Gangland, Drugs & Smuggling
Pablo Escobar
Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord, drug trafficker and narco-terrorist. His cartel, at the height of his career, supplied an estimated 80% of the cocainesmuggled into the United States, turning over US $21.9 billion a year in personal income. Often called "The King of Cocaine", he was the wealthiest criminal in history, with an estimated known net worth of US $30 billion by the early 1990s (equivalent to about $55 billion as of 2016), making him one of the richest men in the world at his prime.
Escobar was born in Rionegro, Colombia, and grew up in nearby Medellín. After briefly studying at Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellín, he left without a degree and began to engage in criminal activity that involved selling contraband cigarettes, along with fake lottery tickets, and participated in motor vehicle theft. In the 1970s he began to work for various contraband smugglers, often kidnapping and holding people for ransom before beginning to distribute powder cocaine himself, as well as establishing the first smuggling routes into the United States, in 1975.
His infiltration to the drug market of the U.S. expanded exponentially due to the rising demand for cocaine and, by the 1980s, it was estimated that 70 to 80 tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. on a monthly basis. His drug network was commonly known as the Medellín Cartel, which often competed with rival cartels domestically and abroad, resulting in high-rate massacres and the deaths of police officers, judges, locals and prominent politicians.
In 1982, Escobar was elected as an alternate member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia as part of the Colombian Liberal Party. Through this, he was responsible for the construction of many hospitals, schools, and churches in western Colombia, which gained him popularity inside the local Roman Catholic Church, as well as with the locals of the towns he frequented. However, Escobar was vilified by the Colombian and American governments, due to the exploits of his political power, which resulted in Colombia becoming the murder capital of the world.
In 1993, just 24 hours after his 44th birthday he was shot and the war against Pablo Escobar ended, amid another of Escobar's attempts to elude the Search Bloc. A Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by Brigadier Hugo Martínez, used radio triangulation technology to track his radiotelephone transmissions and found him hiding in Los Olivos, a middle-class barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Alvaro de Jesús Agudelo (a.k.a. "El Limón"), ensued. The two fugitives attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police. Escobar suffered gunshots to the leg and torso, and a fatal gunshot through the ear.
It has never been proven who actually fired the final shot into his ear, or determined whether this shot was made during the gunfight or as part of a possible execution, with wide speculation remaining regarding the subject. Some of Escobar's relatives believe that he had committed suicide.
His two brothers, Roberto Escobar and Fernando Sánchez Arellano, believe that he shot himself through the ear. In a statement regarding the topic, the duo would state that Pablo "had committed suicide, he did not get killed. During all the years they went after him, he would say to me every day that if he was really cornered without a way out, he would 'shoot himself through the ear'."
Escobar was born in Rionegro, Colombia, and grew up in nearby Medellín. After briefly studying at Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellín, he left without a degree and began to engage in criminal activity that involved selling contraband cigarettes, along with fake lottery tickets, and participated in motor vehicle theft. In the 1970s he began to work for various contraband smugglers, often kidnapping and holding people for ransom before beginning to distribute powder cocaine himself, as well as establishing the first smuggling routes into the United States, in 1975.
His infiltration to the drug market of the U.S. expanded exponentially due to the rising demand for cocaine and, by the 1980s, it was estimated that 70 to 80 tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. on a monthly basis. His drug network was commonly known as the Medellín Cartel, which often competed with rival cartels domestically and abroad, resulting in high-rate massacres and the deaths of police officers, judges, locals and prominent politicians.
In 1982, Escobar was elected as an alternate member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia as part of the Colombian Liberal Party. Through this, he was responsible for the construction of many hospitals, schools, and churches in western Colombia, which gained him popularity inside the local Roman Catholic Church, as well as with the locals of the towns he frequented. However, Escobar was vilified by the Colombian and American governments, due to the exploits of his political power, which resulted in Colombia becoming the murder capital of the world.
In 1993, just 24 hours after his 44th birthday he was shot and the war against Pablo Escobar ended, amid another of Escobar's attempts to elude the Search Bloc. A Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by Brigadier Hugo Martínez, used radio triangulation technology to track his radiotelephone transmissions and found him hiding in Los Olivos, a middle-class barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Alvaro de Jesús Agudelo (a.k.a. "El Limón"), ensued. The two fugitives attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police. Escobar suffered gunshots to the leg and torso, and a fatal gunshot through the ear.
