plot -- one that would make Albert Belle's Cleveland Indians proud.

Melky and his "associates" concocted a website which sold a fake product containing a banned substance, which Cabrera unknowingly purchased and used. Cabrera presented this as evidence at his appeal hearing, and probably thought he was home free. That is, until some very obvious subjects were addressed:

MLB's department of investigations quickly began asking questions about the website and the "product" — Where was the site operating from? Who owned it? What kind of product was it? — and quickly discovered that an existing website had been altered, adding an ad for the product, a topical cream, that didn't exist.

The comedy of errors now involves the FDA, an investigation into Cabrera's "associates", and (what we can all assume) an unlikely repealing of the suspension.

[deadspin]