The Eric Metaxas Show - Jorge Valdes

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Jorge Valdes relates an over-the-top personal story of his life as a cocaine drug lord and how he eventually left this brutal world of crime; Jorge also shares stories of his family's experience with Socialism in Cuba. (Warning: Some content may be disturbing.)

I'm the announcer and I've known Eric since he was a big nobody. In fact, I'm one of the people he stepped on as he climbed the ladder of success. And now my former friend, Eric Mataxis. Hey, folks, welcome to the program. This is the Eric Mataxis show. I just happened to be Eric Mataxis. I consider that an amazing coincidence. Ignore what Todd Wilkerson just said always because he's just, he's the best we could get on short notice in

terms of, you know, announcers. He's a friend. I thought I'd help him out. But usually my guests make up for our lack in other ways. Today, I've got a humdinger, folks. I'm speaking to the author of a book. The book is called Narco Mindset. And the subtitle is The Life Principles that a Cocaine Drug Lord learned on his journey to find meaning in his life. the former cocaine drug lord is my guest, Jorge Valdez. Welcome. Thank you, Eric. It's really a pleasure to be in the show with you. It's my pleasure to have you. You have an amazing story, and one of the things I want to do on this program is I want to get stories like yours out, because people do not know how lives, how dramatically lives can be changed by the God who loves us.

And I say this particularly for people maybe who don't believe in God or don't know. Listen to this story, folks. Listen to these stories because it gives you a different perspective. So Jorge, the bottom line, I guess, is that at age 21, which is some years ago, you were a drug lord and a millionaire playboy. So obviously, you are not that now. Your life has changed dramatically. But what I like to do is go to the beginning of how you got. into that lifestyle. You were working with the Medellin cartel, am I right? Yeah, I was part of the group

that was the original group that eventually became the Medellin cartel. And, you know, Eric, on the ground level. Yeah. That's where the money is. Yeah. And it's amazing because when I wrote the book, Mindset, I did not realize what was going to be happening six, seven, eight months as it is today. You know, I look at all this thing that's going on. And it's all about mindset, right? I tell people it's not how you look at the world. Through what lens do you see the world? And, you know, I came from Cuba, a very religious mom, didn't want her son to grow up in a communist country.

At the age of 10, we're very wealthy. My parents were among the 10 wealthiest people in Cuba. Came to Miami, my mother gets left behind, and all of a sudden I'm 10, and 11 of us are sleeping in a one-bedroom, 750-square-feet apartment in Little Havana. my first decision that I make is God ain't real. My mom is crazy because we were in school listening to Fidel, right?

See, people talk about social. Let me get this straight again. You were born where? I was born in Havana, Cuba. So you were born there. So you experienced what it is to go from being wealthy to communism. You with your own eyes, you saw this. Exactly.

That's why I tell people now. If you think socialism is good, just go try Cuba for a little while. And then you can see because my, just imagine, my father, here's a 40-year-old man, extremely wealthy, multimillionaire in the 60s, in the 50s in Cuba. And my mother, you know, my mother, her father was like the second incumbent to George Washington in Cuba. So here you got my mother and my father, extremely wealthy people. All of a sudden, my mother decides, I'm leaving. I don't care if we leave everything behind.

I don't care if we're going to go to the United States. And a girl, a lady that was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, ends up working, picking tomatoes in the field. All because she refused her children to grow up in a communist country. See, we were in school, and we would come home. I'm just a little kid. So I'm coming home and say, hey, we're learning this in school. Then my mother would say, that's BS.

