The King of Miami Dr. Jorge Valdes Tells All - Behind NETFLIX Series 'Cocaine Cowboys'
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 36 minutes
Words per minute
194.64711
Harmful content
Misogyny
23
sentences flagged
Toxicity
131
sentences flagged
Hate speech
32
sentences flagged
Summary
Jorge Valdez is a Cuban-American born in Miami, Florida in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the age of 23, he was one of the most valuable cocaine salesmen in the world selling 95% of all cocaine in the United States at the time. He was a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, a real estate investor, an entrepreneur, and a human trafficker. In this episode, Dr. Valdez shares the story of how he became a cocaine smuggler, how he got into the drug trade, and how he escaped the clutches of Fidel Castro s Cuba.
Transcript
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Only you can break your word, and the day you do, you're nobody.
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And that's what made me, at the age of 23, laying the floor of a pandemic in jail, being tortured to death.
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Where I bled for five years thereafter, because I was not going to break my word.
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You would think I'd be shocked, and I should have been.
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But immediately, my mindset was, well, you're an accountant.
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You know, that's what you were trained, to count money.
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You'll pay the consequences of our choices, but you can be different.
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So if you've seen the Netflix special, Cocaine Cowboys, my guest today is Dr. Jorge Valdez,
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who from 1977 to 1980 was the number one cocaine salesman in the world.
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One Cuban immigrant hooks up with Pablo Escobar, who was going to school.
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Then he starts selling drugs, makes a million to three million a year.
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Then that leads to later on him becoming a doctor, PhD.
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With that being said, Dr. Valdez, thank you so much for being a guest.
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And I've got to compliment you on your suit, man.
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So, I saw your suits, and I just wanted to dress appropriately.
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My assistant, Caroline, said, there's a man, Jorge Valdez, who looks very sharp in the office today.
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So, before we go through this stuff, there's a lot of different things I want to know.
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But for the audience that doesn't know your story, why don't we start from the beginning,
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My parents were very well off, but I had a mother who was very religious.
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She wanted us to have nothing to do with communism.
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And my father was a very wealthy man, 40 years old.
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He did not think that Fidel was going to impact the rich.
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He didn't think he was going to impact the rich?
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Basically, because, you know, Fidel's first agenda was, I'm going to go after the Americans
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that have taken all this stuff from the United States.
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So, anyway, so we, my mother said, no, we're leaving.
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And it was very strange because, you know, I didn't know any of this was going on.
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And, but that date, she wakes us up at five o'clock in the morning, well, four o'clock in
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He said, just put on underwear, pant, socks, shoes, shirt, and belt.
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And that was strange because, you know, we're going a lot of family trips and we pack stuff
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So, you know, we, back in that generation where you really don't question your parents
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So we headed out to the airport and I was in a trance.
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And then, of course, at the airport was the most traumatic.
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I said that my life shifted in like three cataclysmic moments.
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The first one was that day because as we're about to, our name be called, my mother gets
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called and she finds out they're not going to let her leave.
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And they said they made a mistake, but her father was a very, very big figure in Cuba
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And she was very vocal about, you know, her anti-communism stand.
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In other sense that, for example, one of the things that Fidel did is, let's say your
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son, all of a sudden, when he gets to be 12 and you're living here in Boca Raton, he's
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going to take your kids from your house and he's going to send them to California.
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And he's going to send some kids from Texas to your house.
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Because as we're going to school, they have what they call the pioneers and the pioneers
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like the Boy Scouts, but it was their way of indoctrinating the youth, right?
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So if I go home and I tell my mom, like I would, what I learned in school, right?
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But if I come home and I'm living at your house and your wife tells me that, oh, that's
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a bunch of BS, and I go back to school and tell the teacher, your wife will be the jail.
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So he was breeding snitches and how to break up families.
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Oh, I mean, the first thing he did as far as snitches was every block had a snitch.
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Every block had what they call the committee that reported everything that went on.
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Just somebody sat on her chair and rocked and took notes of cars coming in, whatever was
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And my mother said, well, before my children turn 12, I'm taking them out of here.
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And, you know, my mom was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
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Her dad was, you know, her dad at age of 16 went to the independence to fight with Maceo
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against Spain and came back a general and highly decorated.
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Till this point, the military base where he's from, Fidel Castro, still named it after him.
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That's how much of a big figure he was, like one of our founding fathers here.
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So my mother, of course, she would curse out the committee.
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If she had been 5'4", she'd be a terrorist.
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And my father said, well, if you're not leaving, I'm not going to leave.
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My mother comes, grabs my hand and says, George, you take your brother and sister to
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He eventually, he did get on the airplane as we were boarding.
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And so we went from living in a house that was one square block.
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To 11 of us living in a one-bedroom apartment in Miami.
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Well, we had to write down what time we were going to piss because everyone had to go to
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So all of a sudden, when I got to Miami, what was my first cataclysmic moment?
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All this stuff about God that my mother's been telling me, mom, you know what?
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What they were teaching me in school was right.
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If we're coming from Cuba to be with God, and this is God's joke, you know?
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Well, and so I grew up until many years later, a diehard atheist.
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And then the next day was when this drive in me awoke.
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My cousin, who had been there about a year, year and a half earlier, comes to visit us.
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And he has a candy apple red, white interior, GTO.
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The day I get that, I'm going to be somebody in America.
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But, you know, my father was a man of unbelievable principles.
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You know, we'd get two raw eggs and this powdered milk that they give us that.
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Till today, I'd take milk and I'd want to vomit.
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He's making 85 cents an hour, minimum wage, doesn't speak English, 40 years old, three little kids, rent $80.
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Well, I find out that my friend has lunch at school.
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I couldn't wait to get home and say, hey, Dad, Dad, I found out my buddy, he has lunch.
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To me, a sandwich is like now having a three-pound lobster.
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And he's like, you know, the old generation, didn't he speak much, you know, kids were meant to be seen, not to be heard.
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And he's like, I said, he tells me he gets food stamps.
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I said, well, why don't we get food stamps, Dad?
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He's like, son, because that's for poor people.
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And I looked at him, Patrick, and he was like, holy crap.
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You mean we still got to climb our way out of wherever that's called to get to poverty?
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He pointed a finger in my chest and said, no, son, we don't have any money.
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People that take money from the government are poor and they stay poor.
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You figure out how to get up early and help feed your family.
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And at 530 in the morning, I've been getting up ever since that day.
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I had to walk until I got rid of enough newspapers.
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You know, my father was, there was one thing that he taught me that still resonates with me today.
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I was 65 and I, you know, told to my children over and over again.
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And to me and my brother used to look at each other and go, man, there goes a damn broken record.
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I don't know where he said, son, in life, you have no control whether you're dead or alive.
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He said, the only thing you have absolute control, son, is your word.
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And that's what made me, at the age of 23, laying the floor of a pen and a man in jail, being tortured to death.
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I didn't do, by the time I joined that group that went on to become the Medellin Cartel.
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Jorge Cho finally came out and said the same thing.
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There was a group of families that controlled the drug trade in Colombia.
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And that group, the Americans said, hey, if we bundle them up and call it the Medellin Cartel, we have one enemy.
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But the truth of the matter is, neither Pablo was the wealthiest, neither Pablo was the richest.
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There were people so much more powerful and wealthier than no one's ever known their name.
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And see, and here's what's interesting about it.
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When they came to me about cocaine cowboy, the producers, I turned them down three times.
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And that is that some mother sits there and watches this show and says, hey, it's glamorous.
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Or worse yet, some kid drops out of school and says, I'm going to become like Silent Willie and become a drug dealer and become rich.
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So I was always hesitant of that until the last time when I told them, you tell the bad with the good, and I'll do it.
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Because the interesting thing is, no one, see, every story that you hear, narcos, all of them, what do they start with?
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Well, Patrick, there's a whole big world of enormous drug trafficking before Pablo Escobar even surfaced out of poverty.
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So the number you hear about is the fact that Pablo, at his peak, was worth $20 billion.
