DALLAS -- When Ronaldo Peralta was asked to head up the office in charge of enforcing Major League Baseball's regulations in the Dominican Republic a few years back, it was like sending a single sheriff into a lawless town in the Old West.
"People would pull guns on each other sometimes," he said shortly after taking over. "Well, they still do that. But not as much."
No, nowadays baseball is confronting a different kind of lawlessness in the Dominican. And it has the potential to shake the game there to its core.
Federal agents, following up on baseball's own two-month investigation, have been interviewing representatives of all 30 major league teams after the May firing of Dave Wilder, the Chicago White Sox's senior personnel director, and two White Sox scouts.
According to the Chicago Tribune, investigators are looking into whether Wilder may have pocketed portions of the bonuses the White Sox gave him to sign Dominican prospects. Ross Rice, a spokesman for the FBI office in Chicago, said no criminal charges have been filed.
Wilder has said nothing publicly since his firing.
"The FBI's going to all the organizations . . . asking players if they received or gave money," said Clay Daniel, international scouting supervisor for the Angels, whose Dominican-based scouts have already been interviewed. "I'm sure they're looking into scouts, personnel, people like that that may have had a hand in it."
And it may go higher than that. Several baseball sources, all of whom said their jobs would be jeopardized if they spoke on the record about a federal investigation, say at least one general manager has already come under suspicion.
Peralta and officials in the commissioner's office declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. But according to Daniel and others, the recent escalation of bonuses that teams are paying in Latin America has made it easier and more profitable to skim money from players and teams.
Dominican scouts, known on the island as buscones, or "searchers," have been doing that for at least a decade. Many tell families up front they will take 30% or more of a player's bonus when he signs, then play teams off one another in negotiations to drive that bonus -- and, consequently, their cut -- higher.
