Julian Dorey Podcast - #221 - The Cartel's Highest-Ranking Smuggler Tells All | Luis Navia

Starting point is 00:00:00 Finally, things got settled, and I was let go. When you were let go, did you think that they were going to shoot you on the way out? No. Like it was fake? No. I was let go, and they thought, this motherfucker is going to grab the next taxi to Pereira, which is the nearest town with an airport, city with an airport,

Starting point is 00:00:18 and hop on a plane and go to fucking Lower East Mongolia. You know what I did? I got on a taxi, and I went to Rasguño's hotel and I checked in and I had no money because I had no money because I just came from a kidnapping. I said, no, put it on La Cuenta del Señor. Oh, no.

Starting point is 00:00:39 I went to the bar, had a couple drinks, ordered breakfast, and the next day I call him. And I go, ah, you hombre, ¿cómo va? And he goes, me imagino que estás en la puta mierda. And I go, no, estoy aquí en el Mariscal Robledo, tu hotel en Cartago. No, hijo de puta, no, ¿cómo va? No, no seas tan hijo de puta. ¿Cómo? Hombre, es queuta, no. ¿Cómo va? No, no seas tan hijueputa.

Starting point is 00:01:05 ¿Cómo? Hombre, es que tenemos que hablar. No tenemos que hablar un culo, pero qué loco. ¿Cómo que hijueputa? He was going, what the fuck? This motherfucker's crazy. I checked and he came to see me at the hotel. He was like, I have nothing against you, but there's no more business.

Starting point is 00:01:22 Try to get it through your fucking head. There's no more business. And then I said, well, OK, I can understand that. And then he says, well, then leave. You're free. Leave. I goes, shit, but you left me with no money. Can you give me 100 grand?

Starting point is 00:01:35 And he goes, you know what? Tengo 50 en el maletín. Te voy a dar los 50. And he had a black Harley Davidson maletín. And he gave me 50 grand. And he told me to get the fuck out of here. What's up, guys? If you're on Spotify right now, please follow the show so that you don't miss any future episodes and leave a five-star review. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:02:14 Luis, I do not know how you're not dead, and I also don't know how you do not have a movie about you yet because your life is fucking insane. Well, I'm alive. And the movie's on its way. It is on its way. I'm working on a movie now. We've got some very interested people and it's very very long well you and i that's great to hear because you and i had an awesome dinner last night just talking about your life on a high level i've also started to read the book you did with jesse fink i'm about 100 pages in i was reading some yesterday afternoon phenomenal highly recommend it's

Starting point is 00:02:45 called pure narco and it's long because you've had a long 25 year run in the past 25 years with basically every cartel known to man except the asian ones although i think i think once uh we hooked up with an Asian guy in New York. He was going to give us heroin. We were going to give him cocaine. And we ended up partying for like five days at the plaza. And that deal never went through. Okay.

Starting point is 00:03:15 But yeah, Columbia cartels and Mexican cartels crossed the board. So we're going to get into all of it today. And we'll take as long as we got to do. I don't care if it's two podcasts or one, we'll get it figured out. But essentially you were, first of all, your backstory is nuts, how you ended up in this, but you were the logistics guy. I kind of look at you seeing as you never carried a gun, never ordered anyone killed, and you were the middleman basically getting it between countries for on behalf of these cartels i kind of look at you as like the non-violent kaiser soze

Starting point is 00:03:51 of the cartel world because you roll up you look like francis ford coppola you're like this fun affable guy you're the last person i'd look at and be like yeah that motherfucker's in the cartel well that's that's the idea and i always had that very clear in my mind. I mean, there's one thing I knew and that was, you know, it's not healthy to be hot and be in that business. So I got in the business. I was, let's say I was fortunate to get into it at a high level and I liked it. And I always tried to keep myself from getting involved in things that I knew didn't come natural to me. What came natural was business and logistics. The killing part and the violence, that happened.

Starting point is 00:04:42 I won't say it didn't because, you know, you work for the Medellin cartel, Northern Valley cartel, the Mexican cartels, shit like that happens. I mean, but let's say it's not my department. OK, but these are organizations that have a lot of different people that do a lot of different things. But I always knew that the key and what made me keep going was I stayed myself. I remained as who I was and I didn't try to play a part that I didn't feel right. I always felt right doing what I did, which was logistics. And I excelled at it. First, through distribution networks in the USA. I got very hot in the USA, and I left to Colombia. And then I opened up the, what you would call export offices, where you buy planes and you buy boats, and then you offer your services. And you've got connections in the Bahamas, you've got connections in Mexico and Belize and Guatemala,

Starting point is 00:05:47 later on in Europe, and you put these into play. It's just like business today. You've got connections that buy aluminum, so you work with them. And you always make... You're doing some of that now? Yes. I do a lot of aluminum business aluminum copper manganese different minerals and i don't know what to tell you i think that's probably uh

Starting point is 00:06:16 more dangerous and worse than uh the cocaine really i mean what we're doing business not the aluminum but in general to feed this uh craziness that all americans have in the whole world has on electric cars we're making big holes in the world you know africa it's all mined out you know there's a lot of uh news about this you know basically the chinese own africa yeah the cobalt mining and all that shit and the copper and the cobalt and you know, lithium in Bolivia, right? So it's all bad but you know and You know I Never never thought that I

Starting point is 00:07:03 Never felt out of place in my business. I never thought I was doing anything bad. I knew it was illegal. When you were in the Coke business. Yeah, of course. I mean, illegal. Yes. But I think it was morally wrong.

Starting point is 00:07:15 No, no. There's a lot of people don't like that, but I have to be truthful. You know, if I really was against it if i thought it was morally wrong i wouldn't be doing it and i got into it and i fell into a groove let's say that lasted 25 years well that's the thing i i don't want to touch that yet because i think one of the most fascinating things about you is your psychology and just breaking down how you view what your world view is how you view your role and what your role has been in it so i think that's going to come up throughout the conversation so i'll put a pin in that but can we start at the very beginning you you were born

Starting point is 00:08:02 in into a hurricane essentially you were born in in I guess, what, four or five years before Castro took over? Yes. Do you remember Cuba at all? No. No, I was too young. I came from a well-to-do family. My father was in the sugar business in a very big way. They had interests also in sugar trading in new york so from early years of 1940s 1950s

Starting point is 00:08:32 my dad was in new york and wall street so we were an affluent family in cuba and when we got to miami we got to key biscayne um my dad had monies that he had brought over from how did he get money out of cuba i never like alessi your family's from cuba right and your grandfather got fucked right yeah we got royally fucked and lost everything and had to start over so yours is one of the cases where it's very few people had that success yeah how did that happen my dad worked with Julio Lobo, and the company was called Galvan Lobo. It was the largest sugar trading company in the world. Who was Julio? Julio Lobo was the richest South American at that time.

Starting point is 00:09:15 He was the richest man in South America. He owned more sugar mills than anybody else. The United States had a sugar deal with Cuba that they paid Cuba the same monies they paid the U.S. farmers. Cuba was in a privileged position as far as sugar was. So working in Wall Street and having access to, you know, the world and the position he was in, he was able to have offshore accounts and, you know,

Starting point is 00:09:47 his earnings, he didn't keep them in Cuba. He kept them overseas. Smart. Yes. He was never, never in favor of Fidel. And when Fidel came on the scene, he knew it was a disaster. And he told Julio Lobo, it's a disaster and he told julio lobo it's a disaster julio thought that they could manage fidel that fidel was a guy that they could manage that he was a young kid and he was manageable and

Starting point is 00:10:13 my dad always told him no you're wrong julio used to say we're gonna tweak him like a puppet it didn't turn out like that did your dad ever talk with you about Fidel? Nope. Ever since when he left Cuba, he never touched that subject again. Never? He's not the kind of guy that, no, Ken Cuban, no. My dad was a very quiet person. Rarely did he say anything. And when he said something, it meant something.

Starting point is 00:10:40 He was an amazing businessman, very well respected, and worked at the highest levels. Even when we got to Miami, he opened up shipping companies. You know, the first sugar mill in Florida, you know, my dad created that. Wow. With partners from New York. He worked with Millbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. The law firm. Yeah, the Rockefeller Law Firm, Chase Manhattan Bank Law Firm.

Starting point is 00:11:13 They put together a group with the local Glades County sugar farmers. They put together the first sugar refinery. And you were saying at dinner last night your dad specifically liked working with americans he didn't like working with latin americans yes um nothing against latin americans but at that time he was uh very involved with americans and the sugar market he had the offices in wall street um and he just felt that uh they ran a cleaner show let's say you know america was more organized and he was used to organized business not reckless south american you know not to say anything bad, but he really respected the

Starting point is 00:12:08 American way of doing business. Got it. Now, when you were growing up, did you have, was he trying to get you into that business at all? Did you work with him? Was he a big influence in your life or was his business very separate from family his business was very separate and since his business was two hours away from miami he spent a lot of time in clouston florida he would he would leave every week he was out you know three or four days of the week he was away from home and he was a workaholic and i mean he created this from nothing though for sugar mill and then the shipping business he was always very involved in business he was a workaholic and he was very smart at what he did he was not a salesman he was an administrator and he had a sharp numbers mind

Starting point is 00:12:59 so uh did he always tell him no he was very. He was he wasn't much of a talkative person. He never told me, no, get into the. What he always told me was study, study, study, get a degree, become a professional. And unfortunately, that was not me. That's the truth. I mean, I went to high high school I went to a Jesuit high school I had classmates of mine that knew they were going to be engineers knew they were going to be doctors knew they're going to be accountants not me I was in high school I didn't know what the hell I was going to be I just wanted to make money I knew I liked liked money. But how? I didn't know. I didn't know. Were you a troublemaker? Somewhat. Somewhat.

Starting point is 00:13:51 Yes. I wasn't the most, you know, disciplined student. You know, I was always up to some mischief. But in a good way, not a bad way. But I was, you know, I got along with B's and C's in school because, you know, I'm not dumb and I would listen. And if I had to cram the last day, I would. But I could have, if I would have studied, I would have had A's and B's. But I wasn't into school. School was not, I didn't see school as the way to success. Was there a type of industry or type of job that maybe wasn't any kind of traditional job or accountant or anything.

Starting point is 00:14:52 For example, I loved playing the drums. From an early age, I decided I want to play the drums. So my dad bought me. My dad had money, so he bought me a beautiful Ludwig drum set. The Cuban Ringo Starr? Yeah. My dad had money, so he bought me a beautiful Ludwig drum set. The Cuban Ringo Starr? Yeah. So, like, for example, the Beatles come out in 64 or 62 or whatever.

Starting point is 00:15:15 Great music. I loved them. But what I really loved about the Beatles, what really stuck into my head about the Beatles was they were 18, 20 years old, and they were multimillionaires. The music was okay, but the fact that these kids were 20 years old and multimillionaires, and they were just flying around doing whatever they wanted to do, that stuck in my head. Did you view that money as power? Is that what you liked about it?

Starting point is 00:15:45 Money is power, and money is freedom to do whatever the hell you want. So, I mean, who wants to be in an office, an accountant, an attorney? You know, I was very much a free spirit. I liked music. I loved music. I still do. While I was in prison, I played the drums for five years. No shit.

Starting point is 00:16:04 I played country music. I played the choir music at the church, Pearl Jam, rock, Soundgarden, Bush, Spanish music. You missed it when, Alessia, you weren't here yet, but I had Life of Pablo playing out there, and Luis was getting up like, I got a Shazam that. I know that song. Rare Earth. Yeah yeah the fade recut so charlie heat and kanya i i drive a lot because my business in miami takes me everywhere you know where we supply

Starting point is 00:16:42 windows and aluminum facades to condominiums, and they're all over the place. So I'll drive from Hialeah to Aventura to Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach, and I'll drive to LA just as long as I have music. But my music is at full blast. Oh, yeah. That's how I listen to music. Love that. And I'm drumming away at the steering wheel. I'm going, people must look at me going, this guy's nuts.

Starting point is 00:17:10 Who was your favorite in the 60s as a kid? The Beatles obviously came up, but were there other bands you really liked? Jethro Tull. I really liked Jethro Tull. Ian Anderson, Clive Bunker, great drummer. These drummers were all, back then they were still from a jazz school. Like Ian Page from Deep Purple. Great drummers. And I like Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin.

Starting point is 00:17:42 Oh, yeah, of course. The Who. Rolling Stones, I wasn't a big fan of the road really no later on i did but no it's your first cold take yeah but jethro toll was a tough jethro toll gets they get forgotten about a lot they were great awesome yeah cream cream line faith yeah traffic great i love you know stevie winwood you know great great band uh southern rock you have almond brothers wayne almond great guitars off the wall guitars yep you know uh leonard skinner i've been listening to a lot of Dave Matthews lately. Dave Matthews is the cockroach that never dies.

Starting point is 00:18:29 He just hangs around, keeps making great music. He goes from here and then he goes here and he switches. And the drummer's amazing. His drummer's amazing. So I love music. I listen to music all the time. Music is a big turn on. Like, you know, when the girl that turned me on into this business,

Starting point is 00:18:52 first it was Emeralds. She told me it was the Emerald business. So I said, fine, Emeralds. How did this happen again? Like, you went to Georgetown. I want to make sure we have the full color here. You went to Georgetown. You ended up at University of Miami. You graduated.

Starting point is 00:19:06 You met this girl who was at your birthday party right after college. Is that right? Actually, I was working at a radio station. When I came back to Miami, I started going to FIU, and I worked at a radio station called 96X. And that was back in 75. I used to come across and buy three, four pounds of pot. Because I said, this is a perfect, I got the perfect market. I got the DJs. These guys smoke all the time. They love it. So I didn't have to go out of the station to sell my product. It was perfect business model. And I worked in the bookkeeping department.

Starting point is 00:19:45 What's up, everybody? If you are enjoying this episode, and I hope you are, please make sure you share it over on Instagram and tag me. Whether it be a post or a story, you can tag me at Julian Dory Podcast, or even on my personal at Julian D. Dory. And if you're not following me over there, please make sure you do that too. And I will make sure I repost that on my story. And also, if you are over on X, you can tag me at Julian D. Dory, and I will repost that as soon as I see it. So thank you to all of you who have been sharing around the show. As always, smash that subscribe button, hit that like button on the video, and enjoy the rest of this one. So these radio stations, their ratings were defined by the Nielsen books, Nielsen ratings back then. I don't know if they still are. So I'm working at the radio station. My best friend calls me and says,

Starting point is 00:20:31 hey, I got these books in the mail. They want me to fill them out, their radio books. And I said, you got what? Yeah, it says Nielsen on them. I go, you got the Nielsen books? I go to the station manager and I tell him him and he says, you got to be shitting me. And we were like number 10 in the market. So I talked to my friend says, listen, the station manager, we have trades with furniture companies, rug companies, stereo companies. We're going to give you new furniture, new rugs, and stereos for your house. Sounds good. I told the station manager, you can keep all that.

Starting point is 00:21:10 I want $5,000. I got to invest this. So this guy, five members of his family, because his mother was divorced, and she had one last name, and he had another last name, and the husband had another last name. So, you know, five books, different names. They fill them all out 24-7. They're listening to 96X from 6 a.m. and they have the radio on while they're sleeping too. So the ratings come out and 96X comes out the number one. Boom.

Starting point is 00:21:45 Cool. I got my 5,000 bucks. His mother was freaking out. He told her he won a radio contest, and that's what they won. Sure enough, it didn't take long. The owner of the radio station was Bartell Broadcasting, owned by Charter Communications. They're on the New york stock exchange yeah

Starting point is 00:22:06 yeah i've heard them okay so they come down from new york that says there's been a fraud and uh the fcc is looking to take our license away and we believe this fraud initiated uh with uh mr bookkeeper there mr navia and i saw this shit coming down and i said the fcc is going to come after my ass so i left to ecuador i made excellent ecuadorian friends in georgetown when i was in georgetown even today my best friend is Ecuadorian. So Georgetown is like the Illuminati of Ecuadorians? Oh, yeah. That was full of Ecuadorians.

Starting point is 00:22:51 And boy, did we have a good time. To this day, these friends that I met in Georgetown are still my close, close, as they say in Ecuador, mi panas, to the heart. So you had to flee from a radio station over 5K. Yeah. I fled to Ecuador. I stayed there for a month. Then I guess the FCs, we lost the license. This is crazy.

Starting point is 00:23:18 You know, a 96X lost the license. So what does that do to them? Well, it wasn't a good one you know you know it's it's a costly mistake there you lose your radio license uh so i came came back to miami after being in ecuador for about 30 45 days and it's my birthday wait so you so you would you went to ecuador because you thought maybe i'm going to get arrested for this. Yeah, I thought the FCC was going to come down. But then 30 days later, you're like, I'm good, fam, I'm back.