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There was a guy named, nicknamed Negro, who Pablo killed.
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The thing with Pablo was, he was not the wealthiest or the most powerful.
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If Pablo killed you, he would kill all your males in your family.
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And because the group that I got enlisted to, it was only four and me, five.
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It was five of us that controlled 95% of all the cocaine that came to the U.S.
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That group was very different than all this group.
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I'm going to give you the script for Pablo Escobar, for Gacha, Sal, Willie, Chappell.
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Poor kid, got out of school, joins the life of crime, becomes powerful, lives a lavish lifestyle,
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And that's not the story that I ever wanted to tell.
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See, yeah, I was poor because I came to the United States and we lost everything.
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But I was the youngest employee in the Federal Reserve Bank at the age of 17.
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I went to school full-time and I worked at the Federal Reserve Bank full-time.
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I went to school at the University of Miami full-time on scholarship.
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And I had, I'd never done drugs, didn't drink all the alcohol by the age of 20 that I drank,
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But, you know, I can tell you what I did for four years every day of my life.
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Yeah, my mom eventually joined us about seven months later.
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So, you were 11 years old when she came to Miami.
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As a matter of fact, right before I turned 11 years old.
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Your mom and dad have taught you strong values.
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All of these things your parents have taught you.
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Who is Jorge Valdez going to end up being at this point?
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I take a couple years to work, saving up money.
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I graduate from law school at 25 and I'm going to be a millionaire at 30.
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Because if I'm not a millionaire, I'm a nobody.
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I had a little girlfriend that I would see very, very seldom.
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And if we ever went, ever, we hardly even went to a party.
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I'm going to be a lawyer by 25 millionaire by 30 is what I'm going to be doing.
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So now what happens where you get introduced to this life?
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So I, uh, at 76, my accounting professor, uh, he had left from a mission.
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He was a partner, a person in Waterhouse, came to Miami and this speaks Spanish.
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So he's like, Hey George, if you come work for me and do my Spanish clients, I'll give you
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secretary office, everything to start your business.
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And to me, that was like heaven opening up because I wanted to be on my own.
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I mean, I thought I had a heck of a future of the Federal Reserve Bank.
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Me and the vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank office were the only two that they paid
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So when he tells me that, my mother, my father, very conservative.
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My mother, you'll never be nobody working for somebody.
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So, you know, my mother was everything in our house, like most, uh, Hispanic mothers.
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And, uh, and I resigned and I went to work for him.
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And the first client that he gave me was a little grocery store in Miami, like a little
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strip, uh, joint and not, uh, not a strip club.
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You know, like those shopping centers in Miami, right?
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I mean, like, I don't know, 10 feet wide, 15 feet wide, 40 feet, uh, deep.
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I'm supposed to go every Monday in the morning, a couple hours and pay me a thousand dollars.
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So I go there and they have a little office in the back and I go and I see this paper sack
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and he had like a hundred and some odd thousand dollars.
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I look around, no way this grocery store produced that.
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I thought, well, maybe they haven't made deposits in a year.
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And I'm like, no, there's got to be something wrong.
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So the only thing I could think of, there's a shelf and I'll never forget it had a can of
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So I'm going to go and I'm going to put a V on top of that can.
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I want to see if this can sells because I'm coming back next week and now I'm like,
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Now, suspicious that something's going on, the least of them all, if they gave me a hundred
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choices, I would have chose cocaine as the hundredth of the choices.
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So the wife gets out and gets a big old piece of ham and throws it at him at the store
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and then he takes out his gun, shoots the ham and puts it back in the counter.
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I'm like, well, these people are a little different than I am.
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And so do my accounting, go back, and the next week when I come, there's another hundredth of
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I called him in there and said, oh, bro, let me give you a little accounting lesson.
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You see that can of Campbell's soup that's still there because I put a V on it and it
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Well, if that can is a dollar and you sell it to one for $3, you have generated $3 worth
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I've deposited close to $300,000 and yet the receipts for all you bought don't add up to
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You think that they would like come up with some, they looked at me and they're like,
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In the 70s, in the 70s, cocaine does not have the stigma that cocaine has and should have
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In the 70s, it was for the rich and famous, the Hollywood celebrities.
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I mean, you could buy a gorgeous house in Miami, four bedroom for 40 grand and a kilo
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And by the way, we've been meaning to ask you, we know you work for the government.
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And I just threw a number for the heck of just getting, stop this conversation list, go
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You know, three of them, $24,000, three bucks an hour at the bank.
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You know, like this is 25 years worth of labor.
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I tell people I had drawn a line that I wouldn't cross for nothing.
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But all of a sudden, the fact that here's these people that couldn't even hardly read and
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write, and they're making ungodly amounts of money.
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And here I am, busting my ass, working, honestly, going to school, no sleep.
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And it's like, so we come up with excuses, right?
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And that gives me the money to go to law school.
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I tell people, listen, nobody drinks a gallon of vodka the first time.
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And then you come up with a good excuse, because that's how we are.
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And immediately, the first way I just, when he told me there were cocaine dealers, you
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But immediately, my mindset was, well, you're an accountant.
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You know, that's what you would drink, to count money.
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Hey, I'm providing a service that I paid all those years to work for.
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And I started what was considered by the government the original web of the most sophisticated
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money laundering, because immediately, I started to become friends with ministers of finance
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If you look up nerd in the dictionary, bang, there was my picture.
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I have a picture when I started with a cartel with a yellow jersey from my high school.
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And I'm like, so I started making this money for them.
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And shortly thereafter, and this thing escalates.
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So this is like towards the end of 1976, 77 coming on.
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So within a month, within a couple of months, they come and they tell me, we want you to
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So I meet him, and this is the guy that was the original head of what would become the
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This is the guy from who a lot of all these people came from.
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And he's like, hey, we're interested in starting a banana import business.
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And we want to buy a ship, and we want to start bringing bananas, and we want to, you
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know, I mean, and here's the interesting thing.
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He and his partners, they were business people.
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This is not what you would think that you see Pablo and all his sicario, that type of
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No, this is what, I mean, he owned the largest construction company in Colombia.
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He owned the largest coal mine, the largest emerald mine, airlines.
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So I'm thinking that he's proposing a legitimate business.
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I mean, he's like, well, we want you to be the president.
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I said, look, I want equal partnership or, and $7,000 a month.
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And we flew out to California and we bought a big old landing ship, you know, and those
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were those big cargo ships where they would go up to the shore, the military, drop a hatch
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and they offload equipment and stuff like that.
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And little did I ever imagine what the real intention was with the banana company.
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So we buy this ship and I'm in California and we got to refurbish it to do refrigerate
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And when I'm out there, the guy that's doing the refrigeration for me starts harassing
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It's like, hey man, I know that's a cocaine boat.
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I said, look, you think I'm stupid enough that if this is going to do something illegal,
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And I was that stupid because I had no idea.
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Because they didn't talk like you would think the stigma.
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I mean, try to tell any one of those goos today, let's do a feasibility study.
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They'll look at you like, what the hell is that?
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So, anyway, so I come back to Miami and I tell the guy that started me with the partners,
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The guy that was, this guy that was always hanging at the grocery store, which was the
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These people keep thinking that, that this boat is for cocaine.
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And he's like, man, you know, you can make a lot of money if you find a good buyer out
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And I'm like, dude, I don't want nothing to do.
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I say, be stupid of you guys to get me involved in that when I'm handling all your money.
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Now, I'm depositing half a million dollars a month.
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And this is where I tell my second cataclysmic moment.
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Now, my circle of influence has changed, right?
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You know, I tell my son, my generation, people say, oh, wow, incredible.
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You know, because back then you married early and we all had responsibilities.
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Now, I start in the circle of their friends, the rich, the famous, the musicians, the auction promoters.
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And I go to a party and I see a judge strung out on cocaine.
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A judge that gave people hundreds of years for cocaine offense.
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And I looked at him and I'm like, man, there's no God and there's just no morals in this country.
