The Underworld Podcast - DM'ing Dominican Narcos, The Shooting of David Ortiz, & Cesar The Abuser

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

The Dominican Republic has long been a transshipment for cocaine heading to the United States and Europe. In recent years Dominican traffickers have started playing major roles in the supply chain. Corruption has flourished as local 'capos' have grown more powerful. All of this came to head when iconic and world famous baseball player David Ortiz was gunned down in a crowded bar in the summer of 2019. A week after the shooting, Sport Illustrated sent us down there to figure out what happened, opening up a door of cocaine, corruption, and the island's most powerful drug lord, Cesar The Abuser. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals, because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. It's a hot early summer night in Santa Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. And despite it being Sunday, the bars are bumping. Depending on who you ask, the scene at the dial bar and lounge is either a bit too dangerous

or the kind of place where a couple of edgy celebs can kick it with no worries. That's what's happening on the next day. night of June 9th, 2019, at least. David Ortiz, arguably the most beloved person in the Dominican Republic, and hell, maybe one of the most beloved baseball players in all of baseball, is having some drinks with a famous reggaeton artist named Secretto, a television host named Juel Lopez, and a shady businessman everyone called Sixto. The street is popping, there's nightlife spots all up and down the block, lots of restaurants and bars. Santo Domingo can be a bit of a rough town, beautiful, but no

stranger to gun violence. And someone of Ortiz's profile might stand to have some bodyguards, or at least be up in some VIP section. But this is his island. He's from the barrios and he's warship there. What could go wrong? Lopez, the TV host, even puts up an Instagram caption under a photo of him and Ortiz that night reading, you know we are from the streets. But there's someone else at the bar too. And he's been watching that table of celebrities all night for hours, reporting back to a team of a dozen or so people that includes two other nearby cars and two people on a motorcycle.

In fact, he takes a grainy picture of the table before Ortiz arrives and text it to a member of his team who then text it to someone else and on and on it went like a bad game of telephone until it was seen by Rolfi Ferre Cruz, who had recently returned to the DR after spending a few years in New Jersey. Cruz knew what he had to do that night

when he first looked at the grainy photo. The driver pulled the motorcycle up to the bar and dropped him off. He walked up the streets, pulled out a pistol, rolled up to the bar's patio, and all of this on camera, he shoots David Ortiz, a man probably more well known than the president of the country in the back. Mota, the guy who had been watching the table and had taken the photo, barely flinches as chaos erupts when customers realize someone has just been shot. The most beloved and famous man in the Dominican Republic has just been gunned down in front of dozens of witnesses. Who the hell would do such a thing? A week or so afterwards, Ortiz was still recovering. Sports Illustrated sent me down there to try to find out.

And what I found was a story about a botched investigation, the narco kingpin known as Caesar the abuser, rumors of money laundering and love triangles, high-level corruption brought about by cocaine trafficking, and an explanation that just made no goddamn sense to anyone. This is the Underworld podcast. Hello, hello, welcome. This is the podcast where we bring you stories of transnational organized crime every week. My name is Danny Gold.

I am here with Sean Williams. You know we are also from the streets and we are two reporters that have traveled around the world reporting on crime and conflict and fun things like that. Yeah, I grew up on a street. Yeah, is that what you mean, sir? Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. So yeah, this episode is somewhat based off some reporting I did for Sports Illustrated in the DR a few summers ago and what I found there, all that fun stuff.

I think the article came out in July of 2019 and we'll put it up on the reading list on the Patreon for everyone who wants to check it out. I definitely want to eventually do an episode on the Trinitonarios and DDP, Dominicans don't play and, you know, other Dominican gangs and possibly one on the Washington Heights crews of the 80s and 90s, like the Wild Cowboys. You know, it's the middle of August. We're recording this. It's my last episode of the summer. There was any justice. I'd be sitting 20 feet from the Mediterranean, just eating fried calamari. But instead, I'm making this episode for you, all of our listeners.

We've had a new episode every week this summer. So, you know, just kind of go with it. You know, hang out with us for 45 minutes as we go through all this fun stuff and this story. Is this your pre-tiny-fired fish mic drop then? I mean, where are you heading off to? No, that's the point, dude. I'm not heading off to anywhere. I'm stuck in New York and I'm making episodes.

I don't have any money, but we're going to keep the people entertained. As always, we have the Patreon and the merch store with that don't Instagram your crime shirt that everyone seems to love. You can find that on our website at underworldpod.com. Patreon.com slash the Underworld Podcast, tell a friend to tell a friend. Subscribe, five stars, all that stuff. Also, true story. I just learned that Sean is actually a baseball fan, which is wild to me. I kind of feel like no Europeans are.