Starting point is 00:23:50 No, they kept it under the rug. They lost their license. They fought it, you know, a year. They lost their license. But I came back because I said, I guess they're not coming after me. You know, I can't live in Ecuador forever. So I came back. And my girlfriend from Key Biscayne throws me a birthday party.

Starting point is 00:24:10 Nice girlfriend. Great girlfriend. I really feel bad about this, too. I'm sitting there on the couch. She had rented a house. Actually, she rented a house. The girls got together and rented a house. And the guys got together and rented a house on Key, she rented a house. The girls got together and rented a house, and the guys got together and rented a house on Key Biscayne for the summer.

Starting point is 00:24:30 She rented a house. She was very good friends with Andy Garcia's wife, for example. Yeah. They grew up on, she grew up on Key Biscayne. So she rented a house. I was sitting on the sofa, having a little scotch on the rocks. Suddenly in through the door walks this girl. She's nothing like anything I had seen before. She was definitely not a local Miami Cuban girl or Kiba's skin girl. She was like off the wall you talk about beautiful exotic just sexy you know she didn't wear bras

Starting point is 00:25:10 back then you know girls you know nice cuban girls all the bra yeah this girl had a beautiful silk dress beautiful gold jewelry emerald nice gold rolex red i mean i go and i'm like just starstruck and girlfriend slapping you no my girlfriend's out there trying to bake a cake or do the cake or talking to somebody else and i look at this girl and she looks at me and she walks in with somebody else this other guy just walks away and starts you know in with somebody else. This other guy just walks away and starts, you know, talking to somebody else. And I went up to her and we started talking. It was immediate. Her and I just clicked immediately. After 20 minutes of talking, she says, what are we doing here? I says, well, it's my birthday. She says, what are we doing here? I says, well, it's my birthday.

Starting point is 00:26:06 She says, what are we doing here? I said, you know, you're right. Let's go. We hopped in her car. She had a black 745 BMW. This was 1978, 77. And we went to her apartment on Brickell. She had her own apartment.

Starting point is 00:26:31 And she brought out bottles of champagne. We started drinking bottles of Haute Brion 1964. That'll set you back. And we, I mean, we just had an incredible time. I mean, if I thought I knew anything about sex before then, I was completely mistaken. Because that was a new world that was open to me. She was lovely, lovely lady, but exotic, exotic. And, you you know i fell in lust in love but from then on you know we we stayed together so and she was your bridge right well you know after that you know

Starting point is 00:27:17 we partied for about three days and then she said you know what i have to go to san francisco will you come with me so you know i back then what, back then I was working at New England Mutual, the insurance company. So you came back from Ecuador. You signed up with the insurance company. My dad knew the owner of the insurance agency, and he signed me up. He says, you got to give him a job. You know, he's out of the radio business.

Starting point is 00:27:44 So, sure, I'll go to San Francisco. Yeah, let's go. No, you don't need to get any clothes. We'll get the clothes when we get there. Sounds good. So we're on our way to San Francisco, and he said, well, this isn't the way to the airport. No, we're not going to the Miami International Airport. We took off to Palm Beach, went to Butner Aviation,

Starting point is 00:28:06 the private terminal, jumped on a Learjet. Lolita Express with Epstein? Yeah. We're on that Learjet. The champagne was already on board, on ice. We started drinking, snorting we had a incredible time on that learjet and we got to san francisco and we checked into the saint francis i think it was the saint francis at that time and uh days went by and days went by and, you know, a month went by.

Starting point is 00:28:45 And then I met some of the people that she sold the emeralds to. She was claiming she was in the emerald business. Yeah, in the emerald business. And we went back to Miami, and we started living together. And then it was time to go to San Francisco again. And this time, they, I didn't know this, but they had sent, let's say, a load of emeralds. And when we got to San Francisco a few days later,

Starting point is 00:29:22 they gave her a few suitcases, and it contained like six, it was like six and a half million dollars. And that's the Emerald business. And I said, wow, that's a very interesting business. I think I like that business. Finally, she told me that it wasn't Emeralds, that it was Coke. And I remember we were sitting in a, she had rented or bought no the her clients she she wanted a mercedes she wanted a mercedes in san francisco and the clients she had said that's not

Starting point is 00:29:56 a good idea that's too flashy we'll just get you a regular american car and they got her a, back then there was a Chrysler car called the Magnum. And she wasn't too happy having a Magnum. She wanted it because she drove a BMW in Miami. We were overlooking, we were in Sausalito, like a hillside, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. And because we had a, they gave us a Magnum car, we decided to buy a Magnum of champagne. We tatted her. And we popped that bottle and she told me, you know, it's not really emeralds, it's cocaine.

Starting point is 00:30:34 And I said, you know what? It's a lot better than anything else and it sure beats rock and roll. So I've always wanted to be a rock and roll drummer. So, you know, I'm in. Next best thing. Let's deal some blow. So from then on, you know, we stayed together for a while.

Starting point is 00:30:54 Then I kind of messed up with a real estate agent. She found out about it and she gave me the boot. And I stayed in the business. And she said, you know, if you're going to stay, you might as well stay hooked up with the people I'm with. That way you're not going to end up dealing, you know, grams on the street with some Cubans and getting killed or something. And who was she hooked up with?

Starting point is 00:31:18 The Ochoas. In Colombia. Yeah. And also she was working with somebody, comes out in the book, his name is Oscar Pelas. Okay. El Poli. He was very feared. Very feared in Colombia because he was one of the original bandidos that he was around before cocaine was around.

Starting point is 00:31:40 Yeah, he just liked the action you were saying. Yeah, he was a bandido. I mean, they called him El Poli because he killed so many policemen in Colombia. And he had a compadre, Joel. He was a psychopath. Poli was no psychopath. He was a very serious man. Joel was off the wall.

Starting point is 00:31:59 So she introduced you to Poli? Yeah. She introduced me to Poli. Now now you're not a violent person. You never have been and you never ended up being. How did you develop such a close relationship with a guy who's essentially Javier Bardem from No Country for Old Men? Because I really respected him. He had a big impact on me me i really was impacted by his seriousness and his concept of what it is to give your word you know with paulie if you told him you're gonna you know you're gonna pay him tomorrow and you don't pay him tomorrow it gets to a point that he doesn't want the money. You're gone.

Starting point is 00:32:55 And he had a sense of respect and just a sense of person about him that you looked at this guy and you knew this was serious. His eyes, his manner, his way of moving, his mannerisms. I was very, very impressed by him, and I admired him. And hanging out with Boli was like hanging out with God. You knew this man had the power of life and death over anybody. When you say hanging out with him, are you talking literally just hanging out with him or actually going on business runs, air quotes there, so to speak?

Starting point is 00:33:26 You know, all we did, all I was involved in was the coke end of the business. For example, he had business differences with certain people in Miami, and I knew that certain people in Miami got whacked by a bully. But I was never involved in that. He didn't want me to get involved in that. You were never there for any of that? No. Because he started to like me a lot because of who I was. I never changed into wanting to be violent and wanting to get into that part of the business. I was always, you know, a three-piece suit, coat and tie, very legit, naive-looking kid. Even as a 23, 24, 25-year-old. Yeah, and he liked that because then I was his chauffeur

Starting point is 00:34:20 because he wanted somebody that spoke English, had a driver's license, and looked like an idiot driving a car while he was in the backseat with a machine gun with a silencer. You know, to this day, I'm friends with a cop, an ex-Miami-Dade homicide detective that detained Pauly in one of his houses and shook him up and took him in for questioning, and then they had to let him leave. Not enough evidence?

Starting point is 00:34:51 Yeah, they just shook him up. And this is a very interesting story. It's really weird. It's right out of Pulp Fiction. So Poli put a hit on this guy, and I always heard, ¿Qué pasó con el Colorado? And Pauly put a hit on this guy. And I always heard, ¿Qué pasó con El Colorado? ¿Qué hubo de El Colorado?

Starting point is 00:35:12 El Colorado was this police guy. They called him El Colorado in the force because he doesn't look Cuban. He's 6'4", red-haired, freckles. He looks Irish. He is Irish descent. So I always heard el colorado el colorado el colorado so here you have a guy i'm hanging out with driving for who has a hit on a miami-dade police detective homicide detective they have a hit on him too because this is known and basically you know a few years ago, I met El Colorado.

Starting point is 00:35:48 I met him. And he was very hesitant to meet me at first. He thought it was the past coming back to haunt him. And then basically what he told me is, you don't even know what you were driving. You were basically driving a hearse because if we would have found him we would have gone at it and he would have gone at us because we knew he who he was we knew he was violent he was no pushover and so did he the way you described him as that he was a gun for hire it seems like across all different people or was he more like a gun for hire he had

Starting point is 00:36:28 made a reputation for himself in medellin and in the business he was in he ended up killing a lot of cops because cops didn't like what he was doing and he didn't i think he was an ex-cop too he was an ex-cop he was f2 f2 are like the worst of the worst they don't they don't have f2 anymore it was so corrupt f2 were were cops for hire for killing people and f2 were really where in columbia in columbia cops for hire for killing people yeah if those were like sign me up like bottom of the barrel cops rogue cops and they so he he killed a lot of cops in columbia that's why he got the name he got a lot of respect and he came to miami when the cocaine business started rolling and somehow he hooked up with um with uh this girl bia in the book the the girl that my girlfriend that turned me on to it and um he had a connection with jose pepe sarmiento el viejo

Starting point is 00:37:38 pepe sarmiento cabrera he was one of the original guys in Miami in the mid-70s that he was bringing in large amounts of cocaine into Miami. You know, he's on Google and everything. He was a big player for the Medellín cartel. So he was receiving most of his cocaine from him. At the same time, Griselda was in there also. Griselda Blanco. In Miami.

Starting point is 00:38:04 I never saw her as being as huge as they say they were. I know for a fact that every time we were at the Omni or Dadeland, sometimes, you know, you hang out all day, you know, basically from payphone to payphone, making phone calls, and you go to a mall. And you see the other people like grizelda's people whenever grizelda's people saw poli's people they want no part of it they were afraid yeah they really everybody all colombians were really afraid of poli he was the real thing there was no black and white there was no gray area there he was it but you become essentially this guy's like chauffeur chauffeur and this is after you break up with that girl right you had gotten into the coke business with her but then when you and her broke up she's like

Starting point is 00:39:00 okay we'll stick with some of my people because then you'll actually be doing legit shit. But is this when you're developing into the logistics expert or did you not have even a role like that yet? No. At that point, she kept working with Polly, supplying her merchandise, and her client was an American guy in San Francisco who was a top-notch client, a client like that you don't have. send 100 kilos. Back then in Miami, you were selling five kilos of cocaine, and half of it got ripped off. The other half came in fives and tens and twenties. And it was just a disaster, not a clean business. They were sending 100 and 200 kilos a month back in 78 and selling at 65,000 a pop.

Starting point is 00:40:08 And this guy up there, his past was hash smuggling. They had a lot of money from hash smuggling. They were very organized, very logistic-minded. They weren't just coke pushers. They were importers of hash from Lebanon, Afghanistan. So they had a lot of money and they had a great clientele and they would pay you in suitcases full of hundreds, rarely even fifties, organized, never a penny missing. So they had the best client. They had the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Starting point is 00:40:47 Back then, you know, 200 kilos, $13 million, $12 million every month. And did you see, you're getting exposed to how they would get it to them though, right? Yes. So how would they do that? Back then it was a pain in the ass because you'd have to bring the money back to Miami. Eventually they set up a banking system where you would give the money over in L.A. Okay, the banking system, I mean, just some guy that picks up the money in L.A. and then he takes care of it because it was already a pain in the ass to get

Starting point is 00:41:25 the coke from Miami to Los to LA or San Francisco even bigger pain in the ass was bringing back the money okay let's stay with let's stay with the money for a second so a guy would go pick it up and he and they'd have to get it back to Miami to wash it there but then eventually they were able to wash it in LA well what they did how washed it, how they got it back to Columbia was their thing. But we said, we don't want to deal with the money part of it anymore. So to accommodate us, they put some people in LA to take the money from us. Got it. Okay. To accommodate us.

Starting point is 00:42:02 So how would you get the Coke from, well, I guess there's two trips there, coke from Columbia to Miami, and then Miami to LA. Back then, we were getting it from Pepe Sarmiento. Later on, a few years down the road, I started working with the Ochoa cousins and the Piedraitas. But how would you get it there?

Starting point is 00:42:24 We built trucks with stashes, and the truck was a pickup-style truck, and we would put a couple of the dirt bikes, and the guy that drove was the guy that was supposedly doing dirt bike circuits. So it looked like a guy and his chick and two dirt bikes in the back, but it was a double false bottom and it would hold up to 300 kilos in the, in the bottom of the pickup. Could dogs smell that though? Like cop dogs?

Starting point is 00:43:00 We always wrapped it in a certain way and vacuum packed it and put coffee or Vaseline or things. So that truck finally did get busted. It did get busted. It only had 40 kilos at the time. It was somewhere in St. Louis. I don't know where. But it was a showpiece also. A showpiece also a showpiece the police used it as a showpiece to show

Starting point is 00:43:28 other police and how they were how their shit was being stashed got it yeah it was it was quite ingenious it was it was a nice thing and you obviously had a network of like drivers who would be responsible like you're not the one driving it, obviously. I had drivers. They always fit a certain profile. And then I had one driver that was like the main driver. And he was a good friend of mine. And he did very well. What kind of profile?

Starting point is 00:43:59 You say fit a certain profile. A nerd. You wanted nerds driving your trucks with coke across the country. This guy, if you looked at this guy, the last thing you would think about would be cocaine hmm this guy would like how do you find you go to local college and say oh you look good no he was just a friend of mine and i said you you fit the perfect profile he was so he didn't want to deal you know he was like paranoid to the point that it was intelligent for him to be paranoid and act goofy and not want to party at all times. He was a perfect guy.

Starting point is 00:44:30 And he never got busted. And you take care of those people pretty good. But how does the money work for you? Can we do a little math here? So let's say you had a load of 300 kilos. I think that was one basic one you were talking about a couple minutes ago. And you get that from the ochoa brothers when the when the distributor buys it in la how much money would at that time maybe late 70s early 80s would they pay for that 300 kilos okay back when i was

Starting point is 00:45:01 distributing um we would usually send 100 kilos at a time. Okay. Let's go with 100 then. We would buy it in Miami. I would get it at $52,000, $50,000, $52,000, and I would sell it at $62,000, $60,000, almost $10,000 a kilo. Okay. It was a very good business. Okay. So you're making $10,000 dollars a kilo okay it was a very good business okay so you're making ten thousand dollars profit a kilo what base is so the way i'm understanding this is once the ochoa send it to you in miami you have now bought it from them it is now yours it was fronted what do you mean it was fronted it was given given to me on credit. I had very good credit because they knew.

Starting point is 00:45:47 Oh, they have credit in the truck business. It's good to know. I never paid for it. That's the other thing. I never went into a sleazy apartment and, well, show me the money or show me the kilos. They used to send me the merchandise. I used to take 100 kilos. I used to ship it to L.A. or San Francisco, and I'd pay them when I got paid.

Starting point is 00:46:12 So you would then ship it. No, I would split the profit with, like, Poli's brother because, you know, he was in on it with me. Oh, the killer had a brother? Yeah, Enrique. But I was receiving from various people at that time. I was receiving from the Piedraitas. I was receiving from the Ochoa cousins. I was receiving from another group, Darío.

Starting point is 00:46:36 And, you know, I would receive 80 from these guys, 80 from these guys, 70, and end up, you know, later on my distribution network grew. Sure. I had like 11 guys all over, know different between la san francisco santa cruz uh minneapolis orlando miami new york that was the coke alessi was doing in santa cruz a couple years ago i had a big great client in in Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz. I remember one day, you know, we had some coke in Miami. We didn't know what to do with it. Shit, we got to get it out west.

Starting point is 00:47:12 It was like this, you know, sometime late November. And so I said, fuck, let's just buy a. So we bought this 1981. It was 1981. A Mercedes came out with a turbo diesel. I said, perfect. That's a low-key car turbo diesel. We just put the shit in the trunk.

Starting point is 00:47:31 It was like 80, 100 kilos in the trunk. I don't know how the trunk was full of that shit. Henry drove the turbo diesel out to San Francisco. Perfect. We deliver it. And suddenly it was like December 21st and says, okay, we got your money. You need to come pick it up. Boom.

