The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - A Sitdown With Pablo Escobar's #1 Cocaine Smuggler: Miami Drug Lord Reveals Medellin Cartel Secrets

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Step inside the world of Miami’s most notorious drug trafficker—Pablo Escobar’s #1 cocaine smuggler. In this exclusive sit-down, former cartel insider TJ Dominguez reveals how he built a vertically integrated empire, negotiated directly with Escobar, and moved thousands of kilos from Colombia to the streets of Miami. From high-speed boat chases under helicopter gunfire to buying off Bahamian officials, he breaks down the smuggling routes, the ruthless cartel rules, and the business mindset that made him millions. He also explains why meetings with Escobar were sometimes more honest than U.S. boardrooms, and how drug money touched politicians, businessmen, and even U.S. politics. Topics covered in this interview: -Negotiating face-to-face with Pablo Escobar -The brutal rules of the Medellin Cartel -Smuggling tactics by air and sea -Escaping a military helicopter shootout -Running legit businesses as cartel cover -How cocaine profits reached U.S. politics If you’re fascinated by the untold stories of the Medellin Cartel, Miami drug wars, and the high-risk world of international smuggling, this episode is a must-watch. Checkout the podcast all about TJ, Cocaine Air https://open.spotify.com/show/0mXtr05OjD4wk4M8JrvLPy?si=dbbda61d237b4002 Today's Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Harry's! Our listeners get the Harry’s Plus Trial Set for only $10 at https://www.Harry's.com/CONNECT #Harryspod Mando! Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code MITCHELL at shopmando.com! #mandopod Ava! Take control of your credit right now. Download the Ava app today, and when you join using promo code CONNECT20, you’ll save 20% for your first year—monthly or annual, your choice. Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now you've got one hangover, four pastel dresses, and zero reasons to wear them again. Sell them on Deepop. Just snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest. And you at least get some of your dignity. Money back. Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop. Where taste, recognize. taste. I got caught up in the excitement, and then I got caught up in the money, and then I got caught up in the power. Don't give me a hard time. I'm going to rearrange your world. Life in Colombia, it's worth less than a Coca-Cola. I didn't sit in this thing to kill people. Did I heard people?

I've heard a few people along the way that I beat to a pulp. Go ahead and shoot me. I'm going to show you how a man dies. I said, but buddy, I'm going to see you again. I'll be in hell waiting for you. T.J. Dominguez is the biggest drug trafficker I've spoken with on this podcast. He was Pablo Escobar's most invaluable cocaine pilot for almost a decade during the 1980s. Pablo had many pilots, but T.J. was the only one to become a drug lord himself. He had a vertically integrated organization, meaning he controlled the cocaine from its origin in Colombia all the way to its distribution on the streets of Miami. He had teams of workers flying the cocaine into the Bahamas,

more workers to smuggle it on speedboats into South Florida, and then a network of distributors who moved the product all over the United States. He owned hundreds of mansions along the coast of Florida, ran the most successful Ferrari dealership in the world, and laundered tens of millions of dollars a year through shady Swiss bankers and Hasidic diamond dealers in New York City. His life literally was Scarface meets Miami Vice, a true boss. There's an amazing podcast series on T.J.'s life called Cocaine Egg.

available now wherever you get your podcasts. I listen to it in one sitting. It's that good. Make sure you check it out. And for a bonus episode with TJ, where he talks about his relationship with Pablo Escobar and gives never-before-heard secrets of the Medellín cartel, head over to patreon.com slash the Connect show.

I don't know how we're going to top this one, you guys. There will never be another like him. T.J. Dominguez, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. I was forced to know a lot about Cuba and my father pounded it on my head. I don't know Cuba. I was born in Cuba, but hell,

I left when I was a baby. Yeah. And my mom said, as long as communism is on that island, we don't put a foot back in that island. Yeah. So I've never gone back. Wow.

staunchly, staunchly anti-communist anti-Castro, as most of the Cubans who came to Miami were at the time. Yeah. We've spoken to a lot of drug traffickers, drug kingpins. what have you, whatever kind of label you want to put on it. Right, right.

You, T.J, are the only one who managed to be vertically integrated, meaning you had the Colombian price and you got the blow all the way from there to the streets of Miami. You flew it in, you boated it in, and then you sold it to customers. Right. And also, let me also add that in the transporting trade, it was really a, Amazing. You know, I've actually laughed at some people because, okay, let's say you're going to fly, but whatever, you want to bring some cocaine. So you said, well, I don't have an airplane. We need a pilot. We need an airplane. Well, I know a guy's got an airplane. We'll see this guy. So the guy goes, well, how much am I going to make? Well, you're going to make X amount. Okay, fine. I'll put my airplane in there. But I'm not flying the plane. Right, right. My balls, you know, I'll lose a plane. I don't want to go to jail. Okay, well, we need a pilot. Well, hell, I'm a airline. I know a pilot that maybe will do it.

So now you go see that guy. That guy goes, I'm not going to do that, but I know another guy that might. So now you have 20 people involved in this bullshit. Right. It's just one and a little airplane. It's like when you're building a house, everybody's subcontracting the workout. Exactly. So you, even when you, at your height, when you owned hundreds of homes, Ferrari dealerships,

you were making $5, $6, $10 million a run, you were still hands on. I've always been hands on. And this going back to what I said before, where I was going with this, is that I owned my airplanes. I flew the airplane. I jumped off the airplane. I jumped on the boat. I took the boat, brought it in, climbed off the boat, jumped in the car, drove it to the Colombian's house and said, you owe me $5 million. How much you got in there?

$250.500. Where's the rest? Where's my money? Yeah. I'm not chasing Pablo Escobar from my cash. Not happening. You negotiated with Pablo Escobar. Yes, I did.

He said the most we can pay is $3,500 a key. That's what they were paying. And you said, $25. And you said, no, that's not going to work. No, it's not going to work for me. Well, look, the way I looked at it in my own little world, I am, Pablo. You guys ask me to come here. I'm making a million dollars a week.

How bad is that? And I don't have to deal with all this bullshit, you know? Yeah, in 1981. Yeah, man. And I was like, what, three, four, five times that, you know, now at least three times. But I think Pablo respected that. even though he was known to kill people for his pride or whatever, I think he respected, like, real business people coming to him with, like,

logical business proposition. And that's what I used. I used logic. My argument was based on logic. And then, you know, it was also based on a little bit of arrogance on my part that I had to play that role, let them know, you know, like, you know, I said this once or twice before. I think I said it to Jonathan. I don't like repeating it, but at the time I needed to be.

said, you know, hey, look us for the church, man. I'm a pro. These fucking guys that you're out there, you're having to chase these guys and shoot them, you know, they disappear with your product. I'm not in that category. You know, I'm not going to fail. And if I don't come back, it's because I'm either dead or I'm in jail, you'll be able to read about it in the paper. And if I can come back, I'll explain to you what happened. You know, I'm not going to hide. I'm not that type of individual. I'm a pro. And part of the reason that they had to kill so many people is because if you know Latinos and the way that Colombians do business, the way most people do business of the drug trade is bad business. People running off, people fucking up. Yeah, but Johnny, let me just say this to you,

man. And I've said in a lot of business meetings, okay, I was the number, I was the biggest cell phone company in South Florida, the biggest beeper company in South Florida. You know, I was the number one Lamborghini dealer of the world. I was buying that Jefferson Banks. It was on the contract when I got popped by myself. I had 12 companies. I have a successful construction company. And the reason why I'm giving you just a little bit of this tidbit, I've sent in a lot of meetings, a lot of business meeting with legitimate people. There's more honesty sitting down with a guy like Pablo

than with 10 fucking lawyers. Because they're all a bunch of scammers. They'll say whatever it needs to be said. They'll move the comma over here, you know, not dot the eye over there. And why? Because in the world that I was in, you miss up, we're holding you responsible.

Death is promised. Yeah, promise. So you kind of know what you're getting. And your lucky figures kill you. Because a lot of those guys back in those days, they'll come in here, they'll shoot your wife, your mother, the cat, the dog, and you to send an example. I was in a meeting with a guy, a Colombian guy in Colombia,

Luis Dengone, I almost say his last name. She's alive. And she was real quick. We're sitting around drinking Heinigan. And one of the guys comes out and goes, Patron, Patron. And he goes, wow, what? He goes, we had a problem. You know, the boat that was coming in, 500 keys or something like that.

He goes, yeah, what about it? He goes, the guy had a heart attack. They had to dump the product and they call the Coast Guard. Luis is sitting there with me drinking. What? Dump the product. You mean my product? They threw it in the water?

He goes, yeah, they had to call the Coast Guard. The guy was dying. So what happened? Well, they took the guy to the hospital. The guy's in the hospital. So Louise goes, you mean he didn't die? And he goes, no, he's in the hospital. Luis, I don't even know the guy, right?

I'm just drinking a beer like you and I are now. He goes, find out what hospital he's in. As soon as he gets out, shoot him. I said, wait a second, Louise, why would you shoot your boat captain? Yeah. He goes, Tito. So the next one that comes up behind him doesn't get a heart attack. Right, right.

The message that these guys see. For sure, for sure. And that's happened to me. me where people had tried to get creative and steal a boat from me. I didn't shoot anybody. Was Pablo your main plug or did you also deal with other connects down there? Because obviously there were plenty of drug traffickers out of Medellin at the time. Yeah, I started out with Luis, the guy that put the order in to kill that boat captain. I started with him and then, you know, paling around with him, he was not a Pablo, but he was in his own right, a big, big guy.

There was a lot of big guys that never made it to the news, you know? Yeah, of course. Yeah, guys that never even made it to the new guys that are like in politics, you know, guy that we clap when we see him walking in here. For sure. I could tell you some real serious people that are. Yeah, you will. No, I won't.

Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect show. Okay, so did when, would Pablo, if you had to go to other sources? No, I didn't go to all the sources. Okay. I got approached by a lot of other guys. Right. I'm going to party.

Pablo is there. A lot of heavy weights are there. And I've now got a big reputation as the go-to guy that, I never lost the tributtal cocaine. So that's really rare, you know? So I'm the go-to guy who's sitting there drinking beer and blah, blah, and they got a cockfight ring going on. By the way, they're betting like, give me a $500 to $1 on this.

$500,000. They're betting like millions of dollars on a fucking chicken, you know, stupid stuff like that. Wow. Well, pieces of paper. Yeah, I'll go two on that. You know, it's just stupid money. So I had a guy, you know, and this happened often, you know, as often as I was down there. Right.

You know, I try not to be down there too much because I'm already bringing in the Coke. Right. So I don't want to associate myself with that. Matter of fact, I did all the cars from Miami Vice. And they were always trying to write me into a script. I'm like, no, I don't really want to. Come on. I'm in my 20s, right here, fucking stud, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We're writing out. No, I don't want it, you know. And then why not? I said, listen, you know, I just don't really want all the, but maybe if you had something like the flying none, I might consider it. Okay, so you basically, when Pablo gave you the deal, $5,000 a unit, started paying you on cocaine, you wouldn't deal with other, with other connects. When they asked me, I would just say, no problem. He said, hey, man, can you bring me? I got $200. Can you bring me $200 on the, you know, on your plane? Not a problem. I'd love to do that. Check with Papa. Right.

And that's the way I got around that stuff. Right. Deal with him. Yeah. Because Pablo's charging these people transport. So, and that's where the cartel thing comes in. They're forcing people to go through them. Before at one point, if you're a cab driver over there, you made a couple of dollars.

I'm going to send a kid to my other cousin in Miami. Well, you could do that. Yeah, fine. You could do that. Now Pablo said, Sandy starts to control this thing and basically organized like a business. business, and now he's setting rules and regulation, all cocaine goes through me. Spring weekends are all about family, sunshine, and evenings on the patio. Before everyone arrives, I stop by my local total wine and more to grab a great bottle to share. With such a wide selection

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In other words, if you had a really good route, even if you didn't, it wasn't Pablo's route, Pablo would say, here's 300, take some of mine. And then you would charge a percentage. Exactly. Oh, yeah, because you got to remember Pablo. was the number one guy in the world with cocaine, so I didn't bring all the stuff that he had. He's, right.

He'd bring in, you know, tons and tons and tons. So some of that, some of that could have been for the Ochoas or gotcha. Did you, would you? Carlos later. Carlos later, of course. She became kind of friends with. He kind of liked him. Did you know later?

Yeah, I didn't know. I can't say that I'm really friends with him, sort of speak. He just, you just got out, you know, and I can't say that I'm friend, but I know of him, we're in the same circle. And at that level and that, you know, the air is pretty thin. We had a party together. You know, like that party that I mentioned to you,

there was a few hundred people that were there. Yeah. And who were there? All the other heavyweights. People have Medellín, you know, and they're all like, it's a melting pot. And so when you came up to me and asked me to move three, four hundred, give it to Pablo.

Pablo would charge you a certain amount. He's paying me $5,000. He told me, at the beginning, which is just a reality, 25 to $3,500 they were paying. But he's not charging you that. He's going to charge you that. He's going to charge you. amount. So basically you're doing what you're doing is you're giving Pablo a kilo for everyone

that you put in there. Right. Because another thing you got to take into consideration, cocaine in Columbia at the time, the base was like $300. For a kilo. For a kilo. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So when you got, let's say, a thousand kilos to Miami, at your height, Pablo starts to just give you out of a thousand kilos to take the kilos and not the cash. He basically forced me. He forced me But I initiated that reason why he forced me. Because I do a kilo. I mean, I do a trip, right? I got a thousand kilos.

I mean, pieces that I just brought in. I charge $5,000 per kilo. So now I say, here's $500, give me my money, and then I'll give you the $500. So now what happens is they want me to go again. They want me to go right away again. So I don't want to go again. I'm so low money from the last trip.

Yeah. So, okay, I agreed to do it one time. so I agreed to do it two times. Now my accounting department's getting a little confusing. You guys are backed up. Yeah, I'm like, wait a second. He owes me three from that. He owes me two from this.

I'm starting, and I'm so focused on what I'm doing here, and I'm not writing stuff in books. And then there is no accounting department. It's my head that I don't know now if he owes me eight or ten or whatever. So I put the brakes on the whole thing. So it's better to, instead of waiting for the Coke to get sold to get your cash, just give me 500 bricks for me and I can then sell them to my customers

here and get the cash right away. No, I gave him 500 and I held 500 because the way I looked at it, I'm holding at least $15, $20 million. You only own me two or three. So you're going to come back. Yeah.

You're going to come back and get your merchandise. Right. You know, I'm not saying I'm not giving it to you. I'm just saying this is kind of like a deposit on my balance of the money. Because when I say pay me, I don't know if you're giving me 2 million, 4 million, 3 million. It's not written in stone.

Yeah. You know, it's just, oh, here, we have this. Because they got to move that stuff. They got to sell it. Yeah. So they got to convert that coke into cash, which is another problem. So maybe they didn't do it right away. Maybe they send it up north because they're moving product in California and New York, all over the world. So if you brought a load in, how many kilos would belong to you and how many belong to Pablo? Okay. At the beginning it was 5 million. When I said, I'm not going back until I'm, you know, I'm caught up on my cash, that's when Pablo sent me a message, get your pay from cocaine. I didn't want to do that. So I said to them, the rep, he had a rep here. I forget his name, Ramirez was his guy's name. So he said, I talked to Pablo. Pablo

said, to take your balance in coke, get cashed out. So I don't want to do that. I'm not on the cocaine business, guys. I'm a transporter. Don't put me. in that business because now it's a whole separate animal johnny that i didn't want to open up that door now i had to get safe houses i got to deal with people the exposure's too great you know before it was wonderful i'm under the radar flying it giving it to and i'm washing my hands out of the whole affair but you did it so i had no choice so out of a load of a thousand kilos now 350 kilos of mine okay so And you, how much could you get yourself from your customers for it per kilo? Okay.

Another great question because when I said, okay, we'll break it down into product, then I had to get creative again because cocaine is like 2530, depending on where your, who your focal point is, you know. So they're not going to give me $5 million or I'm not going to accept $5 million, broke down to $25,000. 30,000. Uh-uh, it's not happening. And you're not going to give it to me at $1,000 or $300, that's not happening. I'll end up owning all thousand kilos. So I said to them, we're going to have to find a happy medium in there, you know, maybe 10, $12,000, 50 percent. If it's going for 25, 30, I'll take mine at 12. And we ended up with a third of the low, which is 350 kilos, basically what I ended up with. Right. So what can you sell your kilos for? Well, I'm And I remember one time, cocaine dropped at my level, you know, where you're buying two, 300

at a time. Cocaine dropped down to $9,000 a kilo. Guess what? I'm warehousing. It's like the stock market. Yeah. I got plenty of money. I'm not putting my stuff out there at $9,000.

I ain't worked too hard for this thing. You know, I'm just going to sit on it. Wait until it goes up to $20. And I contribute to the Republican Party heavy. People say, why? Keep the prize up, man. Yeah. Bust all these amateurs.

Right. Bust all these guys that are charging the $2,500, you know, but almost made it, you know. That's a way better deal. At $20,000 a piece, $350 keys, that's like what? Yeah, I'm making $10,000, $20 million. Yeah, in one trip. So you're making way more than just taking cash. Yeah, but I'm also running a big, big risk now.

Right, right. Because now I'm having to look for buyers. I didn't have a buyer. I don't know what the hell of what do I, do I advertise this thing on the paper? Yeah. You know, I don't. I don't know where to go. and that's another story

which I think I did touch on it with Yeah, so how do you, so did you have brokers? How did you source? I mean, look, when you have cocaine- I started warehousing this stuff. Yeah. I did now, I'm going back. My softening they want me to go back, I'm going back.

