The Jordan Harbinger Show - 665: Luis Navia | 25 Years Inside the Narco Cartels

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

Luis Navia worked for nearly 25 years as a cocaine trafficker for the deadliest Colombian and Mexican cartels until the law caught up with him in 2000. He is the co-author (with Jesse Fink) of Pure Narco: One Man's True Story of 25 Years Inside the Cartels. What We Discuss with Luis Navia: Why did Luis Navia -- a Georgetown student and the privileged son of an affluent sugar trader -- get involved in the illicit international cocaine trade with the most ruthless and infamous Mexican and Colombian drug cartels? How did Luis move between 200 to 300 tons of cocaine (roughly worth $10 billion) over the course of 25 years -- and live to tell the tale? Why did Luis insist on carrying out his business without a weapon -- in spite of being regularly surrounded by the perpetrators of unimaginably brutal violence? What are the logistics for smuggling massive amounts of cocaine over international borders with limited space and personnel? How did Operation Journey, an anti-narcotics effort coordinated across 12 nations and led by the United States and Great Britain, finally put an end to Luis' lucrative cocaine trafficking career? And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/665 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss our two-part conversation with the Caravaggio of currency counterfeiting? Catch up by starting with Episode 488: Frank Bourassa | The World’s Greatest Counterfeiter Part One here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. It was just instant, non-stop trying to get that phone call in, trying to get annoying, your time's running out. You're not thinking about, is it going to hurt if the crocodiles bite me or eat me? You're not thinking about that. You don't have time to think about that.

If you're thinking about that, then you're not using your time properly. You need to make that goddamn phone call. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional drug smuggler, money laundering expert, or tech mogul, and each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use

to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about it, our starter packs are where you should begin. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Topics like crime and cults, investing in financial crimes, scams and conspiracy debunks, negotiation and communication, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, I chat with one of the most prolific cocaine smugglers of his day, Luis Navia. This one is Goodfellas meets cocaine cowboys.

For a quarter century, Navia worked as a high-level transporter for all of the major Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, including Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel, and, of course, flooded the United States in Europe with cocaine before his dramatic arrest in Venezuela in 2000 during the 12-nation operation journey. This one is a rare, on-the-ground insider perspective on the international drug trade. No other American cocaine trafficker in history has worked for all of the major Colombian cocaine cartels. Medellín, Cali, and North Valley of the 80s and 90s, and survived to tell the story. The scale of Navia's trafficking, there are estimates as high as 200 to 300 tons of cocaine, roughly worth $10 billion, and the longevity of his criminal career, which is about 25 years, it really does stand out in terms of careers in the drug business.

This episode is not meant to glorify the business of cocaine smuggling or drug trafficking, and as you'll hear from Luis, not only did his product ruin countless lives, but he ruined much of his own in the process. Here we go with Luis Navia. Most of the time, when we hear about drug traffickers, they're born into abject poverty in a village somewhere in El Salvador, Venezuela, Mexico, whatever, you know, in Senaloa, and they grow up as gangsters.

But that wasn't your story at all. Tell me how you grew up is quite different than most other sort of drug traffickers we would hear of. I grew up in an affluent family. I was born in Cuba, and my parents were wealthy people, in the wealthy sense, very wealthy. My dad was in the sugar business, so we came from Cuba, you know, on a Pan Am airplane, and we stayed at the Key Biscayne Hotel. And I grew up in a very privileged background, private schools, house on Key Biscayne, excellent friends, excellent relationships, top-notch, yacht club parties. I grew up, you know, a yacht club life, let's say.

Is this pre-Castro or you moved from Cuba to Miami? From Cuba to Miami. Because I was like, you're not that old, man. No. I was, you know, five years old when I got to Miami. Okay. But my parents were very affluent. My dad had sugar business, had an apartment in New York City at the Sherry,

Netherland. Then at the St. Regis, I was always exposed to a life of wealth. Then I went to Georgetown University, where I met. met wealthy people from South America. And then I got into this business. How? I met a girl from Aruba. And I thought, you know, we fell in lust immediately in love and lust. But there was a certain attraction immediate. And then we started going out and she told me she was in the Emerald business. Sooner enough, she told me, no, it's not the Emerald business. But what I saw was a lot of money. The first time I ever saw money in this business was a $6.5 million. It's not like I started

selling grams and, you know, making a thousand bucks. If I wanted to do that, you know, I was working with my dad's sugar business, you know, it was huge. So that's part of the reason I stayed in the business because it was with a girl that I was in love with. And it was a very high style living and business at a level that was not from the ground. It was at the highest levels. She was one of the highest distributors for the Medellín cartel. She had excellent connections. I mean, it's not like we were hustling to buy a kilo.

They deliver 100, 200 kilos to her on a phone call, and we'd fly him out in an Learjet. Met on the other side in San Francisco by very nice, very honest, the American guys that were involved in the hash trade from years ago, but it wasn't a criminal mentality. The people that did hash and marijuana back then were not into guns and were not into killing. They were not cocaine cowboys.

They were just very intelligent, very off the beaten path, you know, off the grid type people that decided to get involved in smuggling. Okay, so you met this girl and she was like, hey, by the, the way I'm selling emeralds and you're like, wow, you're making even more money than my dad is in the sugar business. And she's like, by the way, I'm selling cocaine. So you didn't, like you said, you didn't start out going, man, I wanted sell drugs. You came up affluent and you saw even more money. And it was like, well, this is fun and this is easy. And this is even more money than I grew up with. That's appealing to somebody. How old were you at that time?

I was 22. Okay. So you're 22. So money and you're with a girl and you're flying around on a jet. that she owns or something like that flying cocaine around. It was leased. That's pretty appealing. Leased. Yeah. Okay, fine. The thing is, did I want to get into drugs?

No, because drugs is like nasty. It's dirty. You know, you got to hang out in a street corner and sell like, no, no, no. We never saw the drugs. I mean, we did. We saw, you know, suitcases flash across us. And it's not like we had to cut the stuff or do this. It was just what we lived.

What happened was the drugs shifted hands. And then we just, in the time of between the shifted hands and we were waiting to get paid, the $6.5 million, $7, $10 million, we would just have a great life waiting around and just living a beautiful life. Going to the best hotels, the best restaurants, you know, shopping. Really, it's kind of shallow, let's say. Well, you're 22 years old. Everybody's shallow when they're 22, man. Yeah. We were going to the best restaurants.

Just money was never an issue. excessive, excessive amounts of money, you know, it was millions and millions in your hand. And it's cash. So you have to spend it, right? I get it. You're 22. Money corrupts really easily when you're that age. It's not like you have to go out and sell every day and hustle every day. You just handed somebody that's a trustworthy player, 200 kilos. In a month, he'll come back with $6, $7 million. By the end of two months, the balance of the $13 million. And before that, you had already given him another 100, 150 kilos. So we were always owed $10, $15 million.

Unreal. Always. And it's just this money coming in and coming in. Sure, you have to be responsible. We've got to make sure you get the money back to Miami. Back then, later on, we just had to make sure we got it banked in L.A. Banked. So when you say bank, do you mean literally you were walking the money into the bank in L.A. at this time?

No, we never did that. No, no. We never would expose our face to bankers or stuff like that. We gave it to Colombians that were in charge of handling the money. Right. Okay. They laundered the money. Yeah.

They would receive suitcases from us in a hotel lobby and a parked car somewhere. We'd hand over the money. And it was never like guns and wow, we're going to get. No, no. It was just like you had to hand over $3, $4 million. You'd meet the guys, have it in their trunk. of the car, you'd hand over the keys in the lobby of a hotel. They'd take the car. You would never want to see that car. It's a throwaway. I don't know what they did with it, but very non-criminal

activity type stuff. No guns. Nobody yelled at nobody. Nobody threatened nobody. Nobody got tied up and their knees got drilled. Nothing. Nothing. And she was very well respected because she was the goose that laid the golden eggs. So it was very, you know, nonchalant, great living. And then you go from this to like, I would imagine probably the most successful cocaine smuggler in U.S. history. I mean, there's a jump here and there's a story here. I don't think so. I think probably that you, the Italian mafia did more than I did. Yeah, well, I should say single smuggler, like this as a single guy. I think, yeah, the whole mafia Sure, but as a guy with a plane or whatever it was.