Starting point is 00:47:51 $6.5 million. Put it in the trunk of the turbo diesel and I drove it back with somebody. I had to drive it back because I wasn't going to spend Christmas in San Francisco and I wasn't just going to sit in a hotel room with $6.5 million. And I remember this guy was a Cuban guy. He was like half black, half white, mulatto type guy with curly hair. But I was driving out of San Francisco and somewhere past Reno. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:48:23 I almost missed the curve the thing is the uh their car almost just flew off the mountain this guy turned white i mean white paper white he says i'm gonna drive from now on because jefferson starship i just come out with a new you know fly the dragon or flew or Flew the Dragon, this song, and I was trying to switch it. Back then, you put a CD in the car, and it would skip. If you took a bump, it would skip. But I was CDing and driving in the mountain and the curve,

Starting point is 00:48:59 and I missed a curve. This motherfucker turned white. I mean, white out white. And then we took the route through via St. Louis and then made it back to Miami. Okay. So back to some of my original question, though, here, because I want to make sure I understand this.

Starting point is 00:49:16 The way I'm getting it is that your client in San Francisco, for example, is completely divorced from the Ochoas. The Ochoas don't even know who they are. Oh, they know who he was. They do know who he was. They knew who he was. Did they ever deal with them directly? No, no. He was very respectful of that. I never really hooked him up.

Starting point is 00:49:34 Paulie dealt with him directly. Paulie dealt with him directly. And let me tell you a little something. Because Paulie dealt with him, because Paulie dealt with him because Paulie dealt with him. Paulie allowed me and his brother to deal with him out of courtesy. You don't share people like that. Or, you know, you keep those very, you play those cards very tight. Meaning he shared his client with you out of courtesy. he shared his client with me out of courtesy and i he shared it with his brother okay also courtesy to his brother because you know so his brother would make you know half yeah make money right but for example the the ochoas or anybody else would never dare.

Starting point is 00:50:26 They knew who the guy was. They had an idea of who he was. Would never dare approach that person and offer them anything, knowing that Pauly was involved. Okay. Never. That was a big deterrence. I'll bet. The credit system aside, I understand what you mean there.

Starting point is 00:50:48 But essentially, you're buying it off the Ochoas for $50. You're selling it to $52. You're selling it to these guys for $60, $62, making your spread. And you don't owe anything back to the Ochoas at that point because you already paid them. And now you just divvy it up among you guys. And essentially, what you're becoming during this era is now you are becoming the logistics guy to get things from point A to point B. Yeah. Since I had such a good client, my reputation grew as a person that could move the product. So I started getting offers from other groups to give me product. And since they knew I would always pay my credit i was very credit worthy let's say

Starting point is 00:51:26 and with good product and good pricing because i always maintain good pricing i was able to expand my clientele my you know and start giving i i was working with a guy that used to, his clientele was the Hollister Ranch. Many years ago, like in 78, 80, there was just a bunch of rogue surfers, you know, surfing out there at the Hollister Ranch. And they would go once a year. The Hollister Ranch. Okay. And they used to go to Peru to surf contests.

Starting point is 00:52:04 And surfing, Peru has great waves at certain times of the year. And they used to bring back their Coke inside the surfboards. Inside the surfboards? Yeah. So when I started to, I had a friend, a Canadian friend that I worked with that was also a surfer, and he hung out there. And I started giving him one, two, three kilos of Coke. And within three months, he was selling 100 kilos a month.

Starting point is 00:52:35 Love that. Enterprise. Good pricing. Good product. I never cut the product. So it moved. It's just basic economics. A good product at a good price will sell itself.

Starting point is 00:52:47 And this is all, you're still in your 20s during this time period, right? So you're young. Young, selling 300, 400 kilos a month. I mean, I didn't know what to, yeah, by the time I was 27, I already had $5, $6 million. Do you have any of this money buried anywhere? You can keep it between us. There's a $100 bill inside this by the way before we go on here i do want to say this to people out there who already think this sounds unbelievable we're going to get through how it all happened but you literally have a consulting firm that advises the government on matters like this to this day and you were a guy who

Starting point is 00:53:28 when you were caught in 2000 we'll get to that whole story eventually were paraded on the news by you know the u.s authorities like had been long wanted so when you talk to the guys including like the steve murphys of the world who is from narcos fame the dea including like the Steve Murphys of the world, who is from Narcos fame, the DEA guy, a bunch of the guys who arrested you, who you're now great friends with today. Like your story all checks out. Like you really did do all these things because I know what people think when they see people on YouTube talking like it sounds unreal. But you really for 25, were this logistics guy. You really did deal with all the people we're going to be talking about you dealing with, including at the very beginning, like the Ochoas and coming up under a guy like Pauly. But I'm just giving that little editorial for people out there because it's going to

Starting point is 00:54:15 keep getting crazier as we go along here. Yeah, that is, it's not really what I did. A lot of people did what I did. Maybe not the numbers because the numbers had a lot to do with it. You know, fortunately, I was able to sell large amounts early, early on from day one. You know, I never sold five kilos. I never sold 10 kilos. you know, 180, 70, you know, 100, 120. Yeah. Okay?

Starting point is 00:54:49 But I had six or seven of these, and I built it up. But what I did was one thing. It's how long I did it for. Yes. And did I plan it? No. 25 years went by like this. And it was just like from I started as a chauffeur for Poli. No. 25 years went by like this.

Starting point is 00:55:09 And it was just like from I started as a chauffeur for Pauly. Then Pauly went back to Columbia because in 79, I think it was, an article came out in Rolling Stone right after they did that Deadland shooting. Oh, yeah. Yeah. An article came out in Rolling Stone. Can you pull that up, Alessi? Deadland shooting. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:36 And Pauly freaked out because they spoke about the situation that existed, I think, with El Colorado. But basically, that kind of freaked him out, and he went back to Colombia. When he went back to Colombia was when he said it was all right for me to continue working with this client in San Francisco, even though I had already broken up. I didn't break up. They kicked me out. Right. With Bia.

Starting point is 00:55:56 Yeah, yeah. And then I did it with his brother, okay? Yes. With his brother. Enrique. And then the other guy that was also involved here was Joel Poli's compadre was also working with this the same person in San Francisco Joel gets killed some Peruvians whacked Joel in San Francisco why over business joel was a very very problematic very high pitched guy you know

Starting point is 00:56:32 he was over he was he was trouble only he only respected poli poli was the only guy that joel that kept joel in line joel was a piece of work. He was a dangerous motherfucker. It sounds like you were around a lot of these guys over the years. Yes, I was. Joel didn't really fuck with me because, remember, I was Poli's... Look, the most important thing and the most precious thing for a guy like Poli, un bandido, a guy that's got enemies is where you put your head at night on what pillow you rest your head is where you sleep and then poli since i was a very mellow very clean cut kid with no malice you you know, no tendency towards, you know, backstabbing him or, you know, doing a

Starting point is 00:57:28 number on him. He really trusted me. He knew a clean cut kid. I was in charge of renting the apartments where he slept. Nobody knew where he slept. Believe me, these people do. Even today, I learned that. Even today, my driver's license, my Florida driver's license. It's, these people do. Even today, I learned that. Even today, my Florida driver's license. It's a massage parlor. It's a massage parlor somewhere on Flagler. But you think I'm going to put my address where I live and where I sleep at night on my driver's?

Starting point is 00:57:55 I hope Florida Department of Driver's License doesn't come after me. But it's just old habits die hard. Yeah, exactly. Like I always carry two, three phones. We'll get into that later. Okay, all right.

Starting point is 00:58:12 But Joel kind of, you know, he never messed with me. I never had a problem with Joel. But they did. These Peruvians whacked Joel in San Francisco. That's when Poli called in Mario. And Mario comes from Colombia. And I'm introduced to Mario. And who's Mario?

Starting point is 00:58:37 Mario's the guy that comes out in the book that held up that Amtrak siege for three days and killed his sister and his nephew he was high on on base he's in the book yeah yeah i remember mario was a hired gun hired killer very nice guy but you know i mean that's what he did i mean somebody's got to do it somebody's got to run the store but i became quick, real quick. Did you have a moment, though? Like, here you are. You grew up well. You literally went to, like, Jesuit high school.

Starting point is 00:59:13 You went to college. That's a big mafia. That's a separate conversation, but still. Like, you're not around violence, right? You end up in this coke business because you wanted to make money. You saw the money with it. But now suddenly you're getting dumped into a world in your early mid-20s with guys like Pauly, guys like Mario, guys like even Enrique and these dudes who are stone-cold killers that you – maybe you're not there when they're doing it but you know when you see something on the news and there was a pool of blood and six motherfuckers lost their heads

Starting point is 00:59:48 and it was them and you're sitting next to them in their car or you know at the coffee shop or whatever like is there a moment where you're like wait a minute this is this is scary this is crazy or or because you're not like that no you just accepted it i accepted them and i don't know very strange i don't know why but i accepted them and i felt comfortable around them I liked them and that they did these things I didn't really think about it did you think the people they did it to probably deserved it without a doubt mm-hmm without a doubt because these people you knew who they were and if you elect to fuck with them that's your choice and you should be man enough to face up to the consequences but they never went out looking for trouble i mean troubles

Starting point is 01:00:54 came to them and they solved it okay and for example they killed joel nine peruvians were involved mario comes in from bucaramanga. He is from Bucaramanga. He actually flew in from Medellin. And, you know, Paulie tells him, you know, how many guys, you know, we got to revenge, avenge the, you know, Joel's killing. We got to take care of these guys. He asks, how many guys are you going to need? He says, nobody. I'm going to do it myself. Nine guys in San Francisco. Sure enough, he went out to San Francisco. He whacked these motherfuckers. He whacked nine of them. Not at the same time, he hunted them down. Guys, if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button, please take two seconds and go hit it right now.

Starting point is 01:01:47 Thank you. Where do you think these guys got it from? Is it just pure product of their environment? You know, product of their environment and getting good at something takes practice. And they were just good at what they did. These guys were good at what they did. They were some smart motherfuckers. They were sharp.

Starting point is 01:02:12 And you talk about that. I read it in the book. I think Jesse even talked about it in the intro. Because, by the way, Jesse's intro is very long. The guy who wrote the book with you. It's very long, but it's very good because it gives he weaves together his viewpoint into this odyssey of talking with you for years to put this all together and gives previews of the story so i actually really liked it but there was something in there where and you mentioned something like this a few minutes ago

Starting point is 01:02:41 very similarly where you were like these guys were good at what they do and if you're going to do something you should be good at it and there's there's a there is i think what you said was there's a job for everything in the world something like that and someone has to do it so yeah the world needs hitmen and they were hitmen that's how you feel yeah and i'm telling you um as i told you last night i didn't see them i didn't see mario as a hitman i saw him as a friend and as a person i hung out with every day and that i liked and i had certain affinity. And, you know, it was Easter was coming up. And we were talking and I say, you know, hey, what are you doing for Easter? He said, what the fuck is Easter?

Starting point is 01:03:35 The bunny rabbit with some eggs, you know. I mean, for them, Easter is the resurrection of Christ. Feliz Pascuas. But, you know, it's not like a big set. They come from very, very low class dirt floors. They weren't born in houses with running waters and refrigerators. The first thing they do when they make some money is they send their mother in Colombia a refrigerator. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:04:03 So I tell Mario, man, you're not doing anything for Easter? Come to my house. And he came to my house. With your parents? With my parents. Wow. And I introduced him as Mario, a Venezuelan. I didn't say Colombian.

Starting point is 01:04:19 You're not like, Dad, this is a hit man, my friend Mario. And then afterwards, he said, you know, that's one thing about you. You know, I know you come from a golden spoon in your mouth. You were born with a golden spoon in my mouth. I was born with no fucking spoon in my mouth, a wooden spoon at that. And they never held that against you. And they said, you know that? That's one thing we love about you, you are so you know you don't judge

Starting point is 01:04:46 us we are who we are we are sicaria most people judge us you don't judge us and i never did i treat i mean i was looking to get accepted by them yeah and you know i was just myself and i i don't know how to handle a gun i don't i don't have guns you know one day you know um mario i lived in an apartment in venetian island and i go downstairs in the parking lot and i run into mario and he looks at me what the fuck are you doing I said I live here he says you live here I live here also and he tells me you need to move out I go what do you mean I need to move out I just moved in

Starting point is 01:05:34 he says you know what you're heating up my place you're heating up the building because you're hot you sell cocaine you're hot he shoots people but I sell but i'm i'm heating up the bill you were hot so i you know you don't say no i said no no okay why don't if you want me to move out i'll move out you know what and he says okay let's meet back here later

Starting point is 01:05:55 on today later on tonight so he comes to my apartment we start drinking and we start snorting and we start talking because when you drink and you snort, you start talking and talking. And we just started talking. And then I said, I had bought a gun in San Francisco, an antique. Cost me $17,000. I don't know if they took me for a ride or it was actually, but it was a beautiful fucking engraved, like 44, a cold 44. One of the old Western guns came in a case.

Starting point is 01:06:30 And I said, shit. I got high. I said, you know, Mario is such a great guy. He's going to really love this present. I went in the room and I said, Mario, I went to San Francisco and I bought you this. And I gave it to him. Tears came out of his eyes. He says, nobody has ever given me anything.

Starting point is 01:06:46 So he goes, you know, in our world, when somebody gives you a gun, as a gift, you have to give them a gun. So he pulls out his Browning 9mm, and he gives it to me. And that thing was obviously cocked, ready to go, because he never had it any other way. I didn't know what to do with that motherfucker. So I went in my closet, and I put it in the coat pocket of some blazer. I always wear a blazer.

Starting point is 01:07:18 And, okay, so he left to his apartment, and I left to my, you know, I went to sleep. The next day, I said, where the fuck did i put that gun so i went in and i took it out and i was hung over in this and boom the damn thing went off and i said shit where the fuck is the bullet now i took my clothes i because i said that gun for sure has killed somebody, so I'm out of here. I took the clothes, I took everything, and I left. And then three days later, I run into Mario, and he says, hey, I haven't seen you in the building. Where have you been? I said, you told me to leave. I said, you know, I used that one. You told me to leave, so I respect your wish. I left. No, man,

Starting point is 01:08:02 you didn't have to leave. I was only kidding. No, no, no. Come back. No, I already moved out. And that was the story of Mario giving me, you know, I gave him the gun and then he gave me. What became of Mario? Mario, shortly after that Easter dinner, he jumped on a NAMM track. He told me, I'm going to New York by train. Months later, he says, okay, I'll meet you out in San Francisco. He says he jumped on a train in Miami to New York with his sister,

Starting point is 01:08:48 the sister's daughter, and a newborn baby. And he started to smoke base, I guess, when the train took off in Miami. By the time they got to North Carolina, he was so based out, so paranoid, that he shot his sister, he shot the baby and the newborn. They had a three-day siege and the FBI hostage negotiator for three days was talking to Mario trying to save the newborn baby's life. Through the bullet holes in the train, they had to put in little things of, what is it, when they put the IV. So he could IV the baby. The baby was dehydrating. They say that the stench, the smell of the dead bodies inside the train car with Mario was just unbearable, and it was in the summer.

Starting point is 01:09:42 So that's in the book. And that's, you know, you Google Mario and you'll find out. It's, you know, hostage. Yeah. I was getting the names mixed up. Crazy, crazy. Didn't someone go talk to him during that, though, too? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:56 Am I remembering that right? It wasn't just a negotiated, like, you or somebody, like, talked to him while that was going on? No. What happened was I was in San Francisco, and suddenly I get a phone call from my mother. It says, have you seen the paper? I go, what paper?

Starting point is 01:10:12 It says any paper. And I go, what? No, I haven't seen it. Your friend is on the front cover. And I said, no, no, no, that's not my friend. That guy on the cover is Colombian. My friend was Venezuelan. It looks a lot like him.

Starting point is 01:10:28 I mean, because he had come to dinner at the house for Easter. I thought this was the one, as I read about this. Crazy. Someone talked to him during it. The FBI, one of the negotiators, since he claimed, and everybody knew that he was based out, and when you smoke base, you get so paranoid, he killed his sister and he killed the... One of the persons involved in that actually traced back Mario's steps and did smoke base

Starting point is 01:11:01 to see what kind of effect it had on you and some psychologist and wrote about that. Wow. About the effects of base and paranoia and all that shit. You know what it was? I think it was you went to see Pauly in a hotel room or something. It wasn't the Mario thing. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Starting point is 01:11:21 That was before that. Right, right, right. I'm saying I was remembering something totally different. That's my point. After Mario whacked the nine Peruvians, he decided to take it easy. So he rented a motel room in Santa Rosa, California. This was it, yeah. And he started to drink and to smoke bass.

Starting point is 01:11:42 And he called some hookers. Nice. And for three days he was just going at it, and then he started to hit the hookers. And Brian calls me and says, man, we're going to get, this is all going to go to hell. Mario is stuck up in some hotel room in Santa Rosa, beating the fuck out of these hookers. And this is going to go to shit.

Starting point is 01:12:10 The cops are going to go. This is going to turn into a shit show. So Brian spoke to Mario, and Mario said, well, have a loco come over to see me. A loco was me. A loco? Yeah, he called me a local. And I have, yep, he'll only talk to you because he trusts you.

Starting point is 01:12:34 You know, once again, I never posed a threat to these guys. To them, I was just a nice, naive, no malice. And I walk in the room, and Mario is sitting there with his shirt off, with his, you know, always used that Browning 9mm, duct taped to his hand with a pene and then another p, and then, uh, uh, another pane in, on the, on the, on the table. Oh, what? Um, the clip. Oh.

Starting point is 01:13:12 Duct taped to his hand and he had one of the hookers rolling him up and he was smoking base and drinking. I go, what the fuck? And so I went in there and I started to drink him, and then I started to mellow him out, and I started getting rid of the hookers, and I started telling, you know, take this, and I gave him Valium to mellow his ass down, and I was drinking too because I had to drink with him.

Starting point is 01:13:39 He says, Mario, let's talk. Let's get rid of these hookers. I mean, you and me talk. We've got things to talk about. We can't have these hookers listening in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah's get rid of these hookers. I mean, you and me talk. We got things to talk about. We can't have these hookers listening in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get rid of them. So I got rid of the fucking hookers.

Starting point is 01:13:49 And Brian made sure he paid them off and made sure that, because, you know, he had hit them. A couple of them. Yeah, bruised up. After a while, he fell asleep after a day. I was in there for about a day with him. You don't come off a fucking three-day binge just like that. And that was, so that was the one I was thinking of. Okay.

Starting point is 01:14:10 So, and you had said Pauly went back to Columbia when he got hot. So he's out of the picture. Pauly left and Mario came in. All right. Pauly leaves, Mario comes in. And you, did you go and meet the Ochoas while you're doing this? Like, did you personally go and actually, like, get with them in Colombia? Not directly with George or Fabio.

Starting point is 01:14:36 I dealt with Orejas and I dealt with Fabito through his secretary, La Mami. But mostly my one-on-one dealings were with their cousins, the Roberto Luis, Monster, and their Vasquez, Vélez is their last name. Do you remember your first trip to Colombia? My first trip to Colombia was probably 1980, 81, around 1980. What was the nature? Were you called down there to meet with some of these guys?

Starting point is 01:15:18 No, I just went down there. I went to Santa Marta because we were working with some people from Santa Marta. We were going to do a pot run. So that's when I got kidnapped by the gorillas. Oh, you got kidnapped by the gorillas. Because, you know, we were going to do this pot run and I wanted to make sure and I wanted to see the pot. I just didn't want to take 35,000 pounds because they said it was good. So, you know, typical me. So, you know, we started going from Santa Marta. We went towards Venezuela.

Starting point is 01:15:52 And por la Sierra del PBI or PDI. The bottom line is we crossed into some territory that was no man's land, and it was run by, I think it was UP, Unión Patriótica. It was a group that was stationed in that part of Colombia. And it was really strange because you knew you weren't under any government control because they had their own schools. This wasn't La FARC and it wasn't E.P. And it wasn't the E.P.L. who were very violent. These were less violent guerrilla movement.

Starting point is 01:16:33 They had schools. But the point is that, you know, el comandante, you know, held us and told us, what the hell are you doing here? And I told him, we're buying pot. And I said, what do you mean you're buying pot? I mean, you know, from who? And I said, well, I guess from you now. And they wanted to hold me for ransom.

Starting point is 01:17:00 And I said, you know, that's not a good deal. Why hold me for ransom? You know, if you have the pot, I'm here to buy 35,000 pounds. If you have the pot, I'll buy it from you. How about the people in Santa Marta? Fuck them. I'm here with you now. I don't see them here.

Starting point is 01:17:17 So he kind of liked me. We sat down. We worked it out. $10 a pound, $ and fifty thousand dollars i gave them a down payment they shipped when i got back to santa mart i got back with red eye and everything because of the jungle you know i left with some lucchese boots i came back with these rubber boots because the guy tells me oh how are we going to seal this deal and he looks at my boots he said you know i kind of like your boots i said yeah well and he says i'm going to give this deal and he looks at my boots he said you know i kind of like your boots i said

Starting point is 01:17:45 yeah well and he says i'm going to give you my rubber boots because that's what the gorillas wear rubber boots and i'm and you give me those uh nice fancy uh polka dotted boots so you were you were moving pot though too the only time in my life i did i was going to say big mistake it's it's way heavier it's way lower margins bunch of bullshit bunch of we lost the load i still made good on the 350 to the guy but uh the only time the only time where were you trying to bring it through florida bahamas yeah bad move that was an accident waiting to happen. I had this guy, Tim McBride, in here for episodes. I believe it was 105 and 106 where he talked all about his career doing that. He operated and actually ended up becoming like the godfather of this island called Chokoloskee Island in Florida on the west coast.

Starting point is 01:18:41 Oh, I know where that is. Yeah. One of my guys, John john what's his last name he was a fugitive living in cancun and he was from chokoloskee yes best cast chaplain what was his name john chaplin tall big guy he was living in uh south of cancun okay Best captain I've ever seen. He used to do the run by himself. Wait, that's not Captain John. I'm forgetting the names here.

Starting point is 01:19:11 Is that Captain John? I can't remember. Tough motherfucker. I can't remember, but Tim was the guy they would go out on the boat. Him, the captain, one other dude. And they would pick up all the loads. They captain one other dude and they would pick up all the loads they used to do it what what would happen is they would bring in from columbia all the weed on a

Starting point is 01:19:33 cattle ship and so then when they would get when they would get there to switch it over on the boats shit would be too heavy or whatever so they would just throw the cattle in the water and they just drown it was so like the swimming pigs of the bahamas yeah yeah so i i know that he ran that for a long time and that's where the pot came in but as you said you only tried to do this once and you lost it once so that was that yeah so um where were we we were talking about your trip your first trip to colombia you got you got taken kidnapped by the gorillas out in the jungle and then you make the deal for your boots you come out you do this pot deal you made good on the 350 and then i just continued doing uh uh coke never never again did i do pot i thought that was ridiculous so you're still

Starting point is 01:20:25 dealing pretty much exclusively with colombians at that point at that point i was for example i remember i was um working with the piedraitas who were a group out of medellin that had a very very lucrative transport business octavio piedraita pablo ended up killing him esc Escobar. Yeah. But I worked with them big time. They used to give me a lot of merchandise. They used to give me 200 kilos more a month. Did you always call it like merchandise and product? Situations. I used to refer to it as how many situations.

Starting point is 01:21:01 I don't know why. I never called it kilos. In Colombia, they call it un coso but whatever okay you know um so what point do you really expand beyond this pipeline like because you said you had said a while ago that your reputation got around that you had good credit i guess and so people started calling you up it sounded like yeah from the initial client that we shared with paulie and mario well this is interesting you know and there's one guy in san francisco you know paulie through mario when when when paulie through Mario. When Pauly left, he sent Mario. They killed Joel.

Starting point is 01:21:46 So he sent Mario as his rep. And Mario used to sell to this guy in San Francisco. Same guy I used to sell to with Enrique. They let us share. So one day I send this guy, Brian, I send him 100 kilos. And I sell it to him at 58. So two weeks later, I get a phone call from Mario.

Starting point is 01:22:12 Hey, motherfucker, you owe me $400,000. Why do I owe you $400,000? Well, it just so happens that I brought, I sent Brian 100 kilos also. And it seems you were there two weeks before and you sold it at 58. And I was going to sell mine at 62. So do the math. You owe me $400,000.

Starting point is 01:22:37 It's the market, Mario. It's the market. The market. Well, that may be so, but you owe me $400,000. Okay. market in the market well that may be so but you owe me four hundred thousand dollars okay that's the kind of nobody owes mario four hundred thousand dollars if mario says you owe him four hundred thousand dollars either you pay him the four hundred thousand dollars or you kill him or he kills you so we're going back and forth on this $400,000 for a month. That's, I mean, that's how much I guess he liked me or whatever. He didn't whack you. He didn't. And then one day I was in LA and I was on

Starting point is 01:23:15 the phone and I was arguing with Mario. Mario, but it can't be. We're going on six months now. The famous $400,000. Mario, back and forth, $400,000. My brother-in-law listens in on the conversation. Who do you owe $400,000 to? He says, no, Mario. He's driving me fucking nuts because of this. And I explain this. He goes, you owe $400,000 to Mario?

Starting point is 01:23:39 You're fucking nuts. You're fucking nuts. You're a liar. You're a liar. So he went ahead, ordered his sister in Bogota to pay the $400,000 directly to Mario. And then I found out. One day Mario called me. Finally, you made good on it. It was only six months. Only person on earth that owed Mario $400,000 and actually lived through it. And I got pissed at my brother-in-law for paying it because i didn't really owe it it's just it's

Starting point is 01:24:10 not the kind of thing you argue this guy could kill you any he's my friend he's not gonna he's your friend are you nuts this guy's a known killer well he's not he's not a killer to me. He's my friend. This is after a, you know, obviously this is before the train incident. Right, right, right. But it was after the hotel, the Santa Rosa thing. And you're still like, oh, this guy's my friend. Oh, no, no, no, always. To the end, he was my friend. I was sad when this thing happened in the train.

Starting point is 01:24:43 I was really sad because I like Mario. And I'm telling you, that's another thing. I didn't really flaunt it because I took it naturally. But let me tell you, I mean, if anybody ever wanted to whack me, they'd have to think it over twice because Mario would not take likely to that. You liked being around that? You liked being around guys that you knew if you were associated with them? No.

Starting point is 01:25:08 No, I actually liked Mario. I really respected Pauly. Pauly was very respectful. And Mario, you know, Mario, I liked him. I liked him. It was, you know, Pauly I really respected. It was a different relationship, both situations. Pauly was very serious very serious

Starting point is 01:25:27 Paulie never really well his actions proved that he liked because if not I wouldn't hang around with him but he was a very serious guy Mario was more kiddingly Mario was a trip serious trip Joel I didn't like

Starting point is 01:25:42 Joel was just too whacked out. But so after all this happens, you know, Mario dies. So I continue working with the guy in San Francisco. I expand to Santa Rosa. I expand, I expand, I expand. And then I started working with this guy doc down in tucson arizona and he was very very good friends with caro quintero rafael caro quintero from rafael caro quintero yeah now that is the guy who i'm sure we'll talk about this later but he ordered the torture of kiki camarena and then had him killed kiki

Starting point is 01:26:28 camarena the dea agent and who was later caught in costa rica which also involved you in some way major major player in the cartels who's now he was let out and on technicality i believe in mexico and now he's on the run released them i released them by mistake oh my god all right anyway but you were saying the doc out in tucson was this hook yes now now what what was the story with this guy the doc knew him from the pot days because uh caro quintero had a very big pot farm yes buffalo this was covered in Narcos, Mexico very well. So the doc was his good friend, and he used to cross merchandise for Rafa into the U.S. via Arizona.

Starting point is 01:27:17 So the doc is always after me saying, you know, let's do some Coke. Let's do some Coke. I was already sending the doc Coke for him to resell. But he says, let's do some coke let's do some coke i was already sending the doc coke for him to resell but he says let's do our own trips so then i went down to uh puerto vallarta and i met with rafa what year like 84 85 84 somewhere around there okay because he didn't want to get into the coke business he loved weed no he didn't like it he didn't he didn't want to get into the Coke business. He loved weed. No, he didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. But then he hooked me up with some friends of his through my brother-in-law. And they took me out to a place called La Peñita.

Starting point is 01:27:56 It's a strip right outside of Puerto Vallarta. And that's when I called a buddy of mine, a guy I was working with in Colombia with Paco, Alberto Barrera, who later they killed. They chopped his head off. That's in the book, Red River, River of Blood or something. So I bought a Merlin, a very nice turboprop plane. And we started landing that at La Peñita and delivering 350, 400 kilos. And then they would take it up to Guaymas, and then from there they would cross. And you were bringing that in from Colombia? Yes.

Starting point is 01:28:40 I was working with a guy they called Oreo, who also knew the doc. Between him and the doc, they worked that out, but they crossed the merchandise. And we started working Mexico back then, the Mexican border. And so the Mexicans were completely reliant on Colombia to get them their stuff. Yes. So they became the middlemen between Colombia on Colombia to get them their stuff. And then they. Yes. So they became the middlemen between Colombia and the U.S. essentially. The Mexicans.

Starting point is 01:29:12 Yeah. Yes. And the original guy that really did the hookup and introduced the Mexicans to cocaine was a Honduran guy. His name was Mata Ballesteros. Can we pull him up? Mata Ballesteros, El Negro. I'm sorry to have to interrupt this video to say this, but recently YouTube reviewers have been tagging words in our videos as slurs that are not slurs and demonetizing the videos, which is killing our channel. And so I just want to point out that the term used right there,

Starting point is 01:29:43 El Negro, is an official name of an official historical cartel character. It is not a slur. And so that use and any use of it moving forward in this video is not a slur. Thank you for your attention and please enjoy the rest of the episode. Oh, El Negro. Wait, but El Negro, that's not Blackie who, because that's what they called him in Colombia, right? That's not Blackie who was Pablo Escobar's buddy? That's Fernando Galeano. Once again, the term Blackie is an official name of an official cartel character.

Starting point is 01:30:15 It is not a slur. So any uses of that moving forward in the video are not a slur. Thank you. That's somebody else. But he was called Blackie, right? And in Spanish it was El Nero Galeano. Yeah. And Mata Ballesteros was Honduran.

Starting point is 01:30:32 And he was the original guy that hooked up the Medellin cartel with the Mexicans. Mata Ballesteros. He ended up in jail in Honduras. They grabbed his ass. They took him back to Honduras. He ended up in jail. Oh, I remember this guy from the show. Alberto Cecilia Falcón knew him.

Starting point is 01:30:56 Yeah. And who was Alberto Cecilia Falcón again? Alberto Cecilia Falcón was Cuban. He came to the U.S. at an early age. Not an early age, but he must have been 17 or 18, and he started working for the CIA. Oh. He started working for the CIA. Then he went rogue.

Starting point is 01:31:16 He went to Tijuana, and he started to move pot. Are you sure he went rogue, or that was a part of the mission? No, he went rogue. Okay. he went rogue or that was a part of the mission? No, he went rogue. Okay. He went rogue. He started to move pot in big amounts. And he was one of Mexico's first marijuana multimillionaires. Back in 76, let's say, 75, 76, 74, when there was no, I mean, Chapo was around.

Starting point is 01:31:54 The Arellano brothers were around, but they were low level. Right. He was the highest level guy working in Mexico. Alberto Cecilia Falcón. Is this like right when Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo was decided to get in the game? Yes. Yes. Alberto Cecilia Falcón at that point, well, you can tell in Narcos Mexico, although they

Starting point is 01:32:19 killed him in Narcos Mexico. And I called Jesse. I said, that's not true because I was with Alberto in 1996. Did they do that because it was Hollywood or did they really think he had been killed? No, it was Hollywood. Or a mistake or they just wanted to end his part in the series. And they figured kill him because actually what happened to him was he went away for 18 years. He was the first guy to escape a Mexican prison via a tunnel.

Starting point is 01:32:47 They put him in Le Combré prison, and he escaped. What was his full name, Falcone? Alberto Cecilia Falcone. Cecilia with an S. Yeah, let's pull up this guy's Wikipedia. Alberto Cecilia Falcone. So he was a Cuban, ends up in America, works for the CIA. What was he doing on behalf of the CIA, allegedly?

Starting point is 01:33:06 Probably something to do with a bay of pigs. Oh, nice. Probably with the invasions and that shit. Okay, so Alberto Cecilia Falcone, this is from the Narcos wiki fandom. He was a Cuban drug lord active in Mexico, a prominent high society cocaine trafficker. Cecilia Falcone shipped cocaine into the united states through the tijuana corridor he mentored the ariano felix brothers allowing them to establish marijuana shipping routes throughout his territory in the early 1980s he was approached by miguel angel felix gallardo one of pedro aviles's men to

Starting point is 01:33:40 solicit his permission in permitting the Arellano brothers to in joining an alliance between various marijuana smugglers convinced by his personal friend and socialite Isabella Bautista Cecilia Falcone agrees to Felix Gallardo's request on the condition that they do not interfere with his cocaine business however a few years later Felix Gallardo now the leader of the powerful Guadalajara cartel decides to smuggle Colombian cocaine as the Caribbean route used by the Colombians was closed down by the United States. Enraged by the betrayal, Cecilia Falcón uses his influence to order a military raid on one of the weed warehouses of cartel leader Rafael Caro Quintero. The military seize most of the weed and destroy the rest in retaliation don nato of the guadalajara cartel buys out the police force of tijuana and attacks one of cecilia's warehouses setting it on fire recovering rafa's marijuana

Starting point is 01:34:30 phil skyardo sends isabella to negotiate a truce with cecilia falcone and she succeeds in doing so however the dfs immediately kills cecilia falcone after she leaves giving the complete control of tijuana to phil skyardo so that was not true that was not true. That was not true. Okay. That was not true. And I think the lady that they referred to is actually... Can you stay with the mic? Sorry. The lady they referred to actually was La Tigresa. What was her name in Mexico? What the hell?

Starting point is 01:34:59 Well, I have it somewhere. But she was a famous movie star. Because Cecilia Falcone was a very elegant, educated man. He went both ways, but he was portrayed as a very good man. No, he came across totally as a very serious gentleman, very well-dressed, very good looking man um serious no not wacky at all and he was the first multi-millionaire they say that uh when he used to go to europe in the early 70s back then he had, $30 million already when nobody had that kind of money.

Starting point is 01:35:49 There were two big tippers in Paris, him and the Shah of Iran. He used to give out, there she is, La Tigueresa. Oh, that's the girl? Yeah. Interesting. He was always a nice, look at him. Very good looking, well-dressed guy. We got along great.

Starting point is 01:36:07 I met him through a lady friend of ours in Mexico, and I spent two years with him almost every day. So you were living in Mexico? Yes, I was living in Mexico. You relocated to Mexico in like 84? No, I relocated to Mexico. I was living in Colombia up to 1994, and then I went to Mexico. Okay, so he had done his prison stint at this point. Colombia up to 1994, and then I went to Mexico. Okay, so he had done his prison stint at this point. Exactly. He had just gotten out of prison when I met him. And you met him through a lady friend, you said.

Starting point is 01:36:36 Through a lady friend. Now, was he still in the game, though, at this point? He was still in the game, but not as powerful as before. So he was looking to me to start up again and to start bringing in coke from uh belize and chetumal and he had a very good friend who bad son of a bitch who was involved with el negro durazo in mexico city negro durazo was chief of police for lopez portillo in mexico uh sagul vaca okay bad motherfucker there's there's so much here so many different people that tie together that like we can go out of order i want to try to keep it on track though so what we have been talking about that led into this tangent was that you expanded through the

Starting point is 01:37:20 doc and then through rafa caro Quintero in 1984 through that connection. Right. That's good. I guess you have a lot of podcast training to keep people on track. I got to stay on it. Right. So I was distributing Coke that I received in Miami and taking it out West, taking it to Orlando, taking it to New York. At that time, I had already met some of the guys working with the Lucchese family. Oh, so you connected with the mob. Yeah. I worked with them for a few years. Who'd you work with specifically there? The Lucchese.

Starting point is 01:37:56 Are you allowed to say they're probably dead now? I think they're dead. Well, I know my friend is dead, Joey Martino. Okay. They killed him and put him in a 55-gallon drum and dumped him on a river in Hialeah. Nice. But it was the Hollywood subsidiary of the Lucchese group out of New York, New Jersey, the Hollywood group, Anthony Asatoro.

Starting point is 01:38:23 That's right up here. The Supa, Goo, all these guys. Hollywood group, you know, Anthony Asatoro. That's right up here. Yeah. All these guys. But to keep things in line. So I was distributing. And then I got into bringing in plane loads, okay? Because this Lucchese group working out of Hollywood had a cowboy pilot, and they had a stop in Jamaica, and they had it in at the Hollywood International Airport. They had that bought off. So I met this guy, Joey Martino, who was working with the mob, the Lucchese group,

Starting point is 01:39:10 and we started doing planes from Monteria to Jamaica, gassing up and coming right into Hollywood International Airport like nothing. We used to bring in 300, 350 kilos at a time. We were doing that like clockwork. Boom, boom, boom. How'd you get away with it at the airport? They had it paid off. They had that whole shit bought. So when that was happening, at the same time, parallel,

Starting point is 01:39:42 I decided to buy a Merlin, a bigger plane. Right. This is the one with the nice color. To do my own route. Yeah. Okay. So I was working with the Lucchesis, the Hollywood outfit, doing that Monteria, Jamaica, Miami run.

Starting point is 01:39:57 So then I was already importing product. I was already importing. I was also distributing, but now I was also importing. All right. Just to keep the term straight, though, because when you say distributing, I know my head goes to, and a lot of people out there's head goes to, you're handling the guys on the street who are actually giving the drugs out to people. But that's not what you did. You're distributing a full load of product to an outfit that's going to then handle that. Yes.

Starting point is 01:40:24 It's a wholesale. Exactly. All right. Let's use that term. Taking 300, 400 kilos in Miami and giving 100 to this guy, 100 to this guy, 100 to this guy, and 100 to this guy. And how did you initially get hooked up with the Lucchese's? Did you call them up in the phone book and say, hey, welcome to this?

Starting point is 01:40:42 Through some Cuban friends of mine that we were bringing in shit through the bahamas they worked with them with him through another friend uh joey apolito who's no longer with us if you look him up joey apolito that's another i meet joey and Joey says, wait, you got the hookup in Columbia. I got the guys, the mob guys who have a cowboy Hick, Florida pilot, who has a small plane, but he can handle three to 350 kilos. Not that one, the Western, different one. And so I talked to these guys, sure enough you know i started giving them product they send the plane down we load it and it comes into miami then i said you know i want to start doing this because the doc tells me man you're wasting your time we could be hitting the

Starting point is 01:41:39 mexican border big time because i got the hook up with Rafa and Rafa's introduced me to some of his friends that are, you know, moving shit right across the border in Tijuana. So I bought the Merlin and I decided to use the Merlin strictly for Mexico. So the Merlin was hitting Mexico, going to La Peñita. And at the same time I was bringing coke in through Miami. So then that expanded. I was smuggling through Miami and smuggling through Mexico. Then I bought another plane, and then I started to airdrop off the Bahamas with a Conquest. With a Conquest?

Starting point is 01:42:19 That's another plane that was a better plane for airdropping, better than the Merlin. How much was a plane like that setting you back back then? The Merlin cost me, that Merlin didn't cost me a lot. It cost me $600,000. I bought it in Burbank, California. I kept it in Burbank, California, and I used it for Mexico. The Conquest cost me, the first Conquest cost me $800,000.

Starting point is 01:42:44 And that one I kept in Venezuela. And I had a Piper Navajo, which that I kept in Tamahami Airport. But then this is where I start moving merchandise that I actually smuggle. I mean, I'm actually taking delivery of merchandise in colombia yeah and moving it through mexico moving it through bahamas and coming into the united states all right couple things here number one when you're buying all these planes are they bought under your name no what are they bought under i don't know i sent my partner renee to go get it and they put it under some fake company that was working out of Tamiami Airport in Miami.

Starting point is 01:43:28 Okay. So I guess you could kind of do that by chance. And then we registered, the Merlin was registered to an offshore corporation in Panama. Huh. And the Conquest was registered to also, I believe, a Panamanamanian corporation but it had Yankee Victor it had Venezuelan call letters didn't you end up in the Panama Papers or something yeah I mentioned in there paradise papers nice all the papers yeah so morning paper afternoon paper second question as you're building this Empire

Starting point is 01:44:04 though you mentioned earlier the fact that you had all these offices around the world eventually and stuff like you had a shell company i assume right some sort you were you yeah you had set up some sort of like fake business that said well we really do this well just to have an office since I had a macadamia farm in Costa Rica, in Colombia, I set up a Asociación Nacional de Macadamia de Colombia. Bullshit. Then I had some coffee business in Mexico. I had some latex business in Mexico. When did you get these?

Starting point is 01:44:37 Like, 1980? Well, remember that. In 1983, after my dad died, I bought 22,000 acres of sugar land. I mean, 10,000 were bought, 12,000 were leased, because I tried to get back into the sugar business. You stayed with the booger sugar, though. Imagine this shit. This is how my head works. I mean, sugar in the U.S. is subsidized at 28 cents.

Starting point is 01:45:04 It is sold in the U.S. at 28 cents a pound, okay, because the U.S. farmers produce it, and they get subsidized. So sugar, refined sugar, gets sold at 28 cents a pound. So I come up with this great idea, which other people had it too, but I came up with it, that I would buy sugar at $0.04 a pound in Dominican Republic, bring it into the United States to refine at Godshot Henderson in Louisiana, pay $0.05 refining cost. So I'd end up having sugar for $ cents a pound in the U.S.

Starting point is 01:45:47 That sugar needs to be re-exported. It just came here to get refined, and it has to be re-exported. With my partner up in New York, who were always in the sugar business, Lobo Kane, we drew up false papers, and that sugar never was re-exported it was sold to new york bakeries at 21 cents a pound lower than the 28 but it was sold this we made millions off this more money than the cocaine business and you didn't get out of the coke business problem is we got caught uh and it's in the book it's called operation bittersweet operation bittersweet the government came down on us and

Starting point is 01:46:34 some other people in uh in miami uh green brothers uh what year this is uh right after my dad died because god if you would have been alive you would have kicked my ass so this is like 83 84 so this is the first time you get hot yeah i had just bought the sugar land then this operation bittersweet kicks in at the same time i had a sugar packing operation in aruba because we had the licensing of the Hershey name to sell sugar in the Caribbean. The last sugar mill that Julio Lobo bought in Cuba in 1959 was the Hershey mill. And along with the Hershey mill came the name Hershey's as applicable to sugar. So we brought that back to light and I opened up a sugar packing operation in Aruba.

Starting point is 01:47:23 I used to bring in the sugar from Colombia, repack it in Hershey bags and send it to the Caribbean. Then I realized that, hey, isn't Puerto Rico the Caribbean? Yes, it is. Well, but Puerto Rico is also the US. So we did a couple of those runs, but then, and that was successful. You know what I mean? But Operation Bittersweet hits. I get subpoenaed. Thank God when the U.S. government subpoenaed my partner in New York,

Starting point is 01:48:00 he received his subpoena and he died of a massive heart attack. So I was able to go to that subpoena and blame it all on him. And walk out. Because he would have lived, he would have blamed that on me because I was the guy that put up the initial $3, $4 million to get this whole thing going and I would have been indicted. I love that. He's like, thank God he died.

Starting point is 01:48:24 Thank God he croaked so dropped dead right on staten island right across the street so they didn't come after you after that oh i had to go to the subpoena yeah yeah but once that was done you're like it was all him sorry it was all him did they make you pay a big fine or something? Nope. They made him pay his estate and his company a big fine. The U.S. government came down, and then I got scared. I said, no, no, this shit is getting wild. So listen to this. So I had bought all this acreage of Sugar Land and leased the rest.

Starting point is 01:49:03 And I didn't really know the details, but I bought it. Where was it again? Clouston, Florida. Right. And I bought it with a friend of mine that also used to work for the CIA, Amado Hernandez. You went to Georgetown, too. I'm just saying, there's a few things here that are a little.

Starting point is 01:49:20 There's some stuff that lines up. I don't know. Jesuits. Jesuits. Jesuits. They were in Portuguese Macau before the Chinese even had a triad. Listen, Luis, Luis, if you're a spook, you can tell me. This is a safe space. It's okay.

Starting point is 01:49:34 Spooks. Spooks. So we buy the Sugarland, and suddenly a hurricane hits. And I go, fuck, now we're really fucked. What are we going to do now? So I go to the P.O. box in Key Biscayne. And this, you know, I had, since Operation Bittersweet hit, I had given back, I was already in the process of giving back the land

Starting point is 01:50:00 to the guy who I bought it from, Carlos Reynolds. In that process, a hurricane hits. And I said, fuck, we're really fucked on this. So I go to the P.O. box and I see two envelopes from the U.S. Treasury Department. I said, this is all I need. A hurricane hits, Operation Bittersweet, and now the IRS is going to nail my ass. I open the envelopes. It's two checks totaling over $4 million for crop insurance that I didn't know I had. I took the $4 million and I

Starting point is 01:50:36 stashed it in Aruba right away. I said, this is it. So I gave back the Sugar Land. But since when the hurricane hit, it was in my name, I got to keep the $4.8 million from the crop insurance. So that was a nice paycheck, you know. You still got that bank account? No. But Aruba is a nice place to visit. Okay. And so all this, I mean, this is 25 years, and so much shit happened.

Starting point is 01:51:14 I mean, you know, I talked to a couple people to do the book, and a couple of them just couldn't put it together. It's not everybody that can write and put together 25 years of somebody's history. Jesse Fink is very like. Yeah, he did a great job. He put together 25 years. Now, believe me, I tried to, you know, I did a lot of writing while I was in jail, putting chronological order to things, but that was it.

Starting point is 01:51:44 I'm not an author to be able to put it all together in book form i needed somebody of course we did it together and i think he did a great job because it's not easy no to put the i mean it i wrote down everything because i had a good i had a good memory i think my memory's failing me now. But this is amazing that he put that together. And it is, he researched this, like that whole thing, when I called him up and told him, listen, that's bullshit. They never killed Alberto Cecilia Falcone. He had to stop because he researched everything and he was in doubt who's telling me the truth he called alberto's sister and alberto's sister in mexico told him no my my brother you know wasn't

Starting point is 01:52:34 around in 96 he died and then later on she found he found out that she wasn't telling the truth and that's when b Brian Dennard shows up. Can we talk about this Brian Dennard guy? Yeah, he's a good friend of mine. Again, you're not helping your case here. But Brian Dennard, you were telling me about him last night. He's allegedly still in the CIA. Like, I guess you never really leave.

Starting point is 01:53:02 He's fucking around overthrowing some governments. No, no, no, no, no, no. He's a consultant. He's got a consulting firm. They do some consulting in Africa. He's a very colorful person. He's a tough guy. But he was CIA for a long time. Yes. He's come out publicly and said it, that he was a CIA operative for many years. And the reason that Jesse Fink ran into him, because he commented something on a post that Jesse Fink did while he was doing the research on Alberto Cecilia Falcone,

Starting point is 01:53:38 he says, I know Alberto Cecilia Falcone because I was with him in the early years in mexico brian dennard now he's he's that's when he allegedly went rogue though i don't know if he was rogue or not rogue or who he he was working for but he did meet alberto and became a very good friend of alberto's no i'm saying that's when alberto went rogue oh yeah i'm saying he was there he was on behalf of the cia at the time he was already running the tijuana cartel alberto right and brian is friends with him yes as a member of this yes yes do with that what you will yeah okay yeah very interesting fellow i'm in touch with him a lot

Starting point is 01:54:28 we've become friends well a big question surrounding cia and cartels at the dawn of this thing is the aforementioned kiki camerina thing and i i've never heard of the cia had nothing to do with that you think they had nothing to do with that. You think they had nothing to do with that? No. That was just a fuck up. Caro, they shouldn't. Back then, nobody knew that you couldn't kill a DEA agent. The DEA agency was not what it used to be now.

Starting point is 01:54:56 They didn't know. Okay. These guys were just a bunch of flip-floppers starting. Yeah. Flip-floppers starting. Yeah, the DEA, they just flipped out and made a decision that was not a good one, and they came back to haunt them forever. They killed Kiki Camarena, Caro Quintero, and Felix Gallardo. The CIA had nothing to do with it. Right.

Starting point is 01:55:20 So this is what we had talked about with Rafa earlier, because we know that he was involved in that. My buddy Danny Jones had in Felix Rodriguez though for a podcast recently. Felix, that was all bullshit. Yeah, Felix said he wasn't there. Felix had nothing to do with it. So that had been the story for a while that he had been undercover on behalf of the CIA and was in the cartel and then Kiki was brought to him and he was required to torture him and do that which this is where people's brains explode on some stuff

Starting point is 01:55:53 but I don't know what was going on let's just hypothetically say for a minute that is what happened and you say it's not we'll get to that but I think about this a lot because I'm like damn Kiki Camarena was actually really good at his job. He ended up in the middle of- He busted El Bufalo. Right. That big farm. Right. He ended up in the middle of the most powerful people because he was,

Starting point is 01:56:13 again, he was a good agent. And he suffered. And he suffered. So he gets then caught up with them. Like you said, they didn't think anything like killing a DA agent. And let's just say hypothetically Felix was there and he was working on behalf of the CIA and then was the guy who did this. I think about this a lot because I'm like, okay, what if the CIA had some sort of 10, 20-year operation going on that had serious national security implications, right? And they had someone deep cover like this who needed to keep his cover and unfortunately and that's a really light word to put on this but unfortunately this really good dea agent gets caught in the middle of it and the decision is do we break

Starting point is 01:56:56 our cover and blow this entire long mission or does this guy become a sacrificial lamb that's a tough like a lot of people at home including me emotionally are like oh you break cover and you make sure you protect your own but it's from an intelligence standpoint i get why that's like this tough decision but you're saying it's irrelevant because that's not what it was back then you know what the mexicans were doing with the pot, they were crossing pot, and they were crossing pot, and Gallardo and Rafa and the Arellano brothers in Tijuana, they were doing the pot. And then Mata Ballesteros introduces them to cocaine, and they had internal conflicts. Rafa never wanted to go into cocaine. That is true.

Starting point is 01:57:44 But eventually, it to go into cocaine. That is true. But eventually, they all went into cocaine. But that was a clusterfuck among them all. The CIA wasn't really involved in that shit. The CIA got involved in the Contra shit. I mean, when they get involved, they get

Starting point is 01:58:00 involved, and they get involved proactively. They're not just – the CIA doesn't take – is not the small partner in the deal. They take control of the whole thing. And that's the whole thing that happened in Nicaragua. There they were involved. Iran-Contra, you're saying? Yeah, the Iran-Contra.

Starting point is 01:58:21 Sandinistas and all that? Yeah, with Barry Seale and all that. And that's – they got proactive on that one. But that whole, they don't, they're too intelligent. What the fuck are they going to be doing with Quique Camarena? That's a DEA. They don't even like the DEA. Right.

Starting point is 01:58:38 That's what I'm saying. He was good at his job and he ended up, he could have hypothetically ended up in the middle of it. Yeah. He was a very good agent and there was a DEA operation. CIA, they don't want to get involved with the DEA and something like that. They ran their own show in Nicaragua, and they ran it from A to Z. Now, Felix was involved in going down there to Bolivia when they captured Che Guevara. Yes, yes.

Starting point is 01:59:05 He was a real McCoy. He was the guy running that, yeah. And he's the real deal. Okay. Now, but that whole CIA, I mean, you know, everywhere, you know, there was a war in Vietnam, so suddenly the Burmese Triangle becomes the number one producer of opium in the world. So suddenly there's a war in Afghanistan.

Starting point is 01:59:30 And now Afghanistan is the largest opium producer in the world. I mean, the CIA, you know, they've been transporting for years. I mean, I think everybody knows that back up you're saying that at the sites of these wars they are then responsible for transport what what is their incentive to do that well money obviously you have, you know, nobody knows their budget. They're the only agency, I think, that they don't have to disclose their budget. But I'm just, this is hypothetically, I mean, I can't say this for a fact, but, I mean, they were involved in the Iran-Contra. I mean, during the Vietnam War, the Burmese Triangle becomes the number one producer of opium.

Starting point is 02:00:26 A lot of the opium, heroin is coming from there. Then Afghanistan breaks out and Afghanistan becomes the number one producer of opium. I mean, it's a theory. Do you think that's, okay. Maybe they're involved, maybe they're not. I mean, I don't know. Did you deal with them at all in your career? No, not at all.

Starting point is 02:00:47 Not at all. Do you think you may have dealt with them without knowing it? No, no. What makes you so confident? Because I knew who I dealt with. I dealt with Mexicans and that's it. I dealt with Colombians. What if they're assets?

Starting point is 02:00:59 Colombians? No, no. No? No, no. You're confident. You seem very confident on that. Yeah, I would say 95% and leave that 5% for giggles, but no. Okay.

Starting point is 02:01:14 I knew who I was dealing with, and I think they're the kind of people that when they get involved, you kind of know they're involved. Sure. Sure. And once again, that's a theory. It's a theory that I personally think that, you know, could work for them. But I can't say I have proof or anything like that. It's just something that I think.

Starting point is 02:01:46 Like Southern Air. say i have proof or anything like that it's just something that i i think like southern air i mean who owned southern air or air america or all those companies supposedly i don't know put up southern air i think they're not familiar southern air southern air yeah they were based in miami and they were you know i mean shit like that so it's southern air was a global cargo carrier headquartered in florence kentucky it was the first airline to provide acmi service for the wide body boeing 77 southern air out of miami on november 17 2021 southern air ceased operations upon its merger with atlas air is that the same one maybe not this was in miami southern air miami based atlanta this is atlanta yeah it's a different one try southern air miami plane company crash yeah southern air transport, here it is. Southern Air Transport, SAT, 1947 to 1998, based in Miami, Florida, was a cargo airline best known as a front company for the Central Intelligence Agency, 1960 to 73, and for its crucial role on the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s.

Starting point is 02:02:57 If there's flies on you, they're paying rent. You know your shit. That's good. I have no familiarity with this. Air America is another one i mean can we hit that alessi can we hit that full link let's see if it has like a like a section and it's okay like i said somebody's gotta do it go down i mean i don't okay all right this is on the this is on what's this called? Southern Air Transport page? Under Iran-Contra affair. As part of Oliver Norse activities to trade arms for hostages with Iran to support the Contra rebellion in Nicaragua, Southern Air carried loads of U.S. weapons

Starting point is 02:03:34 bound for Iran from the U.S. to Israel and on the return flights carried weapons destined for the U.S. backed right wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua from Portugal. On 5 October 1986, a Southern Air Transport C-123K loaded with weapons failed to return from the scheduled drop to the Contras in Nicaragua. In charge of the operations was Felix Rodriguez. There he is.

Starting point is 02:03:57 He was the logistics officer for airlifts of weapons and supplies from the Lopongo Air Base in El Salvador to the jungle hideouts of the Contras. Rodriguez did not notify the Defense Department or the CIA, but rather attempted to get word about missing C-123K to Donald Gregg, the National Security Advisor for Vice President George H.W. Bush. The shooting down of the SAT flight helped expose the Iran-Contra scandal. Logbooks retrieved from the wreckage linked SAT to a history of involvement with the CIA, cocaine, and the Medellin drug cartel. The logs documented several SAT flights to Barranquilla during October 1985.

Starting point is 02:04:38 In the same time period, Wanda Palacios told the FBI that SAT was running drugs. She worked in the early 1980s for the Colombia's Medellin cartel and had direct knowledge of the cartel's dealings with the CIA and the Contras. She brought in testimony to U.S. Senator John Kerry. Wanda Palacios had witnessed in 1983 to 1985 in Barranquilla the arrival of SAT planes loaded with weapons for the cartel, which would then send them to the Contras. The planes would return to the U.S. loaded with weapons for the cartel which would then send them to the contras the planes would return to the u.s loaded with cocaine palacio stated that jorge luis ochoa vasquez himself explained to the guns for drugs deal with the cia to supply the contras

Starting point is 02:05:15 you've got good eyesight yeah i'm trying it's a little smaller but you know like i said somebody's got to do it and it's out there. I mean, why not? So what I've been asking you was that you didn't see any involvement in your own dealings, and you didn't see involvement in Mexico. But what's clear is that there was involvement, allegedly, between CIA and Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel. If I did it, why wouldn't they do it? A lot of people didn't. I understand now.

Starting point is 02:05:51 Okay, so you're saying because you're like a middleman running the logistics, obviously you're not the only one of your kind, so you're, there are another cog on the wheel that has nothing to do with you, but doing the same thing. Yeah, it's like arms dealers who's an illegal who's the largest arms dealer in the world the u.s government who's an illegal arms dealer a guy

Starting point is 02:06:13 that doesn't buy from the u.s government and sells to a client that the u.s government sanctions they're all arms dealers one's approved one's not approved, I mean, it's a hell of a business. It's a great business. Why was I in it? Because it's a great business. So you think I'm the only guy that's going to realize it's a great business and be involved? No.

Starting point is 02:06:39 You know, pharmaceuticals, legal pharmaceuticals, that's probably worse than illegal pharmaceuticals. You want to get rid of the cocaine business? Easy. Pass it on from the DEA, pass it on, give it to the Department of Agriculture. Give them $20 billion so they can go out and buy all the coca leaf in production. They buy it all. That leaves no coca leaf for any other group, office, export company in Colombia to export any cocaine because there's no coca leaf. The U.S. Department of Agriculture bought it all. Do you think it would be feasible to do that? It's hard.

Starting point is 02:07:18 Because criminals run it. People say that Castaño, who was a paramilitary, they were trimming him for that purpose to act as a buyer's rep in Colombia. Because obviously, whoever does that is not going to be a very popular figure. They're going to want his head on a silver platter. But if you, just like United Fruit, when they wanted the price of banana to go up, they would buy all the banana in Central America. Nobody else would have banana. Banana exports would go down, price would go up. So if you have a guy with a paramilitary strong group of 10,000 armed men, start buying up a lot of the coca leaf in production from Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. And you start storing that. Suddenly, there's no cocaine for anybody.

Starting point is 02:08:16 So when there's no cocaine on the street here in the United States, that creates another problem because there's a lot of people that live off that business. People that, if they do not have cocaine to sell, they still have to feed their families, and they may not take a job at a 7-Eleven or at a McDonald's to flip burgers. They may decide to go into your neighborhood and hijack your car and kidnap your daughter.

Starting point is 02:08:43 Shit like that, that social shit, that just the domino effect that goes down. Look, right after they killed Pablo, Carly put the word out. Carly Cartel. Carly Cartel put the word out that nobody works. We're not going to work. To get in good with the government, we're not going to work to get in good with the government we're not going to work right okay we're not going to work some people didn't like that i was working

Starting point is 02:09:14 with a guy called mono endo claudio endo lunatic psychopath but good business partner since pablo had gone down and cali wasn't working i i i was going to continue to work because then mono who was with the cali cartel told the the old guys in cali fuck you you guys already made your billions i'm i'm continuing the work and he was a rough he was a violent son of a bitch he continued working i worked with him for a while and uh suddenly one day they came into his farm and they shot him up and he was in you know in the bathroom and they um machine gun the bathroom to hell and he was in it and he got popped full of holes. They killed him. But you see you know

Starting point is 02:10:10 Cali at that time there was no coke available in Cali because they weren't working. Yeah we just skipped that to like 1993. That was after they killed Pablo. Right. Now you I'm trying to think here.

Starting point is 02:10:25 There's two main threads that I think we really got to cover just because culturally people are aware of it and I want to see what you knew about it. But we were talking about Kiki. After Kiki was killed and then found, there was a manhunt for Rafa Caro Quintero. Right.

Starting point is 02:10:46 And he fled to Costa Rica, where you had a home base. You had a macadamia farm there, right? Yeah. And you kept Costa Rica clean, meaning you didn't do anything out of Costa Rica so you could have that as like a front spot. Never. Okay. But you got a phone call to see if you would help him? Who called you?

Starting point is 02:11:06 Doc called me and he said, you know, Rafa's in Costa Rica. What can we do for him? You know, he's hot. And is there any way we can get him out of Costa Rica? And I tried. I made a couple phone calls, but it was nothing to be done there, at least not within my power. And I really didn't want to heat myself up in Costa Rica. He went to Costa Rica, and he got caught there. And there was nothing I could do, but Doc was very good friends with Rafa, and he called me up to see if I could do something, but nothing I could do, but Doc was very good friends with Rafa, and he called me up to see if I could do something, but nothing I could do. Did you have a thought there, though, that this is pretty fucked up, what he did?

Starting point is 02:11:52 Because this wasn't like killing a gangster or something. I wasn't even thinking about that. You didn't? No. It was known that he – but remember, when they killed Kiki, it didn't become that popular and it didn't come out in the news as much as it did later. It wasn't immediately that this whole thing blew up and it was the media hype came in a little later. But you knew that, like, again, he'd killed a government agent. He hadn't killed. This wasn't like, you know,

Starting point is 02:12:26 nine Peruvians in a hotel room or something who were dealing blow on their own. Yeah, but that didn't come to my mind right away. I knew that he was in Costa Rica, that he needed help to get out, and if I could lend a helping hand, I would, but I couldn't, and I didn't want to be making phone calls to people in Costa Rica and heating myself up. Okay. And I told doctors, you know, there's nothing I can do and, you know, would just be totally counterproductive for me getting involved in that.

Starting point is 02:12:59 But you said, you had also said you didn't live in Mexico till the 90s. So you're operating things there. You're flying in the planes there. You're helping them build this business even after Rafa goes away. But you were living out of Colombia and Costa Rica primarily. No, Colombia. I never went to Costa Rica because. You kept it clean totally.

Starting point is 02:13:21 Totally. Okay. I understand. And I knew Costa Rica was very gringo friendly. I didn't want anything to do with Costa Ricans. So I lived in Colombia, would travel on and off to Mexico back and forth because I had businesses with, you know, Doc and Oreo and other Mexican groups. I was also, you know, later on I was working in Cancun a lot by boat. By boat?

Starting point is 02:13:49 Yeah. We started when planes got hot and it was difficult because of the radar station in Panama, we decided to start sending boatloads to Cancun. That was 1993. Okay, so that's a while forward. But in the meantime, you had been living in Colombia. Did you deal ever even once directly with Pablo Escobar? Like, did you meet him? Yes, I met him at Pablo Correa's farm. I was working with Pablo Correa. Who was Pablo Correa? Pablo Correa was one of the major

Starting point is 02:14:34 members of the Medellin cartel, one of the big producers of the Medellin cartel. At one point, he probably had more merchandise in the United States than anybody else. He was probably the largest producer in Medellin. And we were doing routes. We were doing Mexico trips with him and as well as Bahama trips. This is why my numbers got so big. I was moving so much because I was working Mexico. I was working Central America, and I was working the Bahamas. And each of these trips were 1,000, 1,500 kilos, 1,000. So when you start adding all this up, you know, those thousands of kilos just start building up. And one of those trips, it was with Doc, as a matter of fact. We landed the plane in Mexico, and they took smaller planes to cross the border, and they threw it in the Arizona desert.

Starting point is 02:15:28 And some of the kilos hit some cactus plants. So when they received the kilos in L.A., they had thorns in them. And these guys, they took one of the kilos from L.A. and brought it back to Medellin. And Pablo Correa called me up says come see me I went to see him at his ranch outside of Medellin where he had a bicycle path Pablo Pablo Correa was always very well dressed always in a suit he had 300 pairs of shoes I saw his closet and suits and Pablo came to visit him and and that's where I met Pablo. How many people are there when you meet him? Well, Pablo Correa had a few of his people there,

Starting point is 02:16:13 and obviously when Pablo came, he had one group come in first. You know, they call it anillos de seguridad, you know, security rings. First one group comes in, checks it out, makes sure everything's good. Then, you know, Pablo comes and then another stays back to make sure nobody comes in after he does. But that's when, you know, I was sitting in the office with Pablo Correa and then he gets a phone call, says, Tenemos al señor que viene en camino. And it was Pablo. And this is like 87, 88, something like that?

Starting point is 02:16:50 This was 80, no. This is 88, 89. I was working with Pablo Correa and Paco Burladero. So it was about 89. I remember that guy. Yeah, that guy was a real sweetheart. Paco Burladero. So it was about 89. I remember that guy. Yeah, that guy was a real sweetheart. Paco? He got his head chopped off.

Starting point is 02:17:12 He got too big for his own good, and he decided to retire, and he pissed a lot of people off. A lot of people trusted him. He kept a lot of merchandise, and he had a lot of control over a lot of people off. A lot of people trusted him. He kept a lot of merchandise, and he had a lot of control over a lot of people's merchandise, and I was transporting for him. But he would, like, there's 500 of your kilos on the strip, and he would send them to Miami. And he would make it, but he wouldn't tell you.

Starting point is 02:17:44 And he'd sell it, then come back and replace your kilos. But, you know, that was like free money. Yeah. And shit, bad things come back to hurt you. And then people started finding out that he was... On the take. Yeah, doing things like that, playing around with people's merchandise.

Starting point is 02:18:06 Sometimes it was your merchandise that, you know, had a fall, and he would tell you that it was yours instead of yours because he'd rather have a problem with you and not you. And in the end, they just grabbed him. They took all his money. They told him they were going to set him free. He went to the river to wash his face, and the guy that was with him cut his head off so he had stored his money i guess in a lot of places so they made him give him access over a hundred million dollars back then

Starting point is 02:18:37 he had in europe okay that was 89 now now back back to Escobar though because you're meeting him then if that was like 89 when you were on the farm and met him he's at the height of his power basically like that's that's when he is that guy whoa were you afraid to meet him no it was cool it's just normal meeting another dude yeah what was he like very gentleman like very smooth not hyper very very leveled even you know he wasn't you know a creeper he wasn't crazy no mono endo was off the wall. He was hyped up. He was like on methamphetamines all the time or something.

Starting point is 02:19:30 Pablo was a very mellow guy. I mean, there's a saying, you know, tiene dos tetas, una da mierda y una da leche. Depende a cual te prendas. Something about shit or milk? Well, he's got two tits. One gives milk and one gives shit. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:19:46 Depends which one you're going to grab onto. Right. I mean, they're all like that. I don't like that you know what he says fully before I know it. This is a little scary. But, I mean, would I wake up in the morning and think about dying, getting arrested? No. It was just my job.

Starting point is 02:20:11 It was what I did. And I wanted to expand my business. I always thought, you know, and my biggest, I always wanted to do freighters, containers. And that was my downfall. And I realized it when I got into it. I told my partner, I said, you know, this is going to be our downfall. And I realized that when I got into it, I told my partner, I said, you know, this is going to be our downfall, the paper trail. Why is that a downfall as opposed to pickup trucks?

Starting point is 02:20:32 Because, you know, you have a plane and you airdrop and it's a pilot and the guy who's kicking in the back and that's it. But when you have a freighter company in Piraeus, 10 boats, 10 ships, and you got the good crews and the bad crews, and when you're going to do a coke run, you got to switch the good crew for the bad crew, and there's bills to pay and gas bills, and there's an office and paper trails.

Starting point is 02:21:04 I knew it,. I knew it. And I said it. After we do this trip, which that was the last trip, there was no other, my plan was to go back to Europe and start building these 100-foot go-fasts with internal Caterpillar 3N diesel engines and just put four islanders from San Andres or four crew members and cross the Atlantic. You don't need a freighter to cross the Atlantic. You don't?

Starting point is 02:21:39 No. How big do you think Christopher Columbus's boat was? I mean, a lot of those boats didn't make it, though. But he made it. It was 50 feet long. Christopher Columbus's boat, that Santa Maria and the Pinta and the other one. The Pinta? The Santa Maria?

Starting point is 02:21:57 Yeah. It was 50 feet long. It made out of wood. So you take a super well-built fiberglass. We were going to build them in Brazil, 100-foot open fishermen with three inboard 1,200

Starting point is 02:22:13 horsepower caterpillar diesel. Those things will run forever. You put 5,000 kilos and you're gone. When it gets to the northern Spain and the Los Gallegos,

Starting point is 02:22:28 the fishing boats take off the coke, you sink the boat and the four black guys or the crew members, usually I was going to use islanders because I was going to transit them back to South America via Cape Verde Islands.

Starting point is 02:22:49 But you sink the boat. Just let it go. Yeah, $250,000 boat, $300,000. What's that compared to 5,000 kilos that you just handed over? And when you build them, you build eight, ten at a time. You had this all plotted out. out yeah that was my next move i was gonna get rid of those freighters okay but here we are the u.s government eric kolbinski came in and picked up my ass yeah we skipped so many years again we got to go back you keep going forward that's already year 2000 yeah we're not there yet i was still we're not there i was still 88 89 on

Starting point is 02:23:26 Pablo Escobar on that farm yeah so that was the last time you saw him though what did what did you now are you in you're in Colombia during the whole Los Pepes thing and all that how did you even lay low during that era because i was with rasguño i was with northern valley okay i started working with northern valley cartel which is rasgunio and uh how'd you get hooked up with him through marulo it came a point where i was working with marulo for many years he was the head of the pereira cartel i was working with him for many years but he got to a point where you know i needed more merchandise my my mexico business was growing so much that i was needing three four thousand kilos at a time and marulo didn't want to get involved in that much So he turns me on to his neighbor, Rasguño, that lives in Cartago.

Starting point is 02:24:31 And the first trip we did with Rasguño, we did two King Airs with 1,300 kilos each, 2,600 kilos, out of Pereira Airport right to Tamaulipas, Mexico. And from there on, it was just pew. Before that with Marulo, we had done like 14 back-to-back trips with a Cheyenne 4. We started with a Cheyenne 2, then a Cheyenne 3, finally a Cheyenne 4, doing 700 kilos a piece. We did 14 trips.

Starting point is 02:25:08 That's a lot of money. Yeah. That was in a period of about a year. How many people do you have working for you? At that point, well, I had a pilot, co-pilot, a manager that would manage the different pilots. Like I said, not too many people maybe 10 12 people working for me the rest didn't have any muscle because you didn't do any of that what i

Starting point is 02:25:32 didn't need the muscle what more muscle than the northern valley cartel well for example you but okay you're with the northern valley cartel during who's gonna who's gonna fuck with you is escobar was crazy. What if Escobar is like, yo, I don't like that this fucking Cuban is doing deals with this guy. No. Get rid of him. No. Up until Pablo died, Pablo was killed, I worked with them.

Starting point is 02:25:56 I worked with El Negro Galeano, Mickey Ramirez, Piedra Itas, the Ochoa cousins, all Medellin cartel. Up until he died. Yeah. When he died, I started working with Northern Valley. Even those last like six months when he was like down to a few men and on the run, you were still doing coke for him? We were working with Negro Galeano through Mickey Ramirez. And we were airdropping off the west coast of Tampa. Off the west coast of Tampa? As a matter of fact.

Starting point is 02:26:33 Like Meteora Beach? There's a lighthouse west of Tampa. And there was so much shit that we were throwing at that lighthouse and bringing in through the West Coast that it was Bob Harley, I think, that told me that they termed that the Coke machine. But you're doing this when the whole Columbia is in like a civil war over this guy. Yeah, we were living. The U.S. government's all over Columbia. Yeah. And you're bringing Coke out of Colombia, no problem?

Starting point is 02:27:06 We never stopped working. That's unbelievable. Until the day that he went to visit Pablo, that he got killed in La Catedral, and after they killed him in La Catedral, before Pablo escaped La Catedral. Oh, when they killed him, yeah, the other guy. Mickey Ramirez went to talk to Pablo in La Catedral, and we thought he was never going to come out. Which was the prison that Pablo built.

Starting point is 02:27:34 He killed Negro Galeano and Kiko Moncada, and he didn't leave right away. Right. He waited a couple weeks, I think. But Mickey went to talk to him to continue operations He didn't leave right away. Right. He waited a couple weeks, I think. But Mickey went to talk to him to continue operations because he had taken over. Since he killed Negro, he had taken over the operations that Negro had. And he wanted Mickey to continue working with him.

Starting point is 02:28:04 And you weren't scared at all that this guy who was killing off all the competition might come for you and be like, I don't need this dude. No, not at all. No dude not at all if i would no not at all i was i was a hundred percent sure that you know what i did was valued and i was working with good people negro galiano mickey a you know pablo to me these were all good people to work with i mean that's the truth you are so interesting that's the truth i was never you could see why most people would be like it's odd that you call someone like pablo escobar quote a good guy to work with he was he was do you think he was for you, but obviously not for other people? Well, I worked mostly with his number one associates, which was, Lopera and Marulo ran the Pereira cartel, which was just a subsidiary of the Medellin cartel. Mono Lopera got killed also.

Starting point is 02:29:15 I worked with the Ochoa cousins. I worked with Medellin cartel principally for many, many, many years. And I was happy working with them. I got along with all of them. And the only time I worked with, the only guy I worked with from the Cali cartel, which Cali cartel was Mono Endo. But then that stopped really quick.

Starting point is 02:29:44 Mickey Ramirez called me up one day and says, Senador, you're working with Mono Endo. But then that stopped really quick. Mickey Ramirez called me up one day and says, Senador, you're working with Manuel Endo. You're going to end up dead. Senador? Yeah. Called you the senator? They called me the senator because I always dressed well. And somebody, I don't know if it was Mickey or Rasguño, said, here we are dressed in fucking polo shirts and dungarees. This guy comes dressed with linen suits, Davidoff ties, and this and that.

Starting point is 02:30:11 Looks like a senator. So they started calling me senador. El senador. El senador. To this day, Mickey still calls me el senador. And he said, please, I'm going to ask you for a favor. You know, I know nobody's working, but I'll go ahead and I'll get some merchandise from somewhere. But please do not work with Mono Endo anymore.

Starting point is 02:30:32 So I was in Cali when he called me. And Mono Endo's chauffeur was taking me to the airport. And I had just had that conversation with Mickey. But I didn't tell him that I was going to continue working with him. What a coincidence. You know what his number right hand man tells me? You know, you seem like a very educated, nice person and you're in this business. I would give you a piece of advice. Do not continue working with my boss. He's going to end up killing you. He's killed everybody he works with.

Starting point is 02:31:06 Now, did that send a shiver up your spine? And that kind of said, wow, those are signs. Yeah. And he ended up, his partner got killed, but he ended up in Panama. But do you, hold on. If you then stopped working with Mono Endo, you didn't have a fear that he would come to you for reprisal, for refusing to work with him? It's kind of like you're stuck between a shit and a fart.

Starting point is 02:31:36 No, no, no, no. Mono Endo had other routes and other things. It just panned out. For him, I stopped working. I was just another guy. I mean, he had other people he worked with. But at that point, Mickey did come through for him. He started giving me merchandise.

Starting point is 02:31:53 And I continued working with Mickey. But then I picked up from there was when I went and started working with Northern Valley, with Rasguño. Okay. And Northern Valley had been around. Actually, I was working with Mickey and Northern Valley at the same time. Towards the end of Escobar's life? No, after Escobar. Okay.

Starting point is 02:32:21 And during Escobar, yes, it overlapped. I did work with Mickey and Negro Galeano, and we were airdropping in that lighthouse. And we were already working with Rasguño. There was a little overlap there. Because after they killed Escobar or was it before, we had, I mean, yeah, there was an overlap.

Starting point is 02:32:54 It was December 93, I think he was killed, right? December 93. But the last year, a couple years there, they were crazy, though. I mean, the country was like like, torn apart because of him. Yes. Shit was burning.

Starting point is 02:33:10 Yes, but I never looked at it that way. I mean, they were putting bombs in Centro Comerciales, but we still want the Centro Comerciales. We still want the centro comerciales. We still want the restaurants. Yes, the country was in turmoil, but we lived there. And that's where we lived. And that's where I worked. And that's what was happening at the time.

Starting point is 02:33:41 Do you fear death? I don't think about it. Do I fear death? I don't think about it. Do I fear death? I mean, twice in my life I was very scared. Once when we were in Venezuela and we were in Isla Margarita and we got word that they were coming after us, the Venezuelan police was coming after us, I was really fucking scared. I knew that if we got caught, we'd get tortured bad.

Starting point is 02:34:09 So we left Margarita by water, by boat. And the other time was when I was in Colombia in December, and I had a ticket back to Mexico via Costa Rica. And somehow or the other, that flight got canceled, but I had to get back to Colombia because it was December 22nd to spend Christmas with my family. And I had to go through Havana. Those motherfuckers pulled me over in Havana. They knew that I was flying with a Mexican passport. They knew I wasn't Mexican. They knew it. They held me back for eight hours.

Starting point is 02:34:45 I was shitting in my pants. And they knew it. They just didn't want to run with it, but they knew it. They let me go. But I realized at that point that if these guys wanted to, I would be lost in that system, and nobody would ever hear from me again. And if they had found out you were a former Cuban

Starting point is 02:35:06 who had left and gone to America, I mean, that could have been... I mean, I would have just been lost in some kind of Cuban prison forever. Now, you... I was really scared because I knew those guys know what they're doing. They got some hot intelligence, those Cubans. The Cubans? Yeah, they thought I was coming from Colombia to meet up with some Mexicans. And our meeting point was Cuba. So for my inconvenience, I had a reservation at

Starting point is 02:35:34 the Hotel Coiba in Havana. And I had a regular room. But since they detained me for about seven hours, drilling me and drilling me, and they say, el proceso primero, el proceso segundo, proceso tercero. I said, how many procesos are there? We could end up getting proceso numero 349, and I'd still be there. I was scared. And they said, for your inconvenience, we're going to give you the presidential suite at the Coiba. And that place was wired to the max with cameras and everything. So I just, you know, I said I was a coffee guy. I was a coffee guy from Mexico. And I went, and next day I went to a coffee factory, so-called coffee factory.

Starting point is 02:36:24 They were basically burning coffee, mostly chicharro with coffee. That's what they give the pueblo. Wait, wait, what? English. In Cuba, the coffee that is sold to the public, it's mixed with chicharro. What's chicharro in English? Like split pea? Like a type of bean?

Starting point is 02:36:52 Yeah, they don't give... The pure coffee is... So they make them shit, basically. Yeah, it gets exported to Europe. Okay. So basically, I just left the next day. And when I got to Cancun, I almost kissed the ground. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:37:06 Because I was really scared in Cuba. Now, because you had, you and I were talking last night. I think you mentioned something earlier on the podcast too, like old habits die hard with some of your incognito nature. Your driver's license you have in Miami right now doesn't have your real address on it. I think you've illegally changed some of your name as well. your driver's license you have in miami right now doesn't have your real address on it you i think you've illegally changed some of your name as well but like when you were going around to these places you would always go under different names and you had all different passports and stuff and i think you said you would keep the initials the same lan because all your suits were like

Starting point is 02:37:42 monogrammed so it would have to be some version of lan but you you had these different aliases which include as you just mentioned going through cuba and claiming you're mexican so like could you put on a mexican accent with your with your spanish i did so you had different dialects of spanish down yes but the thing is that what you never do, especially in Mexico, is not being a Mexican, you don't go into Mexico with a Mexican passport because a Mexican can tell you're not Mexican by the way you talk. Even if you had the accent down? Even if I had the accent. And what happened, I was scheduled to go from Bogota to Cancun because I had the immigration officer there ready to receive me. But since it got canceled and I got routed through Cuba, when I arrived to Cancun, that immigration officer was not there. And sure enough, I get there and I was already a little nervous

Starting point is 02:38:50 and when I get there, he speaks really fast and I say, instead of saying, Mande, I said, ¿Cómo? And right away he said, ¡Ja! Colocho. Aquí no se dice cómo, aquí se dice Mande. And he goes, me imagino que vienes a comprar unas boticas o una chaqueta.

Starting point is 02:39:09 In Mexico, they don't call your coat a chaqueta. They call it chamarra. It's like that scene in Inglourious Bastards where he holds up three instead of three. They just know. So he brought me in. And I just zoned in on this and I kept with it and I went with the flow and I said, you have to understand, this is not what it looks like. I am not traveling under a fake passport for illegal reasons. It's for commercial reasons. I needed to go to Colombia.

Starting point is 02:39:48 I'm in the coffee business. I'm the owner of Cafe Cobah here in Mexico. I needed to get this Mexican passport to not to go through a visa process. I didn't have time. So really, this isn't being used for illegal purposes, just commercial purposes. And he said, OK, and you own Cafe Cobá? Says, yes, I do own Cafe Cobá. If you want, you can come there tomorrow, two days before Christmas. We can sit down in my office and we can talk about this. And the guy said, tenga 10,000 con usted el día de la entrevista. Ten thousand with me the day of the interview.

Starting point is 02:40:30 He let me go. He meant ten thousand pesos. I gave him ten thousand dollars. Oh, he probably. He almost fell off his. Pig and shit. And then I gave his niece a job at Cafe Cobain. But that's something that just flowed out of me,

Starting point is 02:40:46 and the shit I'm saying doesn't make sense, but it makes sense. But you did really own that then. I did own that, and that's what saved me. And I really told the guy, it's not a real passport, but it's not being used for fraudulent purposes. It's being used for commercial purposes. Try to figure that one out. That's bullshit to the max. It's being used for commercial purposes. Try to figure that one out. That's bullshit to the max.

Starting point is 02:41:08 It's fraudulent. That's not who I am. And I told them my real name. My real name is Luis Navia. I own Cafe Cobar. Were you going under the Mexican name or the Novinsky name? I was going under Novoa.

Starting point is 02:41:24 Novoa. Novoa. And then there was another one, Novinsky or something. You said you were Jewish? Yeah, that's the one they arrested me in Venezuela with. Did you wear the yarmulke and everything? Yeah, the whole thing. The nose.

Starting point is 02:41:37 And the nose. And the nose. My daughter has a picture. Wait, what do you mean, and the nose? You had a fake nose too? Yeah, here it is. In living color. My daughter has a picture. When she was in first grade in Mexico City, we were, you know, we left Cancun as Navia and went to Mexico City as Naviansky.

Starting point is 02:41:57 And she had her thing, said, Maria Naviansky. Oh, my God. Remember when we were Jewish? And she shows me that picture and says, remember when we were Jewish? At least I have a sense of humor. Yeah, I mean, you kind of have to. I think that's how you get through, right? Yeah, and to tell you the truth, you know, it started out,

Starting point is 02:42:22 and before you know it, 25 years went through, but I just got on like a flow. Like I rode a wave, and I rode like the perfect wave. Yes, I got kidnapped. I got held by Northern Valley Cartel for 21 days. Wait, what? Back up. wait what back up if you want let's let's take a

Starting point is 02:42:47 a coffee break and we'll go back to the northern valley when I got held for 21 days and also I got held in Mexico I almost got thrown into a pit of crocodiles 100% we'll be right back to talk about 21 days in fucking northern valley and crocodiles

Starting point is 02:43:04 alright we are back from a little coffee break 100%. We'll be right back to talk about 21 days in fucking Northern Valley and crocodiles. All right. We are back from a little coffee break. And you left us with quite a little cliffhanger right there. So there were two things. You mentioned being taken captive by the Northern, what's it called again? Northern Valley. Northern Valley. I was going to.

Starting point is 02:43:20 For 21 days. And then something about crocodiles. So I need you to spill the beans on this okay so we were working cancun and we were doing really well and i brought a um a type a relative an aunt or distant relative to handle some of the money over there. And she went kind of nuts, and she started talking some things that weren't true. And to make a long story short, it got back to Rasgunio, and he wasn't too happy about it. When I got back to Colombia, my partner tells me, hey, you should leave to Europe.

Starting point is 02:44:05 You should leave to Mongolia. You should leave to somewhere because this guy wants you and he's going to come after you and pick you up. Says he doesn't have to do that. He's my friend. I'll go see him right now. I hopped on a plane and I went to talk to him. And I explained to him that, you you know that that was not true he had said that you know I was talking about she had said that I was skimming off the top

Starting point is 02:44:31 that I was talking bad about him that I was acting like the boss of Cancun and none of that was true needless still he said until this gets clarified you're staying here so they um they kept me there for 21 days the funny thing is that you know at first i was in an apartment and i was uh handcuffed to a to a bed to a steel bed that was nailed to the to the floor and then i was taken to a farm with a pool you're taking to a farm with a pool yeah and were taken to a farm with a pool? Yeah, and simply they said, listen, you know, we're not going to keep you in that apartment. You know, things have got to get cleared up. But, you know, you're more free here.

Starting point is 02:45:13 You can just sit around the pool, read. We'll get you some books, whatever. But if you try to leave, they're not going to kill you. The order is not to kill you for now. But they will shoot you in the leg, and then we will take out that bullet. And the one that's going to take out the bullet is me, and there's no anesthesia. So we would, and the guy that was saying this to me wanted me dead because he was kind of jealous that I had a good relationship with his boss.

Starting point is 02:45:40 So I stayed there for a while, and then while I stayed there for a while and then while I stayed there I mean I got kind of bored and then I told the uh the bodyguards that were taking care of me you know let's go get some pizza man I'm sick and tired of having rice and beans all day and I convinced them they took me to get pizza I hear I'm a guy that's kidnapped you know and you're not supposed to go out and get pizza I convinced these guys to take me to go get pizza. And when we came back, sure enough, Rasgunio finds out, you son of a bitch, what do you think this is, a holiday camp going out to get pizza? So the bodyguards were more scared than I was because they thought they were going to get whacked for taking me out to get pizza. Then I told them, you know what?

Starting point is 02:46:26 I don't have a driver's license. We're not doing anything. I'd like to take this opportunity to go get a driver's license. And they look at me and says, let me tell you something. We don't know if you may be going through a crisis because I know you know that everybody that's been here has not left alive and you know just to be on on the level with you one of us is going to have to do it none of us want to do it you are a very nice guy you are different than everybody else that's come come through this situation and we've already drawn

Starting point is 02:47:06 straws as to who's going to do it you don't know who it is and we won't tell you but nobody's happy about it and it's going to happen fast you won't even know it's coming but you know dead people don't drive so why are you want a driver's license when you you know, you're probably not going to leave here, I mean, in any condition to drive. I said, no, man. I mean, Ross is my friend. I convinced him to get me a driver's license. We went to get the driver's license.

Starting point is 02:47:37 He says, who the fuck? He found out. I own the driver's license place. I own the pizza place. I own the phone. I own everything in this town. I know everything.'s license place. I own the pizza place. I own the phone. I own everything in this town. I know everything. He was pissed.

Starting point is 02:47:48 Well, the bottom line is that things got cleared up. I paid. You know, we settled accounts because whenever you're working with somebody, you have 300 kilos on this route, 200 kilos this. But we settled accounts, paid out for almost $5 million, settled the counts, and I was let go. They told me, you can leave. You're good. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:48:17 But most people don't get let go. You weren't afraid during this? I tell you the truth. When they grabbed, when they told me I couldn't leave and they put me in the car, I remember I was in the passenger seat. We were going through El Valle del Cauca, which is a lot of sugar land. And I was just looking out. I was like, my mind was in limbo. Behind me was El Sargento Suarez, and behind me was Chorizo, a hitman that they had. And I knew them both. And, you know, I don't know what to tell you.

Starting point is 02:48:55 I was like, I wasn't mad. I wasn't screaming. I wasn't this. I wasn't that. I was just like blank. My life was blank. And my wife was seven months pregnant. And yes, I did think, you know, somehow or the other, I never really thought that I was not going to make it. Because I don't know what it would be to think that you're

Starting point is 02:49:21 not going to make it, to know that you're going to die i was very worried but i knew i knew in my heart of hearts that rasguño was not going to kill me because he was my friend so there's there are rare people on this earth and i don't know many of them who seem to just be born without forget the anxious gene they're they're born without the fear gene there's just something about them that they can be in the worst of a situation and their hands steady no matter what and I mean I wasn't in these situations with you I can only take it from looking at you now and how you talk about it and hearing the stories as you tell them. But you seem to be one of those people because I don't know how – like, obviously, you had some anxiety in your career. That was something we've talked about, I think, off camera. But, like, fear, that seemed to miss you in the gene pool.

Starting point is 02:50:24 Fear was that time in Venezuela. Yeah, you said there were a couple exceptions, but still. Yeah, but still I was proactive. I didn't sit around being fearful. I got the fuck out of there. Right. We hopped on a boat and hightailed out of there. I was very concerned in Cuba.

Starting point is 02:50:41 But in this situation, this was so strange because it's a fact that when they pick you up like that and they retain you, the best thing you can hope for is a quick death. That's why the bodyguard told me he thought I was losing it. Because who, doesn't this guy realize he's going to die? He's asking to go get a driver's license. Dead people don't drive. This guy actually, maybe he's losing it. So he kind of settled me in and kind of centered me and told me, you know, put your feet on the fucking ground.

Starting point is 02:51:14 One of us is going to have to kill you. None of us want to do it, but one of us has to. So finally, things got settled, and I was let go. When you were let go, did you think that they were going to shoot you on the way out? No. Like it was fake? No. When I was let go, I was let go, and they thought this motherfucker is going to grab the next taxi to Pereira, which is the nearest town with an airport city, with an airport, and

Starting point is 02:51:46 hop on a plane and go to fucking Lower East Mongolia. You know what I did? I got on a taxi and I went to Rasguño's hotel and I checked in and I had no money because I had no money because I just came from a kidnapping. And I said, no, put it on La Cuenta del Señor. Oh, no. I went to the bar, had a couple drinks, ordered breakfast, relaxed. And the next day, I call him.

Starting point is 02:52:20 And then I go, ah, ¿qué hubo, hombre? ¿Cómo va? And he goes, me imagino que estás en la puta mierda. Y yo digo, no, estoy aquí en el Mariscal Robledo, tu hotel en Cartago. No, hijo de puta, no, ¿cómo va? No, no seas tan hijo de puta. ¿Cómo? Hombre, es que tenemos que hablar.

Starting point is 02:52:42 No tenemos que hablar un culo, pero qué loco, ¿cómo que hijo de puta? He was going, what the fuck? This motherfucker's crazy. I checked and he came to see me at the hotel. He was like, I have nothing against you, but there's no more business. Try to get it through your fucking head. There's no more. And then I said, well, okay, I can understand that. And then he says, well, then leave.

Starting point is 02:53:08 You're free. Leave. I goes, shit, but you left me with no money. Can you give me 100 grand? And he goes, you know what? Tengo 50 en el maletín. Te voy a dar los 50. And he had a black Harley Davidson maletín.

Starting point is 02:53:25 And he gave me 50 grand. And he told me to get the fuck out of here. But he says, mejor no. No. Te me quedas aquí puesto un minuto. He called my wife. My wife. So she would come from Bogota.

Starting point is 02:53:42 Pick me up and make sure. I got the fuck out of there. that I got the fuck out of there. Then when my wife came, she really thought that on the way from Cartago to Pereira, that's when they were going to kill us. So she was scared. Yeah, but I knew they were going to kill us. You knew. I never felt that Raz was going to me he's my friend to this day they're all your friends to this day he's in jail and i you know i'll do anything i can to help him no shit i i love raz gunio. I really feel a lot for the guy. I really do.

Starting point is 02:54:26 Now, when this happened, how long had you known him? Three years. I worked with him for about 89, 90, 91, four years. But he used to call me, and I used to go over there, and we just hit it off, and he was a very feared individual. After Pablo, he was probably the guy that took over. Very feared. Even Colombians didn't work with the people I worked with.

Starting point is 02:55:00 Colombians didn't want to work with them, and I feel a lot for him. I really like Rasguño as a person, as a man. Where's he in prison now? He's in somewhere in, he was in Lewisburg. Oh, in Pennsylvania? Which is not a good place, but they transferred him. He's in a better place now, but he's in still for a while.

Starting point is 02:55:24 So I've worked with some, you know, like Ivan Urdinola. place, but they transferred him. He's in a better place now, but he's in still for a while. So I've worked with some, you know, like Ivan Urdinola. Ivan Urdinola is a fucking lunatic. Rasguño is not a lunatic. And this motherfucker, the first day I meet him, I meet him at his car shop. He has a

Starting point is 02:55:43 car dealership. And he used to talk really, Where? In Cali. Okay. And he says, And I go, what do you mean? No, te quiero regalar un carro.

Starting point is 02:56:00 I want to give you a car. So he gives me a 535i with an Alpina box, a car that in Colombia is $150,000. He just gave it to me the first day he met me. So we're going to do a trip. And I go, I personally go with my people, wrap the merchandise. It was like 800 kilos we were going to carry. Oh, you were wrapping it? I went, no.

Starting point is 02:56:21 You were doing it? I wasn't, but I sent my people. And I was in Cali, and I sent my people to wrap it. The trip was canceled. And I told Ivan, make sure that our merchandise stays put, that they don't use our merchandise and send it to Mexico. And then because that's specially wrapped for an airdrop. Even Arzuño, when he realized that I was working with Iván, which basically most of the time they don't let you,

Starting point is 02:56:55 he says, just do me a favor. Whatever trip Iván is on, whatever merchandise, don't take any of my merchandise. I don't want to be associated, because con Iván no se pierde. Iván siempre gana y no quiero problemas con Iván. That's Rasguño.

Starting point is 02:57:11 He didn't want any problems with him. Now, talk about a nut. So sure enough, the conquest comes in. They fucking load it up. Goes to the Florida Keys, to Gordito, to Jorge Cabrera. If you Google his ass, you'll see him next to Hillary Clinton. Jorge who? Cabrera, El Gordito. He was one of our major

Starting point is 02:57:33 guys in the Keys that picked up merchandise. Jorge Cabrera. Florida Keys. Florida Keys. Key West. There he is. He died last year. But he's there with Hillary Clinton Florida Keys. Florida Keys. Key West. Cocaine. There he is. He died last year.

Starting point is 02:57:54 But he's there with Hillary Clinton because he gave Hillary $20,000 and he slept in the Lincoln bedroom. Oh, there you go. That boy. So what happens is he's down there. They airdrop the shit, and it just splatters all over the fucking ocean. When? Wait, wait, wait. The merchandise that I had packed for airdrop, they sent that shit to Mexico, just as I said. And they put in the plane the one that wasn't packed.

Starting point is 02:58:21 And it ended up in the Gulf of Mexico? No, in the Florida Keys. It was off packed and it ended up in the gulf of mexico no in the uh florida keys it was off the florida keys oh okay off um and black rocks uh what's the name of the place um right not ragged key well off off the floor yeah yeah dog rocks okay okay usually when that happens with ivano urdinola he doesn't care that it was his people that put it it was he doesn't care you pay him he doesn't lose you pay him the best you could hope for is that he says, you pay it at cost plus whatever fee, so you end up paying $5,000 a kilo

Starting point is 02:59:10 or $6,000 a kilo. But most, he would charge you for sure. And he said, no, no, no, no, no. That's never has that happened. Y él dijo, no, no, no, ya entendí, ese es el problema me, the car he gave me.

Starting point is 02:59:47 Says, uy, Ivan, que problema, hermano. Uy, puta. Imagínate, el otro día mi mujer cogió y chocó tu carro. Como? My wife has a BMW and I have a BMW. I was at a friend's house and she thought I was at a friend's house visiting a girlfriend, which was not true. But was it not true that night? Yeah.

Starting point is 03:00:11 She got so mad. My wife got so mad that she took her BMW and started smashing it against my BMW. That's boom. That's boom. Nice. Boom. Boom. BMW. ¡Bum! ¡Bum! ¡Bum! ¡Bum! So when I tell Iván,

Starting point is 03:00:27 Iván, imagínate qué noticia más mala darte. Imagínate. Bueno, ¿qué noticia puede ser peor que perderme la mercancía? No, es que, imagínate mi esposa chocó tu carro. ¿Cómo? Sí, mi esposa pensó que estaba

Starting point is 03:00:43 con una querida y cogió y empezó a chocar los carros. Smash the cars together. ¡Hijo de puta! Ahora sí usted es un bacán. Es que nosotros somos iguales porque mi esposa también está loca.

Starting point is 03:01:00 Así que imaginando que iba a estar enojado, lo tomó de otra manera. Dijo, coño, tú y yo somos exactamente iguales. Todos tenemos So figuring he was going to be pissed, he took it another way. He said, coño, you and I are exactly the same. We both have fucking crazy wives. I got that one. And if you Google Lorena Henao, his wife, they say she killed him. No.

Starting point is 03:01:20 Yeah. They killed her, Lorena Henao. She's El Mocho Henao's sister. Married to Iván Urdinola, H, H, Lorena.

Starting point is 03:01:38 Widow of the Mafia. Colombia's Widow of the Mafia. Lorena Henao Montoya has been deeply involved in the drug trade. Known as the widow of the mafia, was murdered after assassins on a motorcycle strafed her car with bullets in the province of Armenia. Like the country? Armenia, coffee growing area of Colombia.

Starting point is 03:01:59 Oh, no. Okay. Not like Armenia, the country. Right. Okay. So she allegedly killed she was one tough crazy can we translate that page let's try that uh so try to see her i stopped picking i mean I mean, that's a story of my life. Wild, crazy shit. Just, you know, I mean, there were bets out.

Starting point is 03:02:31 Number one, when they kidnapped me, when Rasgunio took me in, they had bets out of he's not coming back. For sure he's not coming back. So I came back. When this happened with Ivan, that I lost his merchandise, they said, for sure, without a doubt, he's fucking dead or he has to pay $10, $12 million. About full value for the merchandise.

Starting point is 03:02:52 And when they heard about that, even that, then he took it, the car. I mean, all this shit. If you even knew Ivan Urizenola, you'd know what I'm talking about. A murderous, crazy, volatile psychopath. This big. Crazy, feared Ivan Urdinola. Can I see this guy's face?

Starting point is 03:03:23 Jose Orlando, that's somebody else. Yeah, go to Ivan Ordinola. Go this way. Yeah, there you go. Ivan Ordinola Grajales. Was known by the nickname El Enano. In English, the dwarf. Was a Colombian...

Starting point is 03:03:36 I love how you still have to lift up when you do that. A Colombian drug lord who was one of the leaders of the notorious Norte del Valle cartel, co-perpetrator of the trujillo massacre which occurred between 88 and 92 let's see oh yeah he married lorena you know matoya after several months of intelligence in april 1992 the police finally found the ordinola residence lap what you laughing because you were the intelligence because this shit is off the wall they finally actually liked me they finally sounds like that's a pattern yeah the police finally found the urdinola's residence in la porcelana in zarzal with some of his bodyguards urdinola without

Starting point is 03:04:18 putting up any kind of resistance asked the security forces officer in charge of the operation for a few minutes to bathe change his, and say goodbye to his wife and children. He calmly surrendered, confident that drug trafficking charges against him could not be proven, although he could not be extradited either. Since extradition was prohibited by the Constitution at that time, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison, although his sentence was reduced to four. In jail, he became addicted to greasy food and whiskey he was found dead in his cell in 2002 it was initially believed that he had been poisoned by a chef on the orders of his wife i told you lorena and now crazy but an autopsy revealed a heart attack probably after she paid the coroner right crazy, crazy. OK, well, speaking of crazy, what's this crocodiles thing?

Starting point is 03:05:07 You got you got you said you got threatened to be fed to crocodiles. We were working Cancun and when we were working Cancun, we. All right, guys, that takes us to the end of part one of my two part sit sit-down with ex-cartel kingpin Luis Navia. Make sure if you are not already subscribed to please smash that subscribe button and also hit that like button on the video and stay tuned for that second part. If the video is already out, then the link is down in the description right now. And finally, if you are not following me on Instagram at Julian Dory Podcast or also on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Please be sure to do that and check me out on X at Julian D. Dory. See you next time.

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Julian Dorey Podcast - #221 - The Cartel's Highest-Ranking Smuggler Tells All | Luis Navia

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