It has never been proven who actually fired the final shot into his ear, or determined whether this shot was made during the gunfight or as part of a possible execution, with wide speculation remaining regarding the subject. Some of Escobar's relatives believe that he had committed suicide.
His two brothers, Roberto Escobar and Fernando Sánchez Arellano, believe that he shot himself through the ear. In a statement regarding the topic, the duo would state that Pablo "had committed suicide, he did not get killed. During all the years they went after him, he would say to me every day that if he was really cornered without a way out, he would 'shoot himself through the ear'."
George Jung
George Jung nicknamed Boston George and El Americano, was a major player in the cocaine trade in the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s. Jacob
Jung was a part of the Medellín Cartel, which was responsible for up to 85 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States. He specialized in the smuggling of cocaine from Colombia on a large scale. His life story was portrayed in the biopic Blow (2001), starring Johnny Depp. Jung was released from prison on June 2, 2014, after serving nearly 20 years for drug-smuggling. On December 6, 2016 Jung was arrested and booked in Sacramento County jail for violating his parole. Violation is for unauthorized travel. He took a day trip to San Diego for work purposes, so he could survive financially.
He is not eligible for bail considering his record, and is awaiting a court date. Jung blames his manager for the violation.
George Jung was born to Frederick and Ermine (née O'Neill) Jung in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Though Jung did not excel academically, he was a star football player and was described by his classmates as "a natural leader". His first arrest was by an undercover police officer, for solicitation of prostitution. After graduating in 1961 from Weymouth High School, Jung went to the University of Southern Mississippi. He studied for a degree in advertising but never completed his studies. Jung began recreationally using marijuana and sold a portion of everything he bought to break even.
In 1967, after meeting with a childhood friend, Jung realized the enormous profit potential represented by smuggling the cannabis he bought in California back to New England. Jung initially had his stewardess girlfriend transport the drugs in her suitcases on flights. In search of even greater profits, he expanded his operation to flying the drugs in from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, using airplanes stolen from private airports on Cape Cod and professional pilots. At the height of this enterprise, Jung and his associates were reportedly making $250,000 a month equivalent to over $1.5 million in 2016 dollars This ended in 1974, when Jung was arrested in Chicago for smuggling 660 pounds (300 kg) of marijuana. He had been staying at the Playboy Club, where he was to meet a connection who would pick up the marijuana. The connection was arrested for heroin smuggling, however, and informed the authorities about Jung to get a reduced sentence. After arguing with the judge about the purpose of sending a man to prison "for crossing an imaginary line with a bunch of plants", Jung was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury.
At FCI Danbury during his marijuana trafficking sentence, Jung's cellmate was Carlos Lehder Rivas, a young German-Colombian man who introduced Jung to the dominant and powerful international drug-trafficking Medellín Cartel; in return, Jung taught Lehder about smuggling. When Jung and Lehder were released, they went into business together. Their plan was to fly hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Pablo Escobar's Colombian ranch to the U.S., and Jung's California connection, Richard Barile, would take it from there. Jung had a security man who would accompany him to the exchanges, where Jung would give the man the keys to a car and half the cocaine, and then leave. A day or two later, they would meet again and exchange keys to cars.
Though only the middle man, Jung made millions off the operation. He came up with the idea to steal single-engine airplanes for his transportation and charge $10,000 per kilogram, with five planes going from Colombia to California, carrying 300 kilograms per plane. This translated into $15 million per run for Jung. In the 1970s Jung was earning 3 to $5 million per day. To avoid 60 percent surcharges, as well as a need to launder his earnings, he kept his money in the national bank of Panama.
By the late 1970s, Lehder had effectively cut Jung out, by going straight to Barile. Jung continued to smuggle, however, reaping millions in profits.
In 1987, Jung was arrested at his mansion on Nauset Beach, near Eastham, Massachusetts. With his family in tow, he skipped bail but quickly became involved in another deal in which an acquaintance betrayed him.
