DM'ing Dominican Narcos, The Shooting of David Ortiz, & Cesar The Abuser
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It's a hot early summer night in Santo 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 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 Secreto, a television host named Joel Lopez, and a shady businessman everyone calls 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 worshipped 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 texts it to a member of his team, who then texts it to someone else, and on and on it went like a bad game of telephone until it was seen by Rolfi Ferreira 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, a 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 Golds. 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 Trinitarios and DDP, Dominicans Don't Play, and other Dominican gangs, and possibly one on the Washington Heights crews of the 80s and 90s, like the Wild Cowboys. But it's the middle of August. We're recording this. It's my last episode of the summer. If 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 Four-Eyed 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, 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, which in 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 have you guys, right? It's all good. Yeah. I mean, just the way you talked about it right now, it 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,

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 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 Sixto Fernandez, the alleged target, he's basically like a short squat light-skinned dude. And Ortiz is just like a powerful, dark-skinned, just like giant. But yeah, I mean, a few days later, the authorities, those same guys, turn around and

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 US, that there's a lot of people

that there was a reoccurring character on Saturday Night 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 loved 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 kid surgeries, giving out toys and stuff, just like an 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 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've 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 gets shot, you know, it's like LeBron getting shot in Cleveland or Michael Jordan in Chicago or Messi, wherever he plays. I don't really know. Yeah. 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 needy children. In 2006, he raised $200,000 to start the first pediatric cardiovascular unit in the Dominican Republic. Quoting Perez, no other baseball player or athlete has done more for Dominican children.

What a guy. I mean, does Marcus Rashford have 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 how loved 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 Cid, who is a Dominican reporter. He was my fixer 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, Univision, Diario Listos, and Inside Crime, of course. Oh, yeah. 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. You know, 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 the 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 parenting. In a 2015 Players Tribune video, Ortiz detailed how his father would make him practice baseball in the backyard because it was too dangerous out front. And in his autobiography, Ortiz recounted seeing someone killed when 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 as 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 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 where 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 place.

Gnarly place. Obviously, there is 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, you know, 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.

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 and 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, authorities have cracked down on the corridor through Central America and Mexico. Narcos moving drugs out of Venezuela and Colombia have increasingly used the

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 kind of crazy because I thought that Haiti, with all of its problems, barely functioning state, I thought they'd 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. So it's kind of like it's not stable enough

or it's not set up enough where they feel like they can use it. Because you've 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 failed state versus some kind of stability where you can traffic coke through. It's not a failed state, right? It's a corrupt state. Yeah, corruption. 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, Uptown, Miami, Philly, all that. Famous crews like the Wild Cowboys who did street dealing and crack war stuff, and then the bigger narcos who helped 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, then taking direct control of loads as they hit the islands. 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. Mm-hmm.

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 El Diario in March of 2015 that police and military are involved in 90% of organized crime cases. Wait, I mean, 1,000 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 hitmen 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 where this is foreshadowing, 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 he was going after it. But, you know, I can't I can't say that for certain.

And, you know, I say all that to say this. The people of the D.R. 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. Sixto is his cousin, and he suspects Sixto gave info to the police about him eight years ago. Gomez goes and cobbles together this ragtag 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. One guy goes and contacts other guys, their friends that he has in jail, some other guys are in jail, and on and on, contracting out, and bringing in a total of 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 harsh. Like, they actually did, again, I'm not going to say anything.

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 OPSEC, 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 those 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 men, Mota, 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,

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 range, before fleeing. 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 to drop. They held him until he was arrested. And then since those guys were like two-bit thugs, again, with terrible OPSEC, 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. Ortiz really struggled. I mean, there were some gnarly surgeries. I think he lost pieces of his intestine and his gallbladder. - Jesus. - 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, 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 Santo 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 Santo 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...

since the poverty there. Ralphie spent the first 20 years of his life there, and then he went to the US, 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.

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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 Eleven crew of kind of, you know, doofuses that carried out the shooting. - Yeah, I mean, that's one of the better nicknames we've had. That's like way better than Carlos, I don't know, Reebok or whatever his name was. - Yeah, the surgeon 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 a 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's, like, really small time. The surgeon's kind of, like, medium-sized.

guy. Like he's, he's not important at all. Is he? Or like, what kind of stuff was he? No, I mean, he definitely was the kind of dude you didn't want to cross. Right. But he wasn't like some high level narco trafficker or some like hit man. Yeah. He's not called the anesthetist. I guess he probably had like a, you know, a handful of people working for him in

In Jersey, you know, selling coke on the street, shoots a couple people, has his crew do 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 Ralphie 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 out of 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, everything.