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Because this group that started what would become the main cartel, nobody did drugs.
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They're like, hey, this is for the idiots to make us rich.
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So, I'm like, it leads to another, and they're like, we want you to handle all operations in the United States.
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When I said no, when I said yes, I would, right?
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I said, I got to be equal partners and you got to put up my part because I ain't got no money.
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Needless to say, I said that sort of like, just leave me alone.
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You know, because here's this powerful people having a 21-year-old kid telling them he wants to be equal partner and they got to finance him.
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So, I'm headed back the next morning back to California.
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And when the chauffeur comes to bring me up, he says, Don Manuel wants to see you.
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So, I'm like, okay, maybe we forgot to talk something about it.
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Because we would talk literally like you would with anybody that works for you in another city running some operation.
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I mean, it's like, and I'm like, oh, man, we didn't forget to talk.
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Look, you know, I insulted the hell out of these people and they're going to let me know really quick what they think about it.
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So, they look at me and they're like, we discussed it and we agree.
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We'll let you handle all our operations in the U.S.
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How am I going to get the money back to Colombia?
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For a kid that never broke the law in his life.
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Now, I'm no more just handling money as an accountant that I'm trained to be.
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Now, if you saw Cocaine Cowboy in Netflix, you see there was a big operation in Miami called Operation Video Canary.
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Operation Video Canary, they arrested every drug dealer that there was in Miami, right?
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They were all selling grams out there, like Silent Woolley, who literally, like the producer said, I handed him, or the prosecutor said, I handed him the keys to the kingdom.
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We were doing anywhere between $50 and $80 million a month.
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Well, needless to say, you know, it's like the young athletes that signed the big contract that broke all their lives.
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And I dated some of the most beautiful women in America.
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And I said, and I wrote a blog that I said, I'm 22 years old.
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I have mansions, jets, helicopters, million-dollar car, and I want to die.
00:31:27.860
And seeing that's the message that I wanted to get across to a lot of people, I think they did a really good job in Cocaine Cowboys.
00:31:33.060
Because the thing about it is, see, Patrick, I thought that once I reached my American dream, which is not what the American dream is, the American dream is the World War II generation that worked their butts off to have a job and a decent retirement, one house.
0.76
00:31:50.300
They had marriage problems, but divorce was not an option.
00:31:57.160
They'd rather be an hour early than a minute late.
00:32:03.580
It's the fact that you have this hunger within you, and society is quick to tell you, listen, when you do this, you're going to be happy.
00:32:12.780
When you date this gorgeous model, look at it on TV.
00:32:17.480
They don't look the same in the magazine as they do when they wake up out of bed.
00:32:24.640
You know, you did a video that I liked a lot when you talk about how people are constantly wanting people to like them.
00:32:30.480
You know, and it's interesting that we live in a world that that video, you didn't get as many views as some of the other mafia videos when that video had unbelievable message to me.
00:32:49.160
Because we're miserable and we need affirmation.
1.00
00:32:52.760
See, and instead of people saying to me, listen, George, you're the scum of the earth.
0.99
00:32:58.940
You're so, you know, you're the best to hang out with.
00:33:03.600
So at that time, when you're making a million to three million a month and you guys are doing a bill a year, what does your mom and dad think you're doing?
00:33:17.760
They thought, well, no, they, oh yeah, but they thought that I was a legitimate businessman because we had, we had cattle farms.
00:33:28.880
I took my father to Columbia a couple of times to see the house that I bought, which was a big old development that we have built.
00:33:36.860
And this is the, this is where the problem comes with Sal and Willie.
00:33:40.660
So my dad is best friends with them, with his father forever, since Cuba.
00:33:48.760
Every day after dinner till they all died, they would visit each other's house for coffee.
00:33:54.840
To me, they were like my parents, loved them to death.
00:33:57.600
Well, so Sal, I lost track with Sal because they dropped out of high school.
00:34:03.680
And every time my dad went to his parents' house, he was like, hey, tell George to give me a chance.
00:34:10.140
Because, of course, my dad, being a typical Hispanic, he's bragging about his son, how his son is doing so well, how his son is driving a road, you know, all of this stuff, not knowing really what his son was doing.
0.99
00:34:22.340
So I was afraid that we're going to tell my dad when I give him a meeting.
00:34:27.900
You know, I was afraid that, hey, you know, let me talk to him because sooner or later he's going to spill it.
00:34:35.020
And then, you know, my parents, it would destroy my parents, which eventually it did.
00:34:38.260
And it's the greatest regret of the many regrets that I have.
00:34:41.860
You know, people tell me it's like, don't you miss that life?
00:34:59.220
But the thing is that none of that gave me the joy that I have today because today my joy is not in that thing.
00:35:06.800
My joy is in me and who I am and who created me.
00:35:12.780
So in that time when you're doing these, by the way, very insightful.
00:35:17.280
And I love the fact that you're sharing that with the audience because sometimes messages can come across as being glorified and young people look up to.
00:35:24.680
And so I'd love to have that kind of accolades, the cars, all this stuff.
00:35:27.880
And I don't care if I need to live the fast life.
00:35:30.000
But going back to it, during that time while you're doing business with all these different types of folks, who are you negotiating with?
00:35:39.260
People, celebrities, billionaires, you know, are you doing dealings with Pablo?
00:35:53.980
So I'm dealing with, literally, we paid for the presidential campaign of the president of Costa Rica.
00:36:05.960
We're spending half a million to a million dollars a month in bribery right here in the U.S.
00:36:21.340
Now, I'm not saying that there's not some that will take it.
00:36:24.160
But I'm telling you, as a whole, and it's not like, I'm going to go up to DA agent, and so how does bribery work, corruption work?
00:36:37.300
So if I know you know that federal judge, right, like one that we tried to get to, who was an appellate judge, to rule on my behalf when I had all the rights to win.
00:36:50.200
But, so I said, hey, all I want is a fair verdict.
00:36:57.060
So it's not like a stranger coming to Patrick, the federal judge.
00:37:00.340
It's the guy that Patrick hangs out with all the time.
00:37:06.160
So at the state level, politicians, politicians, it didn't matter who it was.
00:37:11.760
We had no need to buy the president of the United States back then.
00:37:14.660
But I guarantee you, if we needed to, we could have.
00:37:18.320
Because think about a million dollars a month in 1977, 78.
00:37:23.200
You're talking about what, eight, nine, ten million dollars now?
00:37:28.440
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
00:37:32.220
And when you, you can get to people, and basically all we needed from people, what was gold for us was information.
00:37:41.120
We were not looking at, hey, he's in jail, get him out.
00:37:45.300
You know, at that time, you can do that very cheap.
00:37:48.200
Are you also living the life where you're hurting people?
00:37:54.580
Are you also living the life where you have to harm?
00:38:08.820
My godfather, the guy that started this group, where Pablo and all of them come from, he's 93 years old today.
00:38:21.820
And he was on the list to be extradited twice, right?
00:38:27.360
One time, I asked permission to knock somebody off.
00:38:35.700
You know, I didn't grow up on the streets as a street kid.
00:38:39.240
But you wake up every day, and they tell you, hey, Patrick says you're going to put a contract on your life.
00:38:45.760
And Patrick's going to put a contract on your life.
00:38:47.500
And I know that I can wipe out Patrick in two seconds.
00:38:54.040
This guy keeps threatening me, and he's out there asking people, telling people he's going to kill me.
0.55
00:38:59.780
And at any given moment, any human being can be killed.
0.80
00:39:09.240
He says, a million dollars we bring back and make any day of the week, a life we can't bring back.
00:39:16.500
I'm like, but the life you won't get to bring back is mine.
00:39:20.380
And he's like, you do what is right before God, and you'll be okay.
00:39:24.440
And this is one of the founding members of the cartel, the Medin cartel.
00:39:27.080
And this is the guy that said to me, if you have to carry a gun to deal with someone, you have no business dealing with that person.
00:39:32.940
So here was one test he put me at the beginning, at the very beginning.