After working some "clean" jobs, Jung began working in the drug industry again. In 1994, after reconnecting with his Old Mexican cocaine smuggling partner, he was arrested with 1,754 pounds (796 kg) of cocaine in Topeka, Kansas. He pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy, received a 60-year sentence, and was incarcerated at Otisville Federal Prison, in Mount Hope, New York, then was transferred to Federal Correctional Institution, La Tuna, in Anthony, Texas. Jung later testified in the trial of his former accomplice Lehder, in exchange for a reduction in sentence. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Website, Jung (Inmate #19225-004) was most recently serving time in the Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Dix, New Jersey, with a scheduled halfway house release date of June 2, 2014, though he completed his halfway house and was fully released from custody on November 27, 2014.
In September 2014, Jung contributed to "Heavy" with T. Rafael Cimino, nephew of film director Michael Cimino. "Heavy" is a fictional story that details how Jung escaped from a Cuban prison and fled to Guatemala.
On December 6, 2016, George Jung was arrested in his home in Sacramento due to a parole violation. Violation of unauthorized travel. He took a day trip to San Diego for work purposes, so he could survive financially.
George was released from prison in 2017
He died on 5 May 2021. He had been suffering from liver and kidney disease and was receiving hospice care
Jung was a part of the Medellín Cartel, which was responsible for up to 85 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States. He specialized in the smuggling of cocaine from Colombia on a large scale. His life story was portrayed in the biopic Blow (2001), starring Johnny Depp. Jung was released from prison on June 2, 2014, after serving nearly 20 years for drug-smuggling. On December 6, 2016 Jung was arrested and booked in Sacramento County jail for violating his parole. Violation is for unauthorized travel. He took a day trip to San Diego for work purposes, so he could survive financially.
He is not eligible for bail considering his record, and is awaiting a court date. Jung blames his manager for the violation.
George Jung was born to Frederick and Ermine (née O'Neill) Jung in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Though Jung did not excel academically, he was a star football player and was described by his classmates as "a natural leader". His first arrest was by an undercover police officer, for solicitation of prostitution. After graduating in 1961 from Weymouth High School, Jung went to the University of Southern Mississippi. He studied for a degree in advertising but never completed his studies. Jung began recreationally using marijuana and sold a portion of everything he bought to break even.
In 1967, after meeting with a childhood friend, Jung realized the enormous profit potential represented by smuggling the cannabis he bought in California back to New England. Jung initially had his stewardess girlfriend transport the drugs in her suitcases on flights. In search of even greater profits, he expanded his operation to flying the drugs in from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, using airplanes stolen from private airports on Cape Cod and professional pilots. At the height of this enterprise, Jung and his associates were reportedly making $250,000 a month equivalent to over $1.5 million in 2016 dollars This ended in 1974, when Jung was arrested in Chicago for smuggling 660 pounds (300 kg) of marijuana. He had been staying at the Playboy Club, where he was to meet a connection who would pick up the marijuana. The connection was arrested for heroin smuggling, however, and informed the authorities about Jung to get a reduced sentence. After arguing with the judge about the purpose of sending a man to prison "for crossing an imaginary line with a bunch of plants", Jung was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury.
At FCI Danbury during his marijuana trafficking sentence, Jung's cellmate was Carlos Lehder Rivas, a young German-Colombian man who introduced Jung to the dominant and powerful international drug-trafficking Medellín Cartel; in return, Jung taught Lehder about smuggling. When Jung and Lehder were released, they went into business together. Their plan was to fly hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Pablo Escobar's Colombian ranch to the U.S., and Jung's California connection, Richard Barile, would take it from there. Jung had a security man who would accompany him to the exchanges, where Jung would give the man the keys to a car and half the cocaine, and then leave. A day or two later, they would meet again and exchange keys to cars.
Though only the middle man, Jung made millions off the operation. He came up with the idea to steal single-engine airplanes for his transportation and charge $10,000 per kilogram, with five planes going from Colombia to California, carrying 300 kilograms per plane. This translated into $15 million per run for Jung. In the 1970s Jung was earning 3 to $5 million per day. To avoid 60 percent surcharges, as well as a need to launder his earnings, he kept his money in the national bank of Panama.
By the late 1970s, Lehder had effectively cut Jung out, by going straight to Barile. Jung continued to smuggle, however, reaping millions in profits.
In 1987, Jung was arrested at his mansion on Nauset Beach, near Eastham, Massachusetts. With his family in tow, he skipped bail but quickly became involved in another deal in which an acquaintance betrayed him.
