Perez with hubby Juan Perez (l.) and rap superstar Jay Z. SIPKIN, COREY
When asked by Sway on his relationship with Jay Z, Dame unloads on Jay Z’s close relationship with a Desiree Perez who is a known DEA informant and according to reports works closely with athletes in Roc Nation Sports. Perez is the wife of longtime business partner OG Juan, who is rarely seen and never does interviews.
via DAILY NEWS
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.
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.
SKIP to 54:30 for his stance on Jay Z.
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.
JOHNNY NUNEZ/WIREIMAGE
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.”
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