I mean, look, look, if you want me to go, deep into why the Yanks made a bad place, switching a low average slugger into their top three. I can do that too. I mean, we've got our colonial bat and ball game and so of you guys, right? It's all good. Yeah, I mean, just the way you talked about it right now makes me never want to talk to you about baseball ever again,

even if you know everything about it. I definitely know everything about it, yeah. And don't worry if you don't like baseball too, because this episode is really more about cocaine trafficking and narcos and journalism, like every single one of our episodes. Don't worry, guys. We're not going to steer too far away from that. No, we stick to...

From our wheelhouse. We stick to familiar themes. Shortly after that shooting, Dominican law enforcement start making arrests. And when they actually get to the shooter, who we'll talk about a bit later, he said it was a case of mistaken identity.

David Ortiz was not the target. And the police and prosecutors, they basically make fun of this guy for the lamest excuse ever. I mean, how are you not going to recognize David Ortiz? And if you look at a photo of 6-0 Fernandez, the alleged target, he's basically like a short, squat,

light-skinned dude. And Ortiz is just like a powerful dark skin, just like giant. But yeah, I mean, a few days later, the authorities, those same guys, turn around and tell everyone like a completely skeptical nation that actually this was, in fact, a case of mistaken identity. Ortiz wasn't the target. And the rumors just start flying. You know, we're going to talk cocaine. We're going to talk corruption. We're going to talk good old fashioned narco trafficking.

But first, we got to talk about David Ortiz and the Dominican Republic. Oh, yeah, all that cool stuff. And you've put your feature up on the reading this, right? And loads and loads of other stuff about the deal, right? Yeah. Feature is up there. I mean, Ortiz is so popular, even in America in the U.S., that there is a reoccurring character on Saturday Live that's based on him. And for those who don't know him, he's a world famous baseball player. He helped lead the Boston Red Sox to their first championship in like 100 years. Constant All-Star, super love guy, super charismatic. One of the most popular. people in the sport, one of the best people in the sport of the past 20 years, he only retired

a few years ago. And he also had like a heart of gold, right? He was well known for doing charity stuff, like building a pediatric wing in a hospital, paying for sick kids surgeries, giving out toys and stuff, just like an in all around, you know, great reputation, good guy. And the Dominican Republic is like a really baseball crazy country. An absurd amount of pros come from the island. And everywhere you go, there's little kids playing games. Did you, did you head to a game out there, I feel like that would be a pretty wild experience. I went to just like the parks where they have these kids who start practicing super hard at like eight and nine and 10 years old. There's all sorts of shady stuff too involving the industry down there that churns

out the baseball players. There have been scandals like pay for play scandals, steroid scandals, like young kids getting shot up. It's a story in itself. It's the national pastime there, like nothing else. And they're amazing at the sport. You know, they're really, really good at it. When Ortiz get shot, you know, it's like LeBron getting shot in Cleveland. or Michael Jordan in Chicago or messy, wherever he plays, I don't really know. A local sports reporter down there, Nathaniel Perez, told me how Ortiz was known for being a man of the people. Someone who could go to the roughest neighborhoods without a worry, someone who did so without a trace of arrogance. Like other players, they might go visit the barrio they grew up in, but Ortiz could go to all the barrios.

He was constantly raising money for charity and through his foundation, you know, regularly provided life-saving surgeries for nitty children. In 2006, he raised $200,000 to start the first pediatric cardiovascular unit in the Dominican Republic. Quoting Perez, no other baseball player athlete has done more for Dominican children. What a guy. I mean, does Marcus Rashford has to get shot before I do an episode on him? Maybe. Don't put something like that into the air, man. But yeah, I mean, I just want to get across, like, how love this guy was and how much of a good reputation he has.

Obviously, when someone like that gets shot, everyone is like, what the hell is going on, especially because he had that clean reputation. And one of the first places people looked was David's rep as coming from a tough place and being around tough people. Also, let me give a shout out to Diario Libre, Marvin Del Sid, who is a Dominion reporter. He was my fixture when I was down there and just like the best dude. There's a lot of incredible environmental reporting. And while a lot of this is based off of my own reporting, we also got some stuff from Diario

Libre, Univis, Diario Listas, and Inside Crime, of course. Oh yeah. There's shout out to those guys all the time. They're great. Yeah, they do good work. But yeah, he grew up in a tough neighborhood. I went there for a bit to talk with some of the locals to get a feel for the place. But even there, there are some people who doubted the story and thought Ortiz was the main target.