00:39:36.320
He tells me one day, he says, hey, there's this guy, Oscar, that owes me $90,000.
00:39:57.560
We're doing millions of dollars on a handshake.
00:40:11.740
So I go to his house and he says, look, I got ripped off.
00:40:17.920
His wife was about to give birth, had nothing in the refrigerator, no milk, nothing.
00:40:22.040
He says, just tell Manuel that the minute I, my wife gives birth and we find an apartment, I'll give you the deed to the house.
00:40:34.440
So I looked at the guy and I told the guy that went with me, go to the car and bring me, you know, I call it un fajo, which was $10,000.
00:40:47.100
But in the meantime, here, just go buy stuff for your baby and your wife and get yourself settled and you'll never hear from us again.
0.63
00:40:53.820
I called my godfather and he's like, did you collect?
00:40:59.340
I said, not only did I not collect, but you owe me $10,000.
00:41:06.100
That's exactly what I wanted to see you do.
0.99
00:41:09.860
Total different people than the scum that came after.
0.95
00:41:14.080
And it's very, very sad because I say to people, what's one of the reasons why Pablo Escobar got killed?
0.98
00:41:21.940
I mean, do you think that he needs to kill this one guy, a negro, who's a really decent guy because the guy at a Christmas party said, hey, Pablo's got all the fame, but I got all the money.
0.99
00:41:37.900
And then he's at the clinic and this guy's got a lot of power.
00:41:41.800
And Pablo walks in with all his goons and kills him himself in the clinic.
00:41:48.960
But all of this is beginning to surface while I go to prison.
00:41:55.460
So when I gave Silent Willie a chance and what it was, basically what it was is when I meet with him to tell him, listen, stop talking to my father.
00:42:05.360
And I'm like, he's like, come on, man, give me a chance.
00:42:08.100
I said, well, OK, how much you want to buy Coke?
00:42:26.280
So I'm like, all right, let me see if I can never give you a chance.
00:42:29.940
I'll try to work out, but right now we're committed.
00:42:31.420
And even the cartel, even this group, right, they didn't want us to sell much in Miami because they felt that, listen, don't poop where you eat.
00:42:43.580
That's where all the fame and all the glory and all the celebrities, you know, that were our customers.
00:42:49.560
Just think about any famous singer in 1975, 76, 77, 78.
00:43:00.940
Well, two months later, I had just bought a brand new, I think it was a 450 SL Mercedes Convertible in German.
00:43:11.700
And in every load, one of the things that we did, see, if I tell you, like, one of the things that I wrote is called the Narcomaster Journal.
00:43:20.980
And basically, the way I built that empire is no different than the principal I used to get my Ph.D., which is the hardest academic achievement in America, and no different than building a multimillion-dollar national and international company as a twice-convicted drug dealer.
00:43:38.660
Again, I felt that if I approached the world with a win-win, then nobody would be my enemy.
00:43:45.140
So, for example, and this took on later on, became more important.
00:43:58.500
And you say, because it's a small world, right?
00:44:03.040
Hey, man, George and Manuel, they're bringing those left and right.
00:44:08.220
Sooner or later, they're going to knock me off or tell on me.
00:44:13.560
Like, I was just reviewing your show for the first time in history.
00:44:16.340
As Pablo Escobar was doing with the DEA for years.
00:44:27.900
Meaning Pablo was cooperating the entire time with the DEA.
00:44:31.160
Yeah, but, you know, he wasn't doing it to cooperate because he believed in law enforcement.
00:44:34.860
He was like, hey, what's the decent way for me to get rid of Pat?
00:44:38.220
I just found out that Patrick is bringing in a load on such and such day.
00:44:43.000
And with that name, thinking that maybe he'll get credit one day for it, right?
00:44:51.060
So, but if I say all of a sudden, okay, Manuel, let's divide that load in half.
00:44:57.440
And then let's take, among three of the biggest guys, then, divide the other 400 kilos.
00:45:05.960
Instead of being jealous and wanting to knock me off, what are they doing?
00:45:09.020
They're rooting me on because I'm bringing in their stuff.
00:45:15.280
Every group had their own pilots, their own bankers, their own buyers, their own distributors in the U.S.
00:45:24.320
So it was not like it was this one harmonious group, right?
00:45:28.920
So with that said, Manuel, in this one specific load, we're supposed to deliver 30 kilos to this one guy.
00:45:38.980
And when my guy that would do the distribution calls comes to find out, we had codes.
00:45:46.840
So when I called you, I knew you had to talk to me in a certain way.
0.99
00:45:50.460
But the idiot, the agent or whoever he was, is like, well, how many?
1.00
00:45:56.520
So my guy is like, hey, I'm just looking to rent an apartment.
00:45:59.940
Back then, you know, there was no way to trace those brick phones.
00:46:09.940
So I'm like, shit, let me see what Sal can do.
0.98
00:46:13.680
So I called him and I said, hey, you want a break?
0.99
00:46:20.160
Because I called the guy in Colombia and said, look, you almost got us busted.
00:46:27.240
So I said, the best I'm going to do with your 30 kilos is I'm going to take my $7,000.
00:46:32.620
Out of your cocaine at wholesale, which he was paying $18,000.
00:46:36.160
So I'm going to take, you know, three kilos to pay for your freight.
00:46:39.760
And then the rest of it, I'm going to dump it in a dumpster.
00:46:48.080
I'll buy him at what you paid for in Colombia, $18,000.
00:46:56.180
I was charging seven, but it only cost me three.
00:47:00.880
So I called Sal, and he's like, we can't handle that.
00:47:05.780
And his partner, Willie, I don't know if you saw the series.
0.99
00:47:13.860
And a month later, when I come back, they had the money.
00:47:17.860
And they start, and every load, they start bringing in cocaine.
00:47:22.580
So at the end of 1978, Sal comes to me and says, hey, there's this captain in the Bolivian Air Force that's working with the Bolivian government, and they want to deal with you directly.
00:47:34.860
So I go meet with him, and he's like, I can give you cocaine at wholesale in Bolivia, which we're paying $18,000.
00:47:43.800
Because at this time, Colombia is not producing any cocaine.
00:47:50.760
It's all coming in paste, all already crystallized from Bolivia, Peru.
00:47:55.460
He said, I can give it to you at $10,000, and for each kilo you buy, I'll give you one on credit.
00:48:11.940
So I don't know when Colombia started producing, probably in 1980, 81, which is how Pablo got started, right?
00:48:22.780
He'd be sent by one of the bosses, hey, go bring 40 kilos or 30 kilos.
00:48:29.700
They would drive it, you know, across the borders into Colombia.
00:48:33.320
So, and he was, one thing he was, he was sharp, and he was a risk taker and a hustler.
00:48:39.680
So it didn't take him long to get power and to get money.
00:48:43.140
Was he a tough guy even pre him going into cocaine?
00:48:46.300
See, I never dealt with him until after I got out of prison afterwards.
00:48:53.660
And all our conversations were by phone because this time I can't leave the United States when I got released.
00:48:57.920
And he, of course, can come to the United States.
00:48:59.780
So, but, you know, all the stories that I hear from people that were real, real close to him and that know him, yeah, he was a tough kid.
00:49:09.580
I mean, he grew up on the streets stealing tombstones and reselling them, you know.
00:49:15.000
And it's sad because his mother was a schoolteacher that everybody loved.
00:49:17.700
But, you know, it's very interesting because how can we not have drug cartels?
00:49:26.240
In essence, the United States multinational created a lot of the cartels.
00:49:34.140
And like that, multiply them all over Latin America.
0.93
00:49:41.080
And later on, and we said, okay, so here's the deal.
00:49:50.840
U.S., you know, Uniplast, United States Banana Corporation, all of those companies, they come and they buy.
00:49:57.000
And when they don't need no more, they tell us to stick it.
00:49:59.120
And we don't even have roads to take it to Medellin, the city.
00:50:14.860
And we're going to build you roads because we don't give a damn about your bananas.
