YANK VP’S SON HAS ‘ROID PAST
The son of Yankees senior vice president Felix Lopez Jr. was busted in 2002 for trafficking in a banned date-rape drug that has been used by athletes for muscle recovery, and for possession of anabolic steroids at his Tampa apartment, records reveal.
Felix Lopez III, who in recent weeks has been spotted at the Yankees’ minor league facility in Tampa working out in official team sweats, served 19 months of probation after pleading guilty to reduced charges in 2003.
A number of highly placed Yankees sources were unaware of his criminal record until The Post asked about it. Only then did the team ask Lopez to stay away from the minor league complex.
His father, Lopez Jr., is the son-in-law of Bombers owner George Steinbrenner.
Lopez III, 30, was arrested at his Tampa home in September 2002 as part of a nationwide Drug Enforcement Administration sting, which cooperated with local law enforcement authorities, for trafficking in a drug known as GBL.
Cops kicked in the door to his apartment after he signed for a package containing a shipment of GBL, a chemical relative of the date-rape drug GHB, which had been used in supplements marketed toward athletes and bodybuilders for muscle recovery and sleep aid.
The burly Lopez III, records say, was apprehended at gunpoint. Inside the apartment, police found multiple vials of anabolic steroids, a shotgun, paperwork referring to the chemical used to make the club-drug Ecstasy, as well as between one and five kilograms of GBL.
Lopez III, who is a contractor, could have been sentenced to 15 years in prison if convicted of trafficking GBL, which had been linked to a number of overdoses and deaths. But the charge was reduced to possession with intent to distribute. He pleaded guilty to that and to the steroid possession charge and received a sentence of 36 months of probation which later was reduced at his request to 19 months.
Lopez III also was arrested on a battery charge in 2005 after allegedly punching his ex-girlfriend, who soon after claimed he threatened to release salacious videos of her. That case later was dropped.
Earlier this week, a source said Lopez III had been hired as a strength trainer for the Yankees minor league facility, which is overseen by Lopez Jr., who married Jessica Steinbrenner in 2002.
But Lopez III, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, and Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for George Steinbrenner, all denied that the younger Lopez had been, or was going to ever be, hired by the Yankees.
“I’m not a hire . . . I wish,” Lopez III said. “It’s always best to let family just do kind of their own thing. I don’t work for the complex at all, no W-2, no paychecks, nothing.”