He was just being protected because they want to keep his rep clean. They don't want the DR to seem like a place where someone like him can get shot. In his 2017 book, Ortiz wrote, quote, We were poor and our neighborhood was teeming with violence and crime. He told a stabbing. shootings and drugs of his parents showing him a bag of cocaine at a young age and warning him about it. That reminds me of when my mom showed me photos of STIs from her nursing work just to get me to wear condoms. That is damn good parent. In a 2015 Players Tribune video, Ortiz detailed how

his father were making practice baseball in the backyard because it was too dangerous out front. And in his autobiography, Ortiz recounted seeing someone killed and he was a child. Quote, I saw things that no one should see, especially a kid. I should add too that despite all this talk of the DR is super dangerous, the murder rate there is at 10.4 per 100,000, which was lower than Uruguay and Costa Rica and dozens of American cities. I think it's actually down to nine in 2020. Yeah, I guess that puts it in the top few dozen countries,

but it's way, way, way off Central America. Yeah, I mean, it was just important. And I let me put stuff like that in the article because it is easy to get that impression when you're talking about it. And this was also during the time, there was like a weird tourism thing, some people were dying of alcohol poisoning. So it was just like a black mark on the island.

And I just wanted to be clear. Like, you know, the DR isn't this like super dangerous, gnarly place. Obviously, there's some places you should avoid, but like in any area, you know. So I just want to, I want to be clear about that. And again, the DR is famous for producing some of the best baseball players like in the world, sending a huge proportion of pros to the U.S. But there's another rep, the one we're talking about here, which involves something else they sent to the U.S. too that people like me and Sean always talk about.

And here's a line from the article I wrote that just rules. So I'm just going to quote myself. I mean, that's where we're inevitably headed with this show eventually. Yeah, of course. Though the Dominican Republic is a country of a wide variety of natural resources, a robust tourism industry, a proud history, and a plethora of cultural contributions. Two of its exports seem to grab the most headlines. A disproportionate number of extremely talented baseball players and cocaine.

And then there was something else about how America has a thirst for both. blah, blah, blah. I mean, you get it. It's great writing. Yeah. So the DR, it is a huge transshipment point for cocaine. A high-level Dominican police source

told inside crime that about 15% of cocaine produced globally passes through the country, which is an absurd number. I know it was big in the 80s with everything going through Miami at the time, and then it kind of cooled off as the Mexico corridor got popular.

In recent years, his authorities have cracked down the corridor through Central America and Mexico, narcos and moving drugs out of Venezuela and Colombia. have increasingly used the Dominican Republic as a transit point to Europe and the US. So yeah, a lot of it goes to Europe too, not just the US. Yeah, that's like kind of crazy because I thought that Haiti with all of its like problems,

barely functioning state, I thought they more likely go through there than the DR. I don't know. So I think I was told this by a few people in the know down there that Haiti is just too anarchic, you know? So it's kind of like it's not stable enough or it's not set up enough where they, they feel like they can use it. Because, you know, you got to hold the Coke there for a period of time. It's got to go out.

So they just don't trust it in that regard. So there's like a sweet spot of like failed state versus some kind of stability where you can kind of like traffic Coke through. It's not a failed state, right? It's a corrupt state. And I think there's a, yeah, there's a thick line between that, right? Because of that passing through, though, Dominicans have always played a pronounced role in the drug trade.

There have been lots of distributors throughout the last few decades in New York. York, you know, uptown, Miami, Philly, all that, you know, famous crews like the wild cowboys who did street dealing and crack war stuff, and then the bigger narcos who help bring it in the country, the traffickers. This is a lengthy quote from an inside crime report. Another reason the Dominican Republic is a preferred transit nation for cocaine is the increasing sophistication of the native drug trafficking organizations or DTOs. Dominican criminal structures used to act principally as transporters for Colombian and Mexican organizations. Those days are gone. Dominican DTOs have moved into the big league.

Nowadays, the Dominicans are buying cocaine in Venezuela, contracting Venezuelans to make the hazardous journey across the Caribbean, and taking direct control of loads as they hit the island. Dominican reach does not stop here. Their DTOs can move drugs up to the eastern seaboard of the United States. There, a large Dominican diaspora sells the drugs, even going down to retail level. This means that the Dominicans now control a large number of links in the drug train and are able to maximize their profits from each kilogram of drugs. Dominicans working with Colombian and Mexican cartels are also acting as intermediaries for international mafias looking to secure large cocaine loads. And that's, I think, you know, where the European trafficking comes in right there.

And of course, what comes with cocaine trafficking, like billions of dollars. And what comes with cocaine making billions of dollars, high-level corruption. Multiple high-level Dominican officials have been accused of ties to drug trafficking, including a former president who was alleged by a well-known narco-trafficker of refusing to pay him back a $4.5 million loan. A director of the anti-narcotics police

was sentenced in 2016 to 20 years in prison for stealing nearly 1,000 kilos of cocaine, and a high-level prosecutor told the newspaper L Diario in March of 2015 that police and military are involved than 90% of organized crime cases. Wait, I mean, a thousand keys, like, that didn't just come out of the evidence room.

That is serious shit. Yeah, you can't just throw that in your pocket and walk out with it, you know what I'm saying? Or even in a backpack. Last year, the Dominican Republic ranked 129 out of 180 countries in Transparency International's annual corruption perceptions index. There's a lot of stories like this, plenty of stuff with cops and soldiers also violating civil rights, acting as hit men for hire, trafficking, all that good stuff. And again, lots of stories about high-level politicians being involved in the drug game.

You can kind of see like where this is foreshouting, right? A few years ago, the Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito said, quote, is worrying that there are elected congressmen who were involved in matters of drug trafficking? The next Congress will have to pay close attention because there are legislators who receive drug money. And before the election process, we did everything possible to investigate that the law would allow. That sounds very defensive to me. But yeah, cool. No, I mean, he's, from what I remember, he was going after it, but, you know, I can't, I can't say that for a certain.

And, you know, I say all that to say this. The people of the DR are incredibly skeptical of their law enforcement and politicians. And they have good reason to be. So, you know, there are a lot of rumors flying around about the Ortiz shooting. And the whole he was aiming for Ortiz, no way, mistaken identity thing they pulled in the first week. It's not a great look to starting off your investigation if you want people to trust you. back to the shooting. At a press conference a few days after the arrest of the shooter, the authorities say, oh, actually, David Ortiz wasn't the target.

This guy, Sixto Fernando was, the guy sitting next to him, who again looks nothing even remotely close to him. They point the finger at Victor Hugo Gomez, a drug trafficker who has worked for the Gulf cartel and say he's the mastermind of the whole thing. Sixo is his cousin, and he suspects Sixto gave info to the police about him eight years ago.

Gomez goes and cobbles together this ragtap crew of men with nicknames like the bone, the surgeon, and Carlos Nike, you know, small time hoods, violent. And initially, prosecutors said it only cost $7,800 for the hit, but they eventually bumped the number up to $30,000. And it's kind of comical, actually, like one guy goes in context, other guys, they're friends that he has in jail, some other guys are in jail, and on and on, contracting out, and bringing in a total of like 14 people.

I mean, Ocean 11, these guys are definitely not. this is like and the cops just seem like they're just shooting in the dark like what are they talking about this crap they're coming up with i mean that's kind of that's kind of harsh like they they actually did again i'm not going to say whether i believe the official story right now we'll talk about that at the end but they did like get all these 14 people within a manner of like a week or two you know and they had all the contacts and all that i mean they had terrible obsequent but they had everything everything laid out so if you believe the official story They actually did like a pretty good job of all of it.

I think only one guy is still on the run, or he was at least up until like a year or two ago, and that's the surgeon. And we'll talk. Is that Carlos Nike? No, no, it's, that would be good. It's the, it's the surgeon. But it was really funny around this time. Like, Dominicans are hilarious.

There were a lot of memes about, like, how they had arrested everyone. Like, there was one that was like, you're not a real Dominican unless you've been arrested in the, in the Ortiz shooting. Nice. One with like a guy in space that was like, this is the only. person not suspected of the, of the Ortiz shooting, you know, things along with lines that were, like, really, really funny. And the cause of the mistaken identity, again, official story leading to Ortiz getting shot is this grainy photo snapped on the night of the shooting by one of the man, Motta, who was surveilling Sixto, which made it appear as though Ortiz's much smaller friend,

Sixto, was wearing white pants. And they were both wearing similar shirts, but again, the photo looks like it was taken through a potato. You know, it's not a great photo. When the gunman arrived at the club, he sees Ortiz, dressed in white pants, a little confused. You know, there's a lot of theories that he was probably high out of his mind. He's sitting at the intended target table. And as widely shared security footage shows, he approaches the table and just shoots the most recognizable man in the Dominican Republic in the back, point-blank rage, before fleeing. You know, there's a few getaway cars. He can't make it to the motorcycle guy because a furious crowd catches the motorcycle driver and just beats the crap out of him.

he was the first domino drop they held him until he was arrested and then since those guys were like two bit thugs again with terrible obsec arrests followed like every other day moving forward I'm guessing David Ortiz is totally fine today so is this like a rare underworld story

of heartwarming community action at work that part is nice you know get the guy who tried to kill our hero but Ortiz like really struggled I mean there were some gnarly surgeries I think he lost pieces of his intestine and his gallbladder I believe he's made pretty

close to a full recovery, but I'm sure there's complications that are out there. But he's been out in the media for more than a year now, you know, cracking jokes, just being the lovable scamp that he is. I won't get into the whole breakdown of all the people involved, but we'll talk about the alleged shooter, Ralph A Ferreira Cruz, he's captured on the infamous video. He grew up in a little barrio outside of Mao, which is a city three hours north of Santa Domingo, known for massive organic banana plantations. You know, I went down there to track down some of his friends and relatives, and the

neighborhood there is noticeably poorer than even those in Santa Domingo. Many of the residents are Haitians who have fled their country. Some of the houses lack indoor plumbing. Others are nothing more than wooden shacks. Like, you can really sense the poverty there. Rolfi spent the first 20 years of his life there, and then he went to the U.S., and that's where things got a little dicey. His cousin told me he was a different person when he came back after a few years. How many discounts does USA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, Safe driver discount, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy. How many discounts will you stack up?

