The lawsuit claims that Manfred “let the ringleader keep his position in exchange for providing information that would implicate Luhnow,” and goes on to identify Tom Koch-Weser, who is listed as the team’s director of advance information, as the mastermind. Manfred, the suit said, ignored more than 22,000 text and chat messages from Koch-Weser

“Tellingly, none of these messages sent or received by Koch-Weser included Luhnow or suggested that he had any awareness of the activity,” the suit states, adding that Koch-Weser “even texted his colleagues ‘don’t tell Jeff’” and emphasized that Luhnow was never aware of or involved in the scheme.

Luhnow did, however, have knowledge of a system called Codebreaker that used an algorithm to decode sign sequences and was mentioned in a PowerPoint presentation in 2016. But the suit said this effort was only undertaken after games were completed, not in real time, and that Manfred acknowledged it was not a rules violation. As for an August 2017 email the league used to implicate Luhnow, the suit said that while it refers to “dark arts,” it does not mention electronic in-game sign stealing.

The suit contends Koch-Weser was the only witness to implicate Luhnow, and that Koch-Weser “lied repeatedly” to save his job. The suit said that Luhnow gave proper warnings to staffers about following the rules on electronic equipment, and that it was unrealistic to expect him to be aware of the activities of everyone on his staff.

Source: New York Times

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