After working some "clean" jobs, Jung began working in the drug industry again. In 1994, after reconnecting with his Old Mexican cocaine smuggling partner, he was arrested with 1,754 pounds (796 kg) of cocaine in Topeka, Kansas. He pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy, received a 60-year sentence, and was incarcerated at Otisville Federal Prison, in Mount Hope, New York, then was transferred to Federal Correctional Institution, La Tuna, in Anthony, Texas. Jung later testified in the trial of his former accomplice Lehder, in exchange for a reduction in sentence. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Website, Jung (Inmate #19225-004) was most recently serving time in the Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Dix, New Jersey, with a scheduled halfway house release date of June 2, 2014, though he completed his halfway house and was fully released from custody on November 27, 2014.
In September 2014, Jung contributed to "Heavy" with T. Rafael Cimino, nephew of film director Michael Cimino. "Heavy" is a fictional story that details how Jung escaped from a Cuban prison and fled to Guatemala.
On December 6, 2016, George Jung was arrested in his home in Sacramento due to a parole violation. Violation of unauthorized travel. He took a day trip to San Diego for work purposes, so he could survive financially.
George was released from prison in 2017
He died on 5 May 2021. He had been suffering from liver and kidney disease and was receiving hospice care
howard marks
Dennis Howard Marks was a Welsh drug smuggler turned author, who achieved notoriety as an international cannabis smuggler through high-profile court cases. At his peak he was supposedly smuggling consignments of the drug as large as 30 tons, and was connected with groups as diverse as the CIA, the IRA, MI6, and the Mafia. He was eventually convicted by the American Drug Enforcement Administration and handed a 25-year sentence to be served at Terre Haute; he was released in April 1995 after serving seven years. Though he had up to 43 different aliases, he became known as "Mr Nice" after he bought a passport from convicted murderer Donald Nice. After his release from prison, he published a best-selling autobiography, Mr Nice, and campaigned publicly for changes in drugs legislation.
Early life and education
Marks was born in Kenfig Hill, near Bridgend, Wales, the son of Dennis Marks, a captain in the Merchant Navy, and Edna, a teacher. Brought up as a Baptist, he later turned to Buddhism, though he did not become a devout follower. He attended the Garw Grammar school in Pontycymer. He was a fluent Welsh speaker.
He gained a place at Balliol College, Oxford, after he impressed Russell Meiggs in his interview, and read physics there from 1964 to 1967. At the university he was first introduced to cannabis by Denys Irving. After his friend Joshua Macmillan (son of Maurice Macmillan) died, Marks swore off ever getting involved with hard drugs. Among his other friends at Balliol were the epidemiologist Julian Peto and the journalist Lynn Barber. Through a mixture of cheating and last minute cramming, he passed his finals; this was despite months of taking drugs rather than attending classes and a serious infection he developed a few weeks before the exams.
In 1967 he began teacher training, and married Ilze Kadegis, a Latvian student at St. Anne's College, Oxford, who was also training to become a teacher. He gave up teacher training to continue his education at the University of London (1967–68; Grad. Inst P.), then back to Balliol, Oxford (1968–69; Dip HPh Sc), and then on to the University of Sussex (1969–70) to study philosophy of science.
Drug empire
Though involved with drugs at university, he sold cannabis only to his friends or acquaintances until 1970, when he was persuaded to assist Graham Plinston, who had been arrested in Germany on drug trafficking charges. Through Plinston he met Mohammed Durrani, a Pakistani hashish exporter who was a descendant of the Durranis who had run Afghanistan in the 19th century. With Plinston behind bars, Durrani offered Marks the opportunity to sell the drug on a large scale in London, and he agreed to the proposition. He formed a four-way partnership with Charlie Radcliffe, Charlie Weatherly and a dealer named Jarvis. Durrani never contacted them, and so the group acquired smaller quantities of hashish from various sources and began selling the drug on in Oxford, Brighton and London. After six months he returned to Germany to help bail Plinston out of jail. Marks was a useful means of transferring money as he did not have a criminal record.