At that time, I was doing quite a bit, yes. I mean, Jesse Fink, the guy who introduced us, the guy who wrote your book, he's pretty sure that you have single-handedly smuggled a certain amount, and we'll get into what that is, and that that's more than anybody else single-handedly did. Whole organizations, yeah, I'm sure they have you beat, but that's kind of like saying you got beat in basketball by the entire L.A. Lakers. You're not just talking about one player. You're talking about the whole team.

So when you started, did you have a plan like, all right, I'm going to make 10 million bucks, I'm going to buy a couple of houses and I'm getting the hell out of this business. Did you have some kind of plan like that? Initially, no. I fell into it. I was living in a love, a lust relationship. I did love this girl. You know, we were together, together.

And I was just living life to the fullest every day. And I had a life with her. But was I planning, well, let's see, we're going to make a million dollars. Let's buy those apartment buildings over there. No, I was just like living life. Later on, when I broke up with her or she broke up with me, I started thinking, maybe I should buy a couple of these old hotels on Miami Beach, you know, hotels on South Beach back when the Mariel boat lift came.

The hotel that goes for $80 million today was going for $650,000, $450,000 back then. Wow. And the Mario Boat Lift, that's when a lot of the Cubans came to the United States? Yes. And then South Beach was flooded with the homeless Cubans, and a lot of nasty people came on that boat lift. And a lot of very prominent people that today are very prominent people did very well for themselves. Also came on that boat lift. But, you know, the image that the boatlift has is because Vidal did let loose a bunch of insinacitam's items and emptied out his gym.

and sent them over here. And we did deal with a criminal element that was never seen before. Such a criminal element that in the BOP, the Bureau of Prison, people from Marieler, there's a category, special category for them, because for the first time in the history of the federal system, these Mariel Cubans that were sent to Atlanta federal penitentiary, they took over the penitentiary. They created a huge riot. They burnt large part of the place, held the guards.

hostage. These were violent, nasty, crazy criminal people. They did the same thing in Talladega. They took over the whole place, took over the guards, held them hostage, atrocities. You know, you can Google it. Federal riots, Maria L. Cubans and prison system. So these guys, they were so out of control that not even inmates ever saw creatures like this. There are certain laws in prison that you abide by a certain respect, you know, you don't go to the bathroom and the showers, you don't throw the feces to each other. These guys violated everything. They became a total thorn in the side for the federal system. That's what was in Miami at that time. Miami was faced with a large number of these criminal crazy elements that came from Cuba.

Tell me about your first cocaine deal. So you met this girl and she probably I guess hand held you through some of the initial stage of this. Like you said, you weren't buying a couple grams from a dealer and you're like, I think I can make a business out of this. You know, you got connected to the cartels essentially right away. Immediately, yes. Yeah. And when she broke up with you, you kept all the connections. She wasn't like, don't deal with this guy. He's my competition were not together anymore. She was just like go off and start your own business. She didn't mind at all. As a matter of fact, she said, if you're going to continue, might as well continue with my connections that are proven, decent.

I don't want you, you know, dealing half a kilo or a kilo or five kilos down in Miami and getting your head blown off. Yeah. Or getting kidnapped and killed. If you're going to continue, I mean, there's enough for everybody. You can continue with my supply sources, too. She turned me on to the people that were giving her the merchandise. And since I was a decent, honest guy that they felt comfortable with,

They knew I wasn't going to rip them off. They started giving me 100, 150, 200 kilos like they used to give her. And on the receiving end, I had the people that could handle that weight. So your goodwill goes through the roof. She got involved with another boyfriend, and that boyfriend was well off on his own, and he didn't want her to continue working. So also that played into her saying, you know, you take over. I'm going to be a housewife for a while.

He was a smuggler himself. He didn't want her to work. It didn't make sense. You don't want your wife involved in something that could get her in trouble. They had a couple kids. So I ran with that. And from the clients that I inherited from her, and with those sources of supply that I also inherited from her,

I expanded my network, then started selling down in L.A. in Chicago and New York. I stayed away from Miami. I didn't want to work in Miami. and I kind of lived here part-time, so I didn't want to work here. Ah, okay. Interesting that you kept it away from that. Where did you smuggle the drugs from?

I mean, we were talking pre-show, and you asked me how my trip to the Amazon jungle was, and I said, well, you might have a little, you might have a little firsthand knowledge of how my trip to the Amazon jungle was. Where were you taking the drugs from, primarily? Actually, our first smuggle, when I was in Miami with her, I was just receiving and distributing. Okay. I wasn't smuggling. Gotcha.

When I decided to smuggle, the first smuggle we ever did, we bought the paste down in Leticia, which is down in the Colombian Amazon. It's a little peninsula that the tip is Leticia. That was a big center for receiving paste and then taking it up to Colombian processing it into cocaine. So the first smuggle we ever did, we bought 100 kilos down in Letitia, and we smuggled that up to Miami. But then after that, I bought a Merlin and then I bought two conquests. These are jets or airplanes? Turbo props.

Turbo props. Okay. Yeah. You know, I used the contract with the sources apply. They had their runways down there. I would come in and land, load up, and leave. And we would usually work out of the coast, out of Monteria, out of Pereira, somewhere not too south of Colombia because we needed to make up. the ground flying up to Mexico or air dropping at the Bahamas.

So you're relatively conscious of gas consumption. Sure. Why did you need three planes? You're flying the plane, right? You can only fly one. No, no, no, no. You weren't flying it. No, no, no, no.

Those were planes that I owned and I had different pilots because we had different routes. At one time, I could have had five, six, seven routes. Sometimes I had three of my own planes, at least three more. Ah, okay. And I used to lease a Cheyenne 4, a Cheyenne 2, Cheyenne 3, Turbo Commanders. I leased a lot of times I lease Turbo commanders to go to Mexico. And my own planes, which were the conquests, I used to use to go to Mexico and to airdrop in the Bahamas. It's a very good plane to airdrop with.

The Merlin, I used to use for landing. I used to never air drop with the Merlin. When you say airdrop, is it what it sounds like where you're dropping things while you're still flying, just packages out the back? Yes. You slow down. You slow the plane down. You come down, close to the water, open the back door, you start kicking out those bales.

Wow. Someone else is flying the plane who's kicking out the bales? Or are you like, hey, this thing will go straight for a while? No, there's a kicker. Okay. That makes more sense. There's a pilot. There's a co-pilot.

There's a kicker in the back. Wow. And they just land what? In the water or the jungle? No, they don't land. You have to calculate it. No, no, the bales, the bales land. Oh, the bales land in the water.

Yes, they float. They float. And you put little lights on them, little glow sticks. Glow sticks. Glow sticks. You know, usually you have the coordinated because the people that you're dropping to are veteran smugglers,

and the pilot is a veteran Bush pilot. That's what we call them Bush pilots, off the radar type pilots. And they know what they're doing. Yeah. This is before, think about this, though, like I'm wrapping my head around this, is before GPS, you don't have cell phones,

and you can't just, you make these arrangements days, weeks before, and you say, all right, be in the wall, with a boat outside of Lettizia or whatever it is, or outside the aruba, whatever, in the water. And we're going to be at some point that night. So they're waiting a few hours for you. But there's still coordination that without Internet, without GPS, without cell phones, you still had to make these kinds of pretty precise calculations and arrangements for them to get your stuff.

Yes. The plane had a Loran. We used two-way radios. back then there weren't any cellular drones, but two-way radios. So they did get to the point. It's still pretty amazing because I think it would be hard to do that even now with GPS and something that automatically dumps the bales out the back at the exact right spot. I mean, you're looking at a map, and that guy has to kick these bales out as fast as humanly possible

so they're not spread out over 40 miles, right? Yeah, and you're in a cramped space. You're not in a C-130. Yeah. You're in a small turboprop. and on top of that you have the merchandise, plus you have the bladder or the thimbles, the canisters where you carry the gas.

Because remember, the plane itself doesn't have enough gas. You have to rig the tubing, the gas tubing of the plane in a certain way, so you can start feeding it gas from inside. Because you need to take on board the coat, the extra fuel, plus the fuel in the wings of the plane. in the normal gas tanks. So you kind of rig the plane so that you can refuel it in flight by carrying extra gas. Like you extend the gas tank.

