Loud Still Coolin
Suppose be a IT cert like you coli nikkaz
"Alex Rodriguez was ready to retire.
As Major League Baseball prepared to slap Rodriguez with a historic suspension for his sordid star turn in the Biogenesis doping scandal, the 38-year-old Yankee third baseman privately told advisers last summer that he was ready to cut a deal with MLB officials and quit.
Years of steroids and legal warfare had worn him down. And he faced accelerated drug testing if he continued to play.
“He had been talking about retirement because of injuries. Given his prior involvement (with doping), he knew he would be a target for additional testing,” says one source close to the case. “There was no way he could use and play again.”
But multiple sources told the Daily News that A-Rod’s last chance for a dignified exit ended when he turned to Desiree Perez, a Manhattan nightclub manager with a lengthy criminal record and close links to hip-hop mogul Jay Z.
While Perez is not an employee, officer or agent of Jay Z’s new agency, Roc Nation Sports, sources say she is a major behind-the-scenes influence.
“She’s directly involved with the athletes,” one baseball insider said. “She has a lot of power.”
Perez is also a convicted felon, with a long and wild history as a DEA cooperating witness and then a fugitive. She wore wires to meet with major cocaine traffickers, according to federal court transcripts obtained by the Daily News.
Perez declined numerous interview requests and did not respond to questions submitted to her attorneys about her past.
While sources say Perez was behind much of A-Rod’s failed legal and PR strategy last summer, Rodriguez describes her only as a “long-time friend.”
JOHNNY NUNEZ/WIREIMAGEEnlarge
JOHNNY NUNEZ/WIREIMAGEEnlarge
Desiree Perez has close ties to superstar singer Beyonce (at left) and Jay Z, seen at right with rap mogul and Juan (OG) Perez.
“(I) made my own decisions with my legal team over the last year, and I have accepted my penalties and am trying to serve my penalty,” A-Rod, who has no official ties to Roc Nation Sports, told The News recently.
But according to sources, fueled by animus toward MLB and distrust of the Yankees, Perez called for blood last summer. She urged Rodriguez to fight MLB on Biogenesis even though the league’s investigators had flipped the anti-aging clinic’s proprietor, Anthony Bosch.
Baseball’s $275 million-man had the means and connections to the best legal and professional team in the world.
But when the Biogenesis scandal engulfed him, the ex-MVP instead bet his future on the advice of a woman with a dubious past and zero experience with arbitration, collective bargaining or baseball’s drug policy.
Court records obtained by The News show Perez was part of a massive cocaine distribution case in 1994. Following her arrest, she became a key government cooperator, going undercover to help the DEA build successful cases against major traffickers in Puerto Rico and Colombia.
Cooperation with the feds won her supervised release, but she went on the lam and then served nine months in prison.
According to one source with inside knowledge of A-Rod’s strategy, Perez demanded that Rodriguez fight and accused the seven-time All-Star of letting MLB and the Yankees drive him from the game.
Her combative stance came at a pivotal time for Rodriguez.
He was recovering from a second hip surgery in four years and angling to protect his massive contract amid emerging evidence of performance-enhancing drug use.
JOHNNY NUNEZ/WIREIMAGEDesiree Perez parties with Beyonce. Perez, who was caught with 35 kilos of cocaine and spent time in jail, now rubs shoulders with some of the biggest celebs in the world.
Rodriguez approached Yankees president Randy Levine directly, asking for a meeting to explore an exit strategy to protect his multimillion-dollar contract.
When Levine declined, telling Rodriguez that his problem was with MLB and not the team, Perez confronted A-Rod with demands to return to the field, according to one source familiar with the strategy.
“This is when Desiree Perez hijacked the process and forced him back on the team,” the source said.
At one point, after Rodriguez missed a minor league rehab game because of a tight quad and the Yankees asked him to return to
New York for an MRI, Perez helped locate a doctor to review the test and find there was no strain, according to the source.
The plan backfired when SNY and The News reported that the orthopedist, Dr. Michael Gross, had been disciplined by the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners for “failing to adequately ensure proper patient treatment involving the prescribing of hormones, including steroids.”
“This was her ploy, to expose the Yankees and take retirement out of Alex’s hands,” the source said. “She thought she had a gotcha moment when Gross said the MRI didn’t indicate a strain.”
Despite the goof, A-Rod was apparently still taking Perez’s advice on Aug. 2. After smacking a home run in Trenton during his minor-league rehab assignment, Rodriguez told the media that the Yankees and MLB were conspiring to push him out of baseball.
“I think that’s the pink elephant in the room,” said Rodriguez, claiming “people are finding creative ways to cancel (his) contract.”
Rodriguez’s attorneys knew immediately that his attack would derail the diplomacy required for a settlement. A day later, overtures from the Rodriguez camp were rebuffed by baseball officials.
APAnthony Bosch claims he supplied A-Rod with performance-enhancing drugs through his anti-aging clinic Biogenesis.
Two days later, commissioner Bud Selig hit Rodriguez with a 211-game ban.
“They wanted to embarrass the Yankees,” one source said. “Cost them money. That dynamic, that is why Desiree Perez gave an ultimatum to A-Rod. That is why they wanted the Yankees to play him.”
The result was an all-out assault on the Yankees, MLB and Selig, Bosch, the Yankees’ doctor, the arbitrator that would hear Rodriguez’s appeal of the suspension, the media and anyone else that got in the way.
At one point A-Rod’s “supporters” showed up at his arbitration hearing on Park Ave. with signs comparing Levine to the devil.
There were accusations, denied by Levine, that his contract called for a bonus if he could get the Yankees out from under A-Rod’s massive deal.
“Scratch the commissioner’s eyes out and kick the Yankees in the shin,” is how Rodriguez lawyer David Cornwell, speaking at Villanova sports law symposium in March, described the strategy that led to Rodriguez’s suspension for the entire 2014 season.
Nothing was more important than the effort to smear, intimidate and outspend Bosch. Discrediting the witness who knew the most about A-Rod’s doping was a top priority, and the best ammunition was to call him out for having been forced to cooperate with authorities.
Bosch had his back against the wall and had no chance but to flip against his friend. It was a position Perez knew all too well.
CAUGHT WITH 35 KILOSPerez was a 26-year-old mother of young children in 1994 when she was arrested in New York for possession with intent to distribute 35 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records reviewed by The News.
Federal authorities charged she was part of a drug conspiracy stretching from New York to Florida to Puerto Rico.
She and co-defendant Amaury Lopez faced at least 10 years in prison (Lopez was supposedly one of at least three men to marry Perez since the late 1980s).
But Perez cooperated; in return for telling the DEA everything — and “putting herself at substantial risk,” as one prosecutor put it — she was sentenced to 30 months in a military-style boot camp program in 1995.
BEBETO MATTHEWS/APMajor League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig slapped Rodriguez with a 211-game ban for violating league's drug policy.
Many of the records in Perez’s case were sealed soon after her arrest. But one transcript from a June 11, 1996, court hearing obtained by The News shows the feds were pleased with their star mole.
“The defendant has really worked closely with these agents,” assistant U.S. Attorney Laurence Bardfeld told a judge that day, arguing to keep Perez out of jail.
Miami-based defense attorney Alan Ross told the judge that his client “wore a wire on no less than the four or five occasions when she’s been down there in Puerto Rico.
“And I think the court knows from its experience that you just can’t do anything more dangerous than wear a wire and go into an undercover meeting in Puerto Rico with a known violator, one whose (sic) suspected of — or being investigated for — a murder case down there.”
The transcript describes how a mutual “regard and respect” developed between Perez and the DEA special agents she worked with to bust Colombians moving cocaine shipments of 50 to 100 kilograms.
“She has gone the extra mile,” said Ross, adding that he believed the defendant was “fully rehabilitated.”
Perez was released that July and placed on five years of supervised release. She began working at nightspots in Miami Beach and was scheduled to meet her probation officer at one of them, Club Onyx, when she skipped town without notice in early August 1997.
The fugitive resurfaced nine month later in Brooklyn, where she was arrested on March 5, 1998. Perez was charged with grand larceny, criminal use of drug paraphernalia and criminal possession of a firearm.
Her probation was revoked and she was sentenced to nine months in prison and three years of supervised release.
A DEA special agent from the case, contacted by The News, declined comment.
OTTO GREULE JR/GETTY IMAGESSources say Perez was instrumental in getting former Yank Robinson Cano (c.) to sign a mammoth $240 million contract with the Seattle Mariners. At left, Mariners GM Jeff Zduriencik.
But lawyer Ross said he was not surprised by Perez’s career turnaround.
“She is a stunning and bright woman, a very smart lady,” he said.
Perez appears to have been in business with Jay Z since at least 2002, helping the rapper run his 40/40 Club in Las Vegas.
That year, the club’s liquor license application listed Desiree Perez’s father, Epifiano Gonzalez of the Bronx, as president, director and 50% stockholder in the club.
Jay Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, owned the other half.
She was ultimately joined there by her current husband, Juan “OG” Perez, the president of Roc Nation Sports and another partner in the sports bar chain.
“Catch me at the X with OG at a Yankee game/I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can,” Jay Z rapped in his hit “Empire State of Mind.”
By 2003, the Perezes were the operators of the 40/40 Club on 25th St. in Manhattan, a trendy club named for the exclusive group of players, including Rodriguez, who’ve achieved the rare feat of hitting 40 home runs and stealing 40 bases in a single season.
As Major League Baseball prepared to slap Rodriguez with a historic suspension for his sordid star turn in the Biogenesis doping scandal, the 38-year-old Yankee third baseman privately told advisers last summer that he was ready to cut a deal with MLB officials and quit.
Years of steroids and legal warfare had worn him down. And he faced accelerated drug testing if he continued to play.
“He had been talking about retirement because of injuries. Given his prior involvement (with doping), he knew he would be a target for additional testing,” says one source close to the case. “There was no way he could use and play again.”
But multiple sources told the Daily News that A-Rod’s last chance for a dignified exit ended when he turned to Desiree Perez, a Manhattan nightclub manager with a lengthy criminal record and close links to hip-hop mogul Jay Z.
While Perez is not an employee, officer or agent of Jay Z’s new agency, Roc Nation Sports, sources say she is a major behind-the-scenes influence.
“She’s directly involved with the athletes,” one baseball insider said. “She has a lot of power.”
Perez is also a convicted felon, with a long and wild history as a DEA cooperating witness and then a fugitive. She wore wires to meet with major cocaine traffickers, according to federal court transcripts obtained by the Daily News.
Perez declined numerous interview requests and did not respond to questions submitted to her attorneys about her past.
While sources say Perez was behind much of A-Rod’s failed legal and PR strategy last summer, Rodriguez describes her only as a “long-time friend.”
Desiree Perez has close ties to superstar singer Beyonce (at left) and Jay Z, seen at right with rap mogul and Juan (OG) Perez.
“(I) made my own decisions with my legal team over the last year, and I have accepted my penalties and am trying to serve my penalty,” A-Rod, who has no official ties to Roc Nation Sports, told The News recently.
But according to sources, fueled by animus toward MLB and distrust of the Yankees, Perez called for blood last summer. She urged Rodriguez to fight MLB on Biogenesis even though the league’s investigators had flipped the anti-aging clinic’s proprietor, Anthony Bosch.
Baseball’s $275 million-man had the means and connections to the best legal and professional team in the world.
But when the Biogenesis scandal engulfed him, the ex-MVP instead bet his future on the advice of a woman with a dubious past and zero experience with arbitration, collective bargaining or baseball’s drug policy.
Court records obtained by The News show Perez was part of a massive cocaine distribution case in 1994. Following her arrest, she became a key government cooperator, going undercover to help the DEA build successful cases against major traffickers in Puerto Rico and Colombia.
Cooperation with the feds won her supervised release, but she went on the lam and then served nine months in prison.
According to one source with inside knowledge of A-Rod’s strategy, Perez demanded that Rodriguez fight and accused the seven-time All-Star of letting MLB and the Yankees drive him from the game.
Her combative stance came at a pivotal time for Rodriguez.
He was recovering from a second hip surgery in four years and angling to protect his massive contract amid emerging evidence of performance-enhancing drug use.
Rodriguez approached Yankees president Randy Levine directly, asking for a meeting to explore an exit strategy to protect his multimillion-dollar contract.
When Levine declined, telling Rodriguez that his problem was with MLB and not the team, Perez confronted A-Rod with demands to return to the field, according to one source familiar with the strategy.
“This is when Desiree Perez hijacked the process and forced him back on the team,” the source said.
At one point, after Rodriguez missed a minor league rehab game because of a tight quad and the Yankees asked him to return to
New York for an MRI, Perez helped locate a doctor to review the test and find there was no strain, according to the source.
The plan backfired when SNY and The News reported that the orthopedist, Dr. Michael Gross, had been disciplined by the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners for “failing to adequately ensure proper patient treatment involving the prescribing of hormones, including steroids.”
“This was her ploy, to expose the Yankees and take retirement out of Alex’s hands,” the source said. “She thought she had a gotcha moment when Gross said the MRI didn’t indicate a strain.”
Despite the goof, A-Rod was apparently still taking Perez’s advice on Aug. 2. After smacking a home run in Trenton during his minor-league rehab assignment, Rodriguez told the media that the Yankees and MLB were conspiring to push him out of baseball.
“I think that’s the pink elephant in the room,” said Rodriguez, claiming “people are finding creative ways to cancel (his) contract.”
Rodriguez’s attorneys knew immediately that his attack would derail the diplomacy required for a settlement. A day later, overtures from the Rodriguez camp were rebuffed by baseball officials.
Two days later, commissioner Bud Selig hit Rodriguez with a 211-game ban.
“They wanted to embarrass the Yankees,” one source said. “Cost them money. That dynamic, that is why Desiree Perez gave an ultimatum to A-Rod. That is why they wanted the Yankees to play him.”
The result was an all-out assault on the Yankees, MLB and Selig, Bosch, the Yankees’ doctor, the arbitrator that would hear Rodriguez’s appeal of the suspension, the media and anyone else that got in the way.
At one point A-Rod’s “supporters” showed up at his arbitration hearing on Park Ave. with signs comparing Levine to the devil.
There were accusations, denied by Levine, that his contract called for a bonus if he could get the Yankees out from under A-Rod’s massive deal.
“Scratch the commissioner’s eyes out and kick the Yankees in the shin,” is how Rodriguez lawyer David Cornwell, speaking at Villanova sports law symposium in March, described the strategy that led to Rodriguez’s suspension for the entire 2014 season.
Nothing was more important than the effort to smear, intimidate and outspend Bosch. Discrediting the witness who knew the most about A-Rod’s doping was a top priority, and the best ammunition was to call him out for having been forced to cooperate with authorities.
Bosch had his back against the wall and had no chance but to flip against his friend. It was a position Perez knew all too well.
CAUGHT WITH 35 KILOSPerez was a 26-year-old mother of young children in 1994 when she was arrested in New York for possession with intent to distribute 35 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records reviewed by The News.
Federal authorities charged she was part of a drug conspiracy stretching from New York to Florida to Puerto Rico.
She and co-defendant Amaury Lopez faced at least 10 years in prison (Lopez was supposedly one of at least three men to marry Perez since the late 1980s).
But Perez cooperated; in return for telling the DEA everything — and “putting herself at substantial risk,” as one prosecutor put it — she was sentenced to 30 months in a military-style boot camp program in 1995.
Many of the records in Perez’s case were sealed soon after her arrest. But one transcript from a June 11, 1996, court hearing obtained by The News shows the feds were pleased with their star mole.
“The defendant has really worked closely with these agents,” assistant U.S. Attorney Laurence Bardfeld told a judge that day, arguing to keep Perez out of jail.
Miami-based defense attorney Alan Ross told the judge that his client “wore a wire on no less than the four or five occasions when she’s been down there in Puerto Rico.
“And I think the court knows from its experience that you just can’t do anything more dangerous than wear a wire and go into an undercover meeting in Puerto Rico with a known violator, one whose (sic) suspected of — or being investigated for — a murder case down there.”
The transcript describes how a mutual “regard and respect” developed between Perez and the DEA special agents she worked with to bust Colombians moving cocaine shipments of 50 to 100 kilograms.
“She has gone the extra mile,” said Ross, adding that he believed the defendant was “fully rehabilitated.”
Perez was released that July and placed on five years of supervised release. She began working at nightspots in Miami Beach and was scheduled to meet her probation officer at one of them, Club Onyx, when she skipped town without notice in early August 1997.
The fugitive resurfaced nine month later in Brooklyn, where she was arrested on March 5, 1998. Perez was charged with grand larceny, criminal use of drug paraphernalia and criminal possession of a firearm.
Her probation was revoked and she was sentenced to nine months in prison and three years of supervised release.
A DEA special agent from the case, contacted by The News, declined comment.
But lawyer Ross said he was not surprised by Perez’s career turnaround.
“She is a stunning and bright woman, a very smart lady,” he said.
Perez appears to have been in business with Jay Z since at least 2002, helping the rapper run his 40/40 Club in Las Vegas.
That year, the club’s liquor license application listed Desiree Perez’s father, Epifiano Gonzalez of the Bronx, as president, director and 50% stockholder in the club.
Jay Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, owned the other half.
She was ultimately joined there by her current husband, Juan “OG” Perez, the president of Roc Nation Sports and another partner in the sports bar chain.
“Catch me at the X with OG at a Yankee game/I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can,” Jay Z rapped in his hit “Empire State of Mind.”
By 2003, the Perezes were the operators of the 40/40 Club on 25th St. in Manhattan, a trendy club named for the exclusive group of players, including Rodriguez, who’ve achieved the rare feat of hitting 40 home runs and stealing 40 bases in a single season.
her pops parterneed with hov on 40/40. hov musta use to hit that.
...but seriously brehs, I think they might be trying to bring down the camel 
i think the wolves ran him off though
for jay-z ... my favorite rap album is illmatic)