The Pomp Podcast - #952 John Pompliano On How Pablo Escobar Made $420 Million Per Week

Starting point is 00:00:00 what's up everyone this is anthony pompliano most of you know me as pomp you're listening to the pomp podcast simply the best podcast out there now let's kick this thing off in this episode i talked to my brother john pompliano all about the financial life of pablo escobar we cover how much money he was making what he was doing with the money some of the absurd things that he did as he continued to build his drug empire and also how people of columbia viewed him during his rise and ultimate fall. I really enjoyed this conversation with my brother and I hope that you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by OKCoin. They are my favorite place to buy,

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Starting point is 00:03:46 Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. this podcast is for informational purposes only john what's up man what up i uh i'm doing great

Starting point is 00:04:13 how are you i'm fantastic yeah i got no complaints yeah i see your guns out like must be sunny outside right i won't flex i don't want to break the camera all right so yesterday we were talking about like what could we possibly talk about today and we're like i don't know we'll think about it and then separate conversation different point of the day you're like yo did you hear Pablo Escobar. And as soon as you told me the stat, I was like, we got to talk about this tomorrow. So where do you want to start with Pablo Escobar, one of the largest drug kingpins of all time? Yeah, well, let's just start simply. He started off selling fake diplomas. He was stealing tombstones and then reselling them, which is just a savage thing in itself. But then he

Starting point is 00:04:55 started stealing cars where he got arrested first. And then he worked his way into organized crime with obviously drug dealing and cocaine, which was his massive enterprise. But he built one of the largest i'll call it one of the largest drug enterprises in the world so he started out as petty criminal and then over time he built it up he almost became more serious larger scale more ambitious over time until eventually became this massive multinational uh drug business i mean you see here his mugshot here on the left and then you see a pile of cash on the right and obviously transporting and money laundering is huge for these guys so they used to use a bunch of chinese people um over there in asia so they would take usd try to transfer it through an asian or a

Starting point is 00:05:33 Chinese bank or an Asian bank and then transfer it back to Mexican to Mexico to get Mexican pesos right uh so the whole plan was just kind of how do we convert the cash from USD and get it back to Mexico without being traced right so in the height of his career I'll call it and I want to also note something real quick Pablo Escobar not a good guy at all right he used he he used force he's forced to get a lot of what he wanted and that's how he became very very violent and that's how he became very very popular so I'm not advocating to do this at all but he made 420 million a week which comes out to be 22 billion dollars a year rewind rewind pablo escobar and his enterprise they were making a half a billion dollars a week at the top yep he produced about

Starting point is 00:06:18 80 in the 80s he produced about 80 of the cocaine that was consumed in the world okay so that so him and his enterprise create 80 of the cocaine in the world they're booking 420 million dollars a week in revenue uh 22 billion a year keep going he's 22 billion a year but by the time he died he was only worth about 30 billion dollars right why that's well he spent a lot of money frankly right like he was one he was a philanthropist he did build a lot in mexico he did invest a lot he's an economic developer in the nation but when you're raking in 420 million dollars i'm sure that you waste a little bit right so we'll get to in some wild facts in a second but he was burning money he was storing what he was losing it everything under the sun um but yeah he was

Starting point is 00:07:02 that 30 billion dollars back then would be the equivalent about 64 billion today okay so even though he had by far the largest drug enterprise in the world he wouldn't even be the richest person in today's dollar terms uh but he would definitely be top 20 yeah for sure uh on top of that uh when you were telling me about this and his whole philanthropic activities uh i then told you i said you should go watch the movie american gangster right uh because frank lucas uh was doing uh similar stuff where he'd hand out the turkeys uh on thanksgiving etc to uh essentially say hey i got you as a community i got you you guys got me i got you but also i got i rule with an iron fist and if there's any problems then uh the violent side i treat it like the mob where

Starting point is 00:07:44 they rob you and then they say if you want protection from being robbed you should pay us uh i treat it similar to that it's almost like forcing it upon them like they i'm sure they liked it but it wasn't anything crazy but yeah he was a philanthropist you know he was a congressman i did know that only because i watched a movie about it but explain explain what happened he basically just ran for a political office yeah i think that's kind of how it works right he uh basically forced his way into a congress seat uh in 1982 i believe and then two years later obviously it he was a notorious kingpin at the time and they removed him from the congress seat um so he was elected in a in a free and fair election however you want to call that similar