Exactly. Wow. Wow. That sounds dangerous. Water weighs more than gas, but water weighs eight pounds per gallon. Gas is seven and a half pounds per gallon, more or less seven pounds per gallon. Right. Gas is lighter than water.

But that's a big weight. That's a lot of weight. Yeah, that's a lot of weight in a turbo prop. And then you kick a bunch of it out, and then you're more fuel efficient after that. But still, that's super freaking dangerous. Yeah. And when you go down, the plane consumes more gas. Because the lower you are, it consumes a massive amount of gas, as opposed to when you're high altitude.

You have to take all that into account because you're going from point A to point B, but you're not landing. You're just circling, airdropping, and coming back. Oh, my God. There's been so many plane accidents. Well, I lost my partner. on an air drop. Ah. They got killed.

Everybody on the plane got killed. Because he crashed. Yeah. We received that plane near Pereira. And when it came in from Venezuela, the Venezuelan pilots that were, you know, in charge of the plane in Venezuela, these guys are, they used to be Air Force Army for Venezuelan Air Force, whatever that means. Yeah.

But they landed in Pereira and they told us the plane has certain reports. We don't suggest doing this trip. Because they get off, they go to a hotel while the Bush pilots hop on. We erase the call letters, change the call letters, and proceed with, you know, our smuggling mission. They said, we do not suggest you go forward. We can go back to Venezuela, but we do not think the plane is in conditions to do an air drop. It's different when you're doing, asking the plane to do things up and beyond what the manual says. So they just thought this is an old plane that's not been maintained well, it's probably not going to make it?

No, it wasn't an old plane, but it was due for checkups that weren't done. Yeah, of course. And my partner back then, Renee, that was part of his job, taking care of the plane. I bought the plane, but I handed it over to him as, let's say, chief operating officer. He was on the strip with me, and the pilot did not get off. He said, I'll do it. I guess he needed the money. the co-pilot said, I'm not going.

The Bush co-pilot, not the Venezuelan coal. They were off the plane. The co-pilot got off since Renee knew something about flying because he owned an airplane sales center here in South Florida. He hopped on his co-pilot. When he hopped on, I almost hopped on two. I wanted to go along just for the ride. And that's when Marulo told me, what the hell are you doing up there? Get off.

I said, no, I'm going with René. says if something happens, who's going to pay me for the merchandise? Sure enough, when they got the dog rocks, which is where we were air dropping right off the Florida Keys in the Bahamas in the middle there, they went down, they lost the power in one engine, and they just cartwheeled right into the ocean. Everybody died. Oh, man. I would have been on that plane.

Marulo saved my life. Who's Mariro? The source of supply. Oh, okay. The guy that we worked with that gave us the merchandise. He saved my life. Wow. I mean, you've had a lot of close calls. I assume at some points, though, you are landing in the jungle. You know, going back to what we're saying pre-show, you had to sleep over in the middle of nowhere sometimes literally in the Amazon. And I, that's kind of what I was doing. And they would say, hey, don't leave the hotel ground. Don't walk out there at night, you know, unless you're with a guide and a light and all this stuff, because there's a lot of stuff out in the jungle. And we don't necessarily know what all is out there, but you don't want it to find you before you see it with your headlamp, basically. There's everything out there.

I mean, it's eco-tourism, but you go out on your own, like where we were, a lot of places where people didn't hang out. There were no hotels. It was a middle of nowhere. That's why we were smuggling there. We'd build a runway in the middle of nowhere, like in Belize, out in Western Belize. We worked there. We had a runway.

You had to take turns. You had to go with somebody. You had to be very careful. You just can't. Hey, I need to take a piss and walk out. You know, a jaguar will snap you up. There's jaguars out there. You hear the monkeys.

You hear everything. You know, all kinds of snakes. I mean, you've got to really be aware of your surroundings. You're not in a luxury hotel just surrounded by nature. You're out in the middle of nowhere in the jungle. God forbid something happens. You die. There's no hospital.

There's nothing. Yeah. But that's why we were there. Talk about ecotourism, I've been in some really ecotouristic places where nobody's been. I bet. You've said that smuggling is the most important part of the drug business, because of course, if you can't smuggle, there's nothing people can sell and the producers don't make money either. Is one of the reasons that you were so in demand is because it seems like you had a pretty good system, right?

With the planes, did you only smuggle by plane? No, we did also fast boats. Okay. Yeah, we did fast boats. Got to a point where we had to stop the planes because of the radars. Then we started going by water. But mostly, most of our smuggles were airdrops to boats and the boats in the Bahamas and the boats in the Bahamas to Miami by boat.

So it was by air to the Bahamas, airdrop and by boat to Miami. When Mexico came into the picture, we started air dropping off. Kosumel, the island of Kosumel, Mexico, and boats into the mainland, into Cancun, for example. But then we just started going 100% by water. So we would go from the northern coast of Colombia in Nekokli, in an area of Urabah, in Nekokli, all the way to Cancun, Mexico. We refueled that's Banco Serranilla, north of San Andres. That's a long haul. Yeah.

We were doing it in these 32-foot boats that were like half submerged. I mean, they were very low to the water. Very successful. We did a lot of trips. How many kilos at a time are you talking about? We would do 1,200 up to 1,600 kilos on a boatload. What's the value of that each load? What kind of money are we talking about here?

Let's say 1,600 kilos. When they get to Mexico back then, they worked 5,000. that's $9 million. When they get to the U.S., they were selling at $15, $20 back then. I mean, you're talking, you know, $30 million when they get to the U.S. That's at those prices. That's very low pricing.

That was at the early 90s or stuff. There was a time that there was so much coke that the price went down. Each load is at least $30 to $50 million. Wow. And, I mean, with one friend, we did $4.4. 44 trips. That's 60,000 kilos. Over what period of time? That was 92, 93, 94, 95.

You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Luis Navia. We'll be right back. Hey, if you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing folks for the shows, the authors, thinkers, creators, drug traffickers every single week, it's because of my network, and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. This course is all about improving your connection skills, your networking skills,

of course, and also inspiring others to develop a personal and professional relationship with you. It'll make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker. That's all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course, and it's free. And most of the guests you hear on the show subscribe and contribute to the course,

although we're a little light on drug traffickers these days. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, back to Luis Navia. Over a period of years, yeah, that's a hell of a lot of money. And are you then living a normal family life at this point? Because I know you eventually married and had kids. Like, are you living essentially a normal-ish family life while transporting hundreds of millions of dollars in cocaine? Was it like fly a load from Peru to Miami be home in time for dinner?

Yes, I did have a normal family life and I had a normal business and I'd go to work and 1230. I'd go home for lunch and we would have lunch and maybe take a little bit of a normal family life and I had a normal business and I had a normal business. little siesta, go back to work at 4.30, finish work at 7.30. I had a coffee operation in Cancun. I have a latex rubber glove operation in Mexico City. I had the macadamia plantations in Mexico and in Costa Rica. And I was doing my legal business and having a normal family life. And at the same time, we were bringing in thousands and thousands of kilos through Cancun every week. Did your family know anything about this? They probably not, right?

I mean, I assume you didn't share. Not the details. You know, my wife and I were close, of course. She knew what I was involved in. She didn't know the specifics of specifics. But obviously, she knew what I did. Because when I met her in Columbia, you know, it was almost, I was always doing it with a nice group of people. Back then, it was more acceptable than now. I was always dealing with a nice

group of people, and it wasn't the craziness that you hear today. You know, the people I dealt with were my friends. It's not what I did. It's how long I did it for. That's the thing. I did it for 25 years. Oh, my God. Non-stop. Yeah, that's a full career. It never got smaller. You know, I started with nine ounces, the first nine ounces I ever sold in Georgetown, which I should have been studying. I should have never gotten involved in selling ounce. I mean, and I just did it so we could party and, you know, for the hell of it. But until I got caught, which when I got caught in the year 2000, I had 25 tons,

which is 25,000 kilos. That was the seizure. You're not talking conspiracy here. You're talking actual merchandise on the ground. was seized, 25,000 kilos. What is the value of a shipment like that? A billion. A billion dollars. That's a lot of cocaine. We'll get to that in a bit. Because that's a hell of a lot. I mean, that's got to be one of the largest seizures ever. Yeah. And at that point, it was the largest. And that was going to Europe, where we were getting a good chunk of change for that.