This is where I said to you earlier, the question that I had was, I don't know what the show life is on this stuff. Because now I go back, I don't have any problem going back, but I don't have an outlet. So I've got a safe house, It's a multimillion-dollar house in an exclusive neighborhood.

You don't see the neighbors, you know. And I've got this house now like a warehouse filled with cocaine. Why? Because I'm doing a trip for Pablo. I'm going to go back next week. Well, now I've got no excuse. Yeah, I'll go back. And then I take my 350 kilos that I have not sold.

And I have to put them in the house. I go back and do another trip. You got another 350 kilos that I have not sold? Put them in there. Now I do another trip. hell, I'm getting really, really, you know, like, what do I do here? Then I started asking myself, question. What's something like back in those days you can Google?

What's the shell life on cocaine? And what temperature do I have to store this stuff? I didn't know a lot of this stuff, you know? So I started, like, really being concerned. And then one of my guys had a buyer. And then he kind of opened up that door. And I didn't want to sell locally. First of all, locally, the price is too cheap.

And I didn't want to do that. And I didn't really have contacts up north, you know. That's why getting indicted in Detroit, New York, and all these other places, which I was kind of pissed about that. Because I even told the prosecutor up in Detroit, why am I getting indicted here? I don't drive a Chevy. Well, I'm getting indicted in Detroit.

Yeah, but it doesn't matter. Why do Colombians get indicted for the Coke they sell in America? Because that's how they treat it. Exactly. So you had out-of-towners? Are these mostly Cubans? I didn't deal with Cubans. Okay.

Who are the Dominicans? No Cubans in my, in my, my, my team. Okay, so they were all Colombians? No, I didn't deal with Colombians either, Americans. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's not true. One Cuban, Yeo was Cuban.

He was from Mario Boatlev. Oh, wow. But I handpaked him because of that. He was a real scar face. Yeah, he was a real. I mean, I had to be careful with him. Yeah, yo, I didn't say shoot him. I said, I don't like him.

Yeah. That's the kind of guy he was. Today's episode is sponsored by Harry's. Two people this week, true story, two people asked me if I was on Botox, if I was using Botox. And do you know why? Well, because I look young, obviously. But I look young because I had the cleanest shave of my life using Harry's. Okay?

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but when you fly in the loads, drop them off there. You own the boats too to take them from the Bahamas into Miami or the surrounding areas. You bring them up to Fort Lauderdale. Sometimes you'd go around the West Coast, I'd drop them off in the keys. No, I actually, I had two or three, four locations in the Bahamas, okay, different islands. I had one house that I kept as a backup house. I kept equipment in that house.

I had radio towers in there. I had towers for beepers and so forth to try to stay, antennas were short meter, two meter radio, four meters so we can stay in communication with my boats, my airplanes, and so forth. The other reason why that island was important to me was because it wasn't that far. So we're coming in on two speedboats and for whatever reason, people don't realize that coming into the United States, you're coming through cuts. They're called government cuts. They're like door openings, you know.

And even though you might have a thousand miles of coastlines, but you just can't come in into those thousands because hotels, houses, you know, blah, blah. So you come in through the government cuts. the government has spotters out there that they're looking constantly surveillance. So if we cannot come in, then I'm going back and then I'm taking the speedboats back to Bimini,

which is the closest island to the state, and then I'll try it again tomorrow. I'm not losing a load of cocaine. So you would actually, if one of your spotters saw the Coast Guard, you had to do that with Coke, you turn around and go back? As a matter of fact, it's funny, you know, when you say, going back to what I was saying earlier that the DEA asked me,

I actually did surveillance on the government. At one point when I first started doing this stuff with marijuana and cocaine, it was balls to the wall. The scariest mile was the last mile. Because that's where you swim so far to die on the shore, you know? So I had to take that element of surprise in rolling the dice. I like to consider myself a pro. I don't gamble.

So I try to increase the odds on my favor. Have you ever seen me gambling? The game is fixed. And I got the answer. So that, obviously, to me, of course, that's the scariest part. That's where the money's made, bringing it from the Bahamas to the U.S. So how many people did you have in your crew of the boaters? Well, here's what I did.

Like the lookouts to the people driving the boats. Here's what I did. What I did was I had my intelligence guy, okay, which was Nano, and then I had a security guy. He, Dana was his name, or is his name. He hired eight or ten crew, blue. little boats. I didn't know these guys. These guys would not know me. I have no idea what they are or even what the boats look like. These guys were not part of my system. Okay, Dana hired them, and what their job was, whatever they had for a boat, we gave them radios. They were to drive back

and forth on the coast. And say you're fishing, you're a boat that's out there. They come up to you and say, hey, man, are they biting? Hey, man, I dropped my lighter in the water. Can I get a light? They're going to look and see if there's any fishing gear, if you're wearing jeans, if you're government. Oh, they would actually approach the Coast Guard. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, because it's not just Coast Guard. You've got to worry about, you got to worry about DEA customers that are non-marked boat. Oh, I see. Right. So they would, they would, these guys would suss out if these fishing vessels were actually undercover beds. Right. And who do you have? You have local police, Marine Patrol. Coast Guard, you could always see those guys. They got the orange stripes.

for a mile, you know, customs, DEA, and they're sitting there on boats that they confiscated from a buddy of mine. Right. They got no markings, and they're like just anchored there at the cut. So what happens? My guys are doing this back and forth. I come in on my speedboats. Look, when I get goosebumps, I come in on my speedboat, I always travel with two boats.

One's got fuel, nothing but fuel. It's my shadow boat. In case we have a problem and we need more fuel, I got it there. We have batteries. We got pumps and we just transfer. We run back to another place. We're not losing cocaine. We're not.

So I will hold off, let's say, five miles out. And we're like on two boats. We tied off like this. Lights are totally off. There's nothing. There's nothing lit on that boat. No smoking, nothing. And this is like at dusk?

What time would you come in? This is at three, four in the morning. Okay. So it's dark. Dark. When you're bringing in the loads. Yeah. We're on the speed boat's dark.

It's pleasure crap, daytime. Okay. So it's speedboats. Go back to the speedboats. So now I'm out there tight side by side. I'm on the radios. You know, and I'll say, you know, hey, kingfish, you know, how does the driveway look? Hey, man, driveway, mother-in-law's in the driveway.

Sit still. Mother-laws in the driveway. So that means we got somebody on the driveway. You know, and then he'll sit there and he'll say something like, how far out are you? I'm five minutes out. Okay, mother-in-law's moving. Hit it. So I send my lead boat fuel in front.

Yeah. And I sit back and watch. If anybody's going to go after him, I have a decision to make. They went that way. I'm going to go, but I'm going to go that way. Or I'm just going to turn around and go back. That's a call that we've got to make at that point. You know, at that point, you're turning on lights when you get close to the right at the entrance.

And then you watch, you know, nothing's going to happen to him. He's not illegal that fuel. But he's going to draw all the heat that's there. And do you want him ideally? I want him, but do you want your shadow boat, your decoy boat to actually draw a chase? No, I don't. It would be better for us to say that the DEA, whoever happens to have been there, moved and didn't see anything. Right.

I would rather not heat up a boat, not heat up my guys. Right. Because that brings heat to the, that's where you see a lot of these guys that look at a speedball. Like, oh, wow, man, it's a great, great looking, must be a smuggler. No, smuggling boats are plain. No graphics. Yeah. because the government would take pictures.

I've been out there smuggling with an open fish of a speedboat and then at the bales right there and they go by the Coast Guard, they'll go and they'll go strobe light. They'll take like a thousand pictures. What they do is they can't arrest you out there,

but what they do is they take these pictures, blow them up and then they'll pass them around from different agencies. And if you've got one of a kind boat, can you just draw a lot of attention to yourself? And these are the things that that bring people down eventually. Okay, so if, so you would send in the, the first boat, not loaded, the fuel boat,

and then you would just go the other way. Yeah, and then I have a house to the north and to the south of that. I have two homes. I had houses all the way from the Keys, all the way up to Coco, uh, Coco Beach. Yeah, you had like over a hundred houses. Well, no, those houses were for, for sale. Oh, I see, I see, but you had, but you had smuggling houses. Okay, you had, and that's so tell us.

So, you would. you would hit it once the coast was clear, you're five miles out. That's when you speed to shore with the boats loaded. All, you know, full on. How fast are these boats go? Some of these boats would do over 100, you know, 100, 105, 90, depending on the seas, depending on how your prompts are set up. Do you go in about 100 miles an hour?

No, when we're out there traveling, when we're bringing in, you're going maybe 40, 50, 60 mile. You're just riding the, you know, you're cruising, hitting the top of the waves, you know. Full-on power is only if you really are being chased. Yeah. And I've had to do that. I've been shot at by helicopter. Yeah.

You know, and that was scary as all held. Yeah, you actually escaped, I think, the Bahamian military. Bahamian American task board. They had a Huey helicopter, green left over from Vietnam with a 50 caliber on the door. And they were shooting the 50 cal in front of the boat, right? With a razor bullet.

I'll never forget those bullets going over like this. The boat would jump up in the air because you're skimming the surface on the wave, and now you're going 80, 90 miles per hour. You know, I'm not clocking the thing. We just fall on, all the engines are down, roaring like there's no tomorrow. And I've got my other boat right over here,

my shadow boats right over here, and all I hear is screaming, everybody's screaming, got the engines roaring from my boat, their boat, got the chopper right up here, water splashing up. And now when you're hitting these waves, at one point the boat goes up like this, so you see the point of the boat aiming 30 degree angle, 15 degree angle,

and you got the chop. chopper right up there and there's nothing perspective. Looks like you're going to spear this chopper. Yeah, yeah. And you see the bolt going over and you go back down and then you're sitting there, you go back up and all of this and the people, we're going to blow. I got these things called saddle tanks, which is the rail of the boat, which is the wall on the speedboat.

All of that is covered with fuel. And special tanks that are made and they go in there so I can maximize and try to put as much fuel so for the distance that I'm going to run. So if any one of those bullets hits the side of the boat and perfect, yeah, so like I told the guys, we're not stopping. If you want to stop, jump, don't pick you up. You know, we're not stopping. I'm screaming it. And how would I know this?

Because we're wearing FM transmitters. We're all wearing headsets. And we're communicating back and forth this way. You know, and that was pretty scary. So how did you escape that? Because I thought when you see, we've all seen the videos of military, you know, shooting at these boats, I thought that was. was inescapable. I thought, I thought you had to give up, how did you, did you just outrun the chopper? No, my plan at that point was to head to an outer island and then drive the speedboat into the

mangroves. And then before we hit the mangroves, jump. At that point, my main concern is going to prison, obviously, you know, that's what I don't want to go to prison, you know, I live to fight, you know, the day type thing. So I, and then I thought, we always had a flare, gun obviously and we all I kept this even in my airplane we kept a gallon of fuel and the idea at one point why I put that in the airplane was we have to will burn the damn thing you know take the flare gun and shoot the gallon of fuel let it blow up let it burn get rid of the evidence fingerprints whatever you know will be a it'll be disintegrated so at that point I'm process I'm really good on the pressure so I'm processing all the outs and and then I thought well we're

to run the boats into the mangrove. Before that, we'll jump. Hopefully the boats will blow up, you know, but he's got a lot of fuel. And these guys who just not letting up. And we were too far out. We were like a couple hundred miles out there. And these guys were just not giving up.

They were on or they were on the side. They were trying to take the engines out. And then it occurred to me, if they wanted to have killed us, they could have done that. Of course. But being the Bahamians and being the fact that I used to buy product from

these guys, I'm sitting there thinking, you guys want what's in this boat. It's a 50-Cal right there. I mean, you'd have to be a retard to not be able to hit a boat. Yeah. So I'm processing all this shit, I said. But the problem now is we just might get hit by accident. Because these guys are just too close and the bullets, when they might be shooting here, when the boat goes up and thinking it's coming down, now we're up and now we're

hit. So I'm thinking, I mean, we're going to die here. You know, I got to find a solution to this. These guys want the product. I'm going to give them the product. So I tell my guys, slow down. Slow the darn boat down. We slow down to a crawl.

They're doing the helicopter is doing this. They're not on us in the front all the time. They're on the side. They're on the back. They're in the front. So when they peeled off like this, I said, slow down. Jump. So I jumped.

We were three guys in each boat. We jumped to the shadow boat. Now they see this boat loaded with duffel bags. You know, it was actually wait at the time. So they see the product right there because it was what we call an open fish. You know, there's no hiding it. You know, you're just me, but what are you going to hide?

There's no sense in that. So now they see that. It was just getting to the point that it was almost where you couldn't really see. It was twilight, right? So now they're still on us. But I'm saying, and then when we, when I jumped off the boat,

we jumped off maybe going two, three miles an hour. So the boat's doing this. And the boat is now drifting, going slowly. And I'm saying to myself, these guys not going to want to lose that fucking boat. They're not going to want to lose that boat. Why are they still chasing us? Next thing I know, they peel off, and they go straight over to the boat.

They hovered on top of the boat. They dropped the line, and they got on the boat and drove the boat away, and we got away. That was it. And then you probably bought that weed back from them. Oh, then I was like, God, darn, man. I wasn't worried now about dying as I'm alive. Oh, shit, I just gave all this money. And that was mine.

But that's what's so interesting is that you, and we're going to get to, this in a second. You started out by before your cocaine career, you were smuggling in weed from the Bahamas that you were, that was confiscated from the Bahamian government that you were buying from them. Yeah. So it's almost like you could have gone back and probably bought that, that weed back. Okay, I tried, I tried to go back. They had taken my boat apart, took the engines off of it. And then, you know, I put, you know, I call, hey, listen, you guys, I lost a boat, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. well so-and-so just got one. And then when I went to see the boat

or when I sent one of my guys, they took the whole boat apart, the intended, took the radios. And they basically, what you got now is a shell. So I said, forget it. Yeah. You know, and I wasn't going to ask for the weed back at that point.

Don't even ask me why I was too concerned. I owed money for part of that weed, which is where now I started getting into more and more problems, owning money. And that's when I get kidnapped, you know. And I, uh, let's go back to, for to the cocaine now you're stationed in international waters the coast is clear you get the call from the

radio from your spotters right it's go time so what next you you you how many how many bricks per load on a speed boat did you my never my loads were always a thousand or over okay 120 a thousand two right i made it to in the logic that i used with pablo why i was making the money that I was making, and I use logic, you know, in reasoning, that's my best backing that I can come up with. I told Pablo when they said, you know, 3500, 200, and I said, look, man, I got $2 million in my airplane, I got a million dollars in a boat, I got $500,000 in the operation. You're asking me to come here to make less than what I've already got invested. Right. It just doesn't make any sense. These other guys that you're dealing with, they're running around

in an airplane as maybe with 40, 50, 50 grand. You know, 100 grand, you know, and they carry, what, three, 400 at the most? I said, you know, I could carry, you know, I could carry a lot more. I said, I'm not coming to Columbia to make less than what I'm risking, not taking to consideration, my freedom. You know, my freedom or my life. So you had at least a ton, a thousand bricks, is a ton of cocaine on a per speedboat. Per speedboat. So.

No, no, per speedboat, I'm sorry. I apologize. $500 normally is what I would put in that. Okay. I wouldn't put all the eggs in one basket. Right, okay. But you only send 500 at a time? 500, 100, 7, yeah, because what I would do is I would split sometimes that load with a pleasure craft.

Okay. So tell us, finish up how you would get the bricks from the speedboats into the safe houses. We come in to cut, and usually there's a very rich neighborhoods, very wealthy neighborhoods, big homes. One that comes to my mind over there by Val Harbor, Indian Creek, where everybody knows. those homes are like $50 million. Yeah. You know, so, and I'm not going there because then later on, those guys, they started putting their own police,

they have their own police. So they started staging police on the water. Survealing the island going around in circle. So I don't want to go there. But I had a house right by there. What I would do is then I would bring in the speedboat. I had the exhaust set up. And at the beginning I made this mistake.

The exhaust on these engines, you know, you're running 500 units. something horses at the time. Today is like a thousand or more. But so they'll reverberate this glass. They're, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. You know, it sounds like just outrageous, like a war zone. And so I can't have that

because I'm going to wake up all these neighbors. So I got with my guy, he said, okay, what can we do something about this exhaust? You know? And I have to have open exhaust to run the engines, you know, efficiently. So he said, well, we could put a butterfly in there. So what we did? We put like a baffle, like a door. So I pushed his button.

and it cut the direct exhaust out the back, and they rerouted it to under the water. Okay. So now when I'm coming in the back of the house, I cut the engines, we drift into this house, and all you hear is blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, you know you don't hear any noise. So we come up, at that point,

I'm already on the two meter radio. We have different radios that we use for different distance, whether we're going, you know, 1,400 miles or 200 miles, or we're going, you know, like, you know, close up. So now I'm on my two meter radio, which is, you know, 20, 30 mile range hand to hand. And I tell them, okay, I'm pulling up now. So I've got a crew of guys in this house. These guys come out of the house, three, four guys.

Their job is to take these duffelbacks and move them into that house. Okay, there's also one of those guys who will be a boat captain. I call a boat captain. It's just another one of our guy. His job is to jump on the speedboat and then take the speedboat to a marina, which I happen to know the owner of the marina. We docked the boat in the marina. The following day, the boat will come out of the water, go on a trailer, and it'll go to a warehouse

to be dealt and gone through by my mechanics. We wax the boat to make sure it's gliding, you know, and we go mechanically through the boat. Then those guys take the cocaine to put it in the house. That coke will sit in that house all night. The following day, that code goes on a truck, on a vehicle. During 9 to 5 is when I move my product. and trying to increase my change. If you're the only car out there in the middle of the road,

you got a cop sitting there, you're drinking coffee, a little bored. Let me see what this guy's up to. So we're not doing that. So we're moving traffic. Traffic with a crash car and back. So then at that point, that goes to my safe house.