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L.L. Bean. Be an outsider. Visit LLBin.com to learn more. Those years were spent in New Jersey, and he came back to the DR after facing warrants for an armed robbery he committed in 2017. In Jersey, he fell under the influence of the man known as the Surgeon,

who was also a player, like I said, in the Ocean's 11 crew of kind of, you know, duvices that carried out the shooting. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the better nicknames we had. That's, like, way better than Carlos, I don't know, Reebok or whatever his name was. Yeah, the same. Surgeons sort of, the connotations there are pretty scary.

But he was kind of just like a low-level gangster thug in New Jersey. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that police considered him a crime boss, but they kind of mean that he was just the dude who had a couple people under him. You know, he had a situation, I think, where he sent a young kid to shoot somebody, you know, dealt on the street. He actually showed up in the barrio two months before the shooting, and he kind of gathered a little crew there to go off and do crimes. So like Rolfi, Rolfi's like really small time.

the surgeon's kind of like medium barrio guy. Like he's not important at all, is he? Or like what kind of stuff was he up to? No, I mean, he definitely was the kind of dude he didn't want to cross, right? But he wasn't like some high level narco trafficker or some like hitman. Yeah.

He's not called the anesthetist, I guess. He probably had like a handful of people working for him in Jersey, you know, selling Coke on the street, shoots a couple people, has his crew to a couple shootings. We're not talking. Like obviously, again,

not someone you want to mess with, but he's not like a big time guy who's like, internationally known. He was the one who originally received a call from like three levels of people deep to find a shooter that was going to happen. And that's kind of, I think, where he contracted his boy, Ralfi out. Now, as soon as this goes down, again, all sorts of rumors start flying, even though David is seen by pretty much everyone as an upstanding guy, loved by all who has mostly stayed at the trouble. But because of the Dominican Republic's history and current

reputation as a transshipment spot, as a place with a high level of international narcotics traffickers, people kind of zero in on this shooting having something to do with the drug lords, who they all call capos down there? Because who else would be powerful and crazy enough to go after David Ortiz. I'm chasing all those rumors, right? I've got this Dominican reporter I'm working with. We're talking to all the crime reporting guys, all the sports reporting guys, police sources, government sources, hitting up the barrios where the shooter was from where David was from. And again, you know, we talked about the corruption and the politically tight narcos, right? Like how were these neighbors to walk around?

Like, could you see the gang crime effects all around? I've never been to the DR. I'm picturing like beautiful colonial churches and guys smoking cigars and playing dominoes kind of thing. Wow, Sean, the level of prejudice and stereotyping here is a bit. I'm here to learn, Danny. I just want to learn more. You know, in the barrios, they're not going to see a lot of tumble down old colonial churches. Old Santo Domingo, you'll see that sort of thing.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess they do have. I hate to say, like, that sort of typical central American or Caribbean vibe of, like, you know, up in the hills, you know, corrugated aluminum roofs, things like that. You know, Santa Domingo has some beautiful areas. And then it has the sort of rough spots in the outskirts where jobs are hard to come by. And, you know, it's not like you walk around. There's dudes posted up on corners with guns. Obviously, there's certain neighborhoods you're not supposed to go to it night. Again, like any city.

But, you know, I kind of think you get the vibe to it. But it's definitely not a place where you walk around and it feels like completely lawless. You know, there's not people posted up on corners holding AKs. It's not that sort of vibe. Oh, yeah, the corruption, right? That becomes like a running theme, this lack of institutional trust. It's a real problem, especially if you're suspicious of the official story, which everyone is. Guillermo Pena, who runs a nonprofit focusing on criminal justice and human rights,

he explains to me, quote, the people don't trust in the justice system. There's a vulnerability in the system for the biggest cases. He also says the country is dealing with these huge issues, and it kind of leads to impunity for the powerful. So with all that going on, the main rumor focuses on Ortiz, pissing off a notorious capo, possibly the island's biggest. One rumor says it's over a money laundering situation gone bad. Another says it's over a woman.

And a woman at one point had shown up at the hospital after the shooting and kind of caused the scene with David's family. And Ortiz allegedly signed a check buying her a car. And she was also sort of linked to this narco-traffica we're going to talk about. Yeah. I mean, do you do that when anyone pisses you off? I do that all the time. Just write a check for a car.

Like someone goes up in a space. Before, before that, he had bought her a car. Not like after she went to the hospital and caused the scene. All right, that's pretty suspect. Yeah. Also, this notorious capo in the DR, he's seen outside the hospital and later revealed to have lived in the same luxury apartment complex that Ortiz did.

