Wander Franco found criminally responsible — the full timeline from 2023 to 2026

On August 13, 2023, a series of social-media posts in Spanish-language Dominican baseball communities began circulating allegations that Wander Franco, then 22 and the Tampa Bay Rays' starting shortstop, was in an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl. The posts included partial screenshots that the original poster (whose identity has never been publicly confirmed) said had been obtained from a relative of the minor. The Tampa Bay Rays placed Franco on MLB's restricted list within 48 hours and the team's August 14 game proceeded without him. Franco was 22 years old; the alleged minor was 14. Major League Baseball opened its own administrative investigation in parallel with the Dominican criminal investigation that would follow.

By August 15, 2023, Dominican Attorney General Miriam Germán Brito's office had publicly confirmed that a criminal investigation had been opened into Franco for alleged sexual abuse of a minor and possible human trafficking — the latter charge possible under Dominican law because of allegations of payments made to the minor's family. The opening of the criminal investigation, paired with the MLB administrative leave, effectively ended Franco's 2023 season. He had been an All-Star earlier that summer.

September 21, 2023: Franco was formally questioned by Dominican prosecutors for the first time. He denied the allegations and was released without arrest. October 2023: Dominican prosecutors filed formal charges against Franco and against the minor's mother — the latter for allegedly facilitating the relationship and accepting financial payments. The mother's prosecution proceeded in parallel with Franco's for the duration of the case. November 2023: Travel restrictions were imposed on Franco preventing him from leaving the Dominican Republic without court approval. The Tampa Bay Rays moved his status from the restricted list to a formal administrative-leave designation under MLB's domestic violence policy framework.

January 2024: A Dominican judge denied a motion by Franco's defense team to dismiss the charges, finding that the evidence — including phone records, photo evidence, and statements from the minor's mother — was sufficient to proceed to trial. The trial date was initially scheduled for spring 2024 but would be postponed repeatedly over the next two years as the defense team filed additional motions and the prosecution requested time to develop additional evidence.

Throughout 2024, Franco remained on MLB's restricted list. He did not play a single game during the 2024 season. The Tampa Bay Rays continued to pay a reduced version of his salary under the terms of MLB's domestic-violence policy framework, which permits the league to administer compensation during ongoing investigations without terminating the player's contract. His $182 million contract — signed in November 2021 — remained nominally in effect but with no playing time accruing.

May 2024: MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred publicly stated that the league's own investigation would not conclude until the Dominican criminal case reached its verdict, in keeping with MLB's standard policy of deferring to local prosecution before issuing administrative discipline. October 2024: The Tampa Bay Rays organization stated, in their end-of-season communications, that the team was 'preparing for the 2025 season without Wander Franco available' and would not comment on his long-term roster status. The team's signing of Junior Caminero to a long-term contract in late 2024 was widely interpreted as confirmation that the front office had begun planning for a post-Franco future at the position.

January 2025: The trial finally opened in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, after multiple postponements. The prosecution presented its opening case across approximately four weeks of proceedings. Key prosecution evidence included phone records demonstrating extensive contact between Franco and the minor across late 2022 and early 2023, photo evidence preserved by the minor's older sister, and the cooperative testimony of the minor's mother who was being prosecuted separately for facilitating the relationship.

March 2025: The defense presentation began. Franco's legal team — led by Dominican attorney Teodosio Jáquez — argued that the relationship as alleged had not occurred, that the evidence had been manipulated, and that Franco had been the victim of an extortion attempt by the minor's family. The defense's extortion-attempt argument received significant attention in the Dominican press but was ultimately not accepted by the judges. The trial was suspended in April 2025 for procedural reasons related to a defense motion challenging the admissibility of certain evidence, and the suspension extended through the rest of 2025 while appellate courts ruled on the procedural questions.

September 2025: Franco appeared in a Punta Cana nightclub photograph that circulated briefly in Dominican media — his first publicly photographed appearance outside of court proceedings since 2023. The photograph generated significant criticism but had no bearing on the legal case.

May 23, 2026: The trial reconvened with closing arguments. Both sides spoke for approximately three hours. The prosecution emphasized the cumulative weight of the documentary evidence and the credibility of the minor's mother's cooperative testimony. The defense emphasized doubt about specific dates and the extortion-attempt narrative. May 24, 2026: The three-judge panel deliberated through the weekend. May 25, 2026: The verdict was delivered in open court. Franco was found criminally responsible for sexual abuse of a minor under Dominican law 24-97. He was acquitted of the human-trafficking charge based on insufficient evidence that the payments constituted trafficking under the legal definition.

Sentencing was scheduled for a separate hearing in approximately 30 days, per Dominican procedure. The maximum sentence under the conviction is up to 10 years of incarceration, though Dominican sentencing patterns for first-offense convictions of this type tend to range between 2-5 years with potential parole considerations. The minor's mother was found criminally responsible on her separate facilitation charge in the same verdict; her sentencing will be conducted alongside Franco's. Franco's defense team has indicated they will appeal.

MLB's administrative investigation will now reach its formal conclusion. The Commissioner's office is expected to issue a suspension under the league's domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy framework. The length of the MLB suspension is at the Commissioner's discretion and could exceed the Dominican incarceration period; previous MLB suspensions under this framework have ranged from 75 games to lifetime bans, with the Aroldis Chapman, Roberto Osuna and other cases providing the precedent range. The Tampa Bay Rays organization is expected to terminate Franco's contract — a separate action from the MLB suspension — using the morality-clause and conduct-detrimental-to-baseball provisions standard in MLB contracts.

The broader implications for MLB are substantive. The Franco case has been the largest international-jurisdiction misconduct case the league has handled in its modern history, and the protocols developed during the case (parallel investigation, deferred discipline, salary administration during the legal proceedings) will inform how MLB handles similar situations in the future. The Players Association has been involved at multiple stages and has consistently emphasized due-process concerns while also acknowledging the severity of the underlying allegations.

For the Tampa Bay Rays organization, the case closure permits the team to formally move past a roster question that has occupied them for three seasons. For Dominican baseball, the case has been a difficult but important moment of accountability that has been widely discussed in the Dominican baseball academy system and in the conversations that league officials have been having with Dominican federation leadership about player development environments. The verdict matters beyond the individual.