The Mets’ Delicate Dance With a Billionaire

When the Mets needed money after their owners were fleeced by Bernard L. Madoff, they turned to Steven A. Cohen, a hedge-fund billionaire. Their first request to him to invest came in 2010. A year later, Cohen emerged again as a possible financial lifeline before the Mets agreed to sell 33 percent of the team for $200 million to David Einhorn, another hedge-fund wizard. But that deal eventually collapsed.

Steven A. Cohen is a minority partner of the Mets, but his company faces a $1.2 billion penalty for insider trading.

Ultimately, Cohen paid $20 million for one of the 12 minority partnerships that Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, the team’s co-owners, sold last year. Even at that point, Cohen’s company, SAC Capital Advisors, was the focus of a long federal investigation into insider trading, which raised questions about the small pool of investors willing to pay for the Mets’ stakes and the owners’ due diligence of Cohen.

On Monday, SAC agreed to plead guilty to insider trading violations and to pay a record $1.2 billion penalty. Cohen has not been personally charged by the government, but he has been tainted by the conduct of his company.

Now, should Wilpon and Katz â€" or Major League Baseball â€" push Cohen to sell his sliver of the Mets? Fay Vincent, a former baseball commissioner who is a securities lawyer, said of Cohen: “Don’t forget, there’s a big difference between the company being charged criminally and he being charged. At this moment, he hasn’t been nicked.”

But, he added: “Generally speaking, people in these situations come forward and say to the company: ‘What do you want me to do? I don’t want to embarrass you. You’ve got plenty of troubles as it is.’ And many times, the individual will leave.”

That may not be so easy at Citi Field. The limited partners have agreed not to sell their shares for three years â€" or until around March 2015 â€" and to offer them to existing partners first. Given the debt-filled recent history of the Mets, it is unlikely that Wilpon has $20 million lying around to return to Cohen as the team seeks, in the weeks ahead, to sign some free agents with the money now coming off its payroll. Other minority partners, like the comedian Bill Maher, may not be willing to finance Cohen’s exit.

And if his stake were then offered to outside bidders, how many people these days want to invest tens of millions in the Mets?

Cohen certainly did not invest in the Mets in anticipation of any wild profits down the road. Cohen and the other Mets partners are receiving 3 percent annual compound interest if they keep their shares for six years, according to a document circulated to prospective investors.

Major League Baseball has pressed troubled owners to get out before, but only those who actually owned a controlling interest in their teams. Commissioner Bud Selig went to war against Frank McCourt to get him to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers, angered that McCourt had overused debt and diverted team money to finance his and his then-wife’s lavish lifestyle, among other reasons. And baseball pushed Marge Schott out of her position as the managing general partner of the Cincinnati Reds because of a series of ethnic, racial and inflammatory remarks.

Yet baseball approved Jim Crane as the owner of the Houston Astros despite his airfreight company’s legal problems. First, a federal investigation found that Crane’s company engaged in a pattern of racial and sex discrimination, charges that Crane settled by signing a consent decree. (Crane never admitted guilt and his spokesman has called the investigation a “shakedown.”) Second, two of his employees committed crimes that helped the company profit from the Iraq war.

In any case, a majority owner is of more concern to baseball than a minority partner, like Cohen, who has little power over a team’s direction. Cohen’s investment in the Mets, though relatively expensive, was not intended to give him a voice in the front office. And when fans think of the Mets, they think of Gary Cohen, the team broadcaster, not Steve Cohen. “Does this rise to the level where he should be forced to divest himself of ownership?” said Scott Rosner, a sports business professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “Well, I can tell you if he were a potential buyer, he wouldn’t fly. He wouldn’t survive the due diligence. But he’s an existing owner and he probably has more leeway.”

Prosecutors could still, of course, file charges against Cohen. “If this falls on him,” Rosner said, “it’s a different story.”

Email: sandor@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on November 5, 2013, on page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: The Mets’ Delicate DanceWith a Billionaire.