Pablo Escobar’s Cocaine Pilot: The Untold Story of TJ Dominguez (Part 1 of 3)

[SPEAKER_04]: Imagine that, in 1920 or so, I need 14 million to complete my father's sugar mill.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's how I go and meet Pablo.
[SPEAKER_04]: I went down to the bank and I said, I'm here to execute bank commitment for 14 million dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: They said to me, we cannot honor this commitment to you with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I started seeking other sorts of financing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't even $100,000, you got nothing, kid.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I asked myself, he's gonna go on kicking up the guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you don't, I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I had a long talk with my dad father.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I told that, at least I'm tired of asking people from money.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the moment that I said, I'm gonna become a smuggler.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I've got three or four little speed boats going back and forth.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now the problem that I have is I'm not getting enough f*** from the Bahamas.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just income from the Bahamas.
[SPEAKER_04]: It comes from Columbia.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's why I bought that airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know listen, I mean my 20s, I'm making a million dollars a week.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting caught up in this whole lifestyle or the power.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I started developing a reputation.
[SPEAKER_04]: So a friend of mine said to me, would you like to meet Pablo?
[SPEAKER_01]: On his father's deathbed, Tito Dominguez, also known as TJ, made a promise to carry on the dream of building the family's sugar mill.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when he was swindled out of the money that was supposed to fund it, that promise became desperation, and desperation has a way of opening dangerous doors.
[SPEAKER_01]: At first, it was small, a young man figuring out how to get a boat to the Bahamas trying to flip marijuana for cash.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the runs grew, boats multiplied, then came planes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before long, TJ had fleets moving product from the Caribbean into Florida.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when Columbia came calling.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in Columbia, it wasn't just marijuana, it was cocaine.
[SPEAKER_01]: TJ became one of Pablo Escobar's trusted pilots, flying shipments worth millions, not under the cover of night but in broad daylight, with a confidence that made him nearly untouchable.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the height of it all, he was making $5 million a week.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the side, he built a glamorous empire to hide in plain sight.
[SPEAKER_01]: The number one cell phone business in South Florida, a luxury dealership where he sold Lamborghinis.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even had a Lamborghini to match the color of his shirt for every day of the week.
[SPEAKER_01]: His life was a billboard of wealth and power and almost nobody knew what fueled it.
[SPEAKER_01]: but empires built on greed eventually crash.
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1988, federal agents rated his mansion, prison followed, solitary confinement, even a failed helicopter escape plot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now decades later, TJ Dominguez is telling history.
[SPEAKER_01]: The double life of Pablo Escobar's cocaine pilot and what it really costs to keep cartel in the air.
[SPEAKER_01]: And tonight marks the beginning of our three part series with TJ because his story is too big, too unbelievable and too important to rush.
[SPEAKER_01]: I cannot wait for you to hear this conversation with TJ Dominguez.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for joining me in person today on Misunderstood.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, thank you for very much for having me over here.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's an honor to say to you by you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such an honor to meet you in person.
[SPEAKER_01]: As I was telling you earlier, I've been listening to cocaine air, the podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's about your life that people must listen to.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just so exciting to meet you in person.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're one of the most intriguing people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your story is a story that most people have not heard, but should.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm happier here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to try and tell it in an hour, so that people can
[SPEAKER_01]: here about you and then get to follow more about you and potentially read a book that you may come out eventually or see you in the movie.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I did.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm very honored to be here, Rachel.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's start with your background.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we get into the good stuff, I want to hear where you're from, the kind of upbringing you had, your family, tell us so we know who you really are.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you know, I come from a really, really close knit family.
[SPEAKER_04]: I could go, you know, and talk about this for days and days.
[SPEAKER_04]: My mom and dad, we were the kind of family that had to sit in the table together.
[SPEAKER_04]: My father was a son of an immigrant from Spain.
[SPEAKER_04]: My grandparents were from Spain.
[SPEAKER_04]: My father was born in Cuba.
[SPEAKER_04]: He grew up as a cane cutter.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hard work does pay.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was 10 years old and he was cutting sugar cane on the fields.
[SPEAKER_04]: There were once a school in my dad, because there were two poor, and eventually he became a sugarmil mechanic, and he turned that into a company that got contracts, and he started getting more and more fame as a very good mechanic in the sugar industry, which Cuba was the number one country in the world to produce sugar.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he turned that into a multimillion dollar company,
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, that actually later on in life, um, he started going to school at the age of thirty something because that's the one thing he had never had, school and he graduated from the University of Havana.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have his diploma here in Miami in Florida where I live, uh, seven different degrees and never practiced the one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, so we come from a very, very,
[SPEAKER_04]: basic type rooted company.
[SPEAKER_04]: In school, I had to sit in the table with my last button, button, all of us together, TV's off.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have two great sisters.
[SPEAKER_04]: I lost one, two cancer.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the other one is an architect.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm extremely proud of her.
[SPEAKER_04]: And well, my dad was in the sugar industry, as I said, my uncle was actually shot in front of firing squad in Cuba.
[SPEAKER_04]: So my father had to leave Cuba in a hurry, basically, because his life was threatened.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so he came basically without any money, but he was able to acquire sugar mill that he had built in Haiti years before that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I lived in Haiti for four years, where there I learned how to speak Creole, French, and then Italian later on, I learned because of my Lamborghini's.
[SPEAKER_04]: and so I speak four or five languages, but I was very young at that time, I was here to kid.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then my father decided that he wanted to reunite the family.
[SPEAKER_04]: My sister was in Germany studying German.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: How old were she?
[SPEAKER_04]: We were in early teens.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Early, early teens.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, 12.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was your mother still around?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, my mom and dad were like a Romeo Juliet story.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean,
[SPEAKER_04]: They had the kind of marriage that I can only dream about.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've done it a few times and I'll keep doing it until I get it right.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, yeah, but it really, really was.
[SPEAKER_04]: So my dad went ahead and then he became a builder in Florida.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're reading, you're a United the family in the United States.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, correct, correct, correct.
[SPEAKER_04]: And by the way, I was born in Japan, but I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Have I, I don't know Cuba.
[SPEAKER_04]: I came when I was a baby, so I, you know, Miami's my home, and that's what I know.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so years later after I got a little bit older, like 12, 13, 14 years old, my dad decides, no, no.
[SPEAKER_04]: But that point is like 18 or 19, my dad decides he wants to get back into the sugar industry.
[SPEAKER_04]: So all the funs that he has and all the money that he has, he puts into a sugar mill, we're going to buy another sugar mill in another country, put it on a barge.
[SPEAKER_04]: and then going to float it over to Haiti.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why Haiti?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because of the cost of labor in Haiti was a country that needed an industry.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was very favorable terms because you had a tremendous workforce.
[SPEAKER_04]: And my father already had two sugar mills that he had owned there before.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he had a lot of experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he had the credibility.
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly correct.
[SPEAKER_04]: So,
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, so he gets back into the business in a mega long story short, he gets cancer, and I don't know this, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I need 14 million dollars to finish a project.
[SPEAKER_04]: My father passed us away.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm at the age now, maybe 19 and night neighborhood, 20 and night.