Sure. Wow. Most of that merchandise was bound for Italy and Spain. Some of it was making it way to England also through some of our sources. Goodness. So you must have had a lot of contingency plans and things like this, right? Did you carry like 10 grand on your person at all times? I mean, that's like 10 grand. Or a hundred grand? I mean, what did you think you would need to escape? No, a hundred grand is something you keep in a shoebox or something or something you have in your closet there for whatever. Our contingency plan, we lost touch with reality. While I was in Venezuela, I was talking to my Greek partner. We were going to refinance.

We had ships, so I said it's no good to have these ships cashed out and paid for. We should finance it and use some of that money plus some of our proceeds from our earnings. Take $50 million and try to corner the Central American coffee market. And that's what we were trying to do. When I got back to Europe, your mind is off the charts. It's not dealing with reality. Instead of saying, I'm going to retire, I got two kids, I got my wife, and see if we can get together, maybe settle down. I'm sitting here doing massive amounts of cocaine via freighters, because we would take five to six thousand kilos on each freighter.

And instead of saying, let's settle down, let me melt. Trying to corner the coffee market with some Swiss banks. I mean, guys are nuts. And that's the way I thought, you know, you stopped. thinking small on anything. Were you worried at all about getting popped by police? I mean, did you have like emergency cash on your person or gold or anything like that or multiple identities maybe?

Oh, multiple identities, yes. Cash, I mean, when I got arrested, probably, you know, I had a checking account with maybe $900,000 in it. You always have $25,000, $30,000 available, but there's just so much you can carry on you. and you don't use credit cards, what credit cards you do have, you have under a false name, and I probably have more spending power now

as a legal individual, because when you're a fugitive, your spending power is, you know, what you have on you or what you have access to, you take a taxi to a stash apartment, then you grab some cash. But, you know, while you're standing there and you don't have access to that taxi

to get to that stash house, you don't have an American Express gold card with $100,000 spending limit. In that sense, you're a little limited. Although, you know, I had a checking account with $900,000. Well, yeah, maybe I did have more spending power. Yeah, yeah, than most people, I would say $900,000 in a checking account. One, it's just a bad place to keep $900,000. There's no interest on it, but you didn't care.

But either way, back in the 90s, not a whole lot of people had $900,000 in a checking account. I heard that you always used the same initials. on your false identities because you had monogrammed shirts. Is that true? Yes. I figured I never got rid of the shirts, and I figured I never want to be in a situation where I, shit, I'm going through an airport,

and I've got one of these shirts on. I should have, so just in case I just had the same initials. Right. Coming up to a customs guy and George Perez, and it says, L.N. on your shirt, he may get a little spiffy to that. Yeah, suspicious, yeah, for sure. That's, yeah, that's good thinking, I suppose, to keep that at least congruent there.

So 80s, Miami, cocaine, dealing, partying, like, paint this picture for us because I know Cubans and Colombians are in the business, but it wasn't exactly a marriage made in heaven for those two groups. There was a lot of assassins coming in by boat, to say at least. Yes. At first, the Cubans had Miami, and they had the connections to New York and Chicago. and in Miami, and the Colombians would supply the Coke to the Cubans. Remember, you're dealing with cocaine.

The marijuana people were a little more easy to deal with, more honorable, let's say. When you're dealing with cocaine, now you've got the lowest of the Colombians with the lowest of the Cubans. So they're going to end up, bad people will end up doing some bad things. You've got to be nuts to think that bad people will not do bad things. So it got into a turf war over here. Eventually, the Colombians took over. The Colombians took over the Miami area. Then they took over in New York, took over in Chicago,

and they dominated the distribution of cocaine in the United States. That changed when everybody started getting busted, and the U.S. started nailing all the Colombian money routes, and they handed it over to the Mexican. Now, distribution of cocaine in the United States is in the hands of the Mexicans. The Colombians are no part of it. I'm not saying there aren't some Colombian groups importing some stuff through the Bahamas or through Haiti or through Santa Domingo. But most of the cocaine goes to Mexico.

Colombians will buy from Colombians, from Peruvians, from Ecuador, mostly Peru, Colombia. although Ecuador is a big trampoline now. What do you mean by trampoline? A point of exit, an exit point. The Mexicans will have their Colombian sources deliver the cocaine in Ecuador. And from Ecuador, the Mexicans will take it to Europe, Asia, Mexico. The Mexicans have grown immensely. They're the biggest money group in the business nowadays.

They've grown exponentially. They control the U.S. distribution. Colombians don't really want to get involved in the U.S. They've already been through that. Colombians are taking it to more profitable markets like China, India, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, and Europe. Those are the Colombian markets. But Mexicans have access to these markets now using Ecuador as an exit point.

They're huge. The Mexicans are huge. Mexicans have more money than the Colombians probably. My experience sort of begins and ends with watching narcos and reading books like the one that you have. But yeah, that's the common refrain. And so when you're partying in Miami and enjoying kind of this high life, I assume you're getting high on your own supply, right? You're sort of breaking one of the commandments,

which is if you've got all this money and you've got all this Coke, and you're partying all the time, you're probably using a little bit of it, right? Yes, unfortunately, and it was a big mistake. I got into the lifestyle of, you know, when you go out, you drink and you party, you know, I used to use a little bit of my own supply. At least it was very good because if it would have been very bad, maybe I would have died of an overdose. That's why I think it should be legalized. It's the only way to control the health factor.

And on top of that, it's been proven that this drug war has been a total failure. The attitude towards cocaine has been a third. total failure as far as having a drug board goes. That it's a bad drug, it's a very bad drug, but keep your enemies closer. Yeah, I definitely want to talk more about your suggestions and how you feel about that in a bit. I know some of the ways you spent money, this is from the book, $50,000 at a hotel, this might be a little embarrassing, $45,000 for hookers over three days.

Okay, what kind of hookers are we talking about where it's $15,000 a day? I mean, is this just a lot of different hookers, or are they extremely? You know, how do you even spend 45 grand unhookers? I mean, it's crazy. It's a crazy lifestyle. Number one, you don't party by yourself. Sure. You're not a maniac.

You're not sitting there snorting by yourself. You always have an entourage of people with you. When the party starts, like when I used to go to L.A. with Renee, we used to rent, you know, like two, three connecting suites when they had just built the four seasons, or at the Beverly Wilshire or at the Beverly Hills Hotel, take. a couple of the cabanas out back. You've got six, seven guys, everybody partying, champagne, coke. And, you know, you've got 15, 20 hookers coming in or out, you know, it's not like one. It's like an animal house. It's like fraternity.

It's a frat house party. But with expensive tastes and at expensive places, you overdid it. Yeah, I would say so. Once you accidentally threw out $60,000 in a trash shoot, that's a bummer. But I guess you probably didn't care at the time. Yeah, I just said, well, you know, it goes along with the trade, you know. Yeah. You didn't think I should walk downstairs and get that $60,000?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, are you crazy walking down to a trash shoot? No, no. Back then, you had no concept. 60,000 was just like if you threw a shoebox out, okay, so it's a shoebox. It had some shoes in it. Okay, but we'll get another pair. This had 60,000. We thought it was the fake shoe box because we had received a bunch of money and there was about 60,000, 45,000.

I don't remember it in false bills. And instead of giving those out, you want to just, you know, take them out. We confused the good box with bad bars or something like that. But they went down the trashy. Oh, my God. I mean, that's a pretty good annual salary for somebody here in the United States in 2022. Right. And this is like in the 90s.

No, that was 1985. Oh, my gosh. So, yeah, it's at least, you know, around twice that in today's money. Yeah, that's like a lawyer's annual salary went down a trash shoot. Crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. And everything about that was crazy.

And it was over the top. Was it fun? Yes, it was fun. Was it irresponsible? Totally. We were breaking the law. Yes. But it was like, you know, cat and mouse.

What happens if you lose a load of cocaine? You know, what happens when it's like, hey, look, the plane went down or we kicked these bales out and a bunch of them, we don't know where the hell they went? It's happened. I'm sure. I've lost loads and I've paid for them. All that does is increase your goodwill and then we have you more. It's just like a bank. You know, you pay them back, you lose this, but you not lend you more.

My goodwill was through the roof. One time with Ivan Urdinola, which he was a very delicate, violent, volatile guy. He never lost. Even if there was a loss, he wouldn't take it. And we did a load with him, and I went down to his farm, and I wrapped, I think it was about 1,000 kilos, 800 kilos, and I wrapped them for an airdrop. We were scheduled to go on X day, and it was postponed. So I told Ivan, Ivan, I'm going to leave.

The merchandise stays out. there, make sure you don't use that and send that to Mexico. When I send my pilot to pick it up and he gets handed the wrong packaging, sure enough, that happened. I sent my plane and I asked them, hey, are you sure? They're going to give them what I wrapped, what we wrapped. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure enough. We air dropped that and that smashed all over the ocean.

We had to pick it up and we delivered to their people here in Miami buckets. with the kilos broken, with seawater and Coke, just to prove to them, people always said, you know, this is it. They're going to kill Lewis because Ivan, he doesn't care. If he, by mistake, gave it to the wrong people. It's still your problem. If this happened, it's your problem. If that happened, it's your problem.

It's always your problem. And he actually said, you know, I'll swallow it. I'm sure he made somebody else pay for it, but he didn't go after me. And everybody said, that's unbelievable. he comes out in narcos. You can see him and Narcos in a couple of the, I don't know, the Colombian version, but a couple of the shows, Yvonne is there.

And he's very well-known, very well-known guy for his violence, as volatile, yet with me, first day I met him, he gave me an M-535. First day I met him, I met him at his dealership, car dealership. He talked really fast.

He gave me a car. No, he talked really fast. He probably using a lot of cocaine. Right. So, of course, you talked really fast. No, not really. Not really. You know, these guys kept it pretty cool.

They were just known for their violence. They killed a lot of people. First day I met him, he gave me $100,000 car. Wow. That's what it cost back then in Columbia, an M535 Alpine up gear box of a crazy car. I got along with them just fine. I have a knack for getting along with some real crazy people.

I don't know why. I've always had a knack to get along with some real crazy, volatile people. They liked me and I like them. I don't know. Opposites attract. I never carried a gun. Why should I? If I'm hanging out with Ivan, he's got enough guns.

Sure. Yeah, you'd said you survived because you were nonviolent and everyone knew it. And you said your personality was your sword. And on the show, we talk a lot about the value of reputation, how your reputation can be like an insurance. policy alongside your network. And here, it's kind of literally working for you in that respect because you did have some very close calls with crazy people like Yvonne who didn't kill you, in part because they knew you were never going to be a physical threat, right? Never. And they liked that about it. They liked the part that my craziness wasn't in being

violent or vicious. My craziness wasn't just being one crazy son of a bitch smuggler that was good. they didn't want me to be violent. They just wanted for me to be creative and good at what I did. Shmooze the right people at the border, talk to the right people to do this and do that, have a nice network. That's what they wanted me to do. They liked me.

They liked my honesty. He's so honest that, you know, he tells you up front, you know, I don't carry your gun. The worst thing you can do is lie. These people are the alpha predators. Okay, they are the alpha predators. predictors. You can't lie to these people. They have a sense of smell. They'll see you coming a mile away. If you're a killer, they know you're a killer. It's one-on-one. But if you're not,

and you give them a bullshit story that you're a killer, they'll smell you out. Then you're being dishonest. So from day one, I tell them, listen, I don't know nothing about guns. I don't own a gun. I don't know. I've been around the biggest killers and the biggest criminals that you can imagine as friends, and I treat them with respect because that's their business and that's what they do, and that's fine, they're hitmen.

But they're my friends, and I treat them with respect, and I don't look down on them, and I'll invite them to have dinner at my dinner table, and I will break bread with them because they are my friends. That they're killers, that's between them and God,

or them and whoever they want it, but they are my friends, and they really say, You know, you come from such a high class, born with a golden spoon in your mouth, went to college, and yet you're so humble. You're here with us, hanging out with us, and you treat us with, I've invited them to dinner in my parents' house. Not telling my parents who they were. Yeah, I would imagine.

But I felt bad that they had nowhere to go on Easter Sunday, for example. So I said, hey, this is a family day. Your family's in Columbia, you know. Come and share. You know, I didn't tell my parents. who they were. He's an exchange student from Colombia. Yeah.

Yeah, exchange student from Venezuela. You don't want to say Colombia. But they realized this guy is so like, he doesn't judge it. And they're used to getting judged all the time. They see that. Sure. They smell that. So like Yvonne, I'm not going to bullshit, Ivan.

He is the alpha predator. Yvonne, I lost your load, man. You fucked up. What do you mean? Nobody says that to you. Well, you know. And he loved me for him. And to this day, I'm still alive.

Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah. For that to happen with Ivan Urdinola and being alive is like unhurt. You told me you're more likely to get killed for losing 50 kilos than 50,000 kilos. Why is this? Is it like a bank too big to fail and they want you to owe them versus just being pissed off? No.

Ask Trump. Ask Trump. It's the old thing. You're too big to fail. Even Trump said it. You know, my bankruptcy is so huge in where was it? Atlantic City that instead of letting them go under, they lent them more money. So basically, when you lose 5,000 kilos, if they kill you, they lose the 5,000 kilos.

If, you know, you lose them, not if you steal them. If you're going to die anyway. But if they feel you're still good and your business is still active and your business didn't go under, they'll give you 5,000 more kilos or 10,000. thousand kilos so you can make up what you owe. 50 kilos, you know, they may kill you because you're getting 50 kilos from a broker who got it from a middleman, who got her from a distributor, who got her from a, you know, blah, blah, blah. But when you're dealing directly with a source of supply that has hundreds and thousands of kilos, the relationship is a little different.

Yeah. It's too big to fail and they depend on you to move 20, 30,000 kilos a year. So, you know, you don't want to lose that relationship. Yeah, that makes sense. You said the Coke was so pure you only do bumps. So when we see them do whole big lines on narcos and stuff, that's nonsense, right? Because a line of really pure coke would take you to the moon. A lot of people did lines. I've seen people do lines.

But that was in the early 80s when some of the stuff wasn't that good and a lot of it was cut. But still, I've seen people do lines of pure coke. It's all what your body gets used to. I always got my body used to just, you know, a bump and a bump. Some people got used to lines and if their body didn't take a whole hit of a line, but pure Coke is not meant to be done in lines. When we were in Colombia with our friends and we were partying and stuff, we'd have a bag and we just, you know, take a spoon and dip it and boom, boom,

you bump it, you don't do lines. We didn't. So for people that don't know how to do cocaine, A bump is when you dip a little, I don't know, like a little metal spoon end or fork or something like that into a bag and you get like a pinky nail worth of it in your nose instead of a whole big line like you see on TV or in the movies. Or depending on where you went to college, on a table. How accurate are shows like Narcos and Narcos Mexico? I mean, a lot of the stories and the people are embellished, but did you see that? Would you say like, hey, this is fairly accurate?

Yeah, it is. It is accurate. You know, Amado Carrillo, El Guero Palma, El Chapo, the Arellano brothers, they're pretty accurate. The Aereano brothers had huge parties in Tijuana. They wore that kind of clothing, those colorful shirts. Benjamin, Ramon, Amado was probably the most successful. One of the richest drug smugglers ever, ever, ever. Some people say he's still alive, I don't think so.

at Chappel. They do a very good job of portraying in general, a real picture there. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people listening have definitely loved those shows. I certainly watch all of these. And we had the Narcos guys on a while back, Javier Peña and Steve Murphy, the actual cops, not the actors. That was episode 4.53 if people want to go back and listen to that.

Nice guys, actually. You know, giving talks now and kind of surprised that something they did 20, 30 years ago is now super popular. You know, they weren't expecting that, obviously. Nor were you. No. I did two podcasts with Steve Murphy, great guy, amazing guy, and it's crazy that he was in Colombia. When I was in Colombia, we were both on opposite sides of the same coin because I was working with Pablo when he was hunting Pablo. I was friends with and worked with Negro Galliano, which Pablo killed. And that was the basis for the creation of Los Pepe's, and all these characters that are in that series

about Steve Murphy and Javier Peña, I knew these guys. And now I told Steve, can you believe this? Like in the 80s, you were on different sides, and now we're doing podcasts together. And he said, yeah, well, Lewis, you know, you were one of them, but you were just there for vacation. Yeah, you were one of them.

You can't say you weren't, but you never changed who you really weren't. The business did not change your nature. Yeah. You know, I didn't become a killer because I hung around killers. I was always turned on by money, so the greed factor was always there. I was always money hungry, yes. My morality gauge on how to make money, I didn't think that what we were doing was that bad. I didn't think it was bad.

I knew, I always said, you know, liquor, the people that sell. liquor, the people that sell arms. Today, Coke's illegal. Tomorrow it'll be legal. But, you know, there's certain things I never did because that was not me and I was not going to go that far on the morality thing, like kidnapping and killing or human trafficking. It's done. And some people say that what I did is worse, but I just didn't see it as that. We were just moving a commodity like anything else. You have, I've heard you say I did something illegal. not something immoral. Illegal, not immoral.

I try to keep it as much a business as possible. It's an illegal business, but I handled it in a very honest way, in a very humane way. I cannot be responsible for things beyond my reach. It's inhumane when, you know, people die of overdose, but people get drunk and get in a car and crash every day and die. But from my end, if I could avoid it, you know, I would avoid the people casualty part. Some things got too out of control that I had no say in it.

It just fell into the hands of corporate headquarters, I'd say. Some guy just stole 5,000 kilos because he stole it because he wanted to. I'll say, I can't do anything about that. You know, that's when the office comes in and they handle it at that level. But a friend of mine lost 400 kilos in California, a Mexican friend of mine. It wasn't really his fault. I paid for him. Instead of having him whacked, I paid for it.

And then we continued working. So I made it off. But anybody else would have said, I'm not paying, you know, 400 kilos. That was $4 million. Wow. I got charged at $10,000 a kilo. I didn't get charged full price. You know, I paid for it.

Twice I did that. You said nobody gets in the business to kill people. They get in to make money and then the business changes you and you end up a killer. What's that process like? How does that happen? Everybody gets in the business to make money. Some people get into the business as a killer because that's what they're good at to make money. They start out as a killer and they end up owning a cocaine exporting enterprise because they grew in the racks.

But everybody starts out to make money. The killers in the co-business that I've known, started as a killer to make money. They didn't start, you know, as a killer just because they enjoyed killing. Although I know of some situations where people lose their mind and then they start enjoying what they're doing and they're psychopaths. Then they, okay, the other group of people will kill you in a heartbeat because it's business.

They will not hesitate to kill you, but it's business. But everybody starts out to make money. Whether you start out like I did, distributing. But what I did, I did it for money. I didn't do it for free. In my case, I was with a girl that I was enjoying my time with her so much that I just did it to hang out with her. It was just the result of me hanging out with her that I got involved in the business. At the beginning, I started in the business just to be with her, living with her and hanging out with her was so great, so much fun that that was part of it also.

And then as a result, I ended up saying, yes, I do want to stay in the business. She said, do you want to stay or do you want to get out? Says, no, no, no, no, no. You know, I've always loved rock and roll. I always wanted to be a rock and roll drummer, and this is better than rock and roll. So I stayed. And that conversation actually did take place.

We were overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. You wrote, if you're scared of dying, don't get into this business. So is it just a young man's game? You know, like young guys, we don't think we're going to die. Us older guys, no, we're going to die. I'm not trying to expedite the process. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't even know where to start. I don't think I could do it.

Timing is everything. I was at the right time, at the right place with the right people, and got connected in the right way. Now, while I was doing this, was I thinking of getting busted or dying? No. Because if you're thinking of dying all the time or getting busted all the time, then too much of your thinking is going into that instead of going into being creative, intelligent, and smart, and doing what you're doing in the right way.

This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Luis Navia. We'll be right back. I want to thank you for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of those who advertise on the show, that's what keeps things going around here. All those discount codes, all those complicated URLs, we put them all in one place. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. It's mobile responsive. We're working on a search function. but in the meantime, you can search for any sponsor using the search box on the website as well at jordanharbinger.com. So please consider supporting those who support us. Now for the rest of my conversation with Luis Navia.

You had some close calls. Tell us about the crocodile thing. I mean, this was, you know, this is a plunger. We worked Cancun for many years. They got to a point where we said we're not working Cancun anymore because it's getting too dangerous and now you have to pay tribute to, uh, Amado Carrillo's group that was run by a guy named Metro. So we decided to stay out of Cancun.

But one day I get a phone call and said, hey, we got permission to work Cancun. So I said, fine. I brought the load into Belize. And I traveled from Mexico City to Cancun because we were going to receive the load in Chetumal, which is part of that Cancun area that falls under the umbrella of the Juarez cartel and under the umbrella of this guy that controlled that whole area. To make a long story short, I travel to Cancun and I get to Cancun and I'm trying to find Metro and I can't find them and I make a couple phone calls and I can't find because I want to tell them. Listen, my 600 kilos are in Belize. Let me know when you want me to hand them over to your people in Chitumar. So I go to a hotel that I know they own. I have a couple drinks and then suddenly in through the door comes Metro's number one transport or heat. So I tell He I said, here.

You know, I got 600 kilos in Belize, and I'm glad you're here. So let's talk about, you know, how am I going to get them over to you? When do you want to do this? So I said, oh, we'll talk about that later, you know, let's have some drinks and this and that. So we start drinking and started playing pool. So at the end of the night, I said, listen, I want to play tennis tomorrow, so I'm going to go home early. And we had already had quite a few drinks. It was my idea.

And I said, you know, this one last pool game will play for $250,000. If I win, you give me a $250,000 break on the train. transport, if I lose, I give you 50 kilos placed in Cancun. Of the 600 that are in Belize, you take 50 as your own. And 50 at 5,000 a kilos, $250,000. So I lost. I almost won, but I lost by one ball or something, eight ball. So I go home to, you know, boom, wake up the next morning.

I'm going to go play tennis. I played tennis. Then I went to my business in Cancun, the coffee business. And I went across the street to make a phone call from a pay phone. Before you know it, I get hit in the back. My hair gets yanked. They want to put me in a Chevrolet truck. This is Metro's people and Metro.

He's accusing me that I'm working under the radar, that I should have told him that I was in Cancun working, that according to him, I'm working under the radar, trying to sneak one by him, pulling a fast one on him. Like you're doing business in his area without letting him in on the business? Correct. Got it. I said, are you nuts?

you think I'd be here in Cancun myself on a payphone? On top of that, do you think I would have gone to play pool with heat last night? That's all bullshit. This did not. Get him in the truck. Get him in the car. So finally, I backflipped in this. I didn't let myself get into the car.

So I said, okay, let's settle down. I'll ride with you. But please, just let me ride in the front seat with you. I need to explain, oh, my God, this guy. We're taking this guy out. Next thing you know, he may want to drive. I said, no, just let me go in the front seat. So here I am explaining to this guy, this whole thing, he wanted nothing of it.

He don't want to hear nothing about it. He's driving to the laguna, which used to be an abandoned theme park. It had green and red pyramids and these concrete geometrical figures, and it was abandoned, and they used to keep some alligators, crocodiles. It was a type of crocodile back there, because the allegations. Alligators were on the golf course. The alligators are more docile than these crocks, salt water, freshwater, fresh water, crocks.

And we're driving there. I'm very upset. I mean, I'm terrified because he says, I'm going to throw you the car. The only thing that's going to be left are those shiny little plastic shoes you've got on, my tennis shoes. I'm trying to explain to him at the same time. I'm calling Hill nonstop.

This guy doesn't answer. I said, oh, my God, this guy's on a plane. knows where, whatever, hungover, doesn't answer. Right before we're about to get there to the, where they kept the crocodiles, and this was known that he used to throw people there. Three minutes before getting there,

finally he answers the phone. Because I asked Metro to dial him from his phone. He didn't want to. I convinced him to dial him. He dialed them and he answered. And Metro goes, Here I have the collocho, he'll be to throw in the crocodiles,

The only thing that is going to get are those zapatillas Blankas that they have them here. Colocho means the Columbian. I have them here in my custody and I'm going to throw them into the Cricket House.

The only thing that's going to be left over of those white shiny sneakers. And he kind of was hung over and says, what? What? He explained it to him. He said,

no, no, no, no, no. Don't throw him into the car. He owes me $250,000 from last night. So this guy goes, he's blown away. He thought it was a bullshit. shit story. And he looks at me and, you know, like when somebody looks at you and you know, there's a certain bond to him, it was so far-fetched and it turned out to be true that he couldn't

believe it. And you know what he said? He said, you know what? You're crazier than I am. You're playing pool with healing. You lose 200. If not even I do that, $250,000. You have a load in Venice. You're here in Cancun. You know this is my town. I mean, all these things are so. out of alignment with the planets, let's say. And yet, it's true. You did lose $250,000. I mean, he looked at me and there was a certain bond. Then he dropped me off at the hotel.

And then you realize that these kind of people, they're so whacked out, they're so strange, they're so different. The same way, there's a look that saves your life. There's a look that you can walk into a restaurant and you look them the wrong way. He'll put a bullet in your head. like nothing, and he'll have his tacos and leave.

And yes, that was very close. That was very close. The adrenaline was going, I don't even have words to tell you, because I can't, I don't know what I felt. It was just an instant, nonstop trying to get that phone call in, trying to get annoying, your time's running out. You're not thinking about, is it going to hurt if the crocodiles bite me or eat me? You're not thinking about that.

You don't have time to think about that. If you're thinking about that, then you're not using your time properly. You need to make that goddamn phone call. You can't be there crying. Oh, yeah, don't take me. Because the first thing they'll do, look at the little money. He's crying all like a baby. And you lost all that good time where you could have been making a phone call.

Either that or thinking of a way to jump out of the truck. So basically, if you had just gone to bed that night, instead of being a degenerate gambler, you'd be dead by now. You'd be dead. Dead. Yeah. And I never gamble. Oh, you never gamble. That was just a one-off.

I've only gambled twice in my life. That's funny. Once with Polly, we were playing poker at night with Mario, rest in peace, and rest in peace, Polly, and I lost 100,000. That's it. I never gamble. And that time, for the hell of it, I played, but I went to Vegas to launder money, trade in money for chips, but I'm not a gambler.

I just did it for the hell of it. Wow. But if I would have gotten to bed last night, and I would have gotten picked up on that phone and put in that truck, I would have not have that kind of story. I would have just had to say, you know, we have a load.

Please believe me. It's for you. That da, da, da, da, da, da, da, that. I could have been dead. Unbelievable. How did you retire? Right? You said if you're going to retire,

never tell people you're going to retire because acting educated or better than others is a good way to get killed. I mean, I assume you were forced into retirement by getting arrested, not because you wanted to retire. I never wanted to retire, and that's how crazy it was. The feds retired me. They picked me up, and they put an end to my career. But if it would have been for me, you know, I was already under indictment, so I had no choice. I had to continue working because I wasn't about to give myself up and go to jail. So I had to continue working, so I would have continued working. But I have a friend of mine, He didn't grow up as a wealthy person.

He made a lot of money in the Coke business. Then he started going to Paris and being very refined and very educated and this and that. And he started telling everybody, I'm going to retire and move to Paris. And I'm not going to have no more, nothing to do with this BS anymore. One day he got picked up. They kidnapped him. They took all his money. You know, they just said, let him retire.

This guy just thinks he comes in, does this, and then retires and walks away. But then there was some stories about him that he had done some things that, you know, he cheated some people out of some money, declared some loads that were lost that weren't lost, kept the money, played with that. So, but yes, they did pick him up. They took his money. One morning that said, you're free to leave.

He went to the river, bowed down to wash his face. And the guy that took him to the river, took a machete, and whoop, chop. chopped as they are. Wow. Yeah, so if you want to retire in the business, you literally just have to disappear. Exactly. Don't tell anybody, don't just disappear. Let them think your plane went down over the ocean and you just never made it home. Yeah. And I know a lot of people that have been very fortunate that they've never been indicted. They've worked 30 years and they're retired. They're sitting back and enjoying their money. No problem. How much do you think you made over your career as a narco or a smuggler?

I don't know, 50 million, 80 million. I don't know, but kept very little. Sure. For the cartels, you know, billions were produced. Is it hard to calculate how much you earn in the business? Because that's a pretty big spread, 50 to 80 million. Yeah, it is hard. It's hard because it comes in and it goes out.

It's a hard number to pinpoint. but somewhere around there, I guess. Were you able to stash anything? I mean, I guess you probably can't tell me that because if you get arrested and then you come out, you can't be like, yeah, I had a bunch of money under the mattress. No, I mean, people know that there's something,

you know, there's always been something. It's private, but there's always been something. Yeah, I figured, of course it's private. I'm still going to ask because people are wondering, you know me, come on. You know how this works. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of money that. went through my hands, you know.

And I should have been more responsible. I should have retired. I'm an educated man. I could have done anything. I could have bought 10 McDonald franchises back in the 80s. I could have just closed my eyes and just gone like this on a map of Miami and bought 20, 30 properties, 100 apartments. But then I was always so caught up in the business itself. I had to leave the United States.

I wanted nothing to do with it. the U.S. I didn't want any properties here. So I started investing overseas, and Macadamacadamia farming, Costa Rica, in Mexico, coffee operations here. I mean, in Mexico, latex, this, that, in the end of the day, there's something, there's always something left over. I mean, what can I tell you? Sure. You said the best thing that ever happened was getting arrested. I couldn't do the right thing myself, quit the business. So somebody had to do it for me. You think you were kind of addicted to the money and the lifestyle, or was it just the thrill of smuggling that kept you hooked? I was in love with my business. It was a business where, you know,

I dealt with the highest levels in that industry. Anytime you're in an industry and you're dealing with the highest people in that industry, it's interesting. And I've always been someone that wants to make it better and take it to the next level. So we started small. We ended up with freighters. So we grew the business. So as an entrepreneur, I was pretty excited about being at a level of dealing with freighters.

And later on, I realized that freighters was a mistake. I should have just dealt with large-sized boats, but not freighters, not commercial. Fraterers are on paper trail. I always knew that the paper trail was going to nail us. having to have offices to maintain those freighters and employees. But I was never going to quit. I liked what I did.

The thrill also, because it's thrilling. When you send 5,000, 6,000 kilos, boom, you make it. It's a thrill. It's a thrill. Not only the money, but the act of just cat and mouse. How long were you then in prison? Five years. Five years.

Okay. I guess if I were to ask about regrets, it seems like missing those years with your kids and damaging that relationship has to be it. Yes. Regrets, not being more mature, more responsible, not saving the amount of money I should have saved, and possibly getting out in time so that I would have never done prison time. But I never thought I was going to get caught. But yeah, that's one of my regrets. I'm lost with my kids is a big, big time regret and not having been responsible enough to save up more.

Yeah, separating the business of drugs from the partying maybe, yeah? Oh, and regret is also partying too much. Yeah. Drinking and snorting. That's a big regret. That is something that whatever business you're in, drinking and partying and snorting beyond a certain point, beyond normal standards, it's definitely not good. I really think liquor is a bad one and Coke also.

Your father was a strong figure in your life. He was a good businessman, right, in the sugar business. Do you think by getting into the narco life, maybe there was some betrayal of his values that he would have tried to teach you? Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt. Although I was honest in an illegal business, And that's why I always, I was always involved in legal businesses while I was in the illegal business because I always wanted to feed myself the story that I'm going legit. And I'm going to honor my dad's tradition of being a great businessman in the legal world.

There's probably more dishonest people in the legal world than they're on the illegal world. But I always had that dream of someday being able to retire and be totally legit. And that was like I was lying to myself because I knew I was never going to retire. One thing is to say it. The other thing is your actions, certain actions that prove that you're working on retiring. I never did those initial moves to show anybody that I was on my way to retire. My attitude was always a reckless, crazy, pedal to the metal, and the illegal world attitude. You said that we're never going to be able to sort of fight the war on drugs.

Interdiction, so catching cocaine smuggling is fruitless. Do you think it's possible to dismantle these organizations? I guess maybe it's better to ask, what do you think needs to happen for us to even make a dent in the war on drugs here? What can we do about this from your perspective? You have to legalize it. And once you legalize it, the market will level out. Okay, but for example, you could, cocaine is like bananas or coffee. There's an X amount of cocaine.

The production of cocaine is not unlimited. Like United Fruit in Central America, when they wanted to drive up the price of bananas, they used to buy up all the bananas, and there was no banana for anybody else to buy, so they controlled the price, and they controlled the physical bananas. The U.S. government could go in, and with the money they spent on the DEA budget, and the ice budget and all this drug with the tenth of that budget,

they could buy up all the coca leaves that are produced down there. So once the government buys it, there's no coca leaf for any cartel organization to buy up. So basically you put them out of business because you eliminate their supply

because there's a limited supply. That's a hard move because, number one, the U.S. government is not allowed to buy cocaine. It may be allowed to buy through the agricultural department, let's say the coca leaf, but it can't buy the powder. But then again, you'd have to partner up with criminal groups down there to do the buying for you. Right.