Starting point is 00:08:20 to how putin gets re-elected okay so he got elected to congress probably spent a lot of money bought a lot of uh influence let's call it and then two years later he was forced to resign uh that after a campaign that exposes criminal activities that's wild but now say this second this is the this was the stat that kicked off this entire conversation what did he try to do with mexico's debt this is genius by him he tried mexico was in about 10 billion dollars of debt and he tried to say if i pay your 10 billion dollars of debt as a nation i think that i should not be extradited anywhere around the world you should not have to abide to any extradition treaties anywhere because i'm basically taking care of this country right so the country of mexico in

Starting point is 00:08:58 the late 1980s they had 10 billion dollars of sovereign debt the country was in debt 10 billion and he had the 10 billion and he said i will pay off the country's debt so that mexico can be free of debt but in exchange no matter whatever happens in the world you cannot let anyone come and take me exactly and as we know uh a lot of the story is he did not do that and mexico did not accept his money because that's a ridiculous offer i think um but yeah and then you just kind of go down the line right you're talking about how how does he not have more money today than uh anyone else i'm sorry it was in colombia not mexico is what he was trying to pay excuse me colombia all this in colombia um but yeah he also when he was on the run in 19 or 1992 1993 he notoriously

Starting point is 00:09:43 apparently burned two million dollars to keep his daughter warm so freezing you're on the run you're in a hideout place he put two million dollars of cash in a pile and burned it and had her sit next to the fire um it's not a fire log obviously that probably burned very very quickly but burning two million dollars to keep your daughter warm just shows that's what the kind of guy was right he wasn't worried about the money aspect of it he was uh he was obviously already on the run at that point um and then he spent an estimated 2,500 a month on rubber bands to keep his money $2,500 a month that's more than people paying rent just to keep rubber bands to keep your money in it's absolutely ridiculous the amount of money that he was making um throughout

Starting point is 00:10:22 his time these are wild stats 10 or 2 billion dollars a year they just chalked it up and said oh yeah the rats are gonna eat it he would store money in warehouses different facilities his house he would store it in just open fields because he had so much money he had nowhere to put it um and then obviously rats and weather and everything can destroy cash dollar bills so he would lose apparently notorious to his brother he'd lose about 10 or 2.1 billion dollars a year yeah did the people of columbia like him like like everything i read there's definitely mixed feelings because he was such a big philanthropist he built over 70 soccer fields he built a zoo in uh columbia and everything like that so it obviously like he was a big

Starting point is 00:11:01 philanthropist but i think people know when you rule with an iron fist you're not the most loved individual in the world um it goes back to that would you rather be loved or hated and i think he was a little bit of both you know that uh you know that i went to uh i went to the zoo in his compound in in colombia hacienda napoles i think we're gonna get to that all right go ahead tell me about hacienda napoles i went there physically i was i was on the ground i went and saw i'm gonna talk about one thing before we get to that is i don't know if you guys are aware but pablo Escobar was on the Forbes billionaire list for four or five straight years, even though he was a criminal and on the run for the United States. So in this is from 1987, the first time he made

Starting point is 00:11:41 the billionaires list, it states in the article that he was not only a U.S. fugitive, but he was also at a net worth of approximately three billion dollars in 1987. This was closer to the height of his career. I think that is extremely understated. And so does Pablo's son, because he's quoted saying forbes couldn't have can't and won't ever have access to it to overview the accounting books from mobsters so they can't calculate their alleged fortunes not even close to the real figures so that just speaks to like these guys don't keep and they might but they don't share accounting books they don't share what their revenue is what their profit is right so everything that forbes did in these past few years when he was on the forbes billionaire list was a guess

Starting point is 00:12:21 they had no clue right so so he probably had more money than they were saying that's exactly what his son is saying is you guys have absolutely no clue the way mobsters work is they don't do public filings they don't tell you what their revenue is up front everything works behind the scenes and that's exactly what he did i think he was worth well over three billion dollars at this point considering how much money he was making all right now tell me about hacienda napoles all right hacienda napoles is an absolute compound dude he built a house it's on the top of this mountain so he can see 360 degrees around if anyone's coming yeah he built it it cost him about 60 million dollars to build there's the original plane from apparently the first trip

Starting point is 00:12:57 he did with cocaine to the united states um and that is the entrance to the compound right there but the compound has an airport several swimming pools a man-made lake a private zoo with exotic birds hippopotamuses i fed a hippo at hacienda napoles they still have it notoriously once they a bull fighting ring as well but notoriously once they came in and took over his compound once he uh once he was dead and everything um there was four hippos left and they they the hippos started um reproducing and uh when we call it there's now hundreds of hippos that are just from those four and those are the only animals that uh kind of stayed in the compound yeah so what's fascinating into a museum with with an amusement park they sell tickets to it you can go if you

