Octavio Dotel And Luis Castillo Linked To The Drug Trafficking Network

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Two former Major League Baseball players were arrested Tuesday in the Dominican Republic in what officials called "the largest organized crime operation" in the country.

Octavio Dotel, 45, and Luis Castillo, 43, are among 18 people arrested as part of an investigation of money laundering and drug trafficking conducted with the help of US authorities, said Dominican Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez at a press conference.

Authorities said the two former baseball players are linked to a drug trafficking network led by Cesar Emilio Peralta, better known as the Abuser, who is still being sought by authorities.

Rodríguez did not detail the supposed roles that Dotel and Castillo played for the band, but stated that, under Peralta's mandate of two decades, the organization has generated "insecurity and crime" that destroyed the "social peace, life and health of our people for many years."

Both players were born and raised in the Dominican Republic and played 14 seasons in the MLB. Dotel was part of the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals World Series champion. During his long career, he played for 13 different teams, including the Yankees and the New York Mets.

Castillo won the World Series in 2003 with the Florida Marlins. That same year was part of one of the most remembered moments in baseball history when he hit a ball that was to fall into the hands of a Chicago Cubs player and end the game, but a fan of the city of Chicago team. The winds, Steve Bartman, got in the way and the ball ended up being a foul.

This gave the Floridian team a new opportunity, which managed to overcome the game and qualify for the World Series.

The American journalist Danny Gold specialized in drug trafficking said that sources in the Dominican Republic told him that the attack against former baseball player David Ortiz was due to problems he would have had with the Abuser.