I met him once at the HDR, many, many moons ago when I was fairly new to Costa Rica, he was a friend of a friend and he sat with us awhile. None of this controversy existed at that time and among his friends he was considered a "cool guy", or a Costa Rican version of "big man on campus" ... "big man in Costa Rica".
I will say before I met him, he had quite the reputation of being a big mouth, a braggart, arrogant.
To my surprise, he was subdued and low key, very funny and gracious. He watched the parade of chicas rotating around the HDR lobby with us and even recommended a little spinner who I took him up on that night and she delivered as good as he said she would. When I agreed with him I liked the way she looked he flagged her down and had her come to the table to meet me, he introduced us and then shortly afterwards took off. 
Just in my short time with him he seemed to be just another monger to me, but I could tell he relished the lime light, the big shot status he enjoyed with these other guys and showing off that he knows these chicas and has a friendship with them that he can snap his fingers and one will come wiggling to the table...
I'm one of those suckers that if you're nice to me I'll be on your side so I felt terrible when I read of his arrest and I donated to his get out of jail fund. I felt the government gave a much more severe penalty than what he deserved, but after hearing how he had been repeatedly warned to stop his excessive behavior and then acting arrogantly after getting clear and fair warning, my opinion is unfortunately he deserved to get into trouble.
It boils down to this; every time you visit the Costa Rica main airport here, it is jammed packed with money spending tourists; families, nature tour groups, surfers, education groups, all here to enjoy the natural wonders, all with credit cards and cash. Costa Rica will protect this at all costs and his excessive behavior was getting the mongering activity more publicity than Costa Rica wanted. Obviously they worried if this information grew too fast, that might endanger the flow of this much much larger group of money spending "clean"
tourists.Agree or disagree CD's penalty is too harsh, a shot was fired across the bow and highly unlikely anyone else will voluntarily step up to the plate (no pun meant on his baseball past) and run their mouths off and alert the powers that be that their money supply is once again being jeopardized by another loose wrench in the well oiled money making machine...
thats a really good depiction 
and was hesitant, who knows, but it sounded like you were polite and friendly. Every thing I read indicated a very one sided and vicious campaign from the judges involved to disembowel him, remember guys, we are not in monger Disney land in Orlando Florida. We are in a foreign country and the privileges, innocent until proven guilty status, right to a reasonable bail (nobody got killed, maimed or raped here) doesn't exist.