The bumbling Dominican hitman who allegedly confessed to accidentally shooting baseball legend David Ortiz was indicted in New Jersey Thursday for conspiring to distribute heroin and cocaine, federal prosecutors said.
Accused hitman Rolfi Ferreira Cruz, 25, was also indicted on charges of possessing more than 100 grams of heroin and a quantity of cocaine with the intent to distribute, and possessing a firearm to further a drug trafficking crime, New Jersey US Attorney Craig Carpenito announced.
Ferreira Cruz, who is already facing charges for allegedly shooting Ortiz in the Dominican Republic, faces up to 40 years in prison and a $5 million fine on the federal charges.
Prosecutors didn’t provide any more details of Ferreira Cruz’s alleged activities, but law enforcement sources said it is part of an ongoing, months-long investigation with the DEA.
Ferreira Cruz is currently behind bars in the Dominican Republic after authorities named him as the hitman who botched an $8,000 assassination job on June 9 that left Red Sox legend “Big Papi” in intensive care.
The 25-year-old claimed he was thrown off by Ortiz’s duds — and authorities in the DR on Wednesday confirmed the true target was Ortiz’s friend David Fernandez, who was out drinking with Ortiz that night and wearing similar clothes.
“It wasn’t David, it wasn’t for David,” Cruz shouted to journalists in Spanish through the bars of a police holding cell in the Dominican Republic last week.
Ferreira Cruz was already on the lam over two 2017 robberies in New Jersey, where he allegedly stuck up a 26-year-old man and a 41-year-old man on the same evening, the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to The Post last Thursday.
The owner of a bodega near the site of one of the robberies said she and her husband recognized his mugshot after the arrest in the Dominican Republic.
“We were watching TV the other night and my husband say, ‘Hey, I know him!’” Magda Cruz, 41, said at her mini-mart on Highland Avenue in Clifton.
“I recognize him. He lives around here. He was a customer. He came in regularly. Not for the last year … He went back to the Dominican Republic.”
So far, 11 people have been arrested for the botched hit while Ortiz continues to recover in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
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