[SPEAKER_01]: And were you working with him?
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah, my father.
[SPEAKER_01]: You knew the business.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: When I lived in Haiti, I went my dad, he, he, he,
[SPEAKER_04]: Even though I was used to kid he put me in the laboratory and he had me there He says this is the heart of the industry.
[SPEAKER_04]: You must learn everything that you can here So and I'm always like my dad was like my mentor to me, you know, God's up here My dad was right on the knee team.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I just worship him I really do a joke up every time I think about him and So what happened was he gets cancer he passes away
[SPEAKER_04]: Unbeknown to me, he left me a manual that says, in my absence, you shout, do this and this and this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now on his dying bed in the hospital, he said to me, son finished the project.
[SPEAKER_04]: Finish the sugar.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this was important to him.
[SPEAKER_04]: very, very young.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he probably sees this as a path for you as a lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's a career.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's our whole family grew up in that industry.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: My mom's side of the family owned the biggest sugar mill of the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know if you know what a sugar mill is, it's all about it or how much it's worth.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we're talking million.
[SPEAKER_04]: millions and millions.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like a billion dollar.
[SPEAKER_04]: Any small curriculum back in those days was about $20,000,000,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So your father passes away and I'm so sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you are left with this weight on your shoulders.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to get $14 million to finish this project.
[SPEAKER_01]: So talk to us about what happens here because this is kind of the moment where your life changes, your betrayed and your life ends up shifting.
[SPEAKER_04]: It didn't really change right there, Rachel.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it started me in a quest that I had, I'm not going to say I'm saddled with, but it's a quest that I needed to complete my father's sugar mill.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now I've got all the way to the world of my shoulders, like you said, simply because I've got two sisters in a mom and none of them have ever worked.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they were all dependent on my dad's.
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, backing and and all of a sudden everything that we own was put into the sugar mood project in Haiti.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now we're running the risco having financial difficulties.
[SPEAKER_04]: If I don't get this thing done, we had a bank commitment from capital bank which is not the same capital that you see now and the director of the bank able holds he's passed away since then.
[SPEAKER_04]: He gave us, we had a commitment from the bank for $14 million to finish the project.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what do I do after my dad passes away?
[SPEAKER_04]: I put on my best brianian, I'll suit that I've got to grab his briefcase.
[SPEAKER_04]: I went down to the bank and I said, I'm here to execute the commitment, the bank commitment for $14 million.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, Abel Holt said to me, I'm so sorry about what happened to you.
[SPEAKER_04]: That it was a great man.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, but unfortunately, we cannot honor this commitment to you, basically you're too young.
[SPEAKER_04]: and he says, and I got a board directed that I have to answer it to, and you have no experience at this level.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they believed in your dad and that's where the commitment came from, but once your dad was gone, they said, now we're out, okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, my dad probably, the lonely basic probably back on again, in those days, we're 60% of the, the project was based on my dad's history.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the fact that he knew the industry really well, and he had experience in that country.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Plus, we had already commitments from the government to allow us to take the money out of the country, tax exemptions for 30 years, we had 30, something 20, 30,000 acres on the contract.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, it was all backed by, and I want to reiterate, this was all legal stuff a few guys were involved in, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was like, this was a great way to make money, and a real way to make money.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, the right now, the biggest sugar mill in the world is owned by the Cubans here in Cluiston, of the world, Fun Hole, they're the owners of the, and that was along with my dad when they first started all that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so anyway, so I went there and then he told me that I was too young and inexperienced to honor the contract.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was like a bucket of cold water, you know, it was like, now what do I do?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I went back down to the car.
[SPEAKER_04]: and now what do I do he told me I'm going to refer you to maybe more of a liberal type of lenders and I think it was a nice web letting me down because he just didn't want to shut the door like that on my face you know you've gone through his tragedy and so I you know I went in and I knocked on the doors that he told me to go same answer same same thing I didn't get any any words with that I started um
[SPEAKER_04]: seeking other sorts of financing, and I spent maybe two years looking for money.
[SPEAKER_04]: As the time passed by, I still had the responsibility of maintaining and supporting an office in 80 with employees, you know, the was it self-sufficient enough that you were able to pay?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, we hadn't started.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had to start.
[SPEAKER_04]: We bought a sugar mill and Puerto Rico that I owed the government of Puerto Rico $780,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: Imagine that in 1920 years old and I owe you a million.
[SPEAKER_04]: I need 14 million to finish the project, develop the fields of foundation, get a barge, you got to put the sugar mill dismantle it, break it down, put it on a boat, float it over to Haiti, and then bring it back up again.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that is a major undertaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: So where do you go next because I know there was a commitment from somebody and a hundred thousand dollar thing happens to you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I go see this private.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, not really.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was.
[SPEAKER_04]: a lender, you know, on the mortgage company, you know, had a lending company, so I went to see him.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was in a bank, but he was like a mortgage type of lenders, so I went to see him and then his name is Rubin.
[SPEAKER_04]: Rubin told me he said, yeah, what you could do this, we could do the $14 million, so I have sources.
[SPEAKER_04]: then we could handle a loan of that nature, he said, but you're going to have to deposit good faith money.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you would say, well, what would you deposit any good faith money?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, believe it or not, it's actually something that was not, I'm not going to say super normal, but it was normal in the industry.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because what they would do that is to separate the BS from reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And always if you can't bring in a hundred thousand dollars to put it in an escrow account in good faith, which is not supposed to be touched.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I don't want to waste my time with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I didn't think nothing was going to happen to the money.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I took 100,000, and I gave it to him.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I got a commitment for 14 million dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: I want that out of there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I had it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I'm floating on the air.
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought, well, my gosh, I want to get this thing launched finally.
[SPEAKER_04]: Year and a half later, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm still at it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm still at it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I've got this commitment and life is great again.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, one day turning into a week, a week turning into a couple of weeks, a couple of weeks turning into a month.
[SPEAKER_04]: And every day, it was always mañana, you know, tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, what are we getting this thing funded?
[SPEAKER_04]: And then it just wasn't happening and here he had the 100,000 on that side of the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then did he not want to give it back to you when you finally asked for it?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, yeah, well what happened was I'm walking into his office and I hear screaming from inside the building.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I freeze when I hear all this screaming.
[SPEAKER_04]: and the door opens up in front of me and there's guys filming trying on my face and then I said, what, the guy goes, what, what even what, and then the guy, I said, what's going on in there?
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, he's got ripped off by the Steve.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, what are you talking about?
[SPEAKER_04]: He's a Rubin, this son of a blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a thief.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, I killed the guy a hundred thousand dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, you got nothing kid.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, your money's gone.
[SPEAKER_04]: This guy's a thief.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going down to the authorities.
[SPEAKER_01]: to follow you know charges against this great right so now you're out a hundred thousand dollars on top of everything yeah do you take revenge on the sky do you what do you do well I
[SPEAKER_04]: I was really scary moment and empty feeling.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like really inexperienced, you know, I always lived on them like that shadow.
[SPEAKER_04]: You've been doing a lot of business, but I've never really had to face these type of situations, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I went out back to the car and I had to regroup.