Now a free man, Plinston gave Marks a job transporting hashish in Frankfurt; Marks in turn hired a New Zealand smuggler named Lang as his driver. After paying Marks £5,000 for his work in Frankfurt, Plinston then sold hashish on to Marks and his three friends (Radcliffe, Weatherly and Jarvis) in London; in selling on 650 kilos within a week, the four men made a profit of £20,000. Durrani then arranged for hashish to be smuggled in the furniture of Pakistani diplomats who were moving to London; Marks would then intercept the furniture to find the drugs – this arrangement netted him a profit of £7,500. Marks expanded his enterprise, employing two friends from Wales, Mike Bell and David Thomas, to stash the drugs and help with transportation. The gang became unsatisfied with the way the profits were being split (80% of the money they made went to Durrani) and contacted James McCann, a gunrunner for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Marks and Plinston persuaded McCann to smuggle hashish into Ireland from Kabul, which the pair would then ferry over to Wales and into England; McCann would get the drugs into Ireland through the freeport at Shannon Airport using his IRA connections. Marks avoided the attention of HM Revenue and Customs by creating a paper trail that indicated he made his money from selling stamps and dresses.
By 1972, he was making £50,000 with each shipment. By the end of the year he was approached by Hamilton McMillan of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), a friend from Oxford University, who recruited Marks to work for MI6 because of his connections in the hashish-producing countries of Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan, for his ability to seduce women, and for his contacts with the IRA. The next year, Marks began exporting cannabis to the United States to The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, hiding the drugs in the music equipment of fictional British pop groups that were supposed to be touring the country; he further expanded his operations with other smugglers and other methods of trafficking, often using his Oxford connections. As McCann was in danger of being executed by the IRA should MI6 tip them off about his involvement in drugs, Marks then gave up the smuggling operation at Shannon airport. Following the Littlejohn affair, MI6 ceased their relationship with Marks, while his American operation came to an end after police opened a speaker full of cannabis and arrested gang member James Gater, leading to other arrests in Europe. Marks was arrested by Dutch police in 1973, but skipped bail in April 1974; the British press then made him a nationally known figure, reporting that he was feared abducted by the IRA for his connections with MI6. With most of his fortune confiscated by the authorities, he made his way to Italy, where he lived in a Winnebago for three months before returning to England in secret in October 1974. At this point he began a relationship with Judy Lane; the couple married in 1980 and had three children together. He had previously been in a five-year relationship with Rosie Lewis, with whom he had a daughter.
Marks then connected Ernie Combs, member of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, with John Denbigh, a man with connections in the hashish-producing nation of Nepal. With the help of the Yakuza, large quantities of the drug would be exported to John F. Kennedy International Airport in the guise of air conditioning equipment, where Don Brown's mob (headed by Carmine Galante) would then take possession of the drugs. A 500-kilo deal was set up and executed on 4 July 1975, leaving Marks a wealthy man. Other deals up to 750 kilos followed, and Marks continued to live under assumed names in the United Kingdom. In 1976 he travelled to America, and set up a 1,000-kilo deal between Combs and 'Lebanese Sam' – making himself £300,000 in the process; he continued to regularly set up deals between his various American and Far East connections. In need of a new identity after his alias of Anthony Tunnicliffe was compromised in a police sting, in 1978 he bought Donald Nice's passport.
"Between 1975 and 1978, twenty-four loads totalling 55,000 pounds of marijuana and hashish had been successfully imported through John F. Kennedy Airport, New York. They had involved the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Thai army, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Pakistani Armed Forces, Nepalese monks, and other individuals from all walks of life. The total profit made by all concerned was $48,000,000. They'd had a good run."
— Marks concluding the JFK episode of drug trafficking in his Mr Nice autobiography; the run had ended after the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began intercepting the drugs and arresting Mafia associates in New York.
In the late 1970s, the Trafficante crime family, under the leadership of Santo Trafficante, Jr., were importing Colombian cannabis into the US on freighter ships, thus driving down the price of the drug on the streets in America. In December 1979, Trafficante exported 50 tons of cannabis direct from Colombia to Marks and his contacts in the UK, enough to supply the entire British market for the drug for almost a year. In 1980, Marks was arrested by customs officers for his part in importing £15 million of cannabis; police had followed associates of the Trafficante family to a large stash of cannabis. When arrested, he was in possession of numerous pieces of incriminating evidence, as well as £30,000 in cash. Defended by Lord Hutchinson, Marks pleaded 'Not Guilty', concocting a story that he was an agent for MI6 (concealing the fact that his relation with MI6 ended in 1973) and the Mexican Secret Service that had set up an identity as a drug smuggler in order to close the net on James McCann (wanted in Britain for his IRA activities). The jury found him innocent of drug smuggling, but guilty of using false passports and Marks was sentenced to two years imprisonment, but was released after five days having already served most of this time before sentencing was passed. HM Customs then arrested him for his part of a 1973 smuggling operation but following a plea bargain and time off for remission he served just three months of a three-year sentence.