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? Yeah. 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. Well,

Wow, Sean, the level of prejudiced stereotyping here is a bit... I'm here to learn, Danny. I just want to learn more. You know, in the barrios, you're not going to see a lot of tumbledown old colonial churches. Old Santo Domingo, you'll see that sort of thing. Yeah, I mean, I guess they do have...

I hate to say it, 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, Santo 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 at night, again, like any city. But I kind of think you get the vibe to it. But it's definitely not a place where you walk around and it feels completely lawless. There's not people posted up on corners holding AKs. It's not that sort of vibe. Oh, yeah, the corruption, right? That becomes a running theme, this lack of institutional trust. It's a real problem, especially if you're suspicious of the official story. Right.

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 traffic that 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. No, no, no. 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. 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 and

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 mess 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.

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 we could have gotten a full episode off that if we just made it super produced. Yeah, I mean, just like really hyped. It was just a terrifying thing. I'm game. I'm game. Yeah, all you need is an armored convoy and half a million dollars and you can make the next Caliphate. 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 bro? 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 Files 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 too, but that he got his start as a low-level dealer in the 1990s. So does he actually spend any time in prison for these massive 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 of months or a couple of 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 in

and partying with the Florian Files family in like 2007, 2008. Like he's not just some guy running a few corners, you know, micro trafficker back then might've 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, microtrafficker, is that a term? I kind of want to put that on the t-shirt. I think this is the first I heard it, but I think a microtrafficker t-shirt would go a long way. 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 sea 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. 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, he's well known in the country, but also like if I can find you on Instagram, you know, maybe, 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 like 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. You've slipped into it. I'm fine with that. I'm fine. It sounded good. It's just like so many doc series with 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 officials, too. From Insight Crime, quote,

She is 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, Danilo 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 track. This is a nice 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. Medina 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. Yeah.

The problem is, though, like, he gets too hot. His name is mentioned too much in relation to the Ortiz shooting

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 might have been on the Fed's radar a little bit beforehand, but you're in the papers. You're said to be untouchable. They're really going to focus on you. And that never ends well. He gets added to the foreign kingpin 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. Yeah. It's not good. Also in August, Dominican authorities start going after him and his network. Really?

rating his nightclubs, looking at all the money laundering folks, which even includes two baseball players getting arrested, Octavio Dottel 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 Castillo is, I think that qualifies you right there. That seals it, 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 actually, I meet in a hotel lobby in Manhattan before I fly down to the Dominican Republic because I'm

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 says,

He's one of these guys, like 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. Like, you know, he's a shit talker, but a very popular. Oh man. I mean, just check out Substack. Shit talk is the media's most lucrative job. 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 like 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 makes sense that they would gravitate towards each other.

Oh, man. It's great that we've now got a forum for all the shit we can't get past fact-checkers, eh? Yeah. I mean, is it irresponsible of me? I mean, look, Rubio's Rubio's Rubio, man. Like, he's a known entity, and 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, 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... I'm kind of...

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, involved 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 arrests of officials that have been captured. So I don't think the trial has really gotten 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 no one needs intestines anyway, so he's basically fine. 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. He was flown, I think, on a private medical evac plane a week later. Had to get more surgeries in Boston. I think he's recovered. I doubt he's at 100%, but he's still a well-loved surgeon.

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 fan. I guess I love him now. I didn't love him when I was growing up because I was a diehard Yankees fan. But I think it's just like the character in Silent Live is just so fucking good that it makes me really like him. But he's a good dude. I think, actually, dude, he just started a podcast recently.

With, on Barstool, with like one of the Barstool guys. Get him on. Should we do like a cross? I don't think he wants to talk. I mean, his people did not want to talk to me

I thought the Sports Illustrated thing would work out during my reporting. They were not interested in giving me any sort of comments. So I don't know if we could do a cross collab, but it would be kind of sweet for us. I feel like that would bump our numbers up. I'm sure he'd be like sweet talked by the weird British guy, right? Who suddenly knew tons and tons about baseball, as I do, guys. But also when you're just starting a podcast, sometimes you've got to compromise your morals. Not us. Yeah.

And just sort of like do other promo stuff 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. 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. And we're here to tell you anyone can join a cult. If you've ever dived headfirst into a new self-help

or believed wholeheartedly in a spiritual practice, or even just trusted someone with your life, guess what? You're just as susceptible as everyone else. No one is safe, especially not Megan. I'm the most susceptible. We want to debunk the myth that people who join cults are uneducated or naive or broken because anyone can be manipulated by a narcissist or feel good in a new group they've joined. And we should know we both have been. Join us every week as we explore the world of extreme belief

Talk to survivors and experts. And share our own experiences with cults and the abuse of power. Don't be fooled. You might be next. Get new episodes of Trust Me every Wednesday on Podcast One, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you get your podcasts.