[SPEAKER_04]: I had to sit there and turn the car on and I turned on the AC.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't know where to go.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I said to myself, if I go to the authorities, I'm ready behind this other guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's going down the way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I'm never going to see a penny of this thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It'll probably be three, four years before it goes to court.
[SPEAKER_04]: By that time, the guy's going to file bankruptcy.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know enough about business.
[SPEAKER_04]: They know I'm not going to see a penny.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, I got to take it different approach.
[SPEAKER_04]: I need that money and I cannot afford to lose that money.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I ask myself, I'm just going to go on kicking up the guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well you don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, tell me what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, that couldn't have gone very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, tell me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, obviously.
[SPEAKER_04]: The way I looked at Rachel is really simple, the guys committed a crime.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I kidnapped them.
[SPEAKER_04]: What's he going to do?
[SPEAKER_04]: Call the authorities that I kidnapped them.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's already ripped me off for 100 grand.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I've got a little leverage there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I tricked them into kidnapping them.
[SPEAKER_04]: I created a whole scenario with some buddies in mine.
[SPEAKER_04]: I call the couple of buddies of mine and say, guys, these, I had some pot smuggling friends of mine by the way, I've never smoked even a joint, okay?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to do drugs.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I called up my buddies and I said, listen, I need to borrow your farm.
[SPEAKER_04]: They had a farm out in the Everglades out in the Everglades and South Miami, and this is where they stored a lot of weed.
[SPEAKER_04]: big barn acreage can't hear anything right so I said I want you guys to play the part of Texans you know like really really rich oil guys so he said what are you going on tea and he said well here's what I want to do man and this guy written me on for a hundred grand I think I got money back so what do you want us to do I said what I want to do is put this guy in one of your barns
[SPEAKER_04]: and I want you to help me get them there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, okay, what do you want us to do?
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I'm going to call up Rubin' and tell Rubin' that I got this rich oil guys that are coming in town maybe you would like to meet them and they could become potential investors for him.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, he said, all right, fine.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I used that line, I called Rubin' and I said, listen, I got these guys and oil guys and they're looking to get some property and they've got tremendous amount of access to
[SPEAKER_04]: funds for real estate.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not interested in helping me in Haiti because they're like United States.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe you'd like to meet these guys.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he said, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, give me your address.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll pick you up.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he gave me his address and I went and picked them up with one, two, three.
[SPEAKER_01]: three guys in myself and is it like out of the movies you put a bag over his head shoved a member no okay so he didn't realize he was getting kidnapped no he thought we were going up for breakfast okay how long did you have him uh long enough to beat the hell out of him uh did you get your money back oh yeah
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, so you asked great interest.
[SPEAKER_04]: I actually got more than what I wanted from my money.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because he couldn't pay me with cash.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't have the cash because he had gotten rid of my cash.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he says to me, I could walk into the farm, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, listen, these guys are looking at a ranch.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe you might want to see it.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, okay, yeah, let's go look at it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So when we pull into the ranch, you got the gate, the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: We go inside this house.
[SPEAKER_04]: My two friends go in first, you know, and then he goes in, and then I go in, and then as soon as I go in my other buddies in the door, at this point, I tap on my shoulder, and I say a room and turn around, and I slap him as hard as I could, and I don't know if you know this, that I'm a karate instructor from many, many years of real karate, not to be as stuff that you see in the movies, you know, we train them concrete floors, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a karate instructor from many, many years of real karate, not to be as stuff that you see in the movies, you know, we train them concrete floors, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't take candies from babies.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't go around kicking dogs, but I also don't like to get abuse.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, and I'm like, I hit the guy really, really bad.
[SPEAKER_04]: I need to guy alive.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't need them dead.
[SPEAKER_04]: I need my money back at home.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you need to get him to be so fearful that he's gonna hurt his right.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I really play role that thing to the max.
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, a lot of theatrical, but I beat him.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, so I grabbed him.
[SPEAKER_04]: He turned around.
[SPEAKER_04]: slap them a heart I grabbed them by the ear and I looked at it pointing my finger in his face I said if you don't give him my hand from money back He said look how that window you never gonna see that son again.
[SPEAKER_04]: I could promise you this and at that time Rachel I don't even know how far I would have taken it because I was living that moment I wanted my money back.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't want to penny over what I gave you just give me back what you took from me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I need it
[SPEAKER_01]: So what did you get?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because he obviously, you said he didn't have the cash.
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't have the cash.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he says to me, I can give you cards.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I say, Carl, what are you talking about, Carl?
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, at that point in life, I love Carl, but I'm not in the car business.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what Rubin was able to do, he's such a carn artist, this guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was able to, he says, I can give you cards.
[SPEAKER_04]: He had a connection in a bank and came in, if you could believe this.
[SPEAKER_04]: It came in as like a haven for money laundering money outside the United States.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a contact inside the bank, so we went to a dealership and I knew enough that not want to talk to anybody in that dealership.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he says, I can get you cards, so I said, all right, fine, I'll give you, I think it was a diamond a quarter on a dollar.
[SPEAKER_04]: because I'm not in the car business.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we went over there and I'm now picking out a car for $50,000, which is going to, you know, I'm going to acknowledge maybe 10 grand, five grand, depending.
[SPEAKER_04]: I want that out of there with a whole bunch of cars.
[SPEAKER_04]: Ruben gave them a cashier check from the Cayman bank, which the dealership verified in the bank that the check was good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, on a tank car is coming out of that lot.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I knew enough to get those cars immediately taken and changed titles.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not my problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got cars.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't take those cars, Rubin sold me those cars, so I didn't get them from the dealership.
[SPEAKER_04]: He paid for the cars.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what kind of cars are these?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, you're high in cars, Mercedes-Benz.
[SPEAKER_01]: And is this how you started your car?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, except.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how I got my 100,000.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
[SPEAKER_01]: So because I want to get people to understand first of all, you've had a million and a half jobs.
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like you've been in the car business.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've already got your flying planes, your driving bus.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're driving bus from the contract for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll find a bank.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, my gosh.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So because I want everyone to hear all this.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you eventually tell me how do you get to the point where you get a boat and you get into the marijuana smuggling business?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I get, I get.
[SPEAKER_01]: And why?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why all of a sudden does that become the option?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I want to see my buddies after this incident, and I sit with my buddies and I say, guys, you know, I gotta get this sugar mill thing off the ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they ended up buying the car by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, got some cash.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I got cash back.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I say, would you guys like to come in and help me, you know, this and that?
[SPEAKER_04]: And at that point, I didn't really know that much about,
[SPEAKER_04]: Money laundering or the liability so being involved with some illegal funding I didn't really know that so I asked him if they wanted to put some of the money that they were making on marijuana And to my business they looked at me with straight face and he looked at people don't mind helping you out with whatever He said, but hey, he's a bad risk I said you come on man you guys are in the bad risk business.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're in the drug business.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're telling me 80's a bad risk So they turned me down.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got turned down by everybody is what it came down to
[SPEAKER_04]: One guy, it was called Intercontinental Bank.