People keep telling me, like, out of the sides of their mouths or kind of whispers, you know, never on the record, that high-level people are behind it, but they're not being investigated. And generally, the high-level people is understood to be one person, this man who cast a shadow all over the island, Caesar Emilio Peralta, better known as Caesar El Abusador or Caesar the Abuser. That is a scary name. That's going to the top of the list.

That's scary. Yeah, I mean, that nickname right there is just like... Don't miss around. You don't want to get on that dude's bad side. At some point during the course of like the two weeks or 10 days I was down there, I get a hold of his Instagram account and send him a DM. Wait, hold on. This is like, I want to do this. You know, if we were like one of those podcasts with like a 10 episode thing on like Luminary or Wondery where it's like a really corny true crime stuff and they just hype it up to be as suspenseful and dangerous as scary as possible.

Dale, give me some true crime podcast music. I'm going to give this a shot. Ready? Oh yeah. I'm in a hotel room in the Dominican Republic, relaxing after a long day on the trail for the most scandalous murder attempt the country has ever known, when I hear a ping on my phone. It's a DM on the popular photo sharing app Instagram. It's from an account I messaged earlier in the day, one I wasn't so sure about if it was a smart idea to do or a safe thing to do. The man who messaged me is at the center of all the rumors swirling about who was actually behind the shooting.

And he's also a brutal drug lord, someone I've been told repeatedly not to even mention his name. That's all I got. But I bet, like, we could have gotten a full episode off that if we just, like, made it, made it super produced. Yeah, I mean, just, like, really, like, it was just a terrifying thing, you know? I'm game. I'm game. Yeah, all you need is not, like, an armored convoy and half a million dollars, and you can make the next caliphate. We could, we could definitely make something happen.

I think we've got a future in this industry. Anyway, I did DM him. I was like, hey, what's up, I'm in town looking into this. Give me a shout if you want to clear your good name. And he just wrote back, quote, I do not have any problems. Everything has already been cleared up. Spoiler alert. Dude, you're going to end up having some big problems.

Nice. Insert record scratch here, though. Yeah. So who is Caesar the abuser, this top Dominican narco? All these rumors are swirling behind. I mean, he's a kingpin, and I'm not just using that as like a cool description. It's designated by the feds, who has trafficked. large amounts of cocaine to the U.S. and Europe.

Also, as it goes to the territory, a prolific money launderer, accused of laundering $260 million over a three-year period, which will give you some insight into how much coke he's actually moving. He came up in this notorious network called the Florian-Files Network, which, when it was around, was the biggest in the Dominican Republic. His first arrest that I could find was 2001, when he's caught with 12 kilos of cocaine, and then he gets arrested again in 2007 and 2008.

I think the one in 2008 involved a plane shipment of like 250 kilos. The one in 2007, he's caught with some members of the Florian Filles family and involves like a shootout, I think, in a nightclub with police. The local Dominican papers then, even in 2007, described him as a well-known drug lord. He was also arrested after some shootings in 2014 he's accused of. I've seen one report saying his dad was also allegedly a top trafficker back in the day two, but that he got his start as a low-level dealer in the 1990. So does he actually spend any time in prison for these massive like shipments or gun raids or do they all just like have a chuckle and send him on his way?

Not a long period of time. I think there might be a couple months or a couple weeks in some of them. But it's kind of like, I mean, that's why a lot of the rumors get started, right? Because he's getting arrested for this shit and not spending a lot of time in prison. So confusingly, Univision quotes a former anti-drug chief from the DR who describes him as only like a petty street dealer a decade ago who ends up rising through the ranks because his bosses keep getting arrested. But I mean, I don't know. If he's being caught with dozens of kilos and partying with the Florian Phila's family in like 2007, 2008, like he's not just some guy

running a few corners, you know, micro-trafficker back then might have been a better term, but definitely not a petty street dealer. No, I mean, the guy's got 258 kilos in a plane. That's pretty big time. Also, micro-trafficker, is that a term? Like, I kind of, I want to put that on the t-shirt. I think this is the first I heard it, but I think a micro-trafficker t-shirt would go a long way. Like, that could be our next move. Yeah, I mean, he really takes off.

He steps it up around 2016, bringing in big loads of Coke from Venezuela by air to Puerto Rico, by C to Miami. According to U.S. authorities, he moved at least 1,120 kilos into the U.S. between 2008 and 2017, which kind of sounds like a big underestimate. Yeah. He also ran a whole bunch of nightclubs in the D.R. shopping malls, restaurants, you know, posted up with celebrities, showed off his Ferraris and other luxury stuff on social media.

