Alex Pussieldi Update: Decade After Ouster in Florida, Peeping Tom and Multinational Trafficker Coach Remains a Powerful Figure in Brazilian Swimming
October 27, 2024by Irvin Muchnick
The full Alex Pussieldi story is told in a Chapter 9, “Sex, Lies, and Alex Pussieldi,” of the new book UNDERWATER: The Greed-Soaked Tale of Sexual Abuse in USA Swimming and Around the Globe.
PREVIOUSLY: “Decade After Ouster in Florida, Peeping Tom and Multinational Trafficker Coach Remains a Powerful Figures in Brazilian Swimming,” October 27, https://concussioninc.net/?p=15882
Two days ago, as part of my practice of keeping some of the worst stories of youth sports coach sexual abuse from disappearing down memory holes, despite the diligent forgetfulness of those who know better, I reviewed what’s up with Brazilian, American, and now again Brazilian swimming power player Alex Pussieldi.
He’s the guy who peeped on his wards – teen male swimmers imported from Latin American and Middle East countries – in Florida; who, when caught in the act by one of them, beat him up on the pool deck of the International Swimming Hall of Fame complex in Fort Lauderdale; who nonetheless slithered away again and eventually started his own program in nearby Davie; and who, finally, was fined and indefinitely suspended by Florida Gold Coast Swimming for rigging his team’s meet entries with outside ringers. Whereupon, he “retired.”
Retired, that is, back to his native Brazil, where he’s a swimming news mogul at the same time he serves as “communications coordinator” for the South American swimming governance federation, while also being the honored eponym of the annual Alex Pussieldi Trophy meet for Brazilian youth swimmers.
You might be wondering what SwimSwam, the go-to site for news in the sport, has to say about all this.
The answer is: nothing. They haven’t told their readers the first thing about this coach’s scandals, which include a 2004 USA Swimming investigator’s report that became part of thousands of reluctantly filed court papers that got subpoenaed by the FBI and eventually informed a federal grand jury probe of swimming.
Braden Keith, the editor-in-chief of SwimSwam, and its co-founder and -owner, didn’t respond to our request for comment for this article. Keith hasn’t communicated with me at all since 2014, when he set up a telephone conversation for which he no-showed, after which he disappeared on me for good.
Our conversation was to have been about a remark made to me by a SwimSwam writer, Jared Anderson, regarding my coverage of the FBI’s interest in USA Swimming’s insurance fraud and abuse cover-ups. On May 14, 2014, Anderson emailed me, “We published a story ourselves recently that brought on some push back from USA Swimming.”
Keith, however, emailed, “No articles on the subject of USA swimming and the FBI has been written by Jared Anderson.”
I then asked Keith what was the SwimSwam article that triggered “pushback.” He replied: “I’m driving in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas. Can you give me a ring please? [phone number]”
But Keith didn’t pick up when I called. Nor did he respond to voicemail and email follow-ups.
Regarding the general subject of an FBI investigation of USA Swimming … Over the years I’ve tried to explain to readers that the definition of an FBI investigation is a deliberately slippery semantic slope. The purpose of making this formulation vague is to allow the bureau (or any police or investigative agency) wiggle room to escalate or stand down from moment to moment, depending on how much pressure it was under to do anything beyond stocking child sexual abuse academic expert panels with agents who might be eyeing post-retirement consulting gigs with USA Swimming.
The subpoena by the FBI field office in Campbell, California, of the USA Swimming files, after the California Supreme Court, in 2012, ordered the organization to stop defying lower court discovery orders in coach abuse survivors’ lawsuits – does that qualify as an investigation?
Or the publicizing by a Los Angeles field office agent, Randall Devine, to call him with tips in this area – is that investigate-y enough for you?
Or how about the bust of Alex Pussieldi’s coaching colleague Roberto Caragol by a regional multi-agency sex crime task force headed by the FBI’s North Miami office? (A former federal agent told me that Pussieldi’s practices were also being closely watched through that period.)
In 2014, then Congressman George Miller produced a promised investigation of USA Swimming sexual abuse, which turned out to be about as hard-hitting as a bag of kelp. The San Jose Mercury News was one of the handful of news outlets with which Miller even bothered sharing his exchange of letters with the FBI over his pulled-punch findings. Hot on the trail of this story, the Merc made its focus the assurance by USA Swimming that it was not under investigation.
Regarding the specific subject of Alex Pussieldi and the swimming news site … SwimSwam thinks he’s just swell.
When Florida Gold Coast Swimming gave him the heave-ho in the wake of irregularities, and Nova Southeastern University decided to stop housing his foreign swimmers, SwimSwam told readers that “the great Alex Pussieldi,” winner of multiple American Swimming Coaches Association coach of excellence designations, was retiring. With exquisite specificity, SwimSwam explained his Davie Nadadores “sort of came apart.”
As chronicled in our last installment, after retreating to Brazil for, among other things, a stint as a commentator for the SporTV network there, Pussiedi also resumed the news and commentary operations of his website Best Swimming — which merged with the Brazil-based swimchannel site, extending the defrocked coach’s reach throughout Latin America.
In the midst of ConcussionInc.’s original reports in the mid-2010s, Swimming World magazine removed him as its Brazil correspondent. But for SwimSwam, it’s been full speed ahead with the great Alex Pussieldi. To this day, the site’s search engine shows, he and Best Swimming are regularly cited as the source of breaking information. On May 15, “Brazilian journalist Alex Pussieldi” reported on swimmer Stephanie Bucchini’s expected recovery timeline following an appendectomy. Last year “Best Swimming’s Alex Pussieldi” had the details of Olympic gold medalist Caeleb Dressely’s comeback plans.
The good folks at SwimSwam use Pussieldi’s services for translations of Facebook posts from Portuguese. They use him for the lowdown on where the world championships would be staged after they got pulled from Russia. On which countries FINA, the international federation, qualified to enter relay teams in upcoming competitions.
One thing you can’t read at SwimSwam is that Alexandre Azanbuja Pussieldi is one of the worst bad guys in the history of the sport. One whose continued prominence is enabled by – among many others – SwimSwam.