That's not the way it is. God is real. God is the center of a home. And communists are forced. full of crap. Now, Fidel was genius. What did he do? When you were 12, he would take you away from your family. So let's say you lived in New Jersey. He will send you to live with a family in California. And then he would take the kid from California to live with a family in Chicago. Why? Because when I came home from school and I told my mom what they taught me about communism,

my mother could correct me. But if I went to someone else's house and they tried to correct me, and I went back and told the teacher, hey, the people I'm living with said, communist is full of crap, they get automatic 10 years in jail. So that's how Fidel brainwashed people. When my mother said, I'll leave with the clothes on my back to a country where she spoke perfect English, my father did not, and I don't care because my children will not grow up in this communist ideology. My children will grow up in a country where they have freedom to be what God created

them to be and to worship God freely. and she was willing to sacrifice and sacrificed at all to the point that at the airport so my father originally did not want to leave because my father did not think communism was going to affect him the way it did so but my mother from day one no she would have nothing with it so she filed the papers because you had to file to leave

but because we were very wealthy we didn't leave to 1966 even though we filed in 62 so my father said no I don't want to go but eventually decided but at the airport they leave my mother behind they said they made a mistake and she couldn't leave. I think it was a political reason. But my mother grabbed my hand, I'm 10.

My brother's 9. My sister's 5 and says, George, take your brother and sister to Miami. I'll see you one day. Now, think about this. I didn't think I would ever see my mother again. I'm 10 years old. I have no idea.

My world drastically changed it. My mother loved their children so much. She was willing to let them go by themselves to a foreign country like many Cuban parents did with the Operation Peter Pan and ended up becoming very, successful in America because she would have nothing to do with it. So I laugh when I hear all of this liberal politicians talk about socialism and companies. I'm like, you know, when I was young in college,

we all wanted to be a socialist. Right. Karl Marx is beautiful writing. The reality is it's a failed system. It takes away initiative creativity. And at the end, all it does is control people. So, well, listen, I got to say, you know, Jorge, you and I have at least somewhat similar backgrounds. I mean, my mother grew up in East Germany and my father grew up in Greece, they have the civil war with the communists. They taught me to despise communism, to understand this is evil. It's not just that it doesn't work. It is evil. It crushes people.

It brainwashes people. So to see this happening in America today, in America today on any level is a staggering thing to me. And I speak about it any opportunity I can. I didn't think we would go there. But I'm glad as you prepare us to tell us how you became. a major drug lord, you tell us that you did have this experience, but your mother had the wisdom to say, I mean, how painful it must be for a mother, but to say to her kids, get out, get out if you have the opportunity, and I will stay behind. So I have to ask you, did you see your mother again?

Yeah, eventually by God's grace, she came nine months later, and she had cancer, but God healed her. And the interesting thing was, yeah, the pain for her must have been enormous, three little kids, sending him on an airplane by themselves, but it was less painful than the thought of them growing up in a communist regime. So we came to Miami, and I was mad at God. I thought, you know, the first thing, like everything that goes on, right, there's no God because things go bad and God doesn't exist. How can God let bad things happen to good people?

Well, so we come, but my father had tremendous morals. So, I mean, to the point that my father, Eric, was, we were very poor. we basically all we had was two eggs in the morning with this powder Vietnam milk till today I can't even do milk because it didn't mix and my fight and that's what we would have for dinner till dinner time and I remember a week after I'm in school and I tell my dad hey dad a friend of mine uh has lunch and he just came six months before us and my dad was you know the old generation then he speak very very much he just nods his head and I said uh he told me that he gets food stamps that and my dad just nods his head and I said do you know about that dad he said yes

said why don't we get food stamped dad and he says because son that's for poor people and I'm like man I'm so poor I haven't gotten too poor yet I got to work my way up to poverty he looked at me that day Eric this was this was literally 56 you 54 years ago put his finger on my chest and his son you get up early in the morning and help figure how to feed your family because people that take money from the government are poor but they will remain people for forever. And boy, it was just horrific. I got to say, what a lesson. We're going to go to a break, but there's so much here, Jorge, I just want to say thank you for sharing all this stuff. We're going to be right back.

The book, folks, it's called Narco Mindset. My guest is Jorge Valdez. We'll be right back. who is the author of a book called Narco Mindset. He was a millionaire drug lord, started at the bottom with the Medellin cartel. Unbelievable story, and he's telling it to us right now. Jorge, so right now you're telling us about, okay, you grew up very wealthy in Havana. The Cuban, I'm sorry, the Fidel Castro Communist Revolution comes. you go into dirt poverty. Your parents drag you to America, which is itself a miracle to escape.