0.99
00:50:17.900
We'll build you roads so that you can take some of the bananas back to the city.
00:50:38.740
Cocaine is 70% of the overdose problem in the world.
00:50:49.720
So we don't want to stop it because it's a big thing.
00:50:52.640
And I'm not saying this in a negative way to the many agents, like the ones you had in your show,
00:50:57.220
that are honest people that are really out there risking their lives to try to make this a better world for everybody.
00:51:05.200
I'm talking about those that pull all the strings and do all that they do.
00:51:10.320
And, you know, and the crush on that level is huge.
00:51:13.940
Anyway, so with that said, you know, they come in there and they start growing the banana.
00:51:21.300
So I meet with the captain and he makes this offer.
00:51:24.180
I go back to Manuel and he's like, no, I don't want you involved in any of that.
00:51:30.260
And he's like, because those people are animals.
0.72
00:51:33.880
Think about how Colombian tells those people further down south.
00:51:36.640
He said, look, my nephew went out there to make a deal.
00:51:40.640
And after I paid a lot of money, they sent them to me cut in four pieces in a box.
00:51:47.140
And he says, and why do you want to go over there?
00:52:03.920
We started paying him $2,000 and when I did the last payment in April 79, before I went
00:52:09.720
off on my trip, I paid him $7,000, $5.5 million I paid him.
00:52:17.700
There were two brothers and they lived in the crappiest little house in Miami, drove the
00:52:24.160
crappiest car that you've ever seen to the last payment that we ever made.
00:52:32.500
I mean, think about it, $800, we're paying anywhere between, we started paying $3,000
00:52:40.100
a kilo, $3 million a month for two years and it went from $3 to $6 million.
00:52:55.440
I don't know because I went off to prison and after that.
00:53:06.000
But when they went to try to make contact, we had a number, right?
00:53:08.560
Because what happened every third Thursday of the month, we would put an airplane, we
00:53:12.400
would take this big diesel caterpillar engine, right?
00:53:18.000
Put a 55-gallon drum that would hold 115 kilos.
00:53:21.040
And load that up with grease and then we would bring it to Miami.
00:53:31.200
And on Thursday morning, they knew, when I gave them that code, they knew where I had
00:53:38.420
And that Thursday morning, they would give me another call and I would pick up the U-Haul
00:53:44.140
with the empty hollowed-out engines that looked like they had been sent to Columbia to be rebuilt.
00:53:51.860
I didn't come to the Bahamas and all that crap that people were doing.
0.65
00:53:54.140
At that time when you're going back and forth, are you feared?
0.90
00:54:06.240
I mean, they knew that I had this enormous organization behind me, but why is there to fear?
00:54:18.860
People start dying with the cocaine cowboys with that shooting at the liquor store in Miami
00:54:23.200
in De La Moe, 81, 82, when the Mario Boatlift came to the United States.
0.95
00:54:28.080
And some of those guys, I mean, good guys came, but Fidel emptied out the scum of the earth.
00:54:34.180
And this, every, every criminal organization in the world has been in a federal prison, right?
00:54:41.420
The only one ever in history to take over two United States penitentiaries, Lewisburg and
00:54:50.500
They were in lockdown since the first day they entered the penitentiary.
00:54:53.920
I know guys that would tell me that they would walk by those guys and they would take,
00:55:05.720
They could read and write because in Cuba, even if you're in prison since you're nine
00:55:09.780
years old, you're going to learn how to read and write and do math.
00:55:23.160
What's your opinion on Jimmy Carter at that time?
00:55:25.100
Because it's, there's a, if you have any, because it's a link to that.
00:55:29.800
I don't have any opinion about, no dealings or anything.
00:55:34.400
I mean, even before our cocaine, there's another world that nobody stepped into, which
00:55:39.800
is the Cubans that went to Cuba on the Bay of Pigs that were the big pot smugglers in
0.99
00:55:44.340
Miami, you know, but nobody ever messed with that.
00:55:50.940
It's, it's, it's a good old boy business and nobody's getting killed.
00:55:56.520
You know, you're doing everything on a handshake and everybody's honorable.
00:56:04.280
So what happened is as I make that deal with the Bolivian and I just, okay, we're going
0.98
00:56:08.920
So I'm going to Columbia to show the airstrip to the pilots.
00:56:14.640
And as I'm going, I made, so we show him the airstrip and I called Sal who was in Bolivia
00:56:24.580
And he's like, yeah, all they have here is the cocaine you bought.
0.55
00:56:31.600
So anyway, I got on the airplane because I'm going to go straighten it out.
00:56:38.780
I'm going to go tell the generals that overtrored government that you can't screw me.
0.99
00:56:53.380
And I look, we had a short, we had the problem.
00:56:55.120
But after this load, when you send the plane the next time, we'll give it all to you on
00:57:01.400
I had a meeting with Somoza I had to get to because I had arranged to bring refrigerated
00:57:05.760
containers full of cocaine with diplomatic seals on them.
00:57:17.260
And there's no airplanes from Bolivia to Nicaragua like now, you know, maybe once every
00:57:24.720
So I'm going to get on the airplane because, I mean, nothing's happened to us, right?
00:57:34.300
My God has a heart attack when he sees me in the airplane.
0.95
00:57:37.340
I mean, here's the guy that handles all operations in the United States inside the freaking airplane.
0.91
00:57:41.560
You know, with not only with drugs, but it could blow up.
0.91
00:57:55.580
So when one alternator goes off, we have bladders inside the airplane, right, to give us the distance.
00:58:00.020
I'm like, hey, keep going because what we're going to do is return to the jungles?
00:58:06.540
Literally, we know that the second, 15, 20 minutes later, the second alternator will blow.
00:58:10.780
And now we're over Panama, and we had no way to get the fuel out.
00:58:14.340
And at 3,000 feet, that airplane just went down.
00:58:18.320
If you see the pictures of the airplanes like that.
00:58:20.700
And when I, we jump off the air, first of all, we thought we were dead.
00:58:26.580
We jump, I mean, because we got 200 gallons of diesel inside this airplane, and we got cocaine.
00:58:32.300
And the head of the pilot said to me, take the flare gun, blow it up.
00:58:44.960
I'm like, listen, in Latin America, I buy everybody.
00:58:49.080
Well, I made the mistake of not telling the guy when the military came.
00:58:55.240
I always kept $200,000 in a hidden compartment underneath those old Samsonite hard shells.
00:59:00.800
So I should have just said, hey, here's $20,000.
00:59:07.320
And everybody has a passport so they can stamp it.
00:59:09.180
Thinking he was stamping locally, little did I know he had to call Panama.
00:59:12.160
And when he did, and explained what happened, next morning DEA were there and were arrested.
00:59:20.180
And before he opens his mouth, I said, look, I only have two questions.
0.99
00:59:25.520
I don't want to give you some bullshit story or nothing like that.
0.98
00:59:28.180
How much to buy the cocaine, how much to get out?
0.99
00:59:30.700
And he's like, Noriega just sold the cocaine, $250,000 for you to get out.
00:59:45.420
Sure enough, he comes and tells us, OK, you're leaving tomorrow.
00:59:52.520
So my plan was originally we're going to offload this.
00:59:59.340
It's easy to cross over to Costa Rica to I can get another airplane to take it to the U.S.
01:00:03.640
So they said they're going to rough you up a little bit, make it look good for the DEA.
01:00:09.760
So they take us and they have this big conference room and literally four chairs on the back, nothing else.
01:00:17.080
And they bring this little kid, Patrick, he could have been 100 pounds soaking wet, maybe 5'4", handcuffed to his feet and his hands.
0.87
01:00:25.980
They slammed them on the floor and then they took a broomstick and they inserted that thing up his anus.
0.99
01:00:31.280
And then blood just splattered all over the place.
01:00:35.940
And when that happened, the two pilots who I had told made the mistake to tell him, hey, relax, take it easy.
01:00:42.760
Not only do they tell the DEA, hey, he is the biggest drug dealer in the world this time.
01:00:50.100
So the only guy that can get me out now is running for his life.
01:00:52.660
They take us and they put us in a dungeon for 20 some odd days and they torture us day and night.
01:00:58.120
I piss blood for five years thereafter every time I went to a bathroom.
01:01:04.060
I tell people the interesting thing about it is physical pain.
01:01:12.640
The time you beat them, beat them one time and make it memorable.
01:01:34.740
And they would just take a fire hose and they would just shoot water and clean all that thraw.
0.99
01:01:40.640
Well, you imagine all that excrement all over the way.
01:01:43.540
Luckily, after the second, third day, we had nothing to eat.
01:01:52.900
And we made up our mind that there's no way we're going to talk.
01:01:57.720
There's just no way to live with the shame that you're a rat.
0.99
01:02:10.580
But I can't lose my mind in this freaking place.
0.95
01:02:21.640
He's going to kill us because there's nothing over there.
0.98
01:02:30.020
Because they would come in and just beat us until we passed out.
0.99
01:02:32.160
I mean, they took electricity to our testicles.
0.94
01:02:36.260
And I said, before you come in here, let me tell you this.
0.99
01:02:41.120
Because if he doesn't and we get out, I'm going to get his wife, his kids.
1.00
01:02:49.260
But I'm sure that definitely was going to do it.
1.00
01:02:52.120
You know, the bastard comes in there laughing the next day.
0.99
01:03:11.600
And I'm saying to him, man, they only have one going rate in this country, $250.
01:03:26.060
The next day, he comes and he's like, two days later, he says,
01:03:37.020
They put us up in this room and they took a fire hose to clean us out.
01:03:57.620
So they got us, threw us inside an airplane to Miami.
01:04:01.300
Got to Miami and I was charged with heading the largest drug conspiracy in the history
01:04:14.300
Now, in 1979, a murderer, genius murderer gets $50,000.
01:04:20.160
They had the decency to reduce it to $2 million.
01:04:32.620
Little did I know that my attorney was ratting me out.
01:04:47.580
And I mean, and I had, I had the greatest chance to win the trial because there was no evidence
01:04:59.340
Till this day, till this day, there's never been a wiretap on me.
01:05:03.660
There's never been a compromising picture with anybody on me.
01:05:06.740
That's according to the United States government.
01:05:11.920
So what happens is I hired the best lawyers in the country.
01:05:16.620
In our defense, I even hired a guy that was a state judge that became a federal judge whose
01:05:26.000
$100,000 to tell me whether he would take my trial or not.
01:05:44.100
Because they tried to indict me in the Southern District of Florida.
01:05:52.280
Making Georgia, which I've never been in my life.
01:05:57.180
The guy that was with me had a case pending from three years earlier when he faked his
01:06:02.900
I mean, the guy shows up in the courtroom and says,
01:06:08.600
He said, Your Honor, I'm only the second Jew to come back from the dead.
01:06:21.760
They take me to the Middle District of Georgia and said that I was partnered with the guy which
01:06:26.640
So our final argument is, my client is a drug dealer.
01:06:30.440
My client is the biggest drug dealer in America.
01:06:34.440
But my client has a constitutional right of venue.
01:06:38.680
And you cannot just take him and try him where he's never committed an offense.
01:06:50.880
And I mean, we spent another half a million dollars on the appeal and ended up losing.
01:06:58.420
They gave me 15 years, which is the most they can give you on a conspiracy charge at that
01:07:02.680
I went back to prison and I had a blast in prison, man.
01:07:11.260
Thank you for the cake, but don't welcome me home.
1.00
01:07:14.740
Yeah, I mean, I knew a lot of the people there and, you know, I bribed everybody.
1.00
01:07:18.360
So I, I mean, I had a girlfriend in there, a legitimate girlfriend because, you know,
01:07:22.580
prisoners do have a lot of girlfriends that are, they call them girlfriends, but they're
01:07:28.860
So, you know, and I got out and I didn't have to do anything.
01:07:32.200
When I handed off the cartel to those guys, because when I saw they were taking me to
01:07:38.600
When you got out at that time, do you still have money?
01:07:45.160
As a matter of fact, Justice Berger, because I was given certiori on my bond hearing, which,
01:07:54.780
And in it, Justice Berger says, in this court's opinion, Mr. Valdez is a financial genius.
01:08:04.140
He's got assets all over the world we can't find, and he can move and leave in a snap of
01:08:10.020
I wasn't going to go anywhere because I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life on the run.
01:08:13.500
Plus, I knew, convinced, all my million-dollar lawyers convinced me that I was going to win.
01:08:25.440
We were one of the largest cattle breeders in the country at that time.
01:08:28.120
I had a big quarter horse operation, and I didn't need to do that anymore.
01:08:34.000
I had this gorgeous ranch, made me half a million dollars a year, legitimate.
01:08:44.220
So when I handed the cartel to them, they were like, we'll give you half a world of profits.
01:08:51.000
Because a year into the, me in jail, you're going to say, you know what?
01:08:55.660
George is in jail having a good time, and here we are risking our life.
0.99
01:09:04.420
Every load you bring in, through the operation I'm giving you, I'm giving you everything.
01:09:14.380
Buy me 10 kilos, sell them, and save me the profits.
01:09:24.680
Well, when I went to see them, they said they didn't have no money, that they had quit.
01:09:31.180
I said, okay, I'll get to my second trial, and here's what's interesting, that it doesn't
01:09:37.860
really come out very clear in Netflix, but so when I, I work out, well, let me get to
01:09:48.080
that, and then I'll come back, so it'll make sequence.
01:09:51.580
I looked at them, and looking back, it was the greatest favor anybody ever did me.
01:09:55.860
According to people, they owe me like $20 million.
01:09:59.360
But I started my operation like that, again, no problem, and I started bringing in, and
01:10:03.800
we're bringing in 800, 1,000, one, on my birthday, one month, I brought in three airplanes, one
01:10:09.880
So, you go in, you do five times, you come out, you're going back to the life.
01:10:14.340
Not even flinching, and you know you're going to get back into the life.
01:10:17.200
But the different thing is, yeah, because it was almost like an ego thing.
01:10:22.520
You know, you guys, like, this ain't right, you know, I shouldn't have gone to jail.
01:10:27.120
So, this case, I was guilty, but not what you charged me of.
01:10:31.380
And even though recently, I did a YouTube interview with the first undercover agent in my case, ever.
01:10:40.420
And in it, you can hear it, he talks about it, he says, we never even knew there was a
01:10:44.080
drug problem in America until we found out about you.
01:10:45.920
But then he says, he says, you know, I'll never forget, you walked by me, shook my hand
01:11:11.280
And that's why I don't have any enemies in the government anywhere.
01:11:14.780
So, lo and behold, I go back to the same thing, but then this is when the world now has changed.
01:11:22.720
This is when you've got to go around with bodyguards with machine guns.
01:11:36.620
See, my mother was the best at tough love.
1.00
01:11:40.840
My mother is like, son, what you're doing doesn't please God.
0.99
01:11:44.120
If you go back to New York, you're going to kill us.
01:11:48.320
And then she was like, what do you want to eat tonight?
01:11:53.120
They lived and died in the same house that they bought when they came from Cuba.
01:11:59.600
I said, dad, I got a horse living in million-dollar mansions.
01:12:01.940
And here you're all living in a $60,000 little house in Miami, little ranch house.
01:12:06.940
Son, your lifestyle is now going to change ours.
01:12:10.020
And, you know, just tremendous, tremendous people.
01:12:13.040
But my mother now constantly, son, what you're doing doesn't please God.
01:12:22.940
What was God when, you know, when we came from Cuba and we were sleeping in the floor going hungry,
01:12:38.820
And I started to realize this ain't the world that I signed into.
01:12:47.240
And at this time I had the largest quarter horse operation in the country, right?
01:12:50.180
I went out and bought the best horse in the world, in Texas.
01:12:55.700
Ended up being worth six and a half million dollars.
01:12:57.260
And I was breeding them, 350 mares at 3,000 plus.
01:13:03.780
You know, I was making 900,000 plus selling my babies.
01:13:07.920
Anyway, I had a friend, Patrick, that would come over.
01:13:15.620
And I would always ask him, hey, Lathrop, how'd you quit, man?
01:13:19.460
Because he had moved to Ocala and left the business.
01:13:21.920
And he's like, man, George, you know, best thing I can tell you is like being pregnant.
0.98
01:13:27.880
He said, yeah, man, you're either pregnant or you're not.
01:13:39.400
And eventually one thing led to another, and I quit.
01:13:47.120
Now, since the day I came out of prison until the day I quit, I never even sold cocaine anymore.
01:13:53.900
And I was making over a million dollars for doing nothing.
01:13:59.400
Literally for saying, send a plane, don't send a plane.
01:14:06.480
And I had my ranch in Cluiston, which was 90 miles.
01:14:09.000
Macon never inspired you to get a house there or Macon, George?
01:14:12.700
The judge, which later on he became a fair guy, but the judge was like, first day of
01:14:18.640
He looks at me and says, young man, how dare you tell this court that you're innocent?
01:14:23.080
You got a million dollars worth of lawyers at your table.
01:14:31.660
I'm not very good with old names, but I remember that one clearly.
01:14:51.800
I never, you know, the old saying, you don't poop where you eat.
01:14:56.240
Like, for example, how they got me, how they found out about me to do the Netflix.
01:15:02.920
So the producers were constantly wondering, like, there's a missing link.
01:15:21.860
And in six months, they become kings of cocaine.
01:15:26.440
Until the prosecutor that you saw on Netflix, he's like, oh, you have a missing link?
01:15:44.180
I was on my, when they seized my ranch, they took over 100 Brioning suits.
01:15:50.300
I wore a suit, three different suits a day, every day.
01:15:55.880
I left my office at 6 o'clock in the afternoon.
01:16:05.880
And when I realized that this is not just another business we're doing, you know,
01:16:11.840
And that's what really was getting to me because now crack was coming on the forefront, you know.
01:16:18.120
And I'm like, so when they asked me, how come it was so easy for you to walk away when Pablo, Chapo, Sal, Willie,
01:16:28.760
they had as much money as you or more, same amount of passports or more, more airplanes than you did.
01:16:35.800
I said, well, for me, it was simple because I never considered myself a drug lord.
01:16:42.960
And when that product was no longer attractive for me to sell, I'd walk away.
01:16:46.780
They can't walk away because that's all they are.
01:16:51.620
You see, ball players, you see athletes, when do they go down?
01:16:56.040
Literally in shame when they could have gone down, left the game at the top as heroes.
01:17:02.420
They remember, hey, you know, Joe Montana, you left the game when you were sitting on the bench.
01:17:06.800
Now, when you were winning Super Bowl, because all these people, they can't leave that world because that's their identity.
01:17:16.500
What the hell is he doing in an interview to Sean Penn?
01:17:19.740
This guy can go to Lebanon or go anywhere in the world.
01:17:31.920
He had distribution in every country of the world, every continent of the world.
01:17:44.000
You know, I call it the anguish of victory and the thrill of defeat.
01:17:50.020
You know, what they say, that X amount of most bank robbers get caught at the robbery site within the first hour.
01:18:00.300
I just go back to my ranch and I just breed horses.
01:18:02.240
So what do you mean in 1990 when they took 60 million?
01:18:06.020
So I'm retired for four and a half years, just living the normal life, breeding horses.
01:18:22.060
You know, I'm making over $2 million legitimate a year in my ranch.
01:18:26.520
And I'm at a horse show in 1990 and they come and arrest me.
01:18:39.560
He said, you'll know when you go in front of the judge.
01:18:42.060
And so I go in front of the judge and he's like, you're wanting to make it in Mobile, Alabama.
01:18:50.240
United States Attorney Jeff Sessions wants you.
01:18:54.120
So, the gift from God for me was that it was a time when there was tremendous emphasis by the government on U.S. Attorney's Office to have seizures.
01:19:09.280
To just take, you know, when they, see, why they couldn't take nothing from us before?
01:19:13.340
Because the government had to prove that I made it illegally.
01:19:16.380
When just one smart ad decided, hey, we'll change that.
01:19:20.440
Now we'll take it and let him prove that he made it legitimate.
01:19:24.020
So, they switched the proof, you know, and therefore they couldn't.
01:19:29.540
So, when I get to Mobile, Alabama, my attorney meets me there and he's like, you're going to walk.
01:19:36.460
Look, they got one pilot to say that when you were in Miami, you picked up this guy named Dickie Lynn.
01:19:45.520
Dickie Lynn was a kid that was in prison with me in England.
01:19:48.820
And was, when I got out, we hooked up and he was the guy in charge of all my transportation.
01:20:04.420
And there's one pilot says, hey, I picked up, I took Dickie Lynn to Miami.
01:20:13.280
6, 7 o'clock, he comes with somebody else with $3 million.
01:20:21.100
The night before I got to Mobile, Alabama, that pilot killed himself.
01:20:27.420
He was smuggling cocaine on a DEA airplane and crashed in the fog in Alabama.
01:20:33.380
You see those planes in American Made, you know, where they come into the old field?
01:20:44.280
And I'm like, three months earlier, for four years, July 1st of 1990, it was my final divorce.
01:20:54.880
And my ex-wife takes off with my daughter, which was the love of my life.
01:21:02.500
When I walked away from the hotel, I hired a guy to teach me karate because I'd done karate for a lot of years when I was young.
01:21:10.100
So, and the first day, he says to me, I'm going to teach you about the sword.
01:21:21.640
We're not going to worry about just throwing a punch and all that.
01:21:27.480
I looked at him and said, dude, I'm paying you a lot of money to teach me karate.
01:21:34.000
So, tomorrow, you leave that sword home and bring the real sword.
01:21:40.960
And I'm like, he said, young man, what I got to give you.
01:21:45.720
And I'm like, man, I don't have a gun or a bodyguard.
01:21:50.800
Is he going to start whooping Jesus into me and I'm going to pay for it?
01:21:58.400
When the steam room is heating up after the two hours of karate, waste your time.
01:22:05.540
And people say, well, what did he say that made you change?
01:22:09.800
I was just getting over the two hours of butt whooping.
01:22:17.300
I began to see a guy, Patrick, that lived in a very little world.
01:22:21.860
He lived in a little thousand-square-foot house.
01:22:25.600
And what was most intriguing for me was when he told me that he was madly in love with his 45-year-old wife.
01:22:34.140
This guy's got to be on some Japanese drugs, man.
01:22:41.020
How the hell is this guy going to love that old woman?
1.00
01:22:43.420
You know, now I think she's a gorgeous woman.
1.00
01:22:48.880
And I did everything I could to chase him away.
01:22:57.900
So, the only thing that he would say to me, which was really, really upsetting, or I'm like, come on, Tim.
01:23:14.820
And he's like, man, George, I have an intimate relationship with Jesus.
01:23:31.440
And so, July 1st, 1990, 11 o'clock in the morning.
01:23:50.000
And I'm like, look, God, I don't believe you exist.
01:23:53.820
Number two, if you do, you probably enjoy it so bad.
01:23:56.100
You stay down there and I'll stay up here.
1.00
01:23:57.840
But if you're the reason for his joy, give it to me or kill me.
1.00
01:24:09.120
I just, you know, people say that when you have a conversion, there's bells in heaven.
01:24:12.520
I think it must be enough for Cubans, you know.
1.00
01:24:14.360
So I'm going to find out what happened to the Cuban bells.
0.94
01:24:16.920
But three months later, my world went from dark to complete darkness.
01:24:24.100
And I remember walking into Jeff Sessions' office.
01:24:28.240
And I told my attorney, he said, you're going to walk.
01:24:36.840
I said, look, and by the way, and I said it as a joke, complete joke.
01:24:40.580
I said, by the way, here you are, a good Jew, telling me I'm going home.
1.00
01:24:48.500
I said, I just can't fight these people anymore.
0.98
01:24:52.180
So we go in there, and they said, look, it's real simple.
01:25:03.120
If they can't convict me, right, because there's no witness, then the only thing they can get me is for the violation of my parole that I'm voluntarily going to plead to.
01:25:12.960
They're liable in exchange for, so my deal is, so what do they do?
01:25:18.080
They're like, we're going to charge you with three life sentences.
01:25:22.280
Say, yeah, you quit with Dickie Linden and continue criminal enterprise.
01:25:26.780
You're as liable for the crime you committed as the crime he commits.
01:25:30.480
And now the law has changed, and it's no more 15 years, a life sentence.
01:25:43.060
So they get out of the desk, they go open the door, and in came three agents, DEA, FBI, and IRS.
01:26:00.400
The first time I go to jail, I'm a drug dealer, right?
01:26:05.080
Shoot, I create a lot of money laundering operations.
01:26:14.040
What portion of the $60 million you have is legitimate?
01:26:18.360
I mean, properties, planes, houses, horses, jewelry.
01:26:25.520
They stole about a million dollars of jewelry that they didn't declare.
01:26:35.780
Now, at that time, that amount of money in Mobile, Alabama, was a lot of money.
01:26:47.180
And so, our agreement, our plea with the government was, we voluntarily forfeited.
01:26:53.460
Then, we want to plead to a 10-year sentence, the time I had left in parole, right?
01:27:03.180
And I had already done four so many years of that five, of that 10.
01:27:08.340
So, that's what they ended up giving me, the 10 years.
01:27:28.800
And I looked at him and I said, man, what the hell is he screaming Milky Way about?
01:27:33.580
He said, they only give it to you once every two months.
01:27:43.300
Man, Patrick, it's like just a building fell on me.
1.00
01:27:48.860
I don't have a dollar to buy a freaking candy bar.
0.98
01:27:52.140
What a mental shift you got to go through.
0.98
01:28:01.320
And then, my dad, who is my best friend, my idol, is diagnosed with cancer and told he's got years to live.
01:28:07.960
And I don't know if I'm ever going to be released ever again.
01:28:25.620
I say, if I sleep 12 hours, I waste half of my life.
01:28:32.320
But whatever the case is, every day I'm going to be better than when I wake up.
01:28:37.260
At the end of the day, when I go to bed, I'm going to be better than when I woke up.
01:28:41.020
And I begin to read the Bible as a historical book.
01:28:45.240
And then I decided, well, I'm going to get another degree.
01:28:52.260
I started doing my master's from Wheaton College in Illinois.
01:28:55.660
I taught myself Greek because I had no one to show me how to parse.
01:29:06.320
And I was on full scholarship again and living off student loans.
01:29:13.780
My dad helped me buy this little 700 square foot three-bedroom house.
01:29:18.500
And because the rent, the rent taxes were $675 a month.
01:29:29.740
And my mindset now is, I'm going to finish my master's.
01:29:34.880
And I'm going to become the best professor in the world.
01:29:37.140
And I'm going to have just a bunch of pretty girls beg me for an A.
1.00
01:29:44.360
So when I finish my PhD, I'm one of five Hispanics in the country with a PhD in Spanish.
01:29:50.360
I'm named a Hispanic doctoral student in America twice by the Pew Foundation.
01:29:54.060
And all of a sudden, I meet, and then there I meet the love of my life.
01:30:02.780
But, you know, where I thought I would never, ever in a million years, right, would meet anyone.
01:30:08.460
But, you know, I met my wife, and it was just amazing.
01:30:13.820
And, you know, the interesting thing was that I have been celibate now for seven years.
01:30:18.580
And I'm like, you know, is this going to work out?
01:30:34.180
And we have two amazing children, and I wake up every day of my life, you know, in love.
01:30:39.360
And I tell you, it's just a mindset with which you look at the world.
01:30:47.100
So when I, so I finish my PhD, I'm going to teach.
01:30:54.600
And all of a sudden, I'm in the shower, and I'm finally in the shower, and I'm like, man, he never gave me anything.
01:31:11.560
Someone that sends a check every month and has a good summer?
01:31:16.420
And we're going to move to Georgia so I can be a full-time dad to my kids.
01:31:26.340
So I started a little service master, a little franchise.
01:31:34.140
And when I built it into a multi, then I had my contact with governments.
01:31:38.640
We were involved in the cleanup of the Pentagon.
01:31:40.880
Then at 56, I have no dad living a very lavish life.
01:31:52.400
Our kids have been brought up with great values.
01:31:54.660
But they think that normal is living in a multimillion-dollar home,
01:32:05.040
I said, because if a man can't define when enough is enough,
01:32:09.260
And if grief drives you, I can tell you, you're never going to be happy.
01:32:13.260
I know what it is to live making a million dollars a month.
01:32:15.540
I know what it is not to have a dollar a month.
01:32:19.520
You know, happiness is when you get up every day of your life,
01:32:21.440
and you say, you know what, my thing that I use, phrase that I use every time I speak at the end,
01:32:27.520
when the pages of history are written, will history ever remember your name?
01:32:31.540
And I'm convinced that the only way history remembers our name is when we have an impact in another human being's life.
01:32:41.040
And then my wife wanted our kids to go to high school in the U.S.
0.96
01:32:47.160
I took them to a place where they could see people that miss meals every day and still love God, Cozumel.
01:33:02.820
You know, my son, I have a son who at the age of 16 overdosed.
01:33:12.620
Had the rescue been two minutes later, he would have died.
01:33:15.020
Today, this kid is a millionaire making many figures a year, living in Malta, 32 years old, CFO of a tech company.
01:33:27.260
And my daughter who's a lawyer in Washington for the education department, another one masters.
01:33:34.680
And, you know, I did the same thing my dad did.
01:33:36.900
I invested in my kid's life and had a vision, a vision for their life.
01:33:41.360
And now I spend the rest of my life, we created a foundation.
01:33:45.480
When we built our company, we gave 10% to God and to our foundation to make it different in people's lives.
01:33:53.940
And my mission now is to send a million books to prison.
01:34:01.400
I said, because, you know, that's a whole population that the world has forgotten, that the world has just abandoned.
01:34:08.000
And if they can read a book that can tell them we are not defined by our past, there is hope, there is faith, there is a God that forgives.
01:34:16.940
Because you'll pay the consequences of our choices, but you can be different, you can change your life, then the world will be a lot better.
01:34:25.040
And, you know, they say the question about how do you judge a great parent, they say by their grandkids, your parents were great parents.
01:34:36.100
Your kids are doing what they're doing, lawyer, all that stuff.
01:34:38.520
That just means the values your parents passed down to you was passed down to the kids.
01:34:42.220
Now your kids are going to pass it down to their kids.
01:34:46.940
You know, and hopefully this story inspires people to not even want to go into that life.
01:34:49.900
I've interviewed a lot of different people from your world.
01:34:51.840
Not specifically, you know, maybe Cuban, Colombian, cocaine, although I have had some people like that as well.
01:35:01.960
And sometimes kids look at it thinking about the laver side.
01:35:04.840
But the trend I see with you is you had a way of running businesses.
01:35:10.720
You had a way of driving, selling, tracking, whatever it is, accountability, building a team, recruiting that could work in illegal businesses, but could also work in legitimate businesses.
01:35:22.880
And the moment you made that transition into legitimate, you won in both places.
01:35:36.600
Really, really good having you on the way, Tim.
01:35:40.280
So did you enjoy it from the Cocaine Cowboys, the whole Netflix documentary?
01:35:45.300
And if you enjoyed this interview, we've got two other interviews for you.
01:35:47.840
One of them is with Ed Calderon from Mexican Cartel when he was dealing with that.
01:35:52.880
And the other one is with DA agent Steve Murphy and Javier Pena from the Netflix special, Narcos.