Released in May 1982, though with most of his employees still in prison for the crime Marks was found innocent of, he spent the next year running a legitimate wine importing business but he continued to spend more money than he was making and the savings he made from drug smuggling in the 1970s began to dwindle. In 1983, McCann was still at large and his smuggling enterprise was flourishing; he offered Marks the chance to sell 250 kilos of cannabis and Marks accepted. Dutch police confiscated the full shipment and arrested Mickey Williams, a member of the London underworld who had agreed to help Marks on the deal. Marks then travelled to the Far East to set up cannabis deals with Salim Malik, a Pakistani hashish exporter who he had met through Durrani (Durrani had since suffered a fatal heart attack) and Phil Sparrowhawk, an exporter from Bangkok; they would smuggle their product over to Ernie Combs in America. He also arranged a 500-kilo deal with Mickey Williams, who had travelled to Bangkok after his release from prison in Amsterdam. Marks laundered his money through various fronts: a travel agency, a paper mill, a wine importers, a bulk water transportation company and a secretarial service.
In 1984, he was approached to sell $300,000 worth of cannabis to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent looking to fund and arm the Mujahideen in their war against the Soviet occupation (Operation Cyclone). The agent's contact on the APL ship suffered a heart attack and died on the journey to the US, leaving the drugs in the hands of US officials; the agent subsequently fled to Brazil to avoid prosecution. Though under surveillance, Marks continued to expand his underworld operations and set up a massage parlour in a Bangkok hotel with the help of Phil Sparrowhawk and Lord Moynihan. In 1986, he settled in Majorca, and continued to make vast sums smuggling Salim Malik's hashish into America. The DEA were meanwhile tapping Marks's phones and keeping him under surveillance and having arrested Ernie Combs they came close to busting a large shipment of cannabis, when Marks was tipped off; the ship was redirected to Mauritius and the operation aborted. As he continued to avoid DEA stings he continued to make millions and continued to add to his underworld contacts, finding that he could use Chinese triads to launder his drug money more effectively.
"A Philippine-brothel-owning member of the House of Lords [Moynihan] was staying at the house of a Spanish Chief Inspector of Police [Rafael Llofriu]. The Lord was being watched by an American CIA operative who was staying at the house of an English convicted sex offender [Jim Hobbs]. The CIA operative was sharing accommodation with an IRA terrorist [McCann]. The IRA terrorist was discussing a Moroccan hashish deal with a Georgian pilot of Colombia's Medellín Cartel. Organising these scenarios was an ex-MI6 agent [Marks], currently supervising the sale of thirty tons of Thai weed in Canada and at whose house could be found Pakistan's major supplier of hashish [Malik]. Attempting to understand the scenarios was a solitary DEA agent. The stage was set for something."
— The DEA's efforts to apprehend Marks were made extremely difficult thanks to the many wide-ranging contacts Marks had; in September 1987 many of these contacts were with Marks in Palma.
When friends of his were busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Marks decided to retire from drug smuggling to concentrate on his legitimate businesses; citing the fate of his friends and contacts, who were either in jail, informing the DEA or smuggling heavier drugs. In 1988, DEA agent Craig Lovato arrested both Howard and Judy Marks and extradited the couple to the United States. Arrests of those involved in Marks's various criminal activities were made in England, Spain, the Philippines, Thailand, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Switzerland, the United States and Canada. This was the work of 'Operation Eclectic', set up in 1986 by both the DEA and Scotland Yard and aided by numerous law enforcement organisations from around the world.
