February 16, 2020 — Federal authorities in Miami filed an extradition order last week looking to take custody of Dominican Republican drug lord Cesar (The Abuser) Peralta, currently jailed in Colombia after a flight from justice and alleged connections to Major League Baseball players. Peralta’s name surfaced in the Boston press last year in theories behind the June 2019 shooting of retired Boston Red Sox great David (Big Papi) Ortiz at a bar in Santo Domingo. The 45-year old Cesar the Abuser Peralta appeared on the FBI’s Most Wanted List during the several months he was on the run from a February 2019 narcotics-trafficking indictment out of South Florida. Officials consider Peralta the biggest drug kingpin in the Caribbean and the most prominent narcos figure in South America. He was apprehended back in December in Cartagena, Colombia. While his indictment only cites Peralta for selling five kilos of cocaine, U.S. Treasury documents allege he is responsible for shipping thousands of tons of cocaine and heroin to South Florida wholesale dealers since 2007. Prior to his bust in Florida, he was indicted out of Puerto Rico in November 2018. Last summer, FBI agents and Santo Domingo police rounded up a number of Peralta associates as well as Octavio Dotel and Luis Castillo, two well-known former MLB stars from the Dominican Republic. Both were cleared of any wrongdoing in the weeks that followed. Dotel pitched in MLB for 14 seasons, playing for 13 different clubs. Castillo was a Gold-Glove winning infielder who made three MLB All-Star games and was a staple in the Miami Marlins lineup of the 1990s and 2000s. Big Papi Ortiz is considered a national treasure in the Dominican Republic and is a bona fide sports god in New England, having led the beloved Red Sox to three World Series championships. On June 19, 2019, Ortiz was almost killed, shot in the back as he sat having a drink on the patio of a Santo Domingo nightclub (Dial Lounge) by a man on a motorcycle with ties to Cesar the Abuser. Although initially listed in critical condition in the hospital, Ortiz recovered quickly. Santo Domingo police issued a statement that the shooting was a case of mistaken identity but others in the media and within Ortiz’s own inner circle have speculated it wasn’t that simple and Peralta may have had a personal beef with Big Papi and ordered a hit on him.
