Former Angels star Doug DeCinces sentenced to home detention in insider trading case

Former Angels baseball star Doug DeCinces was sentenced by a federal judge in Santa Ana on Monday to eight months of home detention and ordered to pay a fine for his role in an insider-trading scheme.

DeCinces, 68, was convicted in May 2017 for his role in the trading scheme that involved the alleged use of non-public information about a pending merger. DeCinces, who long denied the charges against him, later worked with government prosecutors as they sought to build a case against an alleged associate.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford handed down a one-day sentence, but DeCinces has credit for that amount of time served so will not do any more time behind bars. Guilford also fined him $10,000 and ordered the defendant to spend eight months in home confinement as part of two years of supervised release.

Following his conviction more than two years ago, DeCinces, of Newport Beach, agreed to help federal prosecutors in their case against James V. Mazzo, a friend from Laguna Beach, whose two trials ended with mistrials when jurors deadlocked. Prosecutors dumped the case against Mazzo in December.

Speaking to the judge, DeCinces said that if he could go back and change his actions, he would.

“I knew it was wrong,” he added.

Guilford said he considered a short prison term for DeCinces when coming into the courtroom “to help you sort things out and to plot a path back, but you convinced me you don’t need that.”

The federal judge admitted that, as a baseball fan himself, he spent a lot of time determining a fair sentence to the Angels star. But a letter of support for DeCinces, drafted by former Major League Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, helped with his decision making.

“He doesn’t carry arrogance as other (professional athletes) do,” Guilford read from the Ueberroth’s letter.

The judge held up a thick stack of letters of support for DeCinces, adding they were “maybe the biggest I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re a good man who made a mistake… I wish you the best,” Guildford added.

Two high profile friends of DeCinces, former Orange County Board Supervisor William Steiner and former Angels player Rod Carew, spoke on his behalf before the final sentencing.

Steiner, who served on the board of supervisors in the 1990s, said he knows DeCinces as a charitable man who spent his time and money helping others. One instance included when DeCinces and his family donated Christmas gifts to a children’s shelter every year, Steiner recalled.

DeCinces wiped away a tear, as Steiner told Judge Guilford the story.

“I believe in Doug,” Steiner said. “His legacy of service in the community … should mean something.”

Carew, an MLB Hall of Famer, called DeCinces a “true friend” who made a “big mistake.”

The 73-year-old former ballplayer had a heart attack in 2015, and underwent a successful heart and kidney transplant the year after.

“(DeCinces) was one of the few players who came to see me in the hospital,” Carew said, adding that he was there for about 300 days. “I woke up to him at my bedside.”

Carew echoed Steiner, adding that his Angels colleague over the years has also inspired him to get more involved in community work.

“I am here,” he said, “because he has done so much more for other people.”

Family members and friends of the former third baseman were in the courtroom, and hugged the teary-eyed DeCinces after proceedings ended Monday.

“I’m very thankful for finally getting through this long ordeal,” DeCinces said in an interview after the sentencing. “It’s been extremely difficult on myself and my family. I’m just blessed that it’s over, I now know what I have to face and move on.”

Mazzo, the ex-CEO of Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics, was accused of providing private information to DeCinces about the company’s pending merger with Abbot Laboratories, a larger medical company.

DeCinces was then accused of using that information to turn a $1 million-plus stock-market profit for himself and another $1 million profit for his family and friends, including David Parker.

The first criminal trial in the case ended with DeCinces and Parker being convicted in 2017, but jurors deadlocked on the charges against Mazzo. Mazzo was then the sole defendant in the second trial, which ended in another deadlocked jury and a mistrial.

DeCinces, who denied the charges for years, agreed to cooperate with the government after the first trial and testified against Mazzo during the second trial that the ex-CEO had tipped him to the merger weeks before it became public. The former baseball player then said that Mazzo told him to keep quiet, after the stock purchases drew the interest of New York Stock Exchange investigators.

DeCinces has also paid a $2.5 million fine to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

City News Service contributed to this report