Marks was taken from Palma to Modelo prison in Barcelona, and then to Alcala-Meco in Madrid. There he was handed a 40-page document which detailed the allegations of his drug smuggling activities between 1970 and 1987, charging him with operating a racket as described in the RICO act. In his autobiography, Marks stated that "although the charge against Judy and some others were absurd, the formal accusations against me, in general terms, were true." The recently passed Sentencing Reform Act meant that he was facing a minimum of ten years to a maximum life sentence without the possibility for parole. The Audiencia Nacional ordered his extradition to Florida. After being shown the prosecution evidence against him, Marks attempted to construct the defence that his smuggling operations were directed to Australia and that he never exported to the United States, and therefore never broke US law. He again cultivated the myth that he was a spy for MI6, and claimed that he was set up by the CIA because he had discovered that CIA agents were smuggling drugs into Australia. He and his lawyers spent hours reviewing the phone tapping evidence to make the coded conversations about smuggling into America seem to suggest that the drugs were actually being smuggled into Australia; research was done into weather patterns to prove tentative links between what was said by Marks and his associates and what was happening at the time in Australia. Marks and his wife were extradited in 1989, and he was given the Miranda rights on the flight from Spain to the US.
In Florida, Judy pleaded guilty to her small part in the racket and was released, having already served some months in prison in Spain. The money Marks made from his smuggling operations was spent on legal fees. He refused to plea-bargain or to inform on his associates, gambling that he could again convince a jury that the authorities had got the wrong man. As the trial began in July 1990, Peter Lane, his brother-in-law and fellow smuggler, wrote to Marks to inform him that he was going to testify against Marks in court to get a more lenient sentence himself. Marks still was confident of beating the DEA in court, but Ernie Combs also agreed to testify for the prosecution so as to secure the release of his wife, and Marks had little choice but to change his plea to guilty to racketeering charges. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail and given a $50,000 fine; though he had originally been sentenced to 15 years he was taken back into court after the judge realised he had misspoken and said that his 10 and 15-year sentences were to run consecutively and not, as he had originally stated, concurrently.
He spent seven years imprisoned in the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana, a rough prison. He had originally been sentenced to Butner, but agent Lovato insisted that he instead serve time at Terre Haute. One of the six most secure prisons in the country, Terre Haute had the worst reputation of the six for gang rape and violence. Despite this, Marks remained on good terms with the many violent inmates housed there as he was "British and a famous non-rat" and avoided conflict "by being nice, charming, and eccentric". During his time there he befriended many notorious criminals and members of four of the reputed Five Families, including: Gennaro "Gerry Lang" Langella (Colombo crime family); James "Jimmy C" Coonan, John "Johnny Carnegs" Carneglia, Vittorio "Little Vic" Amuso, and Frank "Frankie Loc" LoCascio (Gambino crime family); Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato (Bonanno crime family); and Joey Testa (Lucchese crime family). He also made friends with Veronza Bowers, Jr. (Black Panther Party) and 'Big Jim' of the Outlaw motorcycle club.
Owing to his status as an Oxford University graduate with alleged connections to the British Secret Intelligence Service he was treated as a potential escapee and spent many weeks in solitary confinement, though he never attempted to escape or threatened other prisoners or prison staff. During his time in prison he found success as a jailhouse lawyer for the other inmates, securing one overturned conviction. He gave up cigarettes for the last three years of his sentence. In January 1995, Marks was granted parole after a prison officer testified that he was a model prisoner who spent much of his time helping his fellow prisoners pass their GED exams. He was released in April 1995.
Life after release
Following his release from prison, Marks published an autobiography, Mr Nice (Secker and Warburg, 1996), which has been translated into several languages. In addition to Mr Nice, he compiled an anthology called The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories (Vintage, 2001) and more recently a follow-on from his autobiography; Señor Nice: Straight Life From Wales to South America. Señor Nice differs from his previous book as drugs are not central to the story and, while autobiographical, the book is more Marks's own exploration of his ancestor, the pirate Sir Henry Morgan. In 2011 he penned a thriller entitled Sympathy for the Devil.
Marks stood for election to the UK Parliament in 1997, on the single issue of the legalisation of cannabis. He contested four seats at once: Norwich South (against future Home Secretary Charles Clarke), Norwich North, Neath and Southampton Test; he picked up around 1% of the vote. This led to the formation of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA) by Alun Buffry in 1999; the party reformed as Cannabis Law Reform in 2011.