I can see a catchphrase here somewhere, I don't know. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's well known in the country. But also, like, if I can find him on Instagram, you know, maybe tone it down a notch. But he's really into posting up his parties on social media, you know, famous athletes, entertainers, especially famous reggaeton artists. The dude definitely operated like he had a level of impunity.

Remember, he's arrested multiple times for drug trafficking. and shootings, even when he was a much smaller fish. And he's released shortly after with no insight into the process, except for some weird technicalities that they say. If there's one guy that could get away with shooting Ortiz, maybe it's this guy. I'm like doing that podcast documentary thing now where it's kind of like, did he, didn't he?

Maybe we just don't know. I kind of hate that, but I don't know. You've slipped into it. I'm fine with that. I'm fine. Yeah. I kind of, it's just like so many doc series with like serial killers about like, oh, here's an alternate theory that we actually don't have that much evidence on,

but let's present it. Whatever, man, I'm going to keep going. I'm not going to rant. I'm not going to rant. Here's where it gets interesting. And I heard a lot of this down there. Caesar had a lot of high level government officials and law enforcement in his pocket, allegedly.

And I mean, this was something I was skeptical when I first heard it, what I'm about to say. But his wife is related to high level government. government officials too. From Insight Crime, quote, Peralta's wife Marisol Mercedes-Frank has connections to the Dominican Republic's political class. She's the sister of Berlinessa Franco, the current executive director of the National Institute for Early Childhood Care, and she's reportedly close to sitting president, the Neo Medina, according to Univision. He's no longer president, by the way. But also, like, if you're the parents of those two, like one of your children is the executive director of important government agency and the other

is married to the infamous narco-trap. This is an HBO series. Yeah. Yeah. There's an HBO either sitcom, like dark sitcom or series right there. And some more about those high-level contacts, quote, Peralta's participation in these criminal economies was underpinned by corruption. His organization included several former military officers and he allegedly paid off at least one

Dominican politician. In an intercepted phone call, Peralta also stated that he had contributed millions to the electoral campaign of former Dominican president, Danilo Medina Sanchez. Benina acknowledged that he had received campaign contributions from Peralta, but he claimed he did not know the money had come from drug trafficking. Yeah, yeah, come on, bro. So it kind of seems like, you know, he is rather untouchable in the Dominican Republic, you know? Yeah, I mean, you get in with the minister of baby care. You're made for life. Apparently. The problem is though, like, the heat gets too hot. His name is mentioned too much in relation to the Ortiz shooting. You know, maybe there's a few Red Sox fans in the Treasury Department or the DEA. And he's also mentioned as someone tied into high-level Dominican officials. And that is bad for business. Because now, you know, you might have been on the Fed's radar a little bit beforehand, but you're in the papers. You're set to be untouchable. They're really going to focus on you. And that never ends well. He gets added to the foreign king can list. in August two months after the shooting.

Oh, yeah. Like, keep away from the feds, guys. Like, the second you're on that list, you're toast. Also in August, Dominican authorities start going after him and his network, rating his nightclubs, looking at all the money laundering folks, which even includes two baseball players getting arrested, Octavio Dotel and Louis Castillo, who eventually get cleared of the charges. That's crazy. Castillo's a class act.

I'm just saying, guys, like, I do know about baseball, okay? Just like, in case you didn't know already. Yeah, I mean, knowing who cast the EU is, I think that that qualifies you right there. That's Searsie, right? Yeah. So Caesar kind of catches on to things being different, and he flees the country, but he's soon caught in Colombia towards the end of 2019 with the help of the feds. He's currently still locked up there, I think, with extradition proceedings to get him

shipped to the states in progress. Narcos do not flee to Colombia. I mean, come on, man. At least go to Venezuela or something. Like, be aware of relations with the U.S. when you're going to pick a country to flee to because it's not going to end well for you if you flee to Colombia. I forgot to mention this a little sidebar because this is like a fun little insight

into the whole reporting process. During the whole Caesar thing, I'm talking to this guy Carlos Rubio, who I meet in a hotel lobby in Manhattan before I fly down to the Dominican Republic because he says he had to flee the country. Rubio is a lawyer and an anti-corruption crusader who has a popular afternoon radio show.

And depending on who you ask, he's either like completely crazy and full of shit or completely crazy, but maybe he might know a few things. He's one of these guys. He posts multiple videos daily of himself, giving rundowns on what's allegedly happening behind the scenes in the investigation, to his 350,000 Instagram followers.

And while everyone else only has, like, questions and theories, he's the guy who says he has all the answers. You know, he's a shit talker, but a very popular one. Oh, man. I mean, just check out substack. Shit talk is the media's most lucrative job. It really, it really is. They should be having courses on it in journalism schools

at this point. Now, other journalists and politicians, they kind of scoff at the idea of him having inside sources and knowing things. You know, he's sort of like a shock jock, but he's, again, super popular. When I meet him in the lobby, he tells me he's on the run after being threatened by Caesar. And quote, Caesar knows everything.

He also tells me that cocaine and money laundering fuel a not insignificant amount of the economy in the Dominican Republic, and that Caesar is at the top of the pyramid. Quote, he became a partner to the government, and he adds that he is tied into the highest levels of police and military. To Rubio, right, it makes perfect sense that the government would seek to protect Caesar. Another quote, from all my sources, I think he gave the order.

The only thing that I don't buy, I'm almost 98% certain that he did it, but I don't think it was the girlfriend thing. That's the only thing I don't get. He says Ortiz and Caesar were close at one point, but had a falling out, and over what, he's not entirely sure. Also, he says Ortiz, like a lot of young guys who come up in the barrios, he kind of idolized the drug dealers and now kind of mingles with the wrong people. And I want to add that this got cut from the article because it's a lot of conjecture. But I think one of the important parts of this story, at least for the podcast, right, is trying to suss out rumors, just seeing what happens with something crazy like this when you're reporting, how you kind of have to try to make sense of it as a journalist. And Rubio, like I said,

like he's got, he's got people listening to him. Another quote, David Ortiz stayed in touch with every capo. He loved being with capos. He liked to hang out with narcos. What do you think he's going to get? Flowers. He wants the approval of the strong guys where he grew up of that world. He wants to impress him.

And on the other side, the narcos love hanging out with him. Rubio was clear that he still thinks Ortiz is a really good guy. He just says that some of the only people who make it out of these neighborhoods into this world of wealth are the drug dealers and the baseball players. So it kind of, you know, it kind of makes sense. that they would gravitate towards each other. Oh, man. It's great that we've now got a forum for all this shit.

We can't get past fact checkers, eh? I mean, is it irresponsible? I mean, look, Rubio's Rubio, man. Like, he's a known entity. This is the kind of stuff he was telling me. And again, some of the stuff he says. Maybe there's some merit to it. I don't think Ortiz is going to be out there

in touch with every capo. But, you know, you get it. And we've been saying to, you know, everyone's just, if you want to fact check us, tell us we're talking shit. Yeah. Engagement. Personally, you know, I left the DR. kind of like 70, 30,

believing the official version of the story. I mean, I don't, I haven't kept up with all the intricate details and developments. But yeah, it's, it's, I'm kind of. When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing.

Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything. So people can see, your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every

story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. You know, some of it does make sense. I mean, I don't know. It's been two years since I went down there. and the prosecutor on the case was just jailed for a bunch of corruption charges. I think it was like embezzling tens of millions of dollars from the state, money laundering. I mean, that's the prosecuting attorney. And apparently there's a lot more arrest of officials that have been captured. So I don't think the trials really got in underway. And that's kind of where we are.

Ortiz, he's all right, right? He's had his intestines ripped off or something, but, you know, no one needs intestines anyway. So he's basically fine, yeah? He had some pretty intense surgeries. It was not good. At one point, he was actually interviewed a doctor. He's the first person I talked to in the article. I lead with the operating surgeon.

Yeah, I mean, he was flown, I think, on like a private medical evax sort of playing like a week later. I have to get more surgeries in Boston. I think he's recovered. You know, I doubt he's at 100%. But, you know, he's still a well-loved, big-spirited guy. His reputation is not tarnished. I mean, he still does wonderful things for the kids. I love David Ortiz, even though I'm a Yankees.

I guess I love him. now. I didn't love him when I was growing up because I was a diehard Yankees fan. And, uh, but I think it's just like the character in Sioner Live is just so fucking good that it makes me really like him. But he is, you know, he's a good dude. I think actually, dude, he just started a podcast with, uh, with, um, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, one of the bars to do it. I get him on. Yeah. Should we do, like, across. I don't think he wants to talk. I mean, his people did not want to talk to me. Um, I thought the Sports Illustrated thing would work out during my reporting. They were not

interested in giving me any sort of comment. So I don't know if we could do a cross-collab would be kind of sweet for us. I feel like that would bump our numbers up. I'm sure he'd be like sweet talk by the weird British guy, right? It's suddenly new tons and tons about baseball as I do, guys. But also when you're like when you're just starting a podcast, like you got to, sometimes you got to compromise your morals, not us and just sort of like do other promo stuff that that you wouldn't normally do. I would never. Sean probably will. So maybe I mean, maybe there's, we'll see what happens. We'll throw it up on the Patreon. Anyway, thank you all for listening. Enjoy your summer.

Cheers. If you're somewhere where you can get like tiny fried fish by a beach, eat them. Until next time. I'm Lola Blanc

and I'm Megan Elizabeth and we're the hosts of Trust Me, the podcast about cults, extreme belief, and the abuse of power. Now on podcast one. We're real life cult survivors

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