And you go back into poverty in Miami. And, of course, you're angry. You say God doesn't exist because look how we're suffering. So what happens at this point in your life? But very important, my dad had tremendous morals. My dad taught us integrity. My dad taught us that a man, all he has in life is his word. So I work very, very hard.

And I was later focused. I had this vision that I would graduate from college at 20. I would go to law school by 23. I would become a millionaire by 30. At the age of 17, I became the youngest employee in the Federal Reserve Bank in Miami. And they paid for me to go to the University of Miami. I worked full-time and went to school full-time. By the age of 20, when I graduate an accounting professor,

asked me, George, do you want to come and work for us? He did not know how to speak Spanish, and he was a partner of Price and Waterhouse in Michigan. and he said, I'll give you secretary office everything that I ever dreamed of one day being in business for myself. I said, sure. So anyway, I go to work for him and he says, he gives me this little client and it's a little grocery store. I mean, literally 25 feet, 20 feet wide by maybe 40 feet long, one of those little grocery stores in Miami. And the first day I get there, Eric, I see this bag with $100,000. Now, this is 1976. I'm 20 years old. And I said, $100,000. Now, I was such a nerd.

I was such innocent that, number one, I had never drank alcohol in my life, never done drugs in my life. All I did was study and work, study and work, graduate at the top of my class. And so I wrote it off like nothing, you know, I didn't imagine anything. Next week I come, $75,000. Now I start wondering, like, what's going on? There's no way this grocery store can produce all this money. The third week I come, and there's another $120,000,000. I called him.

I said, let me show you a little accounting formula. you buy something for a dollar, you sell it for $3, you got $2 profit. That means so far I've deposited $300,000. That means that you must have spent $100,000 in merchandise, except you only bought about $800. Something don't match. They said to me, they laugh. He says, oh, we're not in the grocery business, George, we're drug dealers.

Now imagine how I felt at that moment when all of a sudden I'm working for drug dealers, a guy that would go to a party, smell marijuana, and leave. I told my girlfriend, oh, I work for the further search bank. I can't mess with my future. I didn't even have a traffic ticket. But immediately I said to myself, well, I'm an accountant. You know, as long as I don't break the law, there was no money laundering laws at that time. The first money laundering laws were created to come after us.

So I crossed the line that I never said I would cross. And that's what we do in life, right? We cross the lines a little bit. And then before we know, we're just too far out. So they said, look, all we need, we know. that you know how to open foreign bank accounts, I said, yeah, I work for the federal government. And he said, all we need is, can you open foreign bank accounts for us?

I said, sure, how much? And I had no idea. I knew because we had done an audit of this guy that had a scam going on, and we know that you could open a foreign account and granted me for $750. So I said, $10,000. Now, $10,000 is a fortune. You know, I had a huge salary, and I was making, I think,

$4 an hour, you know? And they're like, okay, open three for us. and there my life just changed. I opened those three from them. In other words, you made a decision, even though it sounds like you were raised, as you said, very morally, and you were very upstanding in every way,

but suddenly you saw easy money and you looked the other way about what's happening with the money. No, exactly. And the thing about it is, now we go back to 76 when cocaine was not even the radar. So immediately they start telling me like everything we do,

Oh, this is only for the rich and famous. This doesn't go to poor people. Well, one thing led to the other, Eric, and I detailed in the book. And within six months, I became U.S. head of all operations for that group that went on to become the managing drug cartel. And within a year, I was making a million dollars a month by the age of 21. I had mansions. I had a million dollars with the cars. I dated the most beautiful women in America.

And I had unbelievable power, but I was miserable. There was something inside of me. Everybody wanted to be George about this. I want to be anybody but me. And I look back after I wrote my first book originally 20 years ago, coming clean, after I wrote that, and then Narcomyce, I come to think, I had a death wish. I was so miserable because in life, society tells us that once you have X, you're going to be happy. We all come with a void inside of us, right?

And we know that only Christ can fill the void, but society will tell you, women will do it. Cars mention. We abandoned family. We abandon our children. We abandon our morals in search of that. 90% of us never reach it. I reach it. You get there and you realize,

then it's not here. So if it's not here, what do we do now? Before we go to this, I want to kind of pause for a second. You're talking about being in the middle of a world that most of us have only seen in movies. And in many ways, it's glamorous, and in many ways it's very frightening.

Obviously, there's tremendous violence. Did you see that violence? Did you fear for your life? Because, you know, if you're at the top of the heap, somebody wants what you have. Did you see that? How did you deal with that? You know, and that's where I'll get to that part with it. When we first started, there was no violence. When we first started, they were gentlemen. And that's how you get tangled in, right? Because there was no violence. Like I said, our clients was Hollywood.

Our clients were the rich and famous. And I walked around Miami like anything. We were not even on the DA radar. But then I crashed. I ended up a million dollars a month was not enough. I work out of deal with the government of Bolivia and where we're going to be making $7 million three times a month in 1978.

And I got on an airplane. And I'm giving you the cliff notes of it, right? I get on an airplane in Bolivia. I work out of deal with them. But I get on an airplane and we crashed on the way to the United States. My godfather, who founded the cartel, Manning God, says, didn't want me to go to Belize. Look, those people are animals.

Those people will cut you into pieces. But you know, you get to a point in life where you think that you're God. You know, I see that with the celebrities. I see that with a lot of, I see that with a lot of wealthy politicians. Power is the most heinous of all drugs. And I thought, Eric, nothing could happen to me. When my Godfather said to me, how dare you get on the airplane? Don't you realize all our operations are in your hand?

And I'm like, I don't worry about it. Nothing can happen to me. Well, we crashed over the jungle of Panama, and I was arrested. And when I got there, the Attorney General came, and I said to the Attorney General, look, I don't want to waste your time or my time. How much to buy the cocaine and how much to get out? He looked at me and said, Noriega sold the cocaine, $250,000 for you to get out. So I said, no problem.

We had contingency plans, right? So I had a number that people would know that if someone called that number with a certain code, they knew how to respond with. We had $2 million readily cash to mobilize an airplanes within five minutes anywhere in the world. So Noriega, at that time, he got involved in the drugs with you. You happened to crash in the right place. Oh, no real, let's say, Noriega was more crooked than anyone you ever imagine. Noriega worked for the CIA and worked for the cartel.

So we ended up, the attorney general gets the money. He said, look, I have a ranger. We're going to take you to the city of Panama. They're going to rough you up a little bit and make you look like we really care. And then you're leaving for the United States. and I said, no, I want to go to Costa Rica. See, I had just spent a million dollars getting the president of Costa Rica elected the year before. So I said, okay, there's no problem.

Well, we get taken to the city of Panama, and I tell the two pilots, listen, they're going to rough us up a little bit. Don't worry about it. We'll be home tonight. Well, they bring us into this room. It looked like a conference room empty, just four chairs up against the wall. And they bring this kid probably about 5-5, 5, 4, maybe 100 pounds, naked, handcuffed. after his feet of hand. When the pilots saw that, they cracked. They said, look, not only are we really drug dealer, George Valdez, just bribed the Attorney General. Well, they took us in a dungeon for the

next 28 days I was tortured. And, you know, and I tell people, you think that prison tortures all of that changes you? No. I brought to, I was brought to the United States, and in the United States, I was charged with heading the largest drug conspiracy in the history of America in 1979, and I had just turned 23 years old. I was given the highest bond ever in America, well, started at $7 million and the $2 million in 1979. A guy that didn't have a traffic ticket, a young kid. I had the best attorneys in the world. I had Alan Dershowitz, Marty Weinberg, and I just didn't care. I felt like, you know, I was angry at the world.

I was angry at everything. There was no meaning. I couldn't believe why I treated women bad when I adore my mother. And I went to prison and prison to me. was like a camp. I had most of the people live there, work for me, for stolen the work for me. I had a blast. That's when you were in America you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah.

We're going to go to a break. Hang on a second. Jorge, folks, I'm talking to Jorge Valdez. The book is narco mindset. Don't go away. Hey, folks, Eric Mattaxas here. The Trump campaign has a special offer just for you. The president really wants to give you a sign,

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emergency food relief banner. How many children can you save? Go to metaxis talk.com. Folks, I hope you're not just tuning in because the first part of this story is unbelievable. Jorge Valdez is my guest. The book is Narco Mindset. Jorge, so you talk about you crash land in Panama. Now, it sounds like they double crossed you, okay? And they put you in prison. They torture you. eventually you make your way to the United States where you go to prison. And that prison, of course, is nothing compared to what you've been through. And it sounds like I think you just said, you're running the prison at this point. Sure.

I was running the prison. I was 23 years old. I was still making millions of dollars a month. Now, I think about a million dollars a month in 1976. It's a lot of money today. It was a lot of money back then. But, you know, I got out of prison, Eric. And my mindset was, I'm going to get even.

You know, they kidnapped me from Panama. I didn't commit no crime in the United States. Why am I going to jail? But the world starts to change. And something drastically happened. My mother finds out that I was a drug dealer. She didn't know before. She thought I was a businessman because I had many businesses.

And she starts telling me, son, what you're doing doesn't please God. Son, what you're doing doesn't please God. But you know, my mother is the perfect example of what I consider tough love. My mother never waved, letting me know that I was doing it. wrong that God was not pleased with what I was doing, but then she would say, what do you want for dinner today? She would let me know, number one, she never took a dollar from me, refused. I mean, I had, I want to call them a sleazy girl living in a million-dollar mansion, and my mom and dad lived in the same $40,000 house they bought from Cuba, and they were not,

they drove the same car that they bought with their own money. They refused to take anything from me, but they also refused to abandon me as their son. And that is critical. That is critical, because my mother taught me through north. So even though I went southeast and west, I knew what to come back to. So I come out of prison and I go back, same power, but then the world starts to change. Then I start seeing the killings and I start seeing crack coming and hurting kids. And one day I said, you know, I've had enough. And I walked away. And when I walked away, my pain was so much that I thought I had literally less than a month to live. You see, we really didn't have a very good retirement program in the cartel.

And the thing they couldn't deal with is the unknown, right? Why is George walking away? He's making a million dollars. He doesn't even see drugs anymore. The guy is so removed from everything, but I just couldn't take it. I knew that it was wrong. That's kind of an amazing thing, Jorge. I mean, you know, you don't normally hear stories like that,

that somebody is making millions of dollars in a criminal organization, and that you decide to walk away. I mean, that, that's a big deal. Did you, were you thinking about God at that time, or was it just that you were unhappy? What was in your mind that you would walk away? I mean, it's a shocking concept. Right, and it was because literally, Eric,

all I did was say send a plane, don't send the airplane, and pay the big name people that we had on our payroll. I was just so, I was dying inside. I was dying and I knew some deep down, inside that what I was doing was wrong, that it was not right. It was not what my mother raised me to be. I had this future. I crossed the line, and before you know it, I was gone. And I just knew that it was not the right thing to do. And I didn't care that if they killed me. I had to get the whole life behind me. And people say, how do you make, how do you change life? I said, well,

I didn't know how to change. All I knew was if I'm going north, I'm going to go south, east or west. So I moved from Miami, and I went to live in my ranch. And I hired a guy to teach me karate. And the first day he comes, he says, I'm going to teach you about the sword. And I'm all excited because I love weapons. I'm like, oh, man, you know what? This guy is not going to waste no time throwing punches. And he turns around and has a Bible.

And I looked at him. And I was like so angry and irate. You know, and he's like, I'm like, dude, I'm paying you a lot of money to teach me karate. I don't believe in that book. I don't believe what the book talks about. Tomorrow you leave that sword home and bring the real sword. and he got up with him, I don't know, five inches on my face. I looked around, I touched behind me, I didn't have no gun.

I'm like, man, this guy's a 7-degree black belt. He's going to beat Jesus into me, and I'm going to pay for it. I'm like, hey, hey, dude, don't get excited, man. Don't get excited for the next two hours. After we finish and the steam room is heating up, waste your time. He preached to me for three years. And that's something that people need to listen because we live in this society that we like fast food, fast car, fast women. we don't invest in people's lives.

This man, I did everything in the world to chase him away, literally, because he was eating me up. And people said, what did he say that changed your mind? I said, actually, I don't remember much of what he said. Later on, it took a lot of root. What changed me was his walk. He lived in such a little bitty world. And I looked at him, and I'm like, you mean you're married for 25 years to 45-year-old woman, you're in love with her?

And look at me, I'm surrounded by supermodels, and I hate him. You got to be on drugs, man. there's no way in the world that you could be happy. And I kept looking at him over three years, Eric, and he did not waver. I tell people, listen, we are the only Bible someone might ever see. You know, and if I was to say one of the reasons why I was so adamant against Christianity, prison didn't help me be that. Because in prison, I began to see people that called themselves Christian,

didn't live no differently than me. And they were petrified of me, and I'm like, look, why would I want to go to heaven? You're scared for me to send you there. I'm going to go to hell. I ain't scared to go there. And anyway, that's where all my friend lives. So why do I want to go someplace? I don't know anybody.

But this guy did not waver. They did not waver. When my first book came out and was probably about Waterbrook Random House, and they did a big thing in Miami, and his wife came up to me, said, let me tell you something that I've never told anyone. It was three years, Tim coming to see you. And one day, he says, he couldn't sleep.

He'd get up at 4 o'clock, at 5 o'clock and be on the road, an hour and a half to drive to see you and teach you two hours karate. And he said, I'm not going back anymore, Turk. And I'm like, I didn't know what to say. So all I would say is Tim, listen to the Holy Spirit. And he's like, yeah, I'm listening. He's telling me to get out. He said, Teracle, that guy is the devil.

I've been preaching to him for three years. From going to bad, he goes to words. And Tim, listen to the Holy Spirit, Teracle. That guy is the Antichrist. If the Antichrist is coming, is that Cuban in that ranch. That is about. We're going to go to a break. This is the seven-minute segment.

So we're going to be right back, folks. I'm talking to Jorge Valdez. The book is Narco. mindset. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Jorge Valdez. The book is narco mindset. So Jorge, we come to the story where you now say that you were, you scared away your, the guy who's supposed to teach you karate or whatever, he's preaching to you for three years. And eventually God tells him, get away from that guy. That's kind of amazing that he's with you for three years. And then he decides, no, I don't, I don't want to, I I don't want to be near you anymore.

You're frightening me. Yeah. So he's telling that to his wife, and he's so pumped up to come and tell me, see you, but I don't want to see you anymore. And he says that when his car entered into my ranch and the guards open up the doors and they check the car. He said that the car stopped dead. He said, it was the first time ever in his life that he actually heard the voice of God.

And he said, he heard God say to him, why have you given up on George? I haven't. And Eric, three months later, I gave my life to Christ. and how did I give my life to Christ? You know, it was my final divorce, July. I remember so clearly today. July 1st, 1990, about 12 o'clock, and my divorce was final,

and my ex-wife is dragging my baby girl who was my life away, and I was just at the point that I just wanted to die. I went into my room, and I remember that prayer just like today. I got on my knees, and I said, Lord, I don't believe you're real.

I just want to be honest with you. I don't believe in you. Number one. Number two, if somehow, by some miracle, you are real, you're looking at me and saying, George, you're so bad, I don't want you up here, stay down there. But if you are real and you're willing to change me and give me what that man has, because all the money in the world I have can buy it, I'll die for you. And, you know, the Bible said there's angels in heaven, well, not for Cubans, I guess, because my life went

from bad to worse. Three months later, I get arrested. I get arrested for things I had done four years earlier. I didn't even realize that there was a task force. The government couldn't stand it that I had retired a multimillionaire. And I got arrested in Jeff Sessions, Alabama, on his district. And when I got arrested, I had no idea. And my attorney comes and says, hey, don't worry, you're going to walk? They have nothing against you. The only witness died last night. He was muggling in an airplane while he was still a government witness. And I went and I looked He said to me, his Jewish guy, and I know the moment I said, Alan, you know, I love you, man. And here you are. Here you are a good Jew telling me I'm going home. But there's this other Jew I giving my life to me. He didn't say nothing to me. But I can't go on lying. I can't go on fighting these people. I got to come clean. And he's like, are you crazy? You will die in prison. I said, look, if that Jewish carpenter does not change my heart in my life, I don't give a damn where I die. I'm dead already. I'm just walking. And he said, you want to come clean? We come clean. We went in there and I'm, the gun said, lots of money, a little time, little money, lots of time.

I said, you know how much I got? And prosecutors said, no, but I know who does. She opened the door. And four agents had been following me forever. So I matter of fact, I talked to one of them yesterday because they're my friends now. You know, and I told them, I see all this hatred against police. And I said, look, I looked at the world real simple. Their job was not to catch me. I said, David, your job was not to catch me. Mine was to get away. Your job was to catch me. I said, you caught me. And I thank God every day that you caught me. because you caught me, you changed my life. And you're not my enemy, and we actually have been very close. This man spent 10 years of his life to lock me up forever.

And today I consider him one of my closest friends, and I'm one of the person that had the greatest impact in my life. And the other two agents that apart his team also very, very close friends. So I said, I went in there, and my turn said, look, just give him the time that he holds you on parole. Because you didn't catch him with anything. he's actually declaring himself guilty. He's voluntarily forfeiting all his money over $40 million.

And he walked away from this on his own. Anyway, they gave me the 10 years. I went back. I did a total 10 years in prison. But in prison, I started studying because it's about mindset. I said, I can let the time do me or I'm going to do the time. So you did go to prison, and in the 90s, you all through the 90s, you were in prison. Yeah, I went to prison in 19.

The first time I went to prison in 1979 for five years. 19, I went to prison for five years. So in prison, I taught myself Greek. I didn't have anybody to teach me Greek. So I memorized the book. And I got a bachelor's. And then I started my master's from Wheaton College. When I was released, I finished my master's of Wheaton College.

And I became a professor of Wheaton College. I met my amazing wife of 23 years now. Then I went to Loyola for a PhD in Bible. And I graduated. I was one of five Hispanics with a PhD in the entire country. And then my dad died. And when my dad died, I realized, man, how are my three children from my prior marriage going to remember me? As someone who sent the check and had a great summer, I'm missing my dad.

He didn't give me anything. You know, I thought people, listen, your children don't need nothing you got. All they need is what you got that's free, your time. That's all they need. And so I packed and moved to Georgia. I didn't know what to do. I started a little service master franchise. I knew the CEO's service master, a little cleaning franchise.

And in 12 years, I built it into a multi-million dollar national and international company. And I know the head of service master is a Christian. I've heard him speak. Yeah, the amazing people. They changed my life, all of them. And then I looked at myself one day and I said, I told my wife, look, if a man can define when enough is enough, only greed would drive you. I want to be a dad to my kids. So I sold the company and we moved to Kazumel, Mexico, so that they will see poverty.

because now my wife and I was grew up in poverty. But my children now are going to the best school. We live in a multimillion dollar house. We have jets. We have yachts. And that's not reality for them. And I'm telling them that, listen, that's not the real world. And I wanted them to have a social conscience.

And I'm going to move you to a place where you can see people love God that at the same time miss meals every day. And it was the greatest thing in the world. And then I just ran our foundation. When we started our company, I said the way to make our company great, we're going to get 10% off the top. And people think it's, wow, horrific, too much money. But you know what, Eric, that 10% got multiplied it so many, many times over. And we were able to help a lot of people. We created programs to get kids off of drugs at Angola, the person

of Angola, I'm sure you're familiar with. I built the only Catholic chaplain inside any United States prison at Angola. I've been visiting there for 20 years. I led the men that killed Barry Seals to the Lord at Angola, 18 years of preaching to him, very close friend with the warden. And now I just dedicate my time to try to make a difference in people's lives. And I see the horrors that in the world that's going on. And like I tell people, people, how come you're not scared? I said, well, first of all, what is there to be scared of? Number one, you know, if I live, I'm going to live with Christ. If I die, I'm going to be with Christ. So I can't lose to begin with. And if a virus takes me, which I think is a bunch of hoax,

But if the virus takes me, I'm going to sit down with Jesus over that good wine and say, dude, you had to do a little better than that, man. I've been shot out 28 times, it's not a scratch. I fell up on an airplane 3,000 feet alive. Torture, alive. You cannot take me with a little sickness, man. So, you know, and I try to write about mindset, you know, about how do we look at the world? What does that mean? When we come back, I want to hear about what the title of your book means, narco mindset, the life principles that a cocaine drug,

Lord learned on his journey to find meaning in his life. We'll be right back. Back with Jorge Luis Valdez. The book is Narco Mindset. O'Re, what do you mean by mindset? What do you mean? You know, I tell people, it doesn't matter how you see the world. What lengths do you look at it through? I choose to look at the world through the lens of Christ, right? So I happen to, one of those called me crazy, but I happen to believe that if there's a lie in the Bible, I don't read none of it. If I don't follow Christ with all my heart, I'm Well, sin. Sin was fun, but it had eternal consequences. And I look at the division and the hatred that we have and how the liberal media is going ahead and dividing families, and it's

horrific. Look, I tell people, I'm not politically correct by no means. I don't give a damn. You know, if you like me, like me, I'm not afraid of anybody. I'm not afraid of any movement. I'm not afraid of shotgun because I believe that my day said county, I believe that the day God wants to call me, I'm happy, I'm 64. I never thought I lived past 20. So I'm okay, but I can't believe that we're going to live in a world where our children are afraid to say what they believe. Listen, we were poor. Listen, I came of that airplane in Miami at the age of ten and had this lady right in my face. Cubans go back.

America is not Cuba. And I looked at my father. I'm like, why is she so mad at me? I haven't done anything. And my dad never said anything negative. My dad just said, son, work hard. You can't force people to like you. Whoever doesn't like us is not going to like us, no matter.

what we do, but you can make people respect you. And the best way that you fight back is you fight with love. You don't fight by being angry. I looked at the main cartel. Eric, we were the most powerful organization in the world. We were thousands of people. Within a minute, I could call and have a thousand hitmen anywhere in America. And yet what happened? Violence among us? Greed, selfiness, destroyed us. We became nothing. So at the end of the day, how are we going to change the world through love. We cannot allow this to go on. And I tell my children, listen, I know that you're going to grow up in a country now that you're going to be afraid you're going to lose your job because of what you say, but you do what is right before God. You become a person of integrity and honor, and don't give a damn if

you lose your job, because trust me, God will pick you up. God will redeem you and he will protect you, but don't live in fear and don't let this bunch of idiots intimidate you. This is the kind of faith, that we need in America. A lot of people in the church have gone over to the dark side politically. They have no idea of the evils of Marxism, of the evils of socialism. They don't know that Black Lives Matter is an organization that is anti-family, anti-everything most black Americans I know actually believe in. And you know what? What you say, when you have this kind of faith, Jorge, hey, honestly, you don't fear. You praise God and you know that he will deliver you.

He can deliver you. He is with you. What you've been through, I mean, your story is one of the most amazing I've ever heard. You know, the idea that you fell out of an airplane and we didn't get the details on that, but that you were torture you, that you went through all these things. And you know that God is real. I think many people today, they say I'm a Christian. I believe in the principles or I say I believe the Bible, but they don't know that.

God is real and that he will act on their behalf, that he loves them. Maybe they haven't seen it. You saw it, and which is why I wanted you to tell your story. What is your previous book where you tell much of what you just said today? What's the name of that book? My previous book is called Coming Clean, the true story of a cocaine drug lord, and his unexpected encounter with God. You know, and like what you said is so real.

I think that's a sad thing I tell my children. You know, America's a Christian nation. We are the majority. We just are lying a little minority to tell us what is moral, to tell us what family is, to tell us what it's right. Listen, I don't hate anybody. I don't hate anybody because what God tells me to do. But at the end of the day, we just got to stand for what we believe in and not be afraid.

Amen. We are out of time. What a beautiful way to end. Be not afraid. Folks, speak your mind. Say what God tells you to say, and he will take care of you. Jorge, I feel I have a new friend. Thank you.

Congratulations on the book Narco Mindset. And I hope to see you again very soon. I hope to see you again, Eric.