Starting point is 00:13:39 go to columbia you can buy a ticket you can go to uh to this compound uh you also can um uh walk around they have fake dinosaurs like they have like life size those were there when he yeah he definitely put those there because no one would be crazy enough to put that stuff there later uh and then they have like kind of like a museum area where basically it's uh documenting his rise fall and ultimate death uh but you want to know the craziest part about it is as you're walking up to it and like you still can go in this bull uh fighting uh kind of arena and everything is the colombian government built a massive prison on the grounds as well and it almost felt a little bit like oh you know you ran from us for so long like whatever like they've preserved this because

Starting point is 00:14:28 i'm assuming they're making money off of it right as this like a thing that people can go to uh but my guess is that they put the uh the prison there uh as well as just like uh well there's irony in the fact that we built a colombian prison on the ground was that the one that he built that pablo uh because pablo escobar he in 1989 when i said he was ruling with uh such authority and such violence was he apparently killed a government informant by bombing an airplane right and obviously he went to jail for that but the way he got around this was he built his own jail in columbia where he would be housed and in the most lavish pablo escobar fashion he built an exceptional jail this jail had a nightclub this is not this is not the one no that's not the one

Starting point is 00:15:16 on his compound yeah so his jail that he built has a nightclub a sauna a waterfall telephones computers and everything you can think of it uh look he was uh he escaped from the jail after in 1992 and then went on the run and that's when he died in 1993 he died in a shootout um with the police so uh bear with us here this is uh me saying this i believe this is a video of the uh of the prison we can we can play it again there's a road that you walk up from that uh where the plane is as you walk towards the compound and what you'll see here is like this is the uh the prison uh it did not look like the most hospitable uh conditions if this is the one that i saw yeah it literally like it looked like there was almost uh chain-linked uh prisons outside um so

Starting point is 00:16:02 it's uh it's uh it's pretty crazy but all right uh when you think about escobar you think that total net worth got to be about in today's term 65 uh billion i think it was closer with if he sold equity in his company for example something like that i think he was closer worth somewhere around 100 billion to 120 billion dollars yeah so basically he'd be top five richest people in the world in today's dollars uh but obviously it was a nefarious purposes but he definitely ran a multinational corporation in terms of logistics finance uh distribution marketing the whole nine yards yeah i mean he knew how to one use people and the the loyalty and the violence to kind of get what he wanted but look he built a massive enterprise and that goes along with he used

Starting point is 00:16:47 politicians he used local individuals he used trade routes like he used everything in his hands um and outside of his hands frankly to get control on um to make this enterprise successful and to be frank he did it's uh it's crazy to think about he was also nicknamed robin hood yeah they did they did call seems to be throwing around a little bit too much these days but here's what i'll say there's a few folks who i think are from uh columbia actually who are in the chat right now and one of the things you have to remember is that like somebody can get their revenue or their income from nefarious ways judged by both their local government but also the international community which i think most people would say hey that's what's going on here uh but they still can

Starting point is 00:17:30 do good things for the people of their country as he was doing and so what it ends up doing is like depending on who you ask good guy bad guy right like some of these people are very very complex and you can have bad people who also do good things you also can have good people who do bad things and so i think it's just it's uh it's fascinating to see the life of somebody who especially in the united states has now been celebritized in a way uh because for whatever reason american culture really likes he's in violence guns drugs money you know all that type of stuff and there's now you know all these different videos and movies and stuff when you're making 420 million dollars a week you would assume someone's gonna do a documentary or

Starting point is 00:18:09 just like document the story yeah that's a crazy crazy thing all right where can we send people to to follow you on on Twitter, maybe follow me on Twitter at John Pompliano, J-O-H-N-P-O-M-P-L-I-A-N-O. Couldn't make it more simple for you. First and last name. You're a genius. You're you're an absolute genius. No Palm Global. All right. Thank you for coming on tomorrow. What is your criteria going to be for topics? Joe said just what he's interested in. What are your what is your criteria going to be? Anything I think the people will be interested in. So DM me ideas on what you guys want to hear about, I will do the research.

Starting point is 00:18:45 I'll come present it to you and we'll get down to the facts. Do a little learning. A little learning. Oh, facts. Facts and truth. Yeah, well, don't tell the ministry of truth. Don't tell the ministry of truth.

Starting point is 00:18:55 They may shut you down. Yeah. The disinformation governance board. Yeah. In two days, we're going to create a new board. All right. I appreciate you coming on. We'll talk again tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:19:08 Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to palmscryptocourse.com.

Starting point is 00:19:23 We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to palmscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode. Thank you.

The Pomp Podcast - #952 John Pompliano On How Pablo Escobar Made $420 Million Per Week

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