So you'd empower another type of criminal bad guy. The best thing is to legalize it. Then you start growing it genetically modified cocaine. Like you have thousands of acres in Kansas with genetically modified corn. You produce the cocaine here. grade, you legalize it, you tax it, and the guy that unfortunately is hooked on this shit can go to the drugstore and buy a pure packet of cocaine that he knows has no fentanyl, and he knows that someday he can go and get treatment because it's legalized, it's paid taxes,

and it's in part of your insurance. Then the price will go down because the U.S. government will sell that for $60 a gram, a super pure product. You buy it in an air-conditioned drugstore, not under a bridge, supposing yourself to get and kill. Under those circumstances, you will defeat the cartels. The cartels, that's it. It's just like prohibition. The criminality with booze ended when they legalized liquor.

When was the last time you bought liquor from somebody that made it in his bathtub? Never, yeah, of course. Actually, that's not true. When I lived in Serbia, I drank a lot of that. But that's an exception to the rule. That's very interesting. Yeah, yeah. They love that out there.

You buy liquor at a liquor store. And you put that whole mafia, Chicago, 20s criminality, and people drive by shootings and everything that was happy. It died the day they legalized liquor. And Seagrams came in and, you know, the Kennedys were involved and they got the representations for scotch and they paid taxes. That's the only way you're going to get the criminality. out of the cocaine cartel business.

No different. You legalize it and it's over. Now you can buy it legally. That's it. There's no illegality. There's no criminality. There's always going to be somebody selling something on the street. Why buy it from him when it's much easier to drive into Walmart or Walgreens?

I know you're doing consulting here and there for law enforcement. Given your background and your experience, What types of things are they asking you if you're retired? I got to say it scares me a little bit that law enforcement is asking somebody who's been out of the business for decades, how things are done. Like, are we that far behind in tradecraft and technology? No, the things I did are still being done today. I was in it for so long for 25 years that I met so many people and some people are still active, some people aren't. but there's always something that needs,

that you need to confirm from somebody that was there, boots on the ground. And I'm not doing that much anymore because, remember, I retired 22 years ago, but still, they come to me once in a while with things to help them with or things that are happening, what I think, or this guy came from the past,

and this is happening, could this be related to that, that kind of stuff. nothing proactive. Like I don't go down to Columbia and infiltrate the drug groups, you know, or anything like that, you know. I have a business to run here, and that takes full-time priority. But consulting, yes, on money laundering situations.

Right now, you know, the money situation has totally changed. Before the Colombians used to take their money to exporters here in Miami, and the exporters used to buy refrigerators and send them to Colombia. and launder their money that way. Right now, the Mexicans aren't even messing with that. The way the Coke comes up through the tunnels, they take that bulk of that cash, billions of dollars, and send it back to Mexico in bulk.

Then they put $600,000, $700 million inside a container in cash. Send it to China. The Chinese open up the container, take the $600 million, buy pens, dixie cups, syringes, everything you see in Walmart, they take that money, then that gets distributed to the whole planet and it's laundered.

So money laundering has changed. No longer do you have the guys walking in with duffel bags into a bank. No longer do you have people giving money to people in exchange houses here? Right now they don't want to deal with that. There's no paper trail. In bulk, it's taken to Mexico,

and in Mexico, it's taken them and cash to China. Once it gets to China, You lost it. In China, there is no dirty money. It's money. There is no money laundering. It's money.

They have another concept. Dirty money? It doesn't look dirty to me. It looks pretty clean. And what that money gets put into the whole global financial or consumer goods industry. Unbelievable. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. That's probably a whole separate show.

Maybe we'll have to have you come back and talk about that. So you mentioned earlier that you wouldn't do this all over again if you could. What would you do instead if you had a replay? Well, I did what I did because at that time, it played out for me and everything's timing. I think I would have been pretty good as a commodities trader. I would have gotten involved in trading, buying and selling coffee, aluminum, commodities, whether physical or futures, but mostly I think I would have been, because of my nature, I would have been good at that.

Yeah. Well, your dad was in the sugar business, right? Missed it by that much, right? I tried to do it. I tried to go back. And I even got subpoenaed and almost got in trouble for contrabanding sugar. It's in the book, Operation Bitter's Sweet. I'll leave that as a cliffhanger for people that want to go ahead and grab the book.

Because contrabanding sugar almost sounds like something that's not real. But apparently it is. there's more money in that than there was in the co-business made a lot of money the thing is my partner died but it's real it's real anytime you have a subsidy for a product there's a way around i'll leave it at that but a chapter in the book it's called operation bittersweet it was a customs operation focused on what was going on in the mid-80s, a lot of it in Miami, of the contraband of sugar. Luis, thank you so much. Fascinating conversation.

You've had quite an interesting life, and I appreciate that we were able to have this conversation. Now, I've got some thoughts on this episode, as usual. But before I get into that, you're about to hear a preview of my interview with the world's best counterfeiter. How long does it take to print $250 million? Five months. It needs to be worthwhile. It's going to need to be perfect. Because perfect, you go big. One day, for no particular reason, I was driving and thinking, and I stopped at a red light, it just hit me out of nowhere. You know, I'm chasing something to make money from. Sell something, make something, do something. All we do is to translate that into money. So we wake up in the morning and do that. I need to do something for money. Well, why don't I just literally make money? $1 million in $20 bills is about 50 kilos.

So $250 million is $12,500 kilos or over eight Toyota Camry's or six Ford F-150s. That is multiple metric tons of cash. You must have been f-and-stoked, man, because you knew you were going to put $20,000, bills all over all of that and then just never work again. Yes. When I did bring it in and then I slammed the door shut, I was confident enough that everything I did opt to that, I hadn't done any mistakes. So it was good to go.

By design, there are people specifically looking for you all the time. This is all they do. If you get suspected, you know, in any way, let's say you're done. You can tell them whatever you want. They're not dummies. I mean, this is as high as it goes. It's the stuff of the line. For more on how Frank Barossa printed his own fortune and got away with it,

check out episode 488 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Man, this one just got out of control. The seizures towards the end of his career were worth billions of dollars. The street value of the cocaine is just unreal. Multiple nations, including Venezuela and the USA. You know things have gone crazy when Venezuela and Cuba and the United States are all working together. I mean, that is really something else.

Just in case you're still tempted to romanticize the drug trafficking business, here's a little anecdote for you. I left it out of the show, but it's just disgusting. When they would air drop product to fishing camps, they would drop the product out of the plane, right? Like you said, there's glow sticks that he would attach to the product. Now, a lot of these local native tribes, you know, people who are First Nation, they've been there forever,

they live in the jungle, they didn't know what it was, and the glow sticks were really something. so they would run over there to see what it is. And of course the narcos would come by, see the natives all gawking at these glow sticks that are floating in the ocean on the cocaine packages and they would slaughter all of them, men, women, and children, and just leave them for dead in the jungle. So if you think this is a cool kid occupation and it's a lot of fun and it's, you know, a little adrenaline here and there, then just think about that kind of thing. And it should disabuse you of any notion that this is an honorable, upright way to make a living

or even a career in which you could possibly avoid doing evil things in the first place. The whole business is rife with senseless murder and human waste. The reason I brought this story to you today is not only because it's exciting and interesting and Luis was so open, but because Luis is such an outlier and that he's still alive to tell the story in the first place. Big thank you to Luis Navia. Links to all things Luis will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. If you buy the book or any book from any guest on the show, please use our web,

website links. It does help support the show. Transcripts in the show notes, videos on YouTube, advertisers, deals, and discount codes, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or you can always connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with people and manage relationships using the same software systems and tiny habits that I use every day. That's our six-minute networking course. That course is and always will be free. It's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty to create and maintain relationships before you need them. And most of the guests you hear on the show,

they subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. This show is created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie O'Kampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's interested in the narco-trafficking game, and hopefully is not a trafficker themselves, but merely a gawker from the sidelines like myself, share this episode with them. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can

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