He also argued for the legalisation of cannabis in numerous television programmes in the United Kingdom. On 1 October 2010, he was interviewed on Ireland's The Late Late Show. He has acted in gangster movie Killer Bitch, starred in 2009 film I Know You Know, appeared as Satan in the 2006 movie adaptation of Dirty Sanchez, and had a cameo appearance in the 1999 film Human Traffic.
In the music world, he appeared as a guest on the BBC music quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He also collaborated with Welsh group Super Furry Animals on their album Fuzzy Logic and on their singles The Man Don't Give a Fuck and Ice Hockey Hair. He featured on the album Angel Headed Hip Hop with Lee Harris and River Styx. He also worked with former Happy Mondays guitarist Kav Sandhu, and appeared at numerous British music festivals, including: (Glastonbury 2009 & 2011), Beautiful Days, RockNess, Camp Bestival, Kendal Calling, and the Sonisphere Festival. In 2012, he was featured on the Reverend & The Makers track MDMAzing on their third album @Reverend Makers.
He was the subject of a biography High Time (1984) written by David Leigh and also of a biographical film entitled Mr Nice, named after his autobiography of the same name. Released in October 2010, the film featured Rhys Ifans as Marks, and Chloë Sevigny as his wife Judy.
In 2013, Marks recounted his story in an episode of the television series Banged Up Abroad.
Marks and comic writer Pat Mills collaborated on comic strips which tied in to Sony's inFamous 2 video game.
Marks continued a series of 'book-readings' into 2014. In these live events he regaled his audiences with tales of his smuggling days and his time in prison, as well as offering insight into drug production and the arguments for legalisation of cannabis.
On 25 January 2015, it was announced that Marks had inoperable colorectal cancer. He died of the disease on 10 April 2016, at the age of 70.
Early life and education
Marks was born in Kenfig Hill, near Bridgend, Wales, the son of Dennis Marks, a captain in the Merchant Navy, and Edna, a teacher. Brought up as a Baptist, he later turned to Buddhism, though he did not become a devout follower. He attended the Garw Grammar school in Pontycymer. He was a fluent Welsh speaker.
He gained a place at Balliol College, Oxford, after he impressed Russell Meiggs in his interview, and read physics there from 1964 to 1967. At the university he was first introduced to cannabis by Denys Irving. After his friend Joshua Macmillan (son of Maurice Macmillan) died, Marks swore off ever getting involved with hard drugs. Among his other friends at Balliol were the epidemiologist Julian Peto and the journalist Lynn Barber. Through a mixture of cheating and last minute cramming, he passed his finals; this was despite months of taking drugs rather than attending classes and a serious infection he developed a few weeks before the exams.
In 1967 he began teacher training, and married Ilze Kadegis, a Latvian student at St. Anne's College, Oxford, who was also training to become a teacher. He gave up teacher training to continue his education at the University of London (1967–68; Grad. Inst P.), then back to Balliol, Oxford (1968–69; Dip HPh Sc), and then on to the University of Sussex (1969–70) to study philosophy of science.
Drug empire
Though involved with drugs at university, he sold cannabis only to his friends or acquaintances until 1970, when he was persuaded to assist Graham Plinston, who had been arrested in Germany on drug trafficking charges. Through Plinston he met Mohammed Durrani, a Pakistani hashish exporter who was a descendant of the Durranis who had run Afghanistan in the 19th century. With Plinston behind bars, Durrani offered Marks the opportunity to sell the drug on a large scale in London, and he agreed to the proposition. He formed a four-way partnership with Charlie Radcliffe, Charlie Weatherly and a dealer named Jarvis. Durrani never contacted them, and so the group acquired smaller quantities of hashish from various sources and began selling the drug on in Oxford, Brighton and London. After six months he returned to Germany to help bail Plinston out of jail. Marks was a useful means of transferring money as he did not have a criminal record.
Now a free man, Plinston gave Marks a job transporting hashish in Frankfurt; Marks in turn hired a New Zealand smuggler named Lang as his driver. After paying Marks £5,000 for his work in Frankfurt, Plinston then sold hashish on to Marks and his three friends (Radcliffe, Weatherly and Jarvis) in London; in selling on 650 kilos within a week, the four men made a profit of £20,000. Durrani then arranged for hashish to be smuggled in the furniture of Pakistