A deleted article on the NY Daily News is resurfacing thanks to the The Wayback Machine. An article titled “Alex Rodriguez was set to quit baseball until former drug mole and ex-convict Desiree Perez convinced the Yankees slugger to fight MLB over PED suspension.” The Wayback Machine shows the article was available until October 2024, when it mysteriously disappeared.
There is new found interest in Roc Nation CEO Desiree Perez’s “Shady Lady” past, since a newly filed federal lawsuit against her and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation has been making waves worldwide. The federal lawsuit alleges racketeering, illegal wiretapping, and other serious charges.
An excerpt from the NY Daily News article:
Perez was arrested in 1994 for possession of 35 kilos of cocaine with intent to distribute and again in 1998 for grand larceny and possession of a firearm. The club manager, with close ties to Beyonce and Jay Z, has a ‘lot of power’ inside rap mogul’s Roc Nation Sports
CAUGHT WITH 35 KILOS
Perez 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.
In 2003, Perez boasted to The New York Times that “stars like Alex Rodriguez of the Texas Rangers often come by after games in the New York area.”
Perez soon became one of the most trusted members of Jay Z’s entourage. She is a part of international pop star Rihanna’s management team and has been photographed partying with Beyoncé.
But to make Roc Nation a true empire, the organization needed to expand beyond music.
Last year, to great fanfare, Jay Z formed Roc Nation Sports and began representing pro athletes. Baseball insiders say Perez was an important voice in the business from the beginning.
Former Florida Panthers executive Michael Yormark acknowledged the role Perez plays when he left the NHL team and joined Roc Nation Sports in March.
“I am honored and humbled to be joining Jay Z’s Roc Nation Sports as President and Chief Strategy Officer,” Yormark said. “I am thrilled to join an exciting, innovative organization led by Desiree and Juan Perez.”
BIG ROLE IN CANO CONTRACT
The Biogenesis showdown coincided with Roc Nation’s ballyhooed agency launch. While Rodriguez was not an official client, his friend and teammate Robinson Cano was.
Desiree Perez played a large role, along with Jay Z and her husband, in the negotiations that landed Cano his $240 million contract with the Seattle Mariners.
A December 2013 story on MyNorthwest.com suggested Seattle general manager Jack Zduriencik spent as much time wooing the Roc Nation principals as he did Cano.
“We took them down into the locker room to give them a tour of the field, and we had lockers set up for them. There was Felix Hernandez, Robinson Cano, (Roc Nation president) Juan Perez, (Roc Nation’s) Desiree Perez, Jay Z, the whole group,” Zduriencik said.
“It was pretty neat, I mean, it really was. And then we went upstairs and we talked about $240 million.”
The Rodriguez saga demonstrates how a lack of experience — especially in the areas of collective bargaining, arbitration and anti-doping policies — can backfire.
His take-no-prisoners strategy not only led to Rodriguez’s historic suspension, but also the bitter arbitration fight, the animosity of other players and the loss of more than $20 million in base salary for the 2014 season.
“They retained all sorts of people to help them out in their battle with MLB,” one person involved in the imbroglio said. “People would sign on with them, and then get passed on to Juan Perez and finally Desiree.
“It was like Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance, except you never wanted to take a chance with her. She undermined everything A-Rod’s people were trying to do to help him. It was a travesty.”
Rodriguez is now quietly trying to reinvent himself, showing up on college campuses, attending billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway conference and declaring his intention to get an MBA — even though he has no undergraduate degree.
Perhaps emboldened by the Milwaukee Brewers fans who embraced admitted PED user Ryan Braun, or Lance Armstrong’s attempts to rehabilitate his damaged reputation, Rodriguez is contacting friendly media outlets to begin his reinvention tour, one source said.
While injuries and age could end Rodriguez’s playing career, his attack-dog approach to the MLB probe has undermined his chances of returning to the game as a broadcaster or executive.
A-Rod appears destined to become a baseball pariah, doomed by his own bad decisions.
Sources told The News that Rodriguez listens to Desiree Perez and others in Jay Z’s circle because he hopes to become an agent himself — perhaps even joining the hip-hop star’s fledgling agency.
That would help explain Rodriguez’s decision-making process, and the choices he made.
“He was fully aware of the options,” one source said. “He just chose to follow Desiree.”
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Damon Dash wary of Jay Z associate and A-Rod advisor Desiree Perez
The article is linked by another article referencing the convicted felon and Roc Nation CEO, Desiree Perez, titled “Damon Dash wary of Jay Z associate and A-Rod advisor Desiree Perez,” published on 3/11/2015 by the NY Daily News.
The NY Daily News article reads:
Dash said the story made him hesitate to do business with Jay Z, given the fact that federal law enforcement has come down on Dash’s friends and acquaintances through the years.
“I read about his affiliation with an informant, that he’s in business with certain people,” Dash says. “It’s tricky for me to say, but just based on where I’m from, I can’t have nothing to do with that…There’s no more business being done with me and him until I understand the situation.”
Dash said he needed to have a “one-on-one” with Jay Z about the matter. Dash said the feds had been after him “for years” and had arrested some of his colleagues, including Kareem “Biggs” Burke, who founded Roc-A-Fella with Dash and Jay Z in 1995. In 2012, Biggs was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring to distribute more than 100 kilos of marijuana.
“My man’s in jail, I cried over that,” Dash said.
Perez, who manages Jay Z’s 40/40 Club in Manhattan, is a fixture in the rapper’s Roc Nation production company. She was a powerful behind-the-scenes influence on Rodriguez in the summer and fall of 2013, when he launched a wild and unsuccessful effort to escape a season-long doping ban.