[SPEAKER_04]: The CEO of that bank, a real guy, was a son of a president of Cuba.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if I told you my dad was a senator in Cuba.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, there is a little bit of a connection there.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's how I get into the door.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I sit with the guy and I present him the project.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, okay, fine.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's go to Haiti and let's get this project, look at that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if it's everything that you're telling me, it is, we'll fund it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now, again, I'm really a happy camper.
[SPEAKER_04]: The deal that I struck with when the banker was 80% for me, 20% for him, but it's a waterfall deal.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now he gets 80.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I get 20 until it gets paid back and then we switch.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we do this, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: We get to Haiti and then after he inspects everything, I introduce him to the minister of finance, agriculture.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, we're going to do the deal.
[SPEAKER_04]: The following morning, about six, seven o'clock in the morning, very early, he calls me up in my room and then he says, we need to talk and come on down early in the morning.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I come down and have a cup of coffee with him, and then he says, look, we're going to do the deal.
[SPEAKER_04]: I verify with my backers, but there's one thing that's going to be 80 across the board to us.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's what I said to him.
[SPEAKER_04]: But that's not what we said in Miami.
[SPEAKER_04]: We shook hands.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he said to me, he's saying Miami, kid, you whip behind the ears without me.
[SPEAKER_04]: You got a pipe dream.
[SPEAKER_04]: Pipe dream first of my ever heard that term pipe dream without me.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said he said Simple as that we have the money You know, you won't be able to get this thing done without me.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I looked at him and I said this is my life change This is the moment my life change.
[SPEAKER_04]: I looked at him and I said listen me to you something There's the last airplane going back to Miami
[SPEAKER_04]: from here with Delta Flight, I think it was like 3, 15, 3, 20 summers around there, yeah, the noon.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he said, be on that airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because if you're still on this island, I want to put you inside a bag.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, and you know what, unlike you, I don't break my promise.
[SPEAKER_04]: My dad raised me to be a man.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I promise you, I'm going to put you inside a bag.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: The guy left, that night I got a bottle of absolute or something.
[SPEAKER_04]: I went up to the terrace, I had the pain house, and I said there, amongst the stars, which was very, very dark night, and I had a long talk with my dead father.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I told that, listen, I'm not, I'm sitting here and ask you for permission to do that, but I'm tired of asking people from money.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm tired of being kicked to the curb.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I just felt so lonely, and I felt like just,
[SPEAKER_04]: abused really by every of all these people that are literally legitimate business people, bankers, presidents of this and that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And, and I got tired of that, Rachel, so that's the moment that I said, I'm going to be a bank, and I'm going to do what these guys have done, but I'm going to do it better.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's when I decided I'm going to become a smuggler.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I said, where'd be many good that way?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what if I don't find a good turn around your loss?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's scary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I take the boat to be many, and even in the daylight, I'm kind of looking around like, what if we miss this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where'd if we run out of gas, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it is a little bit of blind faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: You went at night, you get there, and you get in the marijuana business.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just quickly explain what that was like, how difficult and, you know, cause I want to get to the cocaine part of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: was really, really simple.
[SPEAKER_04]: I pulled in there.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even know how to dock a boat.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I throw the thing in neutral.
[SPEAKER_04]: I bang the hell out of the speedboat that I bought.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't really know how to drive this darn thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I'm thinking cars.
[SPEAKER_04]: You got to hit reverse to stop in.
[SPEAKER_04]: I almost pulled the dock master into the water.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll never forget to go.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really crazy.
[SPEAKER_04]: right and I don't have any content, they've been to the Bahamas, they've been Haiti, but I don't know the Bahamas.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I get out of there and I look around, there's nobody around.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe 11, 12 o'clock at night.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said to the dogmaster guy, I said, hey listen man, I only get some weed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he goes, he goes, he goes, yeah, you know, like we, you know, so he goes, oh yeah, he pulls out two three joints out of his pocket and like he's going to sell me this, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I looked at him, I said no, man, I want pedals on weight.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he has what he said to me, for that we have to go see my uncle.
[SPEAKER_04]: I get off in an hour.
[SPEAKER_04]: go get a room and then we'll introduce you to my uncle and I said okay I had 25,000 dollars basically left after I bought that boat and from the family I told the money that I could afford to take with me so I had 25,000 in cash and they're banking on this to work because if it doesn't work you don't got a lot left.
[SPEAKER_04]: Pardon me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you have $25,000 and yeah, to buy weed and if it doesn't work, you're kind of gonna work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well you believe that it's gonna work, which is amazing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm gonna make it work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_04]: If it's not this guy, it'll be somebody else.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the only way it's not gonna work is if I die.
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't give up, but she's not in my chemistry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you knew this was going to be the thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, no, for sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm always thinking two or three steps ahead of what's going to happen next.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm trying to anticipate playing chess.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, you're going to be three, four, five moves ahead of the game.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I go see these guys, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And they asked me how much money I had.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, how much will you have?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even know what a price of,
[SPEAKER_04]: marijuana was yeah I don't know a price of my one of my amy right much less in the bomb is you know so the guys said I said this I mean I got to know money to buy every pound that you bring
[SPEAKER_04]: So the guy goes, all right.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, okay, so he said, we're gonna do the exchange in the middle of the ocean.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now I look at this guy and I say, why the middle of the ocean?
[SPEAKER_04]: All kinds of bad things are going through my head.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, you gotta remember, at one point or another, Bahamas didn't live off a tourism.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a nation that made it living off fire.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, contrabands and things like that, back in the days of rum running.
[SPEAKER_04]: and all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: So all that's going through my head, why the ocean.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we meet in the ocean.
[SPEAKER_04]: He tells me we're going to be such in such a location.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's going to have a flashlight, go to the light.
[SPEAKER_04]: But two o'clock in the morning, I see the flashlight.
[SPEAKER_04]: I tie up, next to him, and then he's got a couple of bales on your own pounds each bail.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't have a weapon with me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said before more and more into karate thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And what I had a diving knife tied to my leg.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I took out the knife, we throw it, we tie the boats together, and I wanna make sure I'm not buying a regular one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Cause that's another thing to teach guys to go to.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh wow, I guess I wouldn't have thought of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to check this pot, so I take the knife, I cut a window into it, and I open it up, I stick the knife in, it was pressed hard, like a board, so I smelled it, and it's yeah, this is definitely weed.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, a quality, but then again, I'm not an expert either.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know the boss, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody in Miami will figure it out.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I sit there and then I brought some duct tape, I closed a little window again, and the guy says 30 grand.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just take my little
[SPEAKER_04]: Now the week's on my boat by the way, so I get the guy that's 25,000 and the guy goes, how much is in there?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said 25 and then he says 30, you have five short.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, well, that's all the money I got.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, you said, you had all this money.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, yeah, that's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he said, well look, man, I'll come back and I'll bring you the other five baggy.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, to me, there's no credit in this business.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he starts telling me there's over and over and he starts getting a little voistress with me.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no credit in this business, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm like, okay, well, what are we gonna do here?
[SPEAKER_04]: Take out $5,000, what a pot out of this bail.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I said, there's no other way of getting it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's no credit here.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's two guys on that boat.
[SPEAKER_04]: There was an older guy, maybe in his 40s.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's laying back like this.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was watching him the whole time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was like, I feared the most.
[SPEAKER_04]: They got close to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I could take care of him.
[SPEAKER_04]: But they got far away.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was too far from me to defend myself in the case anything happened.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he says, give the kid the pot.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that he will come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Loomy away.
[SPEAKER_04]: I looked at him when I said, hey, listen, if I don't come back, I mean, the dead or I'm in prison.
[SPEAKER_04]: but I will be back.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't lie, I don't cheat, and I live by my word.
[SPEAKER_04]: The guy says, let him take it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right then and there, I turned around, I brought the pot in into the stage.
[SPEAKER_04]: And here's a funny thing, Rachel.
[SPEAKER_04]: I scored the pot, and I went to see my buddies, and they were like, why don't you guys have to turn me down on the street and move for our game?
[SPEAKER_04]: And it helped me with moving?
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I see those guys, they're their buyers.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're in the weed business, I don't have a buyer.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know anybody go with this thing, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I say, hey, Michael, I need to combine and see you.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, yeah, sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I get there and I said, he could put the car in the garage.
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you want to put the car in the garage?
[SPEAKER_04]: That's something to show you.
[SPEAKER_04]: There was two, three guys in the house, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I pull the car into the garage.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I say here look at this, so I've shown the pod because what you do, what you get that had because they knew that I'm not a pod guy or I'm not a drug guy, so you do find it so I thought I didn't find it and I said, you know, I brought it in easy, you brought it in I said, well how much you want for it?
[SPEAKER_04]: So we agree on a prize, 500 dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Mike says, I mean I thought this was really hilarious.
[SPEAKER_04]: because Mike says to me, okay, fine, just a hundred hundred and twenty grand that I'm going to give that he owes me, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: He goes, all right, T come back tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have the money for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: I looked at Michael and I say, hey, Michael, there's no credit here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for what you spent for 25,000, what did you recommend?
[SPEAKER_04]: I ended up with about a hundred grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm assuming you went back and forth and this became a shuttle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like an airport shuttle.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, are you doing this all because you're trying to get to the 14 million?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you still working on that project?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've moved that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how did this wind itself down where you got into the bigger stuff?
[SPEAKER_01]: And how do you learn how to fly the plane?
[SPEAKER_01]: And where are we going with that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm amazing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got a shuttle business going, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And are you employing other people to do it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you just doing it yourself?
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, I'm doing it all by myself.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I realize one thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's taking me too much.
[SPEAKER_04]: I need 14 million dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: That a hundred grand is going to take me a few years.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: This money.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I, you know, and I had a pretty good business mind.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, you know, the only way I could better this is by adding other boats.
[SPEAKER_04]: So some of the money that I was making now, I'm reinvesting and I bought another speedboat.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I went to see a friend of mine who's a truck driver who was in two terms and Vietnam.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now you say, hey, listen, I got a job offer for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: All the part you get smoke, I said, 10,000 a week.
[SPEAKER_04]: What do I got to do is you try to be speedboat, back and forth from Bimmie, and you're not that far.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I put him on, and then I put another friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I got three or four little speedboats going back and forth.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now the problem that I have is I'm not getting enough marijuana from the Bahamas, because you got to remember Rachel,
[SPEAKER_04]: marijuana doesn't come from the Bahamas.
[SPEAKER_04]: It goes through the Bahamas.
[SPEAKER_04]: It comes from Columbia.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they couldn't get it fast enough for you to even pick it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of the weed that I'm buying actually came from the government.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I find out that the uncle was connected with one of his relatives who was involved in the government.
[SPEAKER_04]: So all the sea seizures that they would do when they were bus somebody.
[SPEAKER_04]: The government would take that weed and they were supposed to burn it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I meet one of those guys, and then they say, well, you got a burn this weed, I say this, and I got somebody Miami to burn it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't worry about getting burn.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me, I'll take everything that you can confiscate.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I've got 2,300,000, I've got 2,3 speed boats, I've got this stuff, but I'm sitting idle, because I'm not getting enough product in order to continue on my quest of 40 million.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, so I said, I was sitting in my list.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even know, late 70s, early 80s, late 70s.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what made, I mean, how come this was so easy to do back then?
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, no, no, it wasn't easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it's a matter of fact, you know, I've actually had a few people argue that point and it's really, I could prove to you how it was harder back then because you got to remember.
[SPEAKER_04]: at one point in life, all the weed, all the drugs, everything that came from outside the United States came through South Florida, and just the way it was, California was not in the picture.
[SPEAKER_04]: Mexico was not in the picture, Texas was not in the picture.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was one entry point, probably a lot of people in the game that I'm assuming.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, not only a lot of people, but a lot of agencies in the game, you have Marine Patrol Coast Guard, DEA customs, ATF, any authority locals, city police, had a boat, like give me a perfect example, Indian Creek, you know, that neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_04]: They keep, they used to keep two police guys on a boat around the island.
[SPEAKER_04]: So one of my point in three houses, I had to go buy them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in these days, like, we're with people in the government in on it, because they were getting paid.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were scratching down on it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Wasn't Reagan making a whole thing about scratching down on it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Order of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I contributed heavy over 100 grand to the Republican Party of the war against drugs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: Man, keep the price up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, brilliant.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'd out the Amitra.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so you have all this going.
[SPEAKER_01]: When do you decide you need to learn how to fly a plane?
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And how do you even get your hands on a plane?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it's really kind of interesting, because I'm thinking I need to go to the source for marijuana where it originates from, that's Columbia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I have a speed, but I can't go to Columbia in a speed boat.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to take a pleasure craft.
[SPEAKER_04]: It takes too long.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't even know anybody in Columbia.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, one thing led to the other, which led to the other and leads to the other.
[SPEAKER_04]: What happened was, our buying airplane, because I thought, well, I need to go to Columbia.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a fastest, easiest way for me to go to Columbia.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, when our buying airplane, again, is another story and itself, I buy that airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought I ripped off the guy right.
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought I'm a great business guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting this airplane for like next to nothing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I after I buy the airplane, I buy it outside of Miami for a lot of deals and Tampa actually that I bought it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I tell the guy, okay, let's go.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, and I don't know how to fly, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So the guy go, he said, well, you can't write in the airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, what do you mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't run in the airplane because no, the airplane has no air certificate that's current.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, what's an air certificate?
[SPEAKER_04]: Airworthiness.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, Plains have been sitting for like a whole bunch of years and needs to be transported by a ferry permit and we can't carry any passenger.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, well, I'm not a passenger.
[SPEAKER_04]: I own the darn airplane and you guys go, you are a passenger because you're not a pilot.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now,
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't travel in my own airplane that I bought in Tampa, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I walk into this airplane needed a paint job, the panel, which is what it's called, what we would call in the car business, a dash was full of holes.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm a car guy, so I look at all these holes in the panel and now you say, so I need some gauges, big deal, pebb boys, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, it's a gauge.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, and I look at the seats.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no seats in the airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I said, who the hell needs seats?
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to put marijuana here anyway.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I'm not looking at the cosmetic.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm looking at two engines on this airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: If I lose an engine, I don't know the backup engine on the other side.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is my rap.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is my way of thinking, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you think it's yourself who am I going to get to fly this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you were like, I'm going to fly this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I'm gonna fly this, but I need to learn how to fly.
[SPEAKER_04]: And in order to learn how to fly, I need an airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's why I bought that airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I buy the airplane and then I get, you know, the airplane's gonna go back to Fort Lauderdale, where somebody referred me to a place that worked an airplane, got by an aim of,
[SPEAKER_04]: Billy.
[SPEAKER_04]: So associated air was the location.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're eventually end up owning all of that stuff and I'm sitting in the air for a lot of their international airport With the whole wall the whole wall was glass.
[SPEAKER_04]: I introduced myself the Billy and I tell Billy I said hey Billy my airplane is flying in I need you to if you could hook me up with a
[SPEAKER_04]: with like an instructor, you know, I want to learn how to fly, is it what kind of airplane did you buy?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I bought a beach craft, 20 engine, he goes, okay, hang on a second, we've got an airplane coming in with the problem, may day.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, and we're sitting there and you're on the bus with a glass wall, and, um,
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, Mayday, something like, you know, it's gonna have something that's gonna happen.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it goes here, here it is, you see it up there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I look up on this guy and look down.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's my airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, they did clear their Mayday because the airplane was coming in without brakes so it couldn't stop.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so hot.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know, my great deal, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my God.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I ended up calling that airplane?
[SPEAKER_04]: The hanger queen, why?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because they were like a pretty Madonna princess, more money, more money, she never did anything.
[SPEAKER_04]: She never pollutioned a darn thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so it was my airplane, came in terrible.
[SPEAKER_04]: I put tons of money into the airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: In the meantime, Billy says, I said, hey man, can you hook me up with another airplane?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I got another airplane that you could do.
[SPEAKER_04]: use, you know, so he introduces me to a guy that was an instructor, a pilot, and that was funny too, because he says, the guy really needs the money.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm driving a Ferrari right at this time.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he says, here's the guy's ad, just go talk to him, the guy could use really the money.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I pull up on the guy's house and beautiful home, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Big home.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, shoot, I should have run another car.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
[SPEAKER_04]: And she goes like in pain, I'm like in money, and I say, yeah, you know, so she goes, come on, let's go, slams the door, and I'm sitting there going, why are you slamming the door?
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're going to do the minute check.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Jack was renting a little cracker box, you know, like a little shed back yard.
[SPEAKER_01]: My gosh.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was excited about this job.
[SPEAKER_04]: Of course, you know, Jack opened up this guy's gonna pay you some money.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, and he was behind two three months rent So at that point Yeah, so the guy goes where he goes to your airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: I gave her a few months and then I set her an account a couple of more So Jack and then now we go to the airport and got this other backup airplane that Billy introduced me to So that's where I start learning out of flight
[SPEAKER_01]: So, eventually, with this aircraft, you start going to Columbia.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a stop?
[SPEAKER_01]: You can go straight.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, actually, no, no, it wasn't quite like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: What?
[SPEAKER_04]: I know, I know it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_04]: What it happens is a friend of mine gets in trouble.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's got an airplane that got in trouble by the Bohemian authorities.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was chased in by DEA.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was an albatross, a very, very expensive airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they had to throw a bales out, you know, and land the airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now this airplane is seized in the Bahamas, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of my buddy calls me Obesity.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know you got some really strong contacts over there in the Bahamas.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got an airplane down by the authorities over there.
[SPEAKER_04]: You think you might be able to get me that airplane out?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, sure, at least I could try.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he says, how much you want for it?
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, like what I'm going to charge them?
[SPEAKER_04]: So, and I knew he had a weak contact.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, it's really simple.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want any money.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he goes, well, what are you going to, I said,
[SPEAKER_04]: I want a weak contact in Colombia.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what I want from my payment.
[SPEAKER_04]: and Anne, whatever is going to cost me to get your plane out.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I go over there and then now he tells me that that airplane had an engine problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I land in this little island, now it's kind of funny too, because I asked to speak to the director of that small little airport, and the guy says, what do you want with that airplane?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I want to take out the airplane, what's you going to take, and the guy goes, I can't allow you to take that airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: That airplane came in hot, you know, was on their suspicion of transporting marijuana.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I asked the guys, can I get behind your desk for a second?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I go, what do you want to do?
[SPEAKER_04]: I just want to show you something.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I come across and behind his desk and he's got a drawer there and I've got a briefcase with me.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, can I open up your door and the guy goes, what do you want to open up?
[SPEAKER_04]: I just do something that you would be really interested in seeing.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he's all right.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I open up his drawer.
[SPEAKER_04]: I take my briefcase and I put it on my lap.
[SPEAKER_04]: I opened it up.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got over 100 grand there in Benji's right on facing up nicely stacked no rubber band paper and the stacks are about $10,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I take one stack and I throw it in there.
[SPEAKER_04]: I take another stack.
[SPEAKER_04]: I throw it in there.
[SPEAKER_04]: I take another stack.
[SPEAKER_04]: I put about 40,000 in there right.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I looked at the guy and I said, oh, by the way, and the event that you're curious to see how much he's in there is 40,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: He goes, all right, he said, yeah, I could let you take the airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, I got another problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he goes, what's the problem?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I need to work on the airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he says, what do you mean work?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I need to work on one of the engines.
[SPEAKER_04]: The airplane won't get off the ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, here's another couple of stacks.
[SPEAKER_04]: for you to look a little longer the other way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because he says, I can't allow you to take it, but I can move the airplane to a corner of the airport where you could do what you need to do and it would be out of my eyes.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, well, here's another couple of thousand dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you could look a little longer.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I bring in mechanics.
[SPEAKER_04]: I get this airplane cranking.
[SPEAKER_04]: Meant him about 80 grand into this whole transaction, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I called up my buddy and I said, hey, listen, I need to,
[SPEAKER_04]: I need to get reimbursed, man, I'm getting a little too far behind this thing, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And he goes, well, what's taking so long, I said, the God darn airplane, I don't kind to make mechanical problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now you're questioning me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm already getting your airplane back and you got me working back and forth.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he goes, well, you need to come by here, so I go to his house when I go to his house.
[SPEAKER_04]: the Colombian that owns all this marijuana and his, you know, all this, he said his house.
[SPEAKER_04]: Guys dressed like a little tennis outfit type thing, whiteness, gold Rolex, so I don't know this guy from Adam, so the guy's questions me, he says, well, what stage is the airplane and I just he says, I like to see it, I said, you want to see your plane?
[SPEAKER_04]: Not a problem, be ready.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll pick you up in the Miami International Airport in 30 minutes.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I go get in my airplane that I'm learning still to hide a fly with Jack.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: OK, now I'm learning.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting stick time, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I go pick this guy up.
[SPEAKER_04]: I bring him to the Bahamas.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now we're sitting there.
[SPEAKER_04]: He sees that I've got the airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've got mechanics.
[SPEAKER_04]: He sees all the stuff that's going on.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he says to me, is that airplane that we flew in over here?
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that your airplane?
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we were both facing the horizon, drinking a beer.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he said, is that your airplane?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, yeah, that airplane does fly.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, you want to put it the work, I said, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he said, when can you go, I said, give me one minute.
[SPEAKER_04]: So then we'll form it right here.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I run away and I go to see Jack, which I always kept them away from all my little private meetings.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's in the room.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I say, hey, Jack, I said, you know what I do for a living?
[SPEAKER_04]: because yeah, you're a builder and he said, yeah, I do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, you know what else I do for a living?
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, yeah, you own the, so I was a big of cell phone company by the way, a software.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, transfer all communication.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wait, timeout, before you finish the sentence, what are all the jobs you've had?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I'd like this sound by that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, come, tell me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I was the biggest cell phone and also beeper.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's another story in itself, how I got into that.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's really hilarious.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it really, really was kind of funny.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I'm a builder.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I had the Jefferson Banks on the contract.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I want my own bank that I got on it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't have to ask anybody for anything.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I want the damn bank.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I had the real estate business, I had an investment company, and then I was the, the number one decommosts of Pentea, X-Colver, Lotus and Lamborghini dealer of the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: I had the biggest showroom.
[SPEAKER_04]: I saw that I think for $40,000,000,000 without a car.
[SPEAKER_04]: After I got seized years later, I was on 1624, he's son, Ray Boulevard, right on the corner there, and before the circle.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, I was having a few other franchises.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right off the top, I met stuff that I owned.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, a lot of other stuff that I didn't even know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then when I had my money in Europe, I was investing in a lot of other stuff, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and you were piloting cocaine for Pablo Escobar.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not at that point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, but that's one of the things on your resume.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah, I looked that out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: the little thing that you've forgotten.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to get it because all these stories we could go into for so long and I want to hear all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want people to hear it in your book.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do want to get into the first time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So eventually you get yourself to Columbia and I'm assuming you start doing the runs back and forth with marijuana.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we're marijuana in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the first time you were asked to fly cocaine?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I was doing the marijuana flying.
[SPEAKER_04]: I, this guy turns me on to this Colombian guy that I flew to the Bahamas, or, you know, he's got a partner now in Colombia.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now I'm doing marijuana for us, you know, from my, you know, often.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's often as I can get it, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: And, I mean, And what's that flight?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going Colombia, you're stopping in the Bahamas?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what?
[SPEAKER_04]: Colombia, it would be Bahamas, Colombia, Colombia, Bahama.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I take it off the, well, as doing is actually doing a thing called air drops because I didn't have a contact in an airport, the land and airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said to Jack, you gotta go back here real quick, I said, so Jack goes, yeah, you're a builder, you're this, you're this, you're this, you're this.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, yeah, yeah, I'm all of that, I said, but you know what else I do for living?
[SPEAKER_04]: He goes, no, why did I say, man, I want him in drugs.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he goes, why are you telling me that?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said simple because I need to go to Columbia to pick up a little marijuana and I don't know enough to find Columbia.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know how to navigate and I'm not really sure myself yet flying solo, you know and he goes, I said I'll give you $50,000 and he said, well I don't want to get arrested as you're not getting an arrested because we're going to land without the pod.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he goes, how are we going to go there?
[SPEAKER_04]: pick up marijuana and come back and land the airplane without marijuana on the airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, because what we're going to do is I'm going to put two of my speedboats in the middle of the ocean.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to fly over and open up the door.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to kick out the ton of cook of marijuana that we're having the airplane and then they're going to worry about bringing it in.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you and I are going to continue flying on the land of the airport without any pot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Reef fuel and go back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Genius.
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought so.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so, all right, now tell me about how that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, you guys must have gotten that good to be able to get close enough ocean, and that's a whole other story.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my God, Rachel, that's what puts me into the cocaine world, because that was the keystone car.
[SPEAKER_04]: I hit on one, I missed on two.
[SPEAKER_04]: I hit on two, missed on three.
[SPEAKER_04]: We put the stuff on the wrong boats one time, we broke down the radio communication.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like, it was like, no, you know, one on one course on smuggling,
[SPEAKER_04]: of course and smuggling.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he's all on the job learning.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have radio, yeah, I got a radio here, I was on that radio, it doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_04]: How do I communicate to the boat?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it's two boats down there, they look like they're our boats.
[SPEAKER_04]: One time we couldn't find each other and I'm describing where we're at by clouds in this guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: You see the one that looks like a giraffe?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'm just south of that and say horrible.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you would drop it sometimes on the wrong boat.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that happened one time.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's horrible, huh?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And did they ever, what happened?
[SPEAKER_04]: What could you imagine?
[SPEAKER_04]: You're on the fishing with a friend and family.
[SPEAKER_04]: Are there sunbathing and police lies over and drops at thousand pounds of marijuana?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, and you don't know whatever happened to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm assuming.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I'm in the airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was that.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I've talked to my guys.
[SPEAKER_04]: I put it right on your lap.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, you didn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we graduate.
[SPEAKER_04]: where you know what happened, I now owe 800,000 dollars to Columbia, to a Colombian.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, I get behind the a-ball, I'm getting now credit line, another credit line.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the guy that I owe is 800,000, it has no sense to humor.
[SPEAKER_04]: Pablo Escobar would be like a choir boy next to this guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's how bad these guys are.
[SPEAKER_04]: These guys are like Guajita.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're, I'm not pointing any fingers.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like an Indian type of race.
[SPEAKER_01]: various.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the real serious players.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, they shoot that guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was risen the tennis outfit.
[SPEAKER_04]: They killed my partner.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they kidnapped me.
[SPEAKER_04]: They put me in a house.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now they're hitting me with guns.
[SPEAKER_04]: And
[SPEAKER_04]: And I tell the guys, hey, listen, and as soon as I say, hey, listen, I get hit again, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, you listen, and these words, he, I'll never forget these words, he said, does he know movie and you ain't no cowboy?
[SPEAKER_04]: And one might f-in 800,000, or you're dead.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, and then I get hit again.
[SPEAKER_04]: So about the third or fourth time in your hits, I said, listen, then she's got straight to the kill me part.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not gonna allow myself to get tortured, getting hit by a gun, and you're gonna shoot me anyway.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just move right to the end.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I said, but now, if you let me talk for one second, I can show you how we can get out of this mess.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you shoot me, my problems are over.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got nothing else to worry about, you're fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: They still have a big problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, you still got a problem?
[SPEAKER_04]: I still owe you 800,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I got four speed boats.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got two pleasurecrests.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got two airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got the hang of queen.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I got Carmen, another airplane that I named Carmen after a girl.
[SPEAKER_04]: not my girlfriend somebody else's and she was in a good, that's why I called.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so yeah, wow, so I sit there and I said, if you let me talk, you know, I could sell one of these things and bring you your eight hundred thousand.
[SPEAKER_04]: right away.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he goes as he give me 24 hours.
[SPEAKER_04]: Meanwhile, by the way, I never mentioned just before, you know, my family did not know what I was doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody had any idea of what I was doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, at this point, are you still single?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you married?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're married.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And your wife didn't even know.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, she didn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I'm in real estate.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm looking at the property, and remember I told you that I was a builder, I'm looking to do a little project development, you know, because now I'm not doing the sugar mill thing right now, but I'm going to develop some property into Bahamas, so I'm flying here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now I am in the car business now, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So why would I be getting into the airplane?
[SPEAKER_04]: I told my family, I'm in the car business, people come in all the time asking me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, I want to get an airplane.
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you give me a referral?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I say, well, why not sell my airplane too?
[SPEAKER_04]: So that was a good thing for my family to hang a hat on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why am I getting into the airplane business?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because, like, it's sell airplanes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this question, sidebar, in the meantime, are you still working on the sugar mill project?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where is that on hold?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I'm losing everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're losing everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: Everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, the fault then on the 700, 180,000 dollars that I owe Puerto Rico, because now, three, three years have gone by, but I figured, if I'm making up money, I could get it all back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was like the impetus of the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still.
[SPEAKER_04]: I lose it, I'm actually lost everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I'm sorry to hear that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you get in trouble with this guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you make his 800,000 back for him?
[SPEAKER_04]: Army?
[SPEAKER_01]: The guy you got in trouble with, the very serious guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you get his 800,000 back to him?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I go and then he allows me to get 24 hours, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I go to the Bahamas to his guy named Luis, little Colombian guy, terror, but he's very good friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I say, hey, Luis,
[SPEAKER_04]: You want to buy GG, GG is an airplane that everybody thought, again, it was named that third girl.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, GG stood initials for the great ghost and you would say, why the great ghost is I painted her runway gray and night time when we land and keep one engine running, in case we need to get off the ground again quickly and then we cut one engine off so that nobody would cut up by a propeller when the door opens up to take out the bales.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, so you hear the noise, but you really couldn't see you.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I named her the great ghost.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, what do you want to sell her for?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, is I'm not going to need her.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he said, what do you mean you're not going to need her?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to be dead.
[SPEAKER_04]: If I don't get my hands on 800,000, I'm what you need again.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said 800,000, and he said, you want to make a million?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, Louis, I need a million dollars like I need air.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, yeah, what do I have to do from a million dollars?
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, fly cocaine.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the way I looked at it, I mean, the dead.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was not an option.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, the cocaine transportation business.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he paid me a million dollars to go to his farm, pick up 450 kilos, I think with my first trip that I did cocaine, and then bring it to the Bahamas.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he was going to bring it over to United States.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when you're dealing with these Colombians at this level,
[SPEAKER_04]: You've got to dot your eyes and cross your T-3 of four times.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's one little misunderstanding can cost you your life.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, Luis, I don't have to wait for this cocaine to get to United States to get paid.
[SPEAKER_04]: I do my part.
[SPEAKER_04]: I expect you only a million dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I need to get paid right away because I got 24 hours.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm on the clock to pay this guy back.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we agreed on all the terms.
[SPEAKER_04]: I do the trip.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then now,
[SPEAKER_04]: I get paid a million dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: The following day, I got an extension on the 24 hours.
[SPEAKER_04]: Luis got me the extension because he knew Tokayo.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that level, the air is really thin.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he stood for the loan.
[SPEAKER_04]: Luis backed me up, got me another 24 hours.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I get the other, I go to a hotel, I cannot the money.
[SPEAKER_04]: I messed up three, four times counting the money.
[SPEAKER_04]: My hands are turning green and all that kind of crazy stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: You're the horrible.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I, you know, see this here to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: People have 200,000, that's my money.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to take the other, whatever it's left, it should be 800, so according to Luis being his addition being correct.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I take that amount of money.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was in a Ferrari, they paid me with garbage money because they were 20s and 50s, right, and 5s, and they didn't even fit in my Ferrari, I had to take the top off the car.
[SPEAKER_04]: If I were to hit a speed bump, I would probably lost like, you know, a box with 50 grand or something, I liked that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I get the money, put it in the car, I drive it over to where they kidnapped me, and they have put me in that house.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now I had a whole different attitude, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: I pulled up there, I walked in, and I said the F and Monies in the car, I go get it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they looked at me like really I said yeah go get it and oh by the way, I'm not staying here until you count this effort money so
[SPEAKER_04]: Right in the suitcases full of money through it in the kitchen counter table that they had there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the guy says, uh, we close up, uh, Tokyo in Colombia.
[SPEAKER_04]: He goes, he's got the money.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Put him on the radio.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, get on the radio.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he says to me, so my brother, when are you coming back, I said, don't my brother me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I'm in the cocaine business.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't ever talk to me on my marijuana.
[SPEAKER_04]: and at that point I was like on a horse and I wouldn't get off that damn horse for nobody.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're no longer the kid who's wet behind the ears.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're no longer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you are the man.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at some point, my goosebumps.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pablo Escobar comes into your life.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's now I'm sending the world on fire.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't do drugs.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I'm a professional at whatever I do.
[SPEAKER_04]: Whatever it is, just be the best you can't be.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, like I told one of my kids who had drafted by Buffalo Saver's hockey.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, you know what the guy comes in second is?
[SPEAKER_04]: You know that and who I said the first loser.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said you got to give it all you got right so now I'm working for Louise every week.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm banging out cocaine trips for 55.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't care what the comedic could be cabbage.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just getting paid a million dollars to fly from Colombia to the Bahamas
[SPEAKER_04]: And my problems are done with.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't have any responsibility of selling, bringing it into the stage.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even need boats anymore.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was wonderful.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I started developing a reputation in meeting some other heavy weights in that cocaine world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And had you heard of Esquars' name?
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you heard of Esquars?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: Herdopablo, herdopablo, herdop, you know, the other guy, gosh, Carlos later.
[SPEAKER_04]: who he's also one of the top five guys in the in the cartel.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, it hurt about all those guys, but didn't mean anything to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, listen, I mean, my 20s, I'll make a million dollars a week.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, and now actually the sugar mill is taking a back seat.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting caught up in this whole lifestyle, you know, the power, the taste of that, in the excitement.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was the time that I landed in the middle of the jungle and I'm looking at a guy on a lowing clock, no tea, then a blow gun, dark thing, and I'm sending a good time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting paid for this amazing.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, this is one I want you national geographic for.
[SPEAKER_04]: And here I'm making all the crazy, stupid money, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I got caught up in that world.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm now doing really well, and I started developing a reputation.
[SPEAKER_04]: So a friend of mine said to me, hey, would you like to meet Pablo?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, what do I need to meet Pablo for?
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, so you can make some real money.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, what, four million dollars a month is not real.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I'm good.
[SPEAKER_04]: He goes, no, you can make some real money.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, all right, fine, listen, and for a dime, and for a dollar, set up a appointment.
[SPEAKER_04]: And as they got to build Pablo's house.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he said, up an appointment for me to meet Pablo.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then that's how I go meet Pablo.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because the way I looked at it, Pablo is looking for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't need Pablo.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm good with the boy, I'm really not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for listening to Ms.
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