Right. The safe house, nobody knew where the safe house was at. No, there's only three people. Myself being one and then two other people that knew where that safe house was at. Your most trusted guys. Yeah, like the most. So the guy, and how much, what was the overhead between the spotters, the people that are unloading the Coke?

I paid those overhead. I figure it was just a few thousand dollars a night. All they're going to do is you give me an hour or two of back and forth. They're not involved in anything. And they don't know who you are. They don't know who I am. The only people that know you are your main guys. But see, what I did with my organization, I broke it down into the aircraft department.

So I had a guy that headed that department. He's in charge of hiring pilots. He's in charge of maintaining the equipment. He's in charge of buying equipment. Did the same thing with the Marine Division. My Marine Division, I had a guy, Johnny, Johnny was with Johnny. He was in charge of the boats. He would be the one maintaining.

He would be the one getting the mechanics, warehouses, and so forth. And then I had the transport equipment, transport on land, you know. And then that included the cars that had the air shocks to be able to pick up the bumper from the back so it wouldn't drag. Yeah. And then I had my servant. Then I had my guy that was my intelligence guy, which is the guy that I call Q after the James Bond movie guy. And he's the guy that did all my electronics. I paid him.

We had guys, one guy, him or somebody else, that would monitor the radios 24-7. Because one thing I did learn in the very, very beginning of this, smuggling stuff, it's all about communication. Right. And precision. You know, like I told the guy, don't try to get there. If we're going to get there at 8 o'clock as a rendezvous point, we'll get there at 7.30. Why?

Don't try to impress me with the fact that you're there early. Because give you two examples. If you're there with a speedboat, what are two speedboats doing sides side by side, 300 miles off the coast of Florida? What are they doing there? These are speedboats. fishing vessels. We got a problem. They're looking for a drop. Now if the airplane gets there before, what does he do? Does he circle and draw heat and burn up fuel? So precision is very, very important.

So you got to the point where you actually were hiring pilots. You weren't flying all the loads. You weren't going out of Columbia every week. No, toward the end, toward the end or the middle. Someone's along there. I don't know at what stage. I realize one thing. If I want to be big, I have to be, like I say to people, you know, you're the guy with a piano, you're the guy with a cello, you're the guy with a violin, but I'm the guy with that little sticks. You're conducting it. You're conducting it, right. Today's episode is sponsored by the company who changed my life. Mando, the world's number one whole body deodorant. I am a sweaty son of a bitch. I've always looked for a deodorant that controls my sweat and my odor, but doesn't have all those nasty chemicals like aluminum. and parabens that you find in your run-of-the-mill deodorants that you buy at the supermarket. That's why Mando is the game changer. Check it out.

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code, Connect-2-0, so they know you heard it from me and get 20% off whatever plan you want for up to a year. That brings your cost down to about $6 a month, $6 a month to build your credit up and change your financial future. Use my promo code, Connect 20. Thanks to Ava, and now go and get yourself some good credit. So your biggest fear is getting a pilot who's a cokehead, who's irresponsible, who's a criminal. How did you vet pilots and how did you, how did you make sure you had the right pilots and how did you keep yourself insulated from them in case they got pot? I had a legitimate aircraft business. So I kept my family isolated. They had no knowledge. So why do I go into the airplane business? My mom, my wife, nobody knows what I'm doing.

So why am I around airplanes? Well, you know, listen, I'm selling Lamborghinis. I got these rich guys coming here and they're saying to me, hey, I'm looking to buy an airplane. You refer me to somebody. So I thought, well, hell, why don't I sell them the airplane? So I decided to get into the airplane business. And one thing led to the other and I'm saying to me, well, why not learn how to fly. So now I have a legitimate airplane business called Excalibur aircraft, sales and leasing charters. I flew quite a few movie stars and all that kind of stuff, you know. So while we have this charter business, we're now in the Port Lauderdale International Airport. So now we're like rubbing elbows with other pilots. We're going to the same place where they're drinking. And then my guy's job

was simple. I don't want to hire a Barry Seals to come work from me. And I say Barry Seals because a lot of people know him and I know you do. I knew him too, by the way. And I don't want that because he's going to bring me a lot of trouble. He's going to bring me what I call a comet. A tail. If he goes down, you know, or somebody else goes down that knows him, then that's going to affect me, the ripple effect.

So who do I want to fly from me? Guys from American Airlines. I'm paying $200,000. You're making $200,000 in a year. $200,000 on a weekend, buddy. and you're not landing with any cocaine. As a matter of fact, if you're worried about getting busted, you don't have to worry about the authorities.

They're going to open up the door for you and throw out a red carpet. So would, and are you making this pitch to them? Yeah, well, Jack would make, once they, you know, I'll go and have a couple of drinks with them. I'm the last word on the approval. Yeah, let's go ahead and hire this guy. And Jack says, this guy's cool.

Like, we've sussed him out. Jack, at the beginning was like my shadow. Yeah. He was great. You know, he taught me basically everything about airplane. And then another guy by the name of Billy. He was the guy that Gigi was a totally illegal airplane. I took wings from another airplane to break some of this other airplane.

We took engines, took these engines off with these other engines, that this airplane would consume less fuel, flying low. Because, you know, you take like jet props, you know, like a jet. It's really designed to fly it altitude. We're not really wanting to fly it altitude. So we're going to burn more fuel, also the noise factor. Right. So, you know, I surround them myself with a lot of pros.

Right. And then you would let them know, listen, we have the Bahamas paid off. Right. You were giving the, I think he was like the head of the FAA in the Bahamas. Well, he was the head of an airport. You know, yeah, Jonathan called him the head of the FAA. But in reality, he wasn't the head of the FAA. He was the head of a airport like Nassau or like a Great Harbor.

And that's what I got. I don't give it darn what kind of title this guy has. What I could about in this airport, where I want to land, he's the man. And you were giving him half a million dollars a drop? For a guy in the Bahamas, I mean, that's, you're making, you're giving him generational money every time you guys drop cocaine. Yeah, did you hear how I did her or you want to tell you how I got this guy?

Yeah, no, no, no, they can go listen to the podcast. That was really funny. All of these anecdotes that are contained within these stories, people should go check out cocaine air, but that's fascinating. So, and then they kept, of course. He was arrogant. Yeah, and they kept wanting more and more money, so you would be moving around. He got all the way up to a million dollars, and then he's threatening to lock up my guys

if I didn't pay him the million dollars. If you had a problem, like if you needed somebody hit, not in the U.S., but in the Bahamas, like if you needed to take care of somebody, could you go, could you make a call to Pablo? Yeah, of course. And they would send somebody up. You didn't have to go to Pablo's rep right here. Right. Yeah, of course.

Wow. Okay, so. Yeah, that's. So the American Airlines, these legitimate pilots, these probably white guys. All my guys. All these white guys. And they said, 200,000 for a run? Yeah.

Okay. Let's do it. And the guarantee is, and I was very upfront, you know, because a few times Jack said to me, T, man, you're going to have to talk to the guy. I got them on the fence. Yeah. But you got to take them all the fence. Right.

You got to make the sale. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, and I like to be transparent. I like to be honest. and you have to, especially in this business. So I told the guy, look, man, let's look at the risk factor here. I make $200,000, right?

You don't make that in a year. And I make $200,000. And you don't have to worry. If you're worried about getting arrested, I'm not asking you to fly to the United States. You're going to fly to the Bahamas. I've got the Bahamas in my back pocket. The head of the airport's security is the guy's going to open up the door for you. So that's guaranteed.

Now, there is a risk factor. What's the risk factor? Flying into Colombia. But even there, we have intelligence. Pablo would supply me with the American task force that's got the Apache. It's on the northern coast. Take the southern route. Okay.

So I would get a certain amount of intelligence given to me. But I'm not going to sit here and not be totally transparent with you. You could run the risk of getting shot. Okay, but the odds are slim. So all they're going down, and they're not even taking any cash with them when they're going down to Columbia. No, I always gave them cash. I always gave them. But not buy money, though.

You're not going down with re-up money. No, no. What I would do is I would give them, let's say it's $200,000. I'll give you $100,000 up front. Yeah. You leave your family, you know, and then here's another 30 or 40. In case you got to put the airplane down, they should buy enough time for you to smoke your way. out of a situation, then I will come in personally and take you totally out.

And clean it up. Right. So I'm not going to leave you stranded down there. So I'm just bright money. Yeah, of course. So what are the routes? Yeah, tell us the air route getting down to Columbia, where they would load up, and how they would get to the Bahamas.

We're going to a place called Los Gianos, which is deep inside Colombia. Where? Los Giano's la Bichada. It's in sight, call it an hour and a half flying into Colombia. But I know. we're going to pull it up on a map. We know Colombia well. So is this close to Medellin or where compared to like Bogota, Medellín?

We'll pull it up. We'll pull it up. We come in through Santa Marta. Okay, so through the north. Through the north. We're coming in through Santa Marta. And then depending where we're told to go, we get that information before. I see.

We get longitude, latitude, and that's, we're flying into the labs where a lot of your amateurs are flying to the coast or near. the coast. Right. And they're transporting the cocaine by trucks or by light airplanes to the closer to the coast. A lot of these airplanes didn't have the fuel to be able to go that distance. Now, we were flying so deep into the jungle and there was no airport, no way of really pinpointing a location. What we had to do normally is we would fly into the north Santa Marta Coast. There's a bridge there. We're flying there. We're going a little deeper into into the jungle, we actually land the plane and we pick up a local pilot.

That's like what we call in Australia a bush pilot. This guy knows that tree over there. He knows that river over there. And he's flying by the seat of his pants. He's flying by eyesight. And it will follow the river. You know, he's going to turn here, but we're going to go here. And he's the guy that's actually flying the airplane at that point.

Okay. So you're just landing at man-made air strips. You're not landing at any kind of- landing in dirt, you know, a bunch of guys out there with machetes. They chopped up and cleared this clearing in between trees. And that's when Pablo had these big labs way out there in the jungle. So you're close to the labs, obviously, where the coax just getting finished. We're right there.

We're right there in the lab. That's wet-ass coke. Yeah. It's good coke. We're out there in the lab in the jungle. Yes. And these things get bombed. Yeah.

You know, one of the things that the Fed started doing because it was impossible to find, They really came. One time our airplane couldn't start, and we missed our departure point, and less than a New York second man, these guys with machetes, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, pooh, they cut all these trees. And I'm talking like a king air.

That's a big airplane, right? They disappeared that airplane right in front of your eyesight. They're really good. So they do that with the lab. They have like a black tarp, and then the post are tree trunks, you know, and they stretch it, and they have all these tables,

made up underneath there and on the top you have leaves palms whatever whatever and then when people think that oh how do you get a kilo do you weigh it no i don't weigh the kilo what they do is they have these little forms on tables like a little two by two kilos i hate to make this comparison but a kilo is like the size of a bible small book kind of thick you know and then what they do is they take their their their cocaine that they've just processed you know and then they pour it into these little forms. And then as it dries, they pour a little more. And it's like on a cheese cloth type thing.

And then it drives. And then when it hits the surface of the two-by-two, let's say, and they scrape it off, that's your kilo cocaine. They wrap it up, duct tape it, and then, you know, next. So it's not like they have scales out there in the jungle. No, of course. And they do this mass production. Yeah.

You know? Wow. So an American Airlines pilot, he's got a family, a nice, lovely Christian family. it doesn't sound like any of these guys got caught. Again, I'm sorry? It doesn't sound like any of your pilots ever got caught. Nobody ever got called. They're all doing well.

They're all retired. So you made these guys millionaires. I made a lot of people millionaires. A lot of people, millionaires. Your distributors too, of course. I made a lot, a lot of people, millionaires. People that you'd be really, really surprised. Okay, let's hear some of them.

No, I can't, you know. You just can't. Is it that deep? Is it that scandalous? They're guys that, you know, that they can visit the White House. You know, guys that are squeaky clean. You're talking about politicians. You're talking about politicians?

Well, business and industrialists, entrepreneur guys that needed funding and some were politicians. Yeah, no, this is a fact. Look, I don't belong to any party right now. Okay, I'm with the Tigo party. That's the party that I'm waiting. But there was a time in my life

that, you know, I think you will know that most Cubans are Republican. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's another story in itself, why they're a Republican. Kennedy let them down. So having some, said that, I contribute

over $100,000 to the Republican Party through some of my friends that I'm invited to have dinner with Reagan. I got an invitation to go have dinner with Reagan. With Ronald Reagan. Not one on one in a party that he was going to hold, but I'm sitting here saying

to my says, this is really crazy. I'm the number one smuggler in my world. And here, I don't say a whole lot for the Secret Service, right? I mean, I'm invited to have dinner with the White House. So I had keys to four cities. I was able to separate that life of mine totally from what I was doing under the shadows,

under, you know, whatever. So there was no reason for me not to be like Walrusseed. I was a young entrepreneur, 20-something years old worth millions and millions of dollars, you know, big-time building, beeper, cell phone, Lamborghinis, vans. So I had it going on. So, yeah, you want to know me. So if you had $20 million that you had to move, you also, besides being the transport, the smuggling into Florida to then the distribution, you were able, you had a sophisticated money laundering operation as well. Very sophisticated.

So you're laundering like tens of millions of dollars. Yes, I am. Explain how that worked. Well, it was really, I surround myself with some really great Swiss bankers that had. third-generation bankers. These guys are so... Let me just give you one scenario that was really fascinating to me. I needed a...

I needed to increase my floor plan, right? Another $5, $10 million. So they hand... What do you mean your floor plan? For cars, Lamborghinis. Right. You know, for the leadership. Okay, you had to build your dealership out.

Yeah. And, you know, I wanted that, you know, I mean, any one of these cars could be a few million dollars. Yeah. So when you're spending three, four million dollars in a car, it's not that much. You know, it's just two or three cars. So, and I wanted more money, you know.

And by the way, are these businesses profitable? Or are these, okay, so they're making a legitimate profit on top of being money washing businesses? But at the same time, let me add that I've gone to my dealership a few times. And I wish you would talk to my general manager. You'd get a really kick out of him. We're closing the place today. What do you mean we're closing the place? We can't do that, Tito.

You know, how can we do that? You know, I says, let me consult with the board. Yeah, I just did. We're closing the place today. Today we're going to shoot pool, we're going to drink champagne, we're going to listen to the Beatles. That's what we're going to do today. Put the or close sign out there.

I just made $60 million. You really think I want to hear to a guy talk to me about, oh, well, you know, the tire doesn't look right. No, I don't want to be bothered with that nonsense. So I didn't really care. Okay. You know, I had people in there that my thought, as a matter of fact, I said the trend on the exotic car world.

We did not test drive cars. you wanted to test drive a Lamborghini, not a problem. Buy it. You know, get out of the car. When I couldn't get them out of the car, I started roping off the cars. So I don't even want you touching the cars, you know. And why? Because otherwise I'm giving joy rights to everybody.

You know, people that can't afford the car, they just want to go around the blog. Oh, I'm on a Lamborghini today. Of course. You know, so we're not doing that. So would you sell a lot of these Lamborghinis to drug dealers? I went to, no, drug dealers can't afford these cars. Okay. legitimate. I sold one to

I wasn't King Abdullah. It was in the 80s who was the king at that time in Arabia. Yeah, Saudi Arabia. He bought a Lamborghini. I became the number one Lamborghini dealer of the world, okay? I went to Italy, and I can show you pictures when I went to Italy to buy Lamborghini

car factory. Not the car. I already had that locked because they were in bankruptcy. And I had the funds to be able to buy it. And if I didn't have enough money, happened to know a guy that happens to be like third, fourth, second richest man of the world. By the name of Pablo comes to my mind. So if I needed funding, do my Swiss bankers through Pablo, not a problem. So I actually went in 1988 to buy Lamborghini.

I didn't end up buying it because I got popped. Okay. And then when I got popped, Chrysler bought it. Okay, but you could go to Pablo if you needed a loan? Yeah, not that I need a loan because I got a lot of money. But if I need a thousand million dollars. Paul was a guy that can, you know, they can back that up. But besides that, going back to the bankers.

Yeah, sorry, go ahead. This is kind of funny because here's what I did. I said, hey, listen, I need like $10 million. So they said, okay, here's what you're going to do. We're going to give you a bank to go to. So they send, they handpick a bank, small little bank. Back in those days, we had more banks in South Florida than in the whole rest of the United States. Everybody seems to have had a bank.

That's why we're buying one. I wanted to be just like everybody else. I own my own bank. So they handpicked this little bank that was not affiliated with anybody. I go and knock on their door, basically. I walk in, sit down with a banker, and I introduce myself. I tell them, you know, who I am on the dealership, the Lamborghini dealership. And I also have three, four other franchises in there.

So the guy goes, oh, my God, he goes, I drive by there all the time. I never been able to go in there because I can't afford those cars. I said, we ought to stop by for a cup of coffee or something, Capuchino. Got a great cappuccino machine. Oh, that would be great, blah, blah. What can I do for you? I said, I'm looking for a loan.

Floor plan. That's what they call the car loan. A temp thing, you know. And so he goes, what are you looking for? I said, anyway, between $5 and $10 million. It's a little rich for our blood right now. He says to me because we're a small bank. And I said, well, here's my card.

You know, if you ever, you know, you know, are able to, please give me a call or just stop by for some cabuccino. Okay, well, thank you. Now I go back to my bankers, and I tell them, okay, basically, mission accomplished. I got in there, I introduced myself. I left them my card, so they tell me, okay, wait, a few weeks later, I get a phone call from the banker. Hey, Mr. Dominguez, I'd like to stop by and see you, or if you can come by, I've got some great news for you. Sure, what is it?

I know it was going to happen. He said, we partner up with another lending institute. Banks borrow money and then relend it at a different rate. So my guys in Switzerland were able to put together an entity to lend this little bank, the money that they were going to turn around and lend it to me. So they're getting it, just use any numbers, getting it at 10 and they're giving it to me at 12. Now, what they don't know, it's my money that's being lent to me. Why would I do that? At that point in time, I did that because I wanted to create as much buffer away from me.

You don't poop where you eat. So I'm doing so many crazy things already that I want to keep this stuff isolated. And this bank, I don't want it to be like a bank that I deposit and doing crazy stupid stuff. Okay. But you lent this Swiss bank, $10 million in the money. drug money. You deposited it with them, and then they lent it to this small bank that gave you a loan. Right. So now you've just, you have two layers of buffer, and then how does that look legitimate on the other end? On paper, it looks great. On paper, I just walked in, you know,

and knocked on a door, the bank that I have no affiliation with, that you, the feds can't sit and say, well, this is your buddy. Now, I'm not going to get my buddy in trouble because this is not my buddy. I don't know this bank from Adam. So there's no, there's no continuity with that bank. But how is that money not traceable, your initial drug money deposit that you made with the Swiss bankers? How does that work? Already at this point, the money's in Switzerland. They lend it to an institute, let's say in New York, which bounces it to another institute and came in and then gets bounced around to different entities. And at one point, this bank is dealing with somebody that is favorable terms. Playing ball. And then they, and then they

take the funds. And then they call me and say, hey, now we're in a situation where we can lend you the money. Okay. So how do you get that cash to Switzerland? Okay, that's a really good question. Wow. Okay. I'm great at this, TJ. Yeah, no, I see that. I see that. My Swiss bankers tell me, here's what you're going to do. You're going to go to New York. And, And this is really fascinating. It was like play acting like something out of a James Bond movie. I don't know whether, you know, the Hasidic Jews controlled the diamond entity in New York at the time. And currently.

And I don't want to say this or that or I don't want to. They're criminals. It's okay. I don't. You said that. Absolutely. I'm putting my stamp on the fact, what a shocker. Diamond District Hasidic Jews are crooks.

They don't like to pay taxes and all that kind of. They do a lot of, it's fascinating. A little piece of paper that big, they'll write, I owe you $2 million, boom. And it's all done with a little, kind of like our business. Yeah. A lot of handshake. Totally. So one of my guys is like this with one of the ambassadors to switch to Israel.

So he hooks me up with a certain group that you just mentioned. Yeah. Now here's the way it works. It's really great, by the way. Really, really great. Oh, my God, it was so cool. And it was scary at the beginning because I didn't like moving around with all that cash. Yeah.

So you took $5 million. In Miami, in Fort Lauderdale, and I put it on my private jet. And that was scarier than moving cocaine because that's already done. Of course. Finish product, you know, so that was, oh, my God. Right. You know, so I've got my jet sitting there. I've got $5, $10 million whatever in suitcases.

I go ahead and I tell my guy, spool up the engines, open up the door. We have, I don't want to sit around that airport any longer than I have to. So we pull the jet, my limousine, get my guy, yellow usually I take with me. And so, yeah, you take the bags. So they open up the cargo compartment of the airplane. They throw in a couple of suitcases in there and then close it. Boom, we're up on the air. I'm flying to New York.

I fly to, and I stayed at the Hensley Palace, which is now called the Palace, which is the corner suites. I think they're like 10 grand at the time. Beautiful three stories, private elevator inside the suite. Okay. And I always have handlers there. I don't ever go to the front desk. I don't even know how that works. You know, I never pay me in it.

So somebody does, my people. And so then I'm told, be in the center lobby by the round. They have like a round flower arrangement with seats all the way around. Be there at three o'clock. There will be a gentleman there wearing a white carnation. you're going to have a red carnation. Okay. Okay.

So he said, go meet him at 3 o'clock Monday. So now I've got Yale in a different room with the $5 million. I now have enough cloud in that hotel where I've got a personal handler that I bought a house for. And this guy, I don't know if you want to say the loyalty was pledged to me or pledged to the house that I. I bought them, but I said, Bobby, I need a room and I don't need any names on that room. I need the room for about an hour, two, three, four hours. Done, Mr. D. I said, okay.

And get it not far from the tower where I'm at because I don't want to walk around the hallway with all this money. So it was heavy, you know. So now I got Yale inside this room with $5 million. Now I meet the guy in the lobby. said come with me please mr. Robinson I'm Peterson he's mr. Robbins those are the names that we use over and over over come with me mr. Robinson so um following so then we go and we get on the elevator we he's got a hand cart damn cart you know so now we go up to that room that I'm

given the number I knock a couple of time we have a little bit of a coat worked out to make sure that it was me that it was cool that I wasn't being forced to go in there there the money's in there, you know, and so, okay, so we got past that code. He opens up the door. I'm not talking to this, Mr. Robinson. Even though he comes from a very reliable source, still not talking to him. You know, I know enough to keep my mouth shut in a lot of cases. So we walk into the room.

I just say to him right there, five. He goes over there, opens up the suitcase. The first thing that went through my mind, Johnny, which really kind of funny because I wore out a couple of money counting machines, wore out the rubber on the wheels. And I'm saying to my son, God doesn't have a money counting machine. I'm not going to be here a week in counting this damn money, you know? And even though we only delve in hundreds, but still it takes a lot of time.

I have never seen a human being do what this guy did. He grabbed each stack of hundreds, and it would be like playing cars, and you raffle the corners, you go, mm-hmm. He would go like that. He would grab his fingers, grab this back, and go like that. Man, he counted that quick.

Never seen anything. $5 million. Like that, man. He counted that damn money, went, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm saying, oh my God, I've never seen it. It's like a machine. Yeah. Get rid of my machine.

Bring this guy into the warehouse. Yeah. It looks like, amazing. So, so the guy counts everything. He says to me, can I use your phone? I said, so he goes ahead. He goes his, grabs the phone. And he says, he could proceed to the next level.

It's satisfactory. Click. Hanks up the phone. He looks at me and he says, wait five minutes. I look at my watch. I walk over. I got a phone number that I'm giving. I call that number.

And the answer is, tell him to have a nice day. I never even say hello. I just click, you know, tell him to have a nice day. Hang up the phone. I turned around and I go, have a nice day. All yours. Takes that puts it in his little cart, wheels it out. I actually walked down to the street with him, and I said, no, I didn't talk to him, but I just watched him.

And I said to you, I was, you know, you guys in the sidewalk in New York City, five million dollars pushing it. The guy's about this big, you know? He said, if anybody knew I was in there, he wouldn't make it to the quarter. Hey, stab this guy right here. And then the guy disappeared. And then I did that over and over and over. That became routine. And so he's the one and he got the money.

Robinson Peterson. And he's the one who got the money to Switzerland? Yeah, and they charged me 6%, which is ridiculous. So super cheap. Six on five million bucks is. Well, one million. It'll be like what. So 300,000.

I say $60,000. Oh, I'm sorry, yeah, five times six. Yeah, okay, so $30,000. Okay, and nothing. And so, and then that, and then it was taken care of. You know, you all my people that I knew that made a lot of money, they were not in the drug business, but they're today very successful accountants, very, very big, a lot of, very powerful.

They're getting one to one. Wow. They jump on the Concord, and then they take a million on the Concord. They wrap the luggage, you know. You're coming from the United States. States, the Switzerland, or actually the Concord Only Fluutahe, in Paris. They don't really check your bag, you know, so, and it wasn't his money to begin with.

But that son of a gun front of mine said, so-and-so, I call him M in the book, aren't you, where he said, nah, I was going to lose some money. So he would take and launder a million for you and come back and give you $500,000. And the other half a million he kept. And these are people today that have just disappeared into legitimacy. but you have no idea the scandalous. Well, look, Johnny, had I not gotten popped, I'd probably be running for president.

Right, right. And I'd probably get your vote. For sure. Because I'm squeaky clean. I've got a legitimate, beautiful background. So how much were your Swiss bankers taking? Well, I don't really know what they were. They were charging me a total for doing that,

which I thought was ridiculously cheap. I was very happy with it. They were charging me 6%. Okay, so that whole process of getting the guy. Wow. How much did you run through? How much did you run through that bank? Here's something else, though.

Think about this. They might have been playing both ends for the middle. Because they were getting six from me, but they might have been getting 10 from the other guys. Because the other guys wanted that cash. The other guys is that group that you mentioned. They were criminals. They needed that cash in United States.

They already had money in the banking system. So what happens when he says, can I use your phone? He said, he calls their, people in Israel wherever the heck they're at, and they go, go ahead, wire the funds. So the money that's being received in Switzerland, it's not my money. My money is actually staying in the United States. Right, of course. Maybe buying other diamonds in cash. Right. Right. So that serves a purpose for them. That's how it works. Bulk cash like that isn't actually moved around the world. It stays and then dirty bankers just wire the legitimate money that they already have in the system

around the world. Of course. So the money is, that my Swiss banker got, you can actually swear it's not cocaine money. Right. It might have been diamond money. Right. It might have been oil money. I see. So it's legitimate.

Wow. The money that I made, the cocaine money stayed in circulation in New York. Wow. Buying more things. Of course, buying diamonds, buying all these legitimate goods. Exactly. It was no trace. So they were willing to pay for that. So you see what I'm saying?

That they could have been getting six from me. Yeah. Six or ten from the other group, too. So how much money did you launder through this system? How much cash did you give these guys? I would go up there probably once a week, once every couple of weeks and do another deposit, $5 million, $2 million, $6,000, depending on what I was buying here also. Right.

You know, and how much money I was spending doing different things. I've given a lot of stuff away. I've given houses away. I've given dozens of cars away. Rolexes, I think there was an article in the newspaper, how many Rolexes I gave away. All of my guys had gold Rolexes, you know. But it sounds like you could have $100 million, isn't a stretch. Nothing.

Yeah, yeah, I made over $100 million. Did any other narcos from Columbia or here find out about how you were cleaning money and try to piggyback off this? Everything that I did, Johnny, I did not broadcast. As a matter of fact, later on in life, when I, you know, I ran across of other people that were smuggling Cuban guys or whatever, American guys. and when that incident happened in the Bahamas where they got one or a million dollars,

I went and I bought a hotel, okay, they had a landing strip and a marina. And I didn't really give a darn about the hotel. I cared about the landing strip and the marina. Those are two tools that I needed, pieces of puzzles that I needed from my operation. So I think I paid three, four, four, five million dollars for the hotel is bungalows, one clubhouse.

And today is very nice. It was closed for a long time after that. It's called, it's on Cat Island. The reason why I'm bringing that up is because at that point, I basically didn't have to say anything to anybody. But now I'm landing in my own facility. So when people bring up the, hey, T, blah, blah, I haven't seen you what happened.

You're, you know, have you shriveled up? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I got a big yellow streak in my back, man. I'm retired. Things are getting too tough out there. I mean, I just did a thousand. thousand pieces. Why should I have to tell these amateurs? They're in trouble. They're going to give me up. Of course. So I basically kept a very low profile. And then I basically told a lot of people, yeah, man, I made too much money. I retired. I'm done.

But I'm really landing on my own strip and I got my own marina. And I don't have to be giving it. I wasn't into beating my chest or running around and speedboat trying to promote that I'm some sort of smuggler. No, and you were completely clean. You didn't do coke. You didn't, you know, you drink. That's it. But you didn't party. You used to have, for these airline pilots that would fly your coke up, you used to throw parties for them. And they were like white boy degenerates, you know, we do some weird shit. Really weird. But you would then say, okay, go have fun. I'm going to go home and go to bed. Well, no, I'm not going to go home and go to bed.

I'm going to go to another side of the island. I got a girlfriend that's my main squeeze. Right. And I totally isolate her. Right. And I'm going to do my own thing. I'm not the kind of guy, I'm not into the, you know, sitting there looking at other guys walking around naked and stuff, you know, I'm just not.

These guys are pervert gay. In other words, you're not gay. No, even if I was gay, I wasn't into that. I'm into just closed doors. Maybe with two or three girls. I'm not going to say I haven't, you know, because that'd be a lie if I did. Did you have a family during this time? Yeah.

No, I didn't have kids. I had a wife. Okay. I had a wife, you know, and I ended up getting divorced. I've been married a few times, you know. But your family, your mother, because your father had passed away, they had no idea. No, no idea. Your siblings?

Did they know? Two sisters. It's one of my sisters, an architect. She's ahead of a city here, the building department zoning, squeaky clean, like Mother Teresa would not even, you know, you can measure Mother Teresa by her. She won't even take a gift on Christmas from anybody. My son right now is a sheriff. You know, I lived a real pure. clean home. But they didn't know about this

when you were out there running. For many reasons. For many, many reasons. Simple. First of all, my mom would have not condoned it. We don't even curse. If I said shit in front of my father, crack my skull. You know, and we had to sit there in the dining room table, all together, TV off, but insured. I was raised that way. Having said that, so my mom would not have approved it.

And second of all, what am I going to do? Ask my mom, hey, mom, I'm thinking about running a thousand. Kilos this weekend. You think I should do it on Saturday or Sunday? What are you going to say? Yeah. And then the main other reason, which is major in my mind, I know enough about the federal government. When the crap hits the fan, they're going to come in and going to throw a rope around everybody, everybody. Everybody that they even had the slightest inclination that they had knowledge or getting arrested. And then when they do that, it would be one way of putting pressure on me. my God, if they arrest my mom, there's nothing that I wouldn't do.

Yeah, of course. And if I told you different, I'd be some liar. Okay, so. So I isolated them for their own safety. So your kilos are going out to, you know, hundreds of dealers, you know, after they, after you give them to the, first of all, let's talk about that. When your bricks got to Florida, how many different distributors are you giving them to? Yeah. Let me just say another thing regarding my family.

They never saw any large amounts of money. Once in a while, there'd be a mistake that would be made, and I might have on a tote bag, $300,000, by mistake. And I remember one incident that my mom said, what is that? And I said, oh, boy, how do I get out of this? So I said, Mom, yeah, I sold an airplane. You know, these crazy Colombians, don't have credit cards and not that kind of stuff.

They paid me with cash. Son, you can't have that kind of cash? Why are you having that? It was in the office. She walked in. And I said, I'm going straight to the bank right now and deposit that. You know, she goes, please do. You know, you shouldn't be.

Yeah, mom, I know, I know. I'm going to the bank. So that's how I got around it. I isolated them from anything. Understood, understood. So at the same time, you've got your Ferrari dealerships, number one of the world. Right. You're a huge builder.

Right. Like you're a builder of homes. Homes. Are these mansions? Are they like more like middle class? No, it was a business, you know. I mean, I was building a multifamily homes, three, four bedrooms of development. Yeah.

I was doing, when I got popped, I was doing 120 homes, you know, that I own outright everything. In a place called Woodman, Port Laudaddo, Tamarack area. But I could be doing that or I could, you know, basically I own the construction company at this point. I'm not swinging a hammer like I used to. Obviously. And I've done that, you know. But tomorrow, I liked a building business and it was profitable. So I stayed in it.

So the whole reason that you got into this business in the first place, your backstory is that you're from a sugar, almost, I would call it this. I would say you were from the aristocracy. Your father was in Cuba. Spaniards that immigrated to Cuba in the early 20th century. Your father really came from nothing. He built up his sugar business. from chopping the cane to then now owning all these sugar mills, sugar refineries.

He brought you up. When you came to the states, he brought you up to as these really, really, as I say, these old school Cubans, Spaniard Cubans, very, very proper, very Catholic, very, just always doing the right thing, family oriented. He dies. He has a heart attack. No, he died of cancer. He had prostate cancer.

Okay. So he dies when you're a bit. young man like 19 or 20. Yeah, that's when he first got the disease. And then he started doing the sugar mill project, a new one, because he owned the sugar mill in Haiti already. Right. He sold that because he wanted to keep the family united. My sister was in boarding school.

My older sister was in Germany learning German. And then I was in Miami going to school. And then my father reeled me in because I guess he thought I was getting a little while even for a young kid, 10, 12. I wasn't listening really to my aunt, minding her. Right. Well, you're coming over here. Right. So now I spent four years there in the sugar mill. In Haiti.

In Haiti. Yeah. I speak French. I speak Creole. I speak like five languages. I speak Italian, French, Creole, English, and Spanish. Spanish could not be spoken in the house. My dad used to say English from the door out, Spanish from the door in.

I didn't do that with my two boys. They don't speak a word of Spanish. Yeah. It's terrible. And it's all about communication. Yeah. All about communication. So the point is he dies.

and now you've made a pledge to him to keep the sugar business going. Yeah, because he started the sugar mill. He put everything that we had into this new sugar mill that he bought in Puerto Rico. We're putting it on a boat and we're floating over the boat into Haiti and then erecting this massive undertaking. And then on his dying bed, he says, son promised me that you'll finish the project. And I said, give him my word, Dad, I'll finish the problem. I'm the only son.

I'm the only boy. And he said, I promise you, I'll finish the project. Well, you know, Johnny, I spent two years, two and a half years knocking on doors, and I just got kicked to the curve. Abused and used. Swindled by mortgage lenders. One guy took $100,000 from me. So this is how you start importing marijuana from the Bahamas. Well, I just said to myself, you know, look at all these guys.

These guys are all con artists. They're all crooked as hell. And I see these other friends of mine that were in the marijuana business. And back in those days, you know, I always. I wasn't saying no to drugs. They would say yes to drugs. Everybody in South Florida was bringing in weed. Yeah, party.

Yeah. You're going to any club. You have a real policeman, not a run a cop, a real policeman on the door, but you walk inside. They're doing lines of cocaine on the table. Yeah. Yeah. So your goal, you tell yourself, most drug dealers are like, I'm going to make a million and get out.

You were like, I got to make 14 million. I need to get the sugar mill done. To get the sugar mill done. But now, all these years later, you've cheated death. You're at the height. of the narco-trafficking business. You made way more than $14 million. Whatever happened, did you lose sight of the sugar mill?

No, I went back. There's a picture of me back in the sugar mill. I went back to Haiti to do that sugar mill much later. Okay. Because I got caught up in the excitement. Okay. You know, at one point, I'm landing in the jungle. And I've got a guy with a loincloth and a blow gun looking at me.

He's touching my raybants. I'm like, don't touch my glasses, right? Yeah. So I'm wearing my hat that had a sword, my Excalibur hat. And he, so I take the hat. I'll go, okay, here, take the hat. I looked at him. I looked around him in the jungle and I got this and I said, Jesus Christ,

this is kind of stuff that I watch in Canada Jones Geographic and I'm getting paid for this. This is really exciting. Yeah. So I got caught up in the excitement and then I got caught up in the money and then I got caught up in the power that I now had, not just financially. don't give me a hard time. I'm going to rearrange your world. I can literally make a call to Pablo.

You're gone. The whole family disappears. Did you have to ever collect like that? Did you ever have to tap Medellin to make a problem go away? Yeah, a matter of fact, that's another great question because in that book, nobody's asked me the question. I actually went to Columbia to collect money that I was owed. Do tell.

I got Peter Yeo, who is the collector. Yeah, it goes, it's my job. The guy cuts out of Miami with $5 million on my money. What guy? A Colombian. He was the distributor. He was a guy that I was doing business. He told me, he said, I can move this product in California.

I said, okay, fine. So I give him the product. Now he disappears. Now, next thing I know, I'm calling him and calling him, he's back in Columbia. So I can't have this type of. publicity in my circle for many reasons i'm bringing in a thousand kilos you know this you know all of a sudden that's 30 40 million dollars wholesale you know if this word gets out i'm going to run the risk of of getting problems with pablo or if i can't live up to that you know obligation

so i said um i got a problem here yeah you i said see if you can hunt him down so we hunt him down he's back in Columbia. So at that point, I decide to go after the money. So, yeah, he goes, that's my job. I'll go do it. I said, yeah, you will not last in Colombia five days. You'll be killed on the first or second day.

I got to do this. So I went back down to Columbia to collect this money that this Colombian left owning me the money. And I cannot have that kind of publicity advertisement in the world that I'm in. Because then I will be subject to, to being played by anybody.

So I had Yeo, and Yeo said I'll do it. So I go down to Columbia. I stay at the New Tibada, which is in downtown Medellin, old hotel historical type thing. I take over the top floor, the whole top floor I rent, and I rent the floor underneath.

When I walk in, I walk in with Benjys in my, and I know how to use money. Believe me, there might be a lot of people out that they're richer than me, but they don't know how to use it more than me. So I walked in, I spread a couple of dollars with an operator, elevator operator. Back in those days, it was a woman or a man sitting on a chair stool, and they operated the elevator.

So I'm giving money to every shift, the front desk, and I told the front desk, I want to know anybody that comes in. I want to know they're Americans. I want to, because now I'm also concerned with American DEA. They're there. You know, I just want them singled out to me, so I know who to stay away from. and even though I'm saying away from everybody. I did not call Pablo. You would ask me, why don't you have Pablo do this?

I don't know if this is Pablo's cousin. So I do not need that problem. So I kept this totally underwrap off the radar. Nobody knew what I was going down there for. So I didn't touch anybody that I knew. I went and I got, I felt good about this cab driver that his name was Angel. So I said to Angel, listen, man, I got a problem.

I'm looking for this guy. Take me to La Estrella, which is this very rich neighborhood. So he goes, okay. So I said, I got a problem with this guy. I need you to find me a spotter. And then I give him the guy's name. I think the guy's name was the Chavarria.

So I said, he was really well known. So he said, yeah, I know who he is. I said, put somebody in front of the house. And I want surveillance on this property 24-7 to report to you, you report to me. He goes, okay. You know, I'm taking care of the guy. So now I got this guy in my pocket and he's feeling good and he's feeling the vibes.

And I'll tell you, it goes beyond money because you will see in the story how deep this guy got with me. So I spend maybe a week doing surveillance. I get a phone call from Angel. He's there. So I run downstairs. Oh, by the way, I didn't sleep in the bedroom. I slept like in a little walking closet. I put bottles all over the doors and the windows.

So I figured if the first thing they're going to do is going to come in through a window, coming through a door, if he finds out that I'm here. He knows I'm after my money. So it's not going to be a greeting. Hi, Tito, how you doing, buddy? And a life in Columbia, it's worth less than a Coca-Cola. Exactly.

So I don't want to be, and I've been in that hotel where they killed three people before. People, dozens of people were getting killed in Medellin every day back then. Listen, I remember reading the paper. It's 68, 69 people killed them in just one weekend. Yeah. Yeah. To see a body on the side of the road, not a big deal.

It's just the way it was, the way life was. Matter of fact, it's funny because he might not be able to appreciate this because it's called Medellín, but in Spanish, metrejean is a machine gun. So when I arrived one time, like now legally, you know, through the airport, one of my buddy goes, hey, hey, Tito, what did you think about the guy on the ladder? I said, what guy in the ladder? You didn't see the guy in the ladder? No, I didn't see the guy in the ladder.

He goes, the guy in the latter where it says population, the guy had an eraser. Erasing population. Bringing the population down. Wow. Wow. And that's the way it was. So now I go to the front of the house.

I check with the spotter. The guy that's doing surveillance on the house. He goes, he's in there. Now, the house has got a fence that's probably 10 feet tall, all the way around this mansion. It's unbelievable. You know what a barrel tile is? roofing, well, it has three barrel tiles, one row, one row, one row, one row, three tiles coming

on top of the fence as decorative. And then in the front has got the iron gate, but it's iron rot on, you know, kind of like decorative. You can see through it. And then it's got a guardhouse over here with guys with guns. And so the guy says, yeah, he's in there. So he said, okay, I go up to the guard and I say, I'm here to see each other. And he gets on the phone. He calls the house. And he says, he's not here. I said, don't tell me he's not there. He's there. And then he goes, call him again. So he calls again. And he said, he's not here. So now I know that he's being evasive. You know, I don't point out my surveillance guy. I want to throw him under the bus. So I said, the guy, so I turn around and I say to Angel, Angel, take your cab, barricate the door.

So now we put the cab parallel to the door. I turned around and I say to the guy, I don't go in, nobody comes out. So I'm out there in the hot sun for about an hour. Okay, I'm getting hotter and hotter and shorter and shorter. Do you have Yale with you with the gun? So you're not armed at all? Good question, Yale.

I said to Yale, if I don't come back, guess what I want you to do? I made arrangements with some people. that were, you know, at 20-something, I already have a trust. I already have a will because I might not show up tomorrow. So I said, and I made her, this is for real, I made an arrangement, if I don't come back to Miami

and this guy had no knowledge of my craziness, you know. I said, if I don't come back, you have unlimited funds dedicated to terminating this guy's family. I want to see him again. So I tell you, he always said, this is going to be your full-time. job if I don't come back. You can't go everything. I said nothing's going to come to an end.

So now I'm over there. My temper is actually running shorter. I'm a really nice guy, but like anybody else, I can be pushed off the edge. The sun is hot. I say nobody comes out, nobody goes in. Now somebody's pulling up to the house, some kind of relative of something. Hey, move the car. And so the FN car is not moving. And then he said, I'm so and so I got. He said, you know, not going in there, man. It's that simple. I'm not going in. You're not going in. And I'm starting to now get boisterous. Now the guy comes out of the guardhouse with the rifle. You know, he's getting a little hot too. And we're screaming back and forth. So I tell him, this is wild, man. Now the guy for I see him coming out of the house. He's walking next to another guy.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry, chavaria. Coming out of the house. And he's going out of the house. and he's got a guy wearing a blue poncho. Okay? And he's walking next to him. This is his bodyguard or some sort of, you know, like a yellow type guy. And he goes like this, pulls it out, pulls out a gun. He goes, you want me to shoot him, boss? So then I tell Angel, Angel, get out of here.

Leave an angel. And an angel goes into the driver's side of the car, pulls out a revolver. and he goes, I'll die here with you. I'm not leaving you. Are you kidding me? This thing's playing out like a movie. You know, I can't buy this guy's life. Guy's son is a priest too, by the way.

Right? He goes, I'll die here with you. And I said, I don't expect you to. He goes, no, I'm dying here with you. So he's, now the other guy is screaming, you want me to shoot him? I'm going to shoot this piece of shit. He's saying all kinds of nasty stuff to me.

So at that point, I flare up. And I say, give me the goddamn gun, you know? And an angel goes, no, no, no, I'll shoot him. I said, give me the goddamn gun. So then, and then Chavarria tells me to be quiet. I'm not being quiet. I said, I want my God money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we're cursing at each other, right?

And the other guy's threatening to shoot me. And then I say to him, you think I'm alone here? You think I'm alone here? I'm not alone here. I got hundreds of millions of dollars listening to this conversation. Go ahead and shoot me. I'm going to show you how man dies. I said, but buddy, I'm a buddy.

going to see you again. I'll be in hell waiting for you. I'll turn your family into dinosaurs. I'll start with your grandson. I said, I learned from you, Colombians. I'm going to show you how much I learn. Go ahead, shoot me. I'm not afraid to die. Go ahead, you piece of shit. Shoot me. That ended. That whole thing. He said, move the car, open the gate. Come in and respect my house. I said, respect me. Not your house. Respect me. You leave the United States owing me money. I can't have that. And I'm still wound up, you know. So we go in the house and we're sitting in the dining room table. That guy picked up the phone and he moved two, three million dollars like that to me. You know where part of the money came from? I got a transfer of money from Beverly

Hills Ferrari back in the 80s. And I never sold Ferrari in Beverly Hills anything. And I'm talking about cars now. He had customers. Wired transferred right into my funds. Before I left the house, I said, I'm not leaving here until part of my money is giving back. You got to show me some good faith. Why, why was he holding out? Why would he run off? Didn't he know how connected you were? Didn't he know you knew Pablo? But he was connected too. I don't know. He was connected too. I don't remember at one point or another. We all think that the world revolves around us. I actually thought that I could walk on water. I mean, hell, if you ask me any kind of question, I could make the impossible happen overnight.

Did you ask him? You were like, what the fuck? Later on, yeah, yeah. Later on, he apologized. He said he had a lot of things. He says he lost a trip. He lost a trip in Denver or one of those other places. He had some networks up there in the West Coast up in northern.

So he said, I lost this. I lost that. I said, what all you had to say to me, hey, T, I got behind a little bit, you know? And I would have given you a trip. I would have made my airplane accessible to you. Yeah. I mean, come on, man, I know you. You know, you could have just said that, but the up and leaf like that and then not answer any of my calls, it's a bad thing to do, man.

One of you guys could have died. Yeah, it could have made me look really bad. Yeah. So when I came back, I came back as a, you know, like, wow, don't mess with teeth. There's a, there's a, so that got around that you went down to collect on your own? I didn't even have to say anything. When I came back, yeah, you made it up point. You came back with the money.

I said the money's already there. It got transferred from Ferrari. transfer from other locations. So he made you a whole. Yeah, I mean, not only did it. He actually had about a million and something left, which we worked out some more cocaine. Give it to Pablo, bring it in, I won't charge you.

Yeah. I mean, I'm willing to work with you. And there's so much money. There's so many ways to recoup it. Yeah, exactly. Now, if you lost a load, you never lost a load. Never lost a load. Which is unbelievable.

I mean, I mean, hundreds of tons of cocaine you moved in. But as did you have in your mind, if you lost a load, are you just going to pay out of pocket to Pablo? Yeah, I would have to. So there's no saying, hey, I'll take more cocaine. It's like he wants his money. Or could you, could you work? Was he reasonable enough to be like, okay, you worked so much.

Here, take more blow and just until I get the money back that I lost. That never happened, so I can't put it to the test. But I can tell you this. What did I feel in my heart? I felt in my heart that if I ever said to Pablo, hey man, I had to dump the stuff, he would just say to me, don't worry about it. Would you just go again? I don't think he would even come back to me and say, you owe me.

Right. Because we're back and forth making so many trips. Because you had built, and you had built so much goodwill. Yeah. And I never asked for anything else and did what I did. I did exactly what I said I was going to do. I showed up on a Tuesday. It wasn't Wednesday.

It wasn't Thursday. It was more. I remember my word. live up to what I did. So I like to think that I built a good professional relationship of trust with him. So I don't see Paulo ever demanding anything from me. And in the book that his brother wrote, his brother was one of the accountants for the Medellin cartel for Pablo, you're one of the only non-family members that's featured in that book. The book is the proof is in the book. Because Paulo had a lot of different pilots that would come in and out,

You know, peak pilots that worked. We talked to Roger Reeves. Right. He worked for Pablo for a time, but he never met him, you know, but. I'm the only guy. You don't see Barry Seal. You don't see, what's his name, Boston George? Right.

Joke in there. I'm the only. And there's not only mentioned all over the book, but it's also a picture of me in the book. Okay. So how? And he himself says one of our main transporters, Ido Dominguez. Yeah. So at what point does this start to unravel? Well, and how?

It unraveled because the guy that basically taught me everything in the way of airplanes and so forth, he was older than me, and Jack, Captain Jack, he developed a really party attitude, and he was the number one pervert guy. What can I say? He'd go into strip joints, come back with 10, 12, 13 strippers, bring them home, laid in a bed with four or five cameras, back in those days, all right? A kilo cocaine all over on. Look it off, man, you know, and they're videotaping this whole thing. And he just became that crazy.

Yeah. Crazy. Stuff that I even have a hard time repeating it, stuff that I don't even want to look at it. Right. Perverted stuff. I do. Anyways. I do.

I tell you what I heard from DEA, they told me. me, they love doing the, what do they call it, the discovery. Yeah, I bet they did. He had a hundred something videotapes and, you know, they have to watch them. Yeah, exactly. But how was Jack involved criminally in the organization for you? Well, he's the guy that taught me how to fly. He flew down there. He has trips with me in the airplane. He's the go-to guy that I relied on. So he was the head of your aviation department? Okay. He hired the other pilots. brought him in. I see, of course. I had to argue with them many times because there's certain things he wanted to do that I was not okay with.

And there's some people that he also developed jealousy for and, you know, that I had to bring them down. But then the party ain't got out of control. You know, I guess all extremes are bad. Hell, if you eat too much cream cheese and bacon, you're going to die. So this guy just started doing too much cocaine. He's sitting there on a winter day in Florida, temperature maybe in the 60s, and he's bleeding, just dripping down like waterfall. He's got caught all over his mouth and he's sweating up a storm in the morning. And I'm like, Jack, you're out of control.

And that's when I still see that picture now because that was the last time that I actually saw him per se. At that point, I said to him, Jack, look, man, I'm going to put you in a rehab. You're going to do what? I said, you're out of control. I'm going to put you in a rehab. I said, I'm not asking you to stop doing, you know, partying. I'm just asking you to slow it down, man, because I can't rely on you.

Look at you, you're a mess. You know, you can't tell me what to do. I say, yeah, I can. He goes, I made you. Well, that kind of upset me a little bit when he said, I made you. I said, Jack, when I met you, you were eating a hamburger, a bite for breakfast, a bite for lunch, and the rest of dinner. You were living in a shoe walks.

I said, don't tell me, don't you ever tell me you made me. It's a matter of fact, you know what? your reliability. I'm going to send somebody by to pick up all the keys. You're off my network. I don't ever want to see you again. Stay away from anything that surrounds me or is affiliated with me. I don't want to lay eyes on you again.

And you can't do. I just didn't. So I call for a meeting for all the department heads. And I actually said, I call Yale. And I said, we got a problem. And what's the problem? I said, Jack is out of control. He's going to bring us.

all down. You know, everybody knows he's out of control. And then one of the, one of the other guys, pilot, as a matter of fact, he was an airline pilot and he became a very good friend. He quit the airline that just became like full time on. So he was going to replace basically Jack. And then he said, look, T-Man, you probably won't even have to worry about him because I have a fee. He'll fly right into the water. I gave him a house, gave him my house in Bimini. So now he's living in Bimini flying back and forth the way you would jump in your car. He would fly in an airplane. So he's flying, you know, full, you know, totally drugged up. And so they seemed to think that he was going to fly into the water.

I said, we need to take care of him. I said, and then you go, Tito, he's one of our friends. And he said, I know, man, it's a hard call here to make, but he's going to bring us all down. How were you planning to kill him? Well, I mean, I just threw out that we got to take care of him. I didn't use the word. I mean, you could take care of him in Bimini. You could disappear in the Bahamas.

They'd never find him. This is Jayu's job. Mm-hmm. You know, exactly. The Bahamas, sharks. Take him out on the boat. Yeah. It was a hard thing to even think about.

Yeah. You know, difficult because he's one of our buddies and he's one of us. We were like the musketeers, one for all and all for one. Right. But he stopped being who he was. And he became a liability. So I said, okay, fine. It's not doing anything about him.

But do me in favor. Grab a piece of paper. Put a date on it. He's going to bring us all. down, put my name on it, and I'll sign it. And that's exactly what happened. Okay, so how did all of Jack's wild partying, cocaine use? How did this lead to the downfall or everything? Well, what happened to... Did he get hot? How did that make him hot? What happened was, no, he spent a mother maybe a year or so, or longer, doing what he was doing, partying every day. He now, one day, he

calls me back up. He comes back into my life. You know, I'm at the dealership, and he pulls up, and I'm in the back parking lot walk into my car. And I look at him, and I say, oh, shit, you know, I know what's going on now. You know, so, hey, T, I need to talk to you. Yeah, Jack, I haven't seen you in a while. How you been, buddy? He's got another guy next to him. So I said, all right, what do you want to talk to me about? He's, I need to make some money. So I said, all right. So, uh, what, Why are you talking to me? So he goes, well, I told you.

I need, I need to make some money, man. I said, who is this guy next to you? So he says, that's my pilot. So I said, Jack, I thought you were a pilot. What are you going to do? You want to start like a little charter business like what I've got? Is that what you're interested in doing? No, man.

I said, no, man, what are you talking about? Jack, obviously you're still doing drugs, man. It's the fact that your brain, man. Get off my property. Yeah. And that's what started. downspin because what happened is that guy was a CI. That guy was a rat. Obviously. Working for the, actually he wasn't working for the feds. He was working for BSO. So they started

the investigation on Jack. Jack meets his guy in a bar and he befriends the guy. Now they're buddies. So the guy's going to do Jack because Jack's got an airplane, he's got a house, he's got things, you know. So the guy thinks that he's got somebody here that's worth arresting or inditing. Jack now bragging about me. He brings me into the picture. So now Jack becomes a second fiddle. Now I'm the real target. But they can't get me. So because my nucleus and my team was very, very tight. So they said Jack up, Jack brings in like Captain Jack, as he used to like to be called. He brings in like, I don't know, something that would be embarrassed to get arrested for, 20 kilos or some crazy stuff like that. And they pop them on a small.

importation charge. So he's working, he's not working with you guys anymore. No, he's just off for a year. And when I told him, you're off my brother, that was it. I never saw him again. I gathered all the keys. He stayed away from everything that Jack knew that I was not a joke. You know, I mean, I'm not going to sit there and hurt anybody. You know, I don't want to come across that way, but I won't beat the hell out of you. Well, did you change up routes? Jack knew everything. Did you, did you change up, you know, where you brought the stuff in, where you moved it? Well, yeah, Some of the stuff we did change. Some of the stuff I couldn't change.

I can't change all my team. And Jack knows them all. He knows my airplanes. He knows pretty much everything. And that was why I said to my team, Jack is going to bring us all down. Why didn't you have him killed? I still don't understand. I guess the brotherly love.

Yeah. My name is not Pablo Escobar. I didn't sit in this thing to kill people. I never set out to be a, you know, a killer, you know. Did I heard people? I've heard a few people along the way that I beat to a pulp I did because they stole from me

one guy took a boat with 10, 15, 20 million dollars with a product. You know, I can't have that kind of stuff. I put them in a house and I beat them to a pulp and then I told them, I said, I have to let the people believe that you're dead. So, move. Move out of the state of Florida.

Go to some other remote part of the world. If I ever see you on a sidewalk, I'm going to finish when I started. And if you see this, I have a cut. here you see that and i talked about that in jonathan's podcast i grabbed a bottle of champagne i broke it i cut my own hand and i made him drink my blood i told him i said you have no backbone i'm gonna put a little backbone into your into your spine now i have four or five guys are watching them there the whole week that i kept them in the house and they're like oh my god this is really gory tito there's a lot of

drama that went with it you know but that's what i wanted to create i wanted to create that drama is this guy's going to live he's going to move out the state but everybody's going to think that he's either dead or or beat him to a pole and i wanted like for two days jack took me to the hospital two days later okay so jackets pop with 20 keys and then 30 40 whatever it was a small amount of coke and then he turns around and starts talking about you guys when i find out that he gets popped i get word right away so i put money in his account and his uh operating account and give money to his lawyer i don't go want to on one with Jack. So I hired a lawyer that I hired another lawyer to, again, separate me. So I put a lot of money in there thousands of dollars. I go see his wife, girlfriend, slash, and I put a bunch of money on her, and I told her, I said, whatever you want to do,

you want to go back to school, you want me to buy you a title, I'll make your doctor overnight. I've got enough money to make anything happen. You don't have to worry about anything. Don't worry about Jack. I'm going to get him out of prison. So my plan was to bust him out of prison. Whether with a helicopter, depending on where he was going to go, I would get him out, I've taken them out of the country, which I've done that before. I've taken people out of the country to another foreign country and where they can get extradited. So Brazil at the time, if you married a Brazilian girl, there was no extradition. So my plan was to take Jack to Brazil, install them there.

And then, you know, Jack, you get a paycheck every month, man. Life is going to be great. You get to party and do all the crazy stuff that you normally do. And the unspoken agreement there is you don't tell us. You don't tell. Right. You don't tell. Okay.

You don't rat your brother out. It's one for all and all for one. Okay. Go on. So Jack goes ahead and, you know, he played ball at the beginning. He's taking the money from my lawyers or the wife. Somewhere's along the line, I guess they scared the hell out of Jack and the feds have a way of doing that.

And then Jack folded. And then my lawyer called me up and he said, Tita, we got a problem. I said, what's the problem? He said, Jack took me off. He doesn't want me to represent him. That was an immediate, I got a major problem. Now his lawyer is really the prosecutor. So Jack decides to turn on me.

So now Jack starts to cooperate. Well, Jack knows everything about me. So shortly after that, Jack was seen in the airport pointing out airplanes. So I took those airplanes and I moved them. I bought another airplane. Okay. And then instead of doing my route was Miami, Columbia, Columbia, Bahama. Bahama, Miami. Now I did something different. I bought another airplane. I sent it to Columbia.

I kept that airplane in Colombia, about a local Colombian airplane with numbers of Colombia. And numbers, Colombia, Hotel Kilo, is the identification call numbers for Colombia. So now I had met an airline pilot. That's another story. It was great. met another airline pilot that they were only making like $20,000, $30,000 a year. So he started flying from me. So now instead of going Miami, Columbia, Columbia, Bahama, Bahama, United States, now I'm going, Colombia, Bahama, Bahama, Colombia, no United States. A pilot that doesn't basically speak, or he doesn't really know where I live.

I met him down there. He friended him. Now he maintains that airplane. I'm giving him like $50,000. for a trip. He's in heaven. And now what's happening now is actually good because now Jack is pointing out all my equipment. Well, there's Gigi, his pride and joy, the great ghost.

Okay, I'm going to put Gigi up on the air this week. So now Gigi's up in the air. And these guys are following Gigi around her, you know, hanging off of trees. You know, we're looking at this. And it's so funny because I'm laughing. The more they look, the less they see. They're looking, but I'm over here. Kind of like a diversion of a magician.

type thing. I'm flying another airplane that you guys have no knowledge and I'm not leaving from the United States. I'm originating from Colombia. And they must be looking into your financials. All of your companies are legit. Who brings me down is actually not DEA, not customs. Who brings me down is criminal division of the IRS. Those are the Gestapo's. For Homeland Security, the most feared agency, not ATF, not FBI, IRS. criminal division. There's two. There's the civil and the criminal. Those guys are bloodhounds. Those are the guys that bring Al Capone down. Those are the paperwork guys. Yeah. Those are the guys that go through. Two, two and a half years, they followed me. Two and a half years looking into your bank accounts.

Everything that I was doing, listen, I'm having dinner at Casasuancho, a very high-end restaurant in Miami. They're sitting over there. I'm over here. I walk out to my limo. My limo driver says to me, T, I got something to tell you. He said, go ahead, tell me, man. What is it? Now, he doesn't know that I was Fugler. Right? So he goes, I don't know how to tell you,

but I had these two guys approach me. He said, go ahead, tell me. What is it? He said, they wanted me to wear a wire on you, and they offered me $25,000 to wear a wire on you and to stand next to you when you were having meetings and so forth. I said, really? I acted like BS, right?

Pull the business card from his business. pocket and was an agent and was a custom agent and he wrote down 25,000 in cash in the back of the car and he showed this is the guy's card well what little the agent didn't know was that I bought that guy's house so his loyalty was pledged to me 25 was not enough so I had to contend with that every day right now what I did was I had a friend of mine that repaired electronic you know I had the phone business and the beeper business well there was a company over here that was an electronic high-end store repairs high-end. The guy had government contracts.

Okay? Guy's name was Gene. Gene would call me up, hey, you need to come down and you and see what these guys are doing. So I go down there and you see this thing? It's like a little box of a lot that big. Now we probably get in a spice store. But at the time, I paid 30 grand for this thing. Half the size of a pack of cigarettes, right? And you drop it in your pocket and had three lights on top.

And it's like a scanner, a sensor. And you can adjust the five-foot diners. diameter, if somebody is honing in like a parabolic type of antenna, it would pick up one light will go off. An electric motor, boom, another light would go off. Any transmitting within a radius of five feet, the lights would light up, one, two, three, or all three of them. Well, let me tell you, Johnny, in a couple of places, all three lights were up.

They took guys out of prison and they brought them in front of me to talk about the old times. Guys that wanted a prison had nothing to do with me, but they wanted to do with me. but they wanted me to start a conversation with them. Hey, gee, I'm out, man. Give me a job. I'm like, now all three lights are going off. Wow. There's got to be something wrong with this thing.

All three lights are off. And so they're wired up. So you could tell in real time, if I'm talking to a guy with a wire. I'm looking at three lights that are burning and I'm saying, I mean, there's got to be something wrong with this thing. This can't be right. Come with me a second.

I take them to the middle of the parking lot away from any car, any radio, anything, and all three lights are still burning. So now I know, man, they're all over me. Yeah. And this is how I love. lived for a long time. It was a nightmare. But they couldn't get you confessing on a wire? No, because at that point when he's talking to me about giving him a job, I let him on. I really

played it up and a guy goes, yeah, man, I need to make some money. I need a job like the old times. So I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. When did you get out? Oh, just the other day, but I need some money, man. So I say to him, all right, listen, you can start on Monday. Don't worry about clothing. I'll provide you with a uniform. Uniform. What are you talking about? I said, no, what are you talking about? I said, you're a mechanic, right? You're going to work at my car plate. But you're going to have to go to school

of Lamborghini and train, okay? And the guy's like, what the hell is wrong with you? I said, no, what's wrong with you? What a second, George? Let me ask you something. Why did you go away for? Do you go away from drugs? Didn't you learn anything in there?

And he goes, I'm out of here. I said, no, you're not out of here. It's my duty, my civic duty, to sit here and make sure that you don't fall off the wagon, man. Sit back down. Oh, they must have hated you. They despise me. So the government's spending hundreds of thousands, if not more, trying to pin you.

Is anybody else talking in your crew besides Jack? Great question. I knew I had a deep throat. I had the indictment two, three, four weeks before he came out. I had all the names. So I had two or three, four private detectives that were ex-military, ex-FBI, and these guys had contacts. So they were feeding me tremendous information.

And then I had a friend that had a friend that has girlfriend was in my own grand jury. Imagine that. So I know I'm getting popped. The only question in my mind was, when is it going to come? But you're still moving product. This whole time that they're trying to get you, you're still bringing in stuff. So it doesn't sound like any of your distributors got popped with a bunch of Coke and then distributors that fingered you.

I never gave anybody up. I never, and they never gave you up. And then, well, they didn't get pop. So what would they give me up? So the time that I gave pop, if they did get Paul later on, what are they going to do?

So how was the grand jury able to indict you? I mean, that's famously like a grand jury can indict anything in the feds, but what evidence did they have on you? One of my lawyers told me, grand jury will indict a turkey sandwich. That's right. That's the saying. But what did, but to actually get convicted?

They get Jack and then they got two or three other people. Who are they? A guy by the name of Papi, another guy by the name of C. But who were they? Guys that I bought my hotel from. In the Bahamas? In the Bahamas. They were American.

Wow. How did they? And Jack knew them. One of them was apparently had gotten into trouble and was cooperating and then Jack knew them. Okay. And then that all tied together. Right. And they went to the grand jury.

And, you know, I don't know, you know, who else? I know that I had a week. I had a deep throat someone who was in my organization. I just was never able to pinpoint who it was. and there was only two or three people that would have been that one guy. And I hated to even think. One was my own brother-in-law, who was my best friend. You know, and he only ended up doing about maybe a month, three weeks in prison.

What was his involvement? Number two guy, he was basically... Your sister's brother? Yeah, my brother and my ex-brother. Your sister who had no idea what you were doing? No, no, my own wise brother. And he was my best friend. I stayed away from his sister.

sister was like beautiful. I mean, gorgeous, gorgeous. But I knew how bad I was. So I didn't want to ruin the friendship. Right. So I stayed away from him and finally I gave it to her beauty and I married her. Oh my God. Yeah, exactly what I... This is fucking a soap opera. This is a telenovela. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, so he got popped, your brother-in-law? Yeah. What was he doing? He was your, he was your number two. What was his function? He held three, four, five million dollars in his, I never, I kept them away from any smuggling. His operation would be, listen, in the morning, bring me every morning 30 grand in cash. So every morning he would meet me somewhere. I didn't keep any money or anything in my home. My home was like a neutral zone. And I made it very clear to everybody, because sometimes I

can't trust you, but I can't trust your wife or your girlfriend or somewhere along the line in a party. You might say something that somebody else is going to pick up on. So I made it very clear. if you ever want anything from me, get it from me. If you ever want to kidnap somebody, kidnap me. You touch a member of my family. Every dollar I got is going to be dedicated to turning you and everybody you know into dinosaurs here on earth. So don't, and I don't keep any money in my home.

I don't have a safe in my home. I don't have 10,000 watches in my home. So Gordon's job was to bring me what I thought. And I normally would spend about 30 grand a day, you know, on a normal day. Hell, I probably spend about $5,000,000, just champagne alone. Right. A day, every day, every day. Not to mention stuff that I gave away to people.

So his job was bring me an envelope with $30,000. And then his other job was, okay, you got to pay John or you got to collect the money from so-and-so. Right. And then he would, you know, he knew where the safe house was at. He didn't deal with it, you know, really. Yeah, and him were the only two people that. I knew with a safe house. Jack didn't even know.

The safe house where the cocaine, all the coke would be a conglomerated warehouse there. Warehouse, right. And then from there it would get distributed. For example, let's say you were one of the, Columbia used your own cars, their own vehicles, right?

So, and I think I said this once before in cocaine air with Jonathan, where they gave me the car, and then I load two, 300 kilos in a brand new car. Next thing you know, the trunk is like dragging. Yeah. Because you got all this concentrated weight back there. So when I saw that, I said, man, I got to do something about this.

This is just attracting too much attention. You got one driver in the car is sagging in the bag, and it's a new vehicle. So I said to the Colombians crew, bring me one or two cars a day. We're going to take care of it. What are you going to do? I'm going to take care of this problem. I'm going to show you what I do after I do it. So I put air shocks.

I took the glove compartment out, and I put a little pump in the engine compartment. And in back of the glove compartment, I put a little level, a little warm, water level and a knob. This knob, you would turn and it would go, Phr, activate the compressor, and then the air shocks would go up or down the little level in there will indicate it the car's riding level. So you load your cocaine in the trunk of the car, put 300 kilos, 200 depending on the car. And then I go, I level off the car. Now the car is driving like there's nobody in the car. And it looks the way it's supposed to look. So I did that, you know, for all the cars, you know. I would take that car, even though I knew the car, and you gave me the car, I would not take that car to the safe house.

That car went to another house where Q had those little scanners, and we went over that whole car that made sure there was no transponder, there was no bug. I don't know what the hell you're up to. So once we were swept the car and we were sure that there was no bugs in that car, then it went to the state power. Went inside the garage and got loaded. And then I would take it to the nearest Burger King or shopping center. And then I would leave the key on top of the tire. And I'd call you up and tell you, hey, listen, your car's in such and such a location. But I'm going to drive it as least as possible.

Pick it up. So Gordon wasn't involved in touching or loading the key loads up. He was there the night, the time where I get, and I think you might have heard this, if not it was just an amazing moment. I've got, this is my beginning. Yeo brings me the first buyer, you know, and I don't know these guys from Jersey, Union City. And he said, I got a buyer. I said, okay, fine.

So we sweep the car. We do this. And then we're separating a thousand kilos that I just brought in from Pablo. Plus, I've got three, four, five, six trips of my own that I haven't been able to move. The next thing I know Yeo says to me, hey, man, we got a problem. I said, what's the problem? We're surrounded. What do you mean we're surrounded?

He said, the cars, man. the feds are in the front of the house. You're bullshit. I say, we don't play around with that kind of stuff, yeah, yo. He goes, I'm not playing. He's hysterical. I see him getting more and more nervous. So I said, wait right here. I run up the stairs a big house, big balcony in the front, French doors. I look through the French doors, sure enough, there's five, six, seven, eight, ten cars, whatever.

Up there with a blue jacket, the yellow lettering in the back, and they got the trunks open with a shotgun, and they're prepping. I said, holy Jesus Christ, yeah, he's not kidding. I run back down. I say, yeah, you're right. So I said, let me see where else they're at. I go to the back of the house. I don't see anybody.

I go to each side. I don't see anybody else. Yale grabs the news, because we do have automatic weapons for protection. People, you know, back on those days, the rip-off. They're very common to get ripped off. The home invasions, they used to call them. So, Yale says, Yale left from prison, Mario Boliv. He said, I'm not going back to jail.

Bob, they're going to have to kill me. I say, calm down. grabs the Uzi, goes ahead, and loads the darn thing, takes the safety all right here, put the damn gun down. I'm not going out there. I'm not going back to jail, T. I don't care about you, but I'm not going. They're going to have to shoot me. So we're screaming on each other right now.

And I say, obviously, you're the problem. Because what do you mean mean? I said, well, I know it's not my brother-in-law because he talks to nobody. You brought this buyer. So the problem's going to be your buyer. He's the problem. No, he's not. So we're arguing amongst each other.

I said, I put the goddamn gun down. So I can't take it anymore. I'm going to go out the house. So the house had a wind wall and the garage faced the side. It didn't face the front of the house. So I grabbed the broom, open the garage door, and I start sweeping, pretending that I'm just fucking visible and I'm sweeping the floor. I'm not really looking that way, but I'm looking that way from peripheral vision of my eye,

corner of my eye. And I hear the screaming from one of the agent, hey, you over there, really loud. So I turned around and I go, who me? I put my hand on my chest. And he goes, yeah, you get back in the house. So I said, why? And he says, we got an armed fugitive across the street from your home right here. Get back in that house.

I said, yes, sir. I walked into the house. I said, you put the gun down. We're not counting anymore. We're not doing any delivery. We're drinking beer. What do you mean? I said, celebrating, buddy.

They're not here for us. They're here across the street. Wow. Miami in the 80s. Miami. Okay. Okay. So how, but how did Gordon get picked up by the feds? He's your money, man. Yeah, because what happened was Jack for two and a half years. If he had a notion that my two Doberman shepherds, I mean, my two Dobermans and my mountain line had any knowledge of what I was doing, he was giving him up. So that's where, again, isolating my family came in. So he gave up everybody that he could think of. Okay.

And then the feds, they throw news around everybody. We'll sort them out later. And then they picked up Jack. Gordon was an intricate part of the organization. He was my money guy that I kept with him, I kept with him about $5 million in cash. And slush money in the event that it was an emergency, that I couldn't get to the money in Europe or I couldn't touch money in the bank and I needed large money to buy somebody out or pay off somebody in the islands or whatever. So Gordon had access to everything, everything. He knew more than me, let's say.

Yeah. Because he had the tabs on how much money was coming, kept books. He knew the cocaine trips. So it's out of a movie. He's, and they squeezed him and he gave it all up. Yeah, that's what he did about three weeks, four weeks. We all get arrested on the same day. What year was that?

1988, April 14th. Okay. In my bond hearing, if you know anything about bond hearing, they're half hour, an hour. Mine went three days. Wow. They said on limited funds, worldwide contacts, $10 million, Donald would be like drinking a cup of coffee. Yeah.

No bond. So they can give you a bond. Never. How did they charge you with RICO running a, or the CCE? Not too many people know the CCE. So that's the Kingpin Act. So they charged, they had enough to charge you with everything the IRS had dug up as the kingpin.

I got indicted in Florida, Central, South. Georgia, they gave me a pass on that. New York, Detroit, the Bahamas. I got indicted in the Bahamas. they fly me to the Bahamas also. So the one prosecutor, like I said earlier, he said, I'll die you over every state you flew over. I said, I don't give it damn.

He said, oh, you don't care if I give you another life. I said, listen, man, I don't believe in reincarnation. I've only got one life to give. So I don't give a damn how many times you indict me. Okay, so are they trying to get you to flip? Are they trying to give up your, get you to give up your contacts in Medellin? Well, it's simple. If I would have flipped, F. Lee Bailey was my first lawyer.

along with a lot of other lawyers when I was free. When I told you that I already had the indictment, I hired F. Lee Bailey from the street. And I told him, I said, you know, the crime's going to hit the fan. I'm going to get indicted for smuggling. You need Flee Bailey.

He patted his chest like that. And he said, okay, listen, I'm going to give you the money that you won. I'm going to tell you something. When the shit hits the fan, don't send me some generic lawyer. I want to see you there. And I'm not paying you.

monopoly money. You're going to need, and he packed Beech his chest again. So the crap did hit the fan. He didn't show up. And then he shows up like a week, two weeks later. And then he says, I got a deal worked out. You're going to do 18 months. And you go home.

I said, 18 months. It didn't even sound realistic. He says, talk to the prosecutor. We got a deal worked out. You're going to have to flip on everybody. I said, what does flip mean? I didn't know the term, because I'm a never around jail. Yeah.

lifestyle, right? Nobody I knew had gone to jail except Peter, and I don't know what that was like in Cuba. So he says, you've got to have to roll on everybody. I said, roll. Start defining that to me. He says, you know, cooperate. Give all your co-defendants and the people that in Columbia. I said, I give you all that money for that. I don't need you for that. Yeah. I said, I can't do that. He says, well, if you don't do that, I can't defend you. I said, well, why don't you tell me that before when you were in the street and you beat your chest and you said it, plebe Bailey. He said, said, well, listen, man, I can't defend this case. Got too many co-defendants, and they're all going to flip.

So I said, I'm going to leave you with one thought, Lee. I bent forward, and I said, buy a remote control to start your car up every effing morning if you don't give me my money back. I had nothing else to say to you, Lee. Oh, yeah, whole footnote. All my Colombians are out there. Have a good day. And I walked out of the office.

That was in prison that I told him that. and I went through truckload of lawyers. Yeah, of course. You know, because they were all telling me what I wanted to hear. They're the biggest thieves. Of course. But every once in a while, you know, like the prince, you know,

you get a frog, they're just real. And I came across one guy that I just had to give kudos to Fred Shorts. I'm free because of him. Okay. So then how did it, how did it conclude? Because you didn't have to flip on, you know, any Columbus. No, I have to cooperate. But that was after everybody went home.

I'm the last guy holding. the pillar here. Okay, how did everybody go home? Just sign here. Gordon, who was like my number two guy, no amount of money could, you know, you guys can't meet. I don't worry about the bond. Just sign here. Self bond. I bought him a multimillion dollar house with nothing but cocaine money. Kept everything. Nobody lost anything. I'm the only guy that had to give up the assets. 30-something airplanes, 100-something houses. It's just too many things to read. remember. How much? All my cars, the dealerships. Fuck. I mean, the property I owned was, I think a buddy of mine, I was in prison when it sold, and they had a little sending off party.

How about that? I'm going to tear it down, put up high rises, and they went and posted champagne and a few of my car guys. Did you have to give up your bank accounts? I have to give up everything. Everything in the Switzerland? Switzerland. If I had a Lamborghini or a Chevrolet or a station wagon in a warehouse, I had, the deal that I signed with the feds was so one-sided, I didn't want to sign it. I didn't want to sign it because it was all one way. It was, if we catch you in one lie, the deal is off. Yeah. And my, and back in those days, um, you're obviously very well versed in the law. I don't know just to what detail, but back in those days, the law changed in 1988, 87 law and 86 law you got a 10 year sentence Johnny you did 18 months in prison right you can

parole out of the feds yeah there's no parole out there's no guidelines so you know what infinity was infinity meaning trillion zillion kilos five kilos or more hit the infinity recommended sentence 10 years 10 years yeah so I was indicted under the old law right so in a way jack did me a favor had I kept on working and been indicted under the new law, the new law 848 CCE starts at life. Yeah. It's an automatic life. Yeah, it's mandatory minimum. So you got popped before mandatory minimums.

Right. Even though I get popped in 88, but they couldn't prove anything current. I see. Because Jack didn't really know that I had an airplane over there. Right. He didn't know you were still working. Exactly. Listen, I will admit to one thing here in front of you.

The day I got popped, I had a thousand kilos in the island that I didn't lose those. The only load you ever lost. Yeah, but I never talked about it because that would give me Muleau. Yeah. Wow. So you had to basically, it was a whole asset forfeiture, but what about cooperation? Yes, I had to cooperate. My cooperation was not telling him about Jack.

Jack couldn't, you know, Jack couldn't keep his mouth shut. Yeah. You know, and Gordon is already home. everybody's home they cop deals so everybody in my indictment is home including uh detroit everywhere what about tito who yeah yo yeah yeah you had had um yeah you was really lucky yeah yo calls my house the day that i got i don't know a hundred agents in my home and my 18 year old wife girlfriend slash later on uh wife she's wonderful she picks up the phone and she goes Because Tito can't come to the phone.

There's a whole bunch of federal agents here. He's ankle-click. He disappeared. Yeah, you split. He disappeared. He disappeared. And then I found out through the grapevine that he got in trouble on something else. And, uh, but yeah, you split.

Yeah. So he never went down on that whole thing. Not with mine diamond, not with anything with to do with me. Okay. But what about cooperating on people outside of your crew? I mean, cooperating against your suppliers, the Bahamians in the Bahamas. And they didn't insist on it.

No, you know really what it seemed to me that they were really after? Johnny, I mean, I'll be damn if you do and damn if you don't. If I didn't have the money that I had, I don't think these guys would have bothered me. Because it wasn't, I mean, they already knew Pablo was, you know, Pablo.

Yeah, what are you going to say about Bob? Exactly. I mean, what could possibly add to that story, right? Yeah. So it was nothing really that I could really bring new stuff. So you didn't tell on anyone except yourself. Myself and I had to agree to everything the Jack had said. Yeah. You know,

which is, my indictment is 57 counts. It's this thick. Yeah. And if you read it, I wish I would have brought it. It says, you know, blah, blah,

Tito this, Tito's always there. Flip the pages, another 700. And they didn't use 1,000. They used my 700 base, because Jack knew that. I said, you know,

what are we carrying? I said, we're carrying 700. Why 700? What are not a figure? I said, because that's a figure that I used based on, the logic that I used, you know. Before that, we were flying,

we were flying for Luis. And when I get kidnapped, which I think, you know, I get kidnapped. And then when I get kidnapped and I need to pay off $800,000, I didn't have the $800,000, I go sell Gigi to Luis, the guy that I talked about earlier. Now, Luis was a major player.

He was a shaker and a mover. I was making a million dollars with Luis, flying cocaine. for Luis, it was 450, 500 kilos. And I didn't really care of what it was. Put it back there and I'm flying it and I'm getting a million dollars. I don't have to bring it to the state. My responsibility ended when I landed in the Bahamas.

And then I just come over here and cash out a million. That's how I end up meeting Pablo because I built that reputation. So you didn't have to give up Luis. You didn't have to, did Columbia find out? Pablo and they found out what happened to you? Yeah, of course. And then about the first week that I was in prison, maybe not even a week. I don't know the exact calendar date, but they sent me a private detective, Columbia,

and an American lawyer. American lawyer brought in the private detective. And they were in prison. They called me out. And I said, who are you? He said, I'm a lawyer, blah, blah, blah. And I ain't going to call you up. You know, I don't know who you are.

And then the other guy starts identifying themselves. we're, you know, representing interested party from down south and I said, like, tell me a little bit about him, what's his house look like or what about what's in the front door. I started asking some kind of questions, you know?

He had the right answers. The detective. Yeah. So now I know I'm talking to somebody that's real. And now they ask me, we want all of the indictments, we want the names or the, the ID so they can look up the court records of what I'm doing. We want to know the

agents, and we want to know everything that you're doing with the law. So I'm not doing anything. He says, well, we want to know everything. So I give them everything. I give them the name of the lawyers that I had at the time. And then is there anything that you need from us? So I said, yeah, I do have a little problem. So he said, what is it that you need from us?

I said, I have four little problems that need to be taken care of. He said, what are the problems? I said, Jack, TJ, Appie. and I don't remember the other guy's name. I need these little four problems taken care of. Now, I don't have to tell Pablo how to take care of these problems. So they asked me, where are they?

I said, Jack is probably in a camp playing golf somewhere. So they treat these rats, you know? And I said, but you guys have your sources? Find out where they're at. I said, I need these problems taken care of. So I go away. Meanwhile, all this is going on, I'm buying helicopter to escape prison.

Okay, okay. Hang on for a second. Hang on, because this doesn't make any sense to me. Go ahead. You've proffered everybody. Oh, no, no, this is before. This is while you're sitting in jail. If you remember, when they sent me the detective,

it was the first week of being in prison. Okay, so you're in the Miami-Dade federal holding downtown. Okay, got it. So, okay, understood. Cooperating came way at the end. Okay, so you're ready to have Jack and everybody that's Gordon, too? Did you give him Gordon's information? No, I didn't think Gordon at that point.

It was the first week of being in prison. I see. So you're going to have. these guys killed. You're going to have Medellin take care of them. It's an ugly word. Yeah. These are the guys that created the indictments. Yeah. I understood. You don't have to justify it. I just want people to be clear. Yeah, yeah. The guys that created the indictment, they were out there from the free world that had nothing to do with what we're doing. Those are the problems. Okay. And if those guys went away at the very, very beginning, when we first got indicted,

and I say, weak, as always with a bunch of guys, I held everybody together. I was the nucleus. You need a lawyer. I pay for your lawyer. You need money. Here's some money for your wife. Now, and we walked together. We hung out together. We sat around in a circle together.

You know, I held everybody tight. Nobody's cooperating. Right. Now I have a bond hearing. I've seen the bond hearing that this is a kangaroo court. I mean, they lied, outright lied. If I told you some of the things that they did, you wouldn't believe me. Outright lied on the stands where you swear.

Yeah. The witnesses. Yeah. Yeah, they were, there were agents that swore up and down and they were just lying. Yeah. I had proof and I was able to bring proof to the court where they were playing baseball with a guy and the guy that went to school with me and the agent said, we're going to lock his own and throw the goddamn key away.

And they come and they take one of my airplanes away from me before I even get arrested. So I'm able to prove all of that that I had knowledge. They still didn't give me bond. So then that's when I realized I better make another arrangement. Yeah. My philosophy was, I'm going to buy helicopter, I'm going to escape, leave, and then. Was that an option back then escaping from the Miami-Dade federal? No, I was in open ground like this.

Oh, wow. So you're going to chop her in? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you really thought that could work. Man, let me tell you, I made one mistake. It was a perfect, perfect plan. I was only using the chopper to jump over the fence. Okay, I hired the pilot.

I bought the chopper all from in prison. Okay, now he's coming over. I'm sending the pilot information. Don't get nervous. This is not a movie. Put the chopper down. I'm not jumping off a roof. Okay, I'm not going to jump in there.

They're not going to shoot at you because they don't know if I have a hostage of your family member. So it's okay. Now, the money I'm going to pay you if you break it down, maximum that you can get is that would be new law. It would be five years. So in that of the five years, you do maybe four. You go to a, you know, maybe not a camp, but the money I'm going to pay you

if you break it down annually, you're going to be well compensated. So I want you to think that you are going to get pop. So you're not scared. Right. All right. So having that mentality and have all this common, I put together a beautiful plan,

he's going to fly over, he flies over twice over the prison. Now, the mistake I made, I had room for one guy. One guy's name was John Cheney. John Chain was an actual hitter, a real professional killer. He hired out to the mob and this and that. And he was my weed buyer who became almost like a partner

because every ounce of pot that I brought in, he would buy. And I didn't have to question anything. It was wonderful. Had a contact with the Hells Angels. Remember those? Not the Hells Angels, the Outlaws. And they were my customers for the weed back in those days. And he had 57 priors, all violent, okay, murders.

and intimidating people, they dropped the case. So I said to John, John, I can't take everybody, but I could take you. What are you talking about, Tiaz? I said, I bought a chopper. He's going to come by at 3 o'clock and fly over and pick the spot. Are you shitting me? I said, no, I'm that serious. I don't care of stuff like this.

So he goes, are you really going to do it? I said, watch, be with me here. My chomper comes over. He sees that it's real. My chomper's picking the spot to pick me up and land, you know, because we have clearings. Now we've got gun powers, you know, but they're not going to shoot. They're going to shoot at me. So we're going to try to hide me from getting shot by the gun tower.

Chopper is not going to get shot. So now I do a lot of homework and I find out the Black Hawk DEA has a helicopter in Tammiami, which is maybe five minutes away from the prison where I was at. But it would take them about five, six, seven minutes to get up in the air. It's not like cranking up a car. You know, so what I, the plan that I came up with was you're going to land. the chopper. I'm going to jump in there. We're going to go and put the chopper in a lake. With the sink it. So while everybody's looking for a chopper, chopper's in a lake. I told him to bring a little

oxygen bottle because I don't know how long it's going to take for the blades to stop spinning. Come on. I have a car waiting for me. I now have an airplane in the same airport DA is going to come out of Tamiami. I'm going to jump on that airplane fly down to. They're looking for me in an helicopter. I'm going to fly down to Haiti where my dad's. old sugar mill had a landing strip that was grass. And you guys still own that property? No, I didn't own the property, but the property was close. Okay.

Shut it down. So nobody there. But the people that control that whole area was very good friends. Yeah. Very, very good brother. You know, I grew up with him when I was 18 years old, they were in Haiti. So I sent word to him. I need help.

I need fuel. And I need you to hide the plane. I need you to hide me. So I got clearance on all of that. So we put the plan together. And how are you able to communicate all that from jail? different sources. I didn't trust too many people. I trusted

my girlfriend, wife. Yeah. And she was brilliant. And then there's a lawyer, too, that I did trust. Okay. And I did trust. I had them for a long time. And then where were we going to go after you were hiding out in Haiti? What was the final plan? The final plan was two, three, four days later,

a week later. I didn't have a set date on that. Let the heat calm down and then fly to the jungles in Columbia and the lab. That's where I felt safe. I felt safe in the jungles. I don't even feel safe in the city. That's where Pablo was going to go before he got out, before he got caught. He was going to go hide with the guerrillas. Yeah, that's where I were going to go. Okay. That was full proof.

I made the mistake. I told John Cheney. John Cheney had flipped already. A week, man, a guy flips right away. I don't know this. He calls the prosecutor and he says, oh, and he ordered to hit on the judge on two, three, four agents. So when I said to Pablo, I got these problems, Jack, he didn't use those names. He told him I ordered a head on the judge that denied my bond. So now he's ordering a hit on the federal judge. Yeah, of course. You know what happened?

Solitary confinement, two years. Oh, my God. While you were waiting to get adjudicated. I never saw anybody anymore. I didn't see the compound for over two years. I went to solitary. No roommate, no nobody in there with me. Right.

You don't order a hit on. a federal judge. You don't take that shit lightly. You know, and that's on. But you were able to prove eventually that that was a lie. Okay. It was a lie. You know, it was an outright lie, you know, and how could I prove?

They wanted to believe it. The federal government wanted to believe it. Yeah. Because then they could put you away forever. Yeah. So you were eventually able to show they dropped, did they try to charge you with that stuff? Do they try to charge you with the experience?

Well, that's a very good point because in my sentences, which lasted like four or five hours. It was crazy. I can't go into all that because it was so long. But I will tell you what my lawyer said to the judge. He was kept in solitary in two years, whatever it was. He said, Your Honor, he was never proven to have been true. They never formally charged my client.

He said, and then he showed where cruel and unusual punishment had been awarded in the past three days to one. because of cruel and unusual punishment. You know what they would do to me, Tony? I think the law at the time said 90 days and then they reopened the investigation. They would take me out of solitary confinement, walk me past that door, turn me around,

say, oh, under investigation again, put me right back on a goddamn hole. Another 90 days. Another 90 days. I think it was, I'm going to step out there and just guess at it. I think it might have been with this other guy that was the precedent

that went to a prison. which is the black guy. Noriega. Noriega. No, no, no, no. I was in prison with Noriega, by the way. I was in the same solitary confinement with him in the building with Noriega. No, no, the president, the US president.

I just, I drew a... A US president was in the... Yeah. No, no. No, no. No, no. Recently, whatever, before Biden and all that, oh my God, the black gentleman...

Barack Obama? Barack Obama changed the law. the law. He made it where after three or four times, if you can't have enough proof to charge the guy, you got to turn them loose. You have to let him out of solitaire. Yeah, because it was just unfair, man. Yeah, of course. They would take you. Of course. And I'll be honest with you. You know, if I fear anything from the federal government, it's just how powerful how they get twist and spin things. And you'd rather just go ahead and put me in front of firing for what shoot me, man. It's a lot more humane. Yeah, totally. You know, and they have that.

kind of power. Yeah, and nowadays, even if you escaped, if they caught you years later and extradited you, you'd be sitting how Chapo is in Colorado. You never see the sunlight again. That's right. That's right. Okay, so after a couple of years, you finally proffer, you go through the system. Well, what happens is John Cheney, who I haven't seen in a couple years, they give me a shower every three days, okay? They put me in a cage. And then, you know, cold is hell in there, by the way. And you're locked in the cage. So they take the handcuffs off when you're inside the cage. And now I'm in there, I'm showering.

I tell the guard, he's right over there. Hey, man, I'm ready to go back to myself. You can't walk around without handcuffs in the back. So the guy goes, yeah, I'll get to you when I get to you. So now he's reading some playboy book or whatever. I'm sitting there freezing my ass off and I see John walking by. On the handcuff. And I yell, John, what are you doing in here?

And he goes, what are you doing in here? So he said, he goes, I've been free. I've been home. I said, what are you doing here? He goes, I got re-entited on something else. He got trouble for something else. Nothing to do with me. So I said, what's going on?

He goes, what's going on? I'm home. Everybody's on. They're going to give you life. They're going to give me life. He goes, how do you know that? And we're screaming at each other. And then he's telling me to shut up that I can't talk to him.

I said, that's my co-defendant. I don't tell me. So he says, I talked to the prosecutor. He told me he's giving you life. So I used to have the warden of the place once a week, visit me, and look through a little glass and tell me, do the right thing. I'm the only guy that's got the key.

And I'd act really stupid, and I'd say, Warren, what's the right thing? I know what the right thing is. Cooperate. So give them all your assets, give them your money, stop fighting, cooperate with the feds. I'm the only guy who's got the key. So I tell the guard, I want to talk to him.

He goes, you can't talk to anybody. The guard says, you can't talk. Take him away. I say, listen, man, next Wednesday's there, whatever it is, that the, that warden comes by and he asks me and he tells me to do the right thing. I want to tell him I wanted to do the right thing and you get me from doing the right thing. He said, hang on a second.

He makes a phone call. He said, put them both in the yard by a cage where I had wire in between us, but we could talk. And then I got an earful. This guy's home. This guy cooperated. He just blew up and told me everything. Game's over. That I was not getting from my lawyers.

My lawyers said, ah, we can beat this week. Give me another $20,000. That kind of stuff. So at this point, I fired all those lawyers, and I hired a guy by the name of Fred Short, who was the head of the United States of America, organized crime task force. It was the head of that. Formerly, yeah. Yeah, well, 10, 15 years, it was with the Fed.

I didn't want to hire him before when he went private because I thought he was too close to the Fed. And I don't know if he was going to really have my best interest at heart. But at this point, I said, I got nothing else to lose it, but he's home. You know, so I said, yeah. So he was the one that was able to spin, you know, I had four people that died. You give you an idea. They said I murdered those four people. Who were they?

One was a pilot, you know, plane crash. Two were my boat guys. Boat sank out in the middle of the ocean. One body was found eaten by sharks. It's actually on record in the Bahamas where the body was found. The boat was gone, hit a wave. And another one got shot in their head, but nothing. And I know who shot him.

And I mean, the Fed don't give a damn about that. The state that I told the guy, because the guy was a guy that I didn't, you know, was really a bad person. He shot out of jealousy. He shot one of my guys, two terms in Vietnam. So I could explain everything, but they don't want to hear that.

Under the new law, those four people, because they were working for me, I would be charged with murder under the new law. Because I put them on the boat, I put them on the airplane, I put them in the situation. that was dangerous. So I'm held responsible. Did any of the American Airlines pilots or the private, you know, pilots that you hired that used to be commercial pilots? Did they, any of them get indicted?

Or were they just off in the wind? One or two got indicted and they, they were able to beat it. They were able to beat it. Wow. No ties. Right, right. But then. Jack saying that he flew this, right? I don't fly anything. You know, that's why I said that if those four people were not involved and we would have held together, we would have. We would have beat this thing. This is all hearsay. It was documented with a thing called Paris Records. United States has got this thing that if you left United States 20 years ago, it's somewhere is on a computer. Yeah. So they got me flying out of the country for an hour, flying out of the country for five hours, flying. And so they, this is where the two years came to play.

They put all these little dots and T's and they put the puzzle together. And then they went to guys, like, for example, that fuel my airplane. And they go, you got a, you know, you got a house. You want to lose your house. You want to lose your wife. We know we're not asking you to lie, but we know that Tito did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We just need your statement saying, yeah, that's, he did do that. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so.

Those guys got past it. They never even got indicted. But so you hand over, like, I don't know, what was the net worth that you handed over to them? I don't know. What's 32 airplanes, tons of boats, speed boats, pleasure crowds. Each boat is worth $4, $5 million, $2, $3 million. Did you give over cash, too? Yeah, I gave the cash that I had.

Gordon had $5 million. I don't know what he did with that. You know, I'm in prison in solitary confinement working this deal. So I don't have access to. The only access I have at this point is my lawyer that I'm telling him this. And he's telling me, you make one slip. You're going to get life. And so I had to be honest with people say, oh, come on, you must have hidden something.

You don't understand. I had to cooperate against me. Yeah. The risk was too big. I have enough confidence in me to make money, but I can't make money in a 9 by 12. Yeah. You know what I was getting?

One phone call 10 minutes a month. Right. And then when they want to play head games with you, they would say, hey, John, nobody home. Try next month. Boom. Thing up the phone. Yeah.

So now you don't talk to anybody. So what was your deal? My deal. What was your sentencing? My sentence was a split sentence, as I said. I got, I got, I did. four, two, and then I got on parole. I was put in a special division that was a high-level division, which was normally, let's say that you would have a probation officer, that probation officer

might have 40 people, you know, so his workload would be, she's maybe once a month or whatever. I had a guy that saw me every other day. Okay, so people don't, I don't get it. What was your prison sentence? I didn't get, I got time served. Oh, my God. Yeah. What a sweet deal. Yeah, well, it wasn't so sweet. I did two, three years in solitary confinement. I had to give up, you know what the IRS told me? 99 cents of your family money, one penny of your money, we're keeping the dollar.

I bought one of my mistresses, girlfriend, whatever you want to call her, I bought her a house, paid off the house. He had nothing to do with anything. You're a girlfriend, period, right? I give her a house. Jack said he bought this one a house, he bought this one a car. Those houses are going. Wow.

hundreds of millions it sounds like wow if you yeah yeah absolutely and they wanted my mom's house my mom's house was bought by my father before i was even a little kid right right but they weren't able to get that no i told them i i said where you had a conversation at your mom's house and so-and-so said that he overheard you having and planning a trip in the mom's house that's enough reason because under the word conspiracy conspiracy becomes an entity and anything that furthers the conspiracy and moves it forward becomes part of it. So the house becomes part. I had not been in the house, I could not, so you know what I told the government? I had a conversation in the Concord, man. When are we going to cease the Concord? This is a joke. I mean, I got really bitter at time. I had an ID bracelet. My mom and

dad gave me when I was like 10, 12 years old. My dad was one of these old Spaniard, you know, I'm not going to say macho thing, but real man don't wear jewelry. For sure. You know, watch you're wearing a watch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and then I want one, you know, we're arguing. And my mom and dad had like Romeo and Julia type romance. They never argued. They argued this time.

My uncle got involved and he goes, let the kid have it. What's the big deal? You know, so I got it. Well, they wanted my, yeah, that's how. So when you say, what a sweet deal, yes. A sweet deal is because I could have been doing life. I mean, so many people are doing life for so much. less weight. How about I know a guy back in those days in Detroit, and that made press one

kilo, and they gave them life. Yeah, exactly. One kilo first time offender. Yeah. The times are different. It'd be like me telling you, I still got friends of mine doing time from marijuana. Yeah. Well, how do you think they feel about that? Totally. When you can go up to a vending machine and buy the damn thing. I know. But I got 20 in, I'm still in. Right. Or I could get, you know, I could look the other way by California civil, but the feds can come in and give me 10, you years so where are we out with all this stuff of course you know and and the lack of knowledge or people are quick to say oh I said a big fight gave up his own mom but you didn't but your paperwork is good so you doesn't you are not a rat you never went out ratting on other people absolutely I could

walk my one of the best way I could describe that I'm in Pablo Escobar's book yeah if I was a ride the address on that book would be some cemetery yeah right right so so you so you know you That's my big spokesman. And when you got out, Pablo, I mean, when you got out, Pablo hadn't yet been killed. Did you hear anything back from Medellín ever after you got out? I don't remember really right now when I know he was killed in 92 or 90 something. He was killed at the end of 93. Yeah, well, yeah.

But I didn't really follow that. I had too many problems going on in my world. But you never heard back like a thank you or anything like that? I talked to Robert when he was doing that book. Robert, his brother. Yeah, brother, his brother. He called me up and then we talked. And he goes, would you mind if I put you?

They were asking me about what's it like in United States. Right. You know, they wanted like an American, you know, the token type guy. And I said, yeah, well, before I did that, I'd call my sons. And I said to my two boys, listen, my mom told me when they offered me a book deal and movie and all that kind of stuff. My mom said, I think you brought enough shame to the family? Right. You want to keep doing this.

Yeah. They brought a book about your father, too, a great book by the government. What is your book going to say, my son? I said, I don't know what you're talking about. Mom, no book. You know, so that buried that. Yeah, yeah. And then the kids got older. Mom passed away. Um, there's no denying who I am. No. You know, it's, it's kind of unfair, you know, John. Um, they judge me by a part of my life. Right. I'm like 70 years old, right here. I did a lot of other stuff, man. For sure. Why don't we talk about some of the other crap that I did? You know, I guess it's not interesting.

So they're always judging me by that. And, you know, you know, and, you know, you know, they hold you hostage to that. And, you know, the only thing I could say is we live in a great country of second chances. Your parents, my grandparents, they all came here looking for a second chance at life. Whether they were prosecuted or not, I don't want to sound nostalgic or like that guy. But the truth is, all right, let's move on. Except what I did for what I did wrong or right. It was a choice that I made, a bad choice.

But I paid dearly for that choice. You know, I got indicted again in New York, right? When I mentioned the money thing, the judge said to me, well, you're standing in front of me. You know, you obviously didn't learn your lesson. I couldn't tell the judge that your own government people are forcing me to lie. And that's why I'm here for upholding the truth. And we'll talk about that on the bonus episode. We got to get out of here.

But, wow, Tito, T, T, TJ, that was epic. I'm honored to sit down with you. Oh, my. And I just want everybody to know that you are, well, we're not going to plug the product. You have come out and just like any serial entrepreneur, you have once again started to thrive in legal business. Yes, I am. And everybody should go listen to cocaine air, this podcast series that goes into a much greater detail about how you got into the business. Antiquotes that will just blow your mind.

Yeah. And even, for example, if you don't mind, you get edit this, if you want, whatever. Rachel misunderstood. She did a pretty good job with me. I feel comfortable with her. Misunderstood. That's what the podcast is called. Misunderstood.

Yeah. It's her podcast. And we did like one hour episode. Yeah. And she was very nice. And you're like, well, Jonathan is my buddy. Yeah. You know, Jonathan is my buddy.

And he's like my seen-eye dog. Okay. Yeah. So go check out cocaine air. That's all an audio podcast. So it's on Spotify. it's on iTunes um and we're going to switch over now to the patreon patreon.com slash the connect show to hang out with you a little more because you're like we don't want you to leave i've had so much

fun thank you very much um an epic life in an epic era yeah that just will never be repeated in history and i'm honored that you sat down with me and i know this is going to get turned into a big show and uh you're a young man you're running around and you're killing it so I'm 17 still. Yeah, exactly. And that's the kind of philosophy that people should like take a piece of that and apply it to your own life. Like your faith and your will and your attitude is what allowed you to thrive illegally

and now legally. You know, when I was in prison, I lectured and I've gone to a few schools, including Miami University. And I don't want to get paid for that kind of stuff at all, you know. And if I could have some kind of little impact, I tell people, you know, don't quit, you know. And set realistic. goals. Don't say that you're going to be an astronaut or something. There's nothing wrong with being a landscaper guy. Yeah. You know? So a set realistic goals and my God, if you put the same

effort you put into selling a bag of weed, getting yourself a $200 car, putting in a street corner, putting a for a sales sign. I get playing the wheels in the window. It makes a big deal. Yeah. You'll set up for three or four. You can keep that money. That's right. You know, and it feels better than any drug money. I can tell you that. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. This podcast money feels better than any drug money ever made. You don't have to be doing this all the time or worried about what's going to happen tomorrow. You could go to sleep at night knowing you're going to wake up in your own bed and nobody's going to be beating your door down.

But you don't have 13 strippers and a bunch of cocaine on your chest. That's the only... There's a lot to be said for that. There's a lot to be said for that. Do not thumb your nose at that, my friend. I'm in a... The feds... I don't know if you're going to hear about, but I've got to tell you, the feds, when I come out,

one of my strict probation things, you're going to take a drug. class. Why drug class? Everybody knows I don't do drugs. They put me in a drug class, right? So I'm sitting in a drug class with 13, 14 people, 20 people, I don't know, any kind of circle. And there's a psychiatrist and psychologist over there in a chair. He's got pat and everything. And so all we hear, she goes, hi, my name is Betty. My drug of choice is alcohol. I started drinking when I was 11. You know, I'm like, oh, shit. Don't, you know, what am I going to say when it gets to me, you know? And hi, my name is Bobby. And they're all like, Hi, my name, my drug of choice is this and that.

And I'm sitting here going, what am I going to say? And I don't even belong here. And they have no idea who you are? None. So, not to me. So I said, hi, my name is Tito. I don't have a drug of choice, but I do have a weakness from the $100 bill. I said, and I made a lot of money out of a lot of the people that are sitting around here.

I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a liar. I'm not a hypocrite. I see you over there, a drug of choice. I said, you need to face your own demons because after you finish drinking, your problems are still going to be there. So stop hiding behind a drug. Or are you over there, the bank robber that you said that you robbed the bank because you have, no, you're just lacy.

You need to get a real job. I said, now, let me tell you, my part, I've been with the beautifulest woman in this world. I've driven the nicest cars in this world. I've had, I don't know, too many airplanes that even bring up. I said, make tons of money. So I'm going to ask you something. what part of all of that you want me to feel bad about. That's all I got to say.

And then the guy goes, I never forget what he said, put his pan down. He goes, wow, that was brutally honest. He asked me to come back out doors and to talk to the class. Tito Dominguez, go check out cocaine air and switch over to the Patreon for a little more chit-chat. Thank you so much, my friend. I'm honored. Thank you so much. My honor is mine for you to have me.

Dale, thank you guys. We'll see you over to Patreon. on patreon.com slash the connect show with Tito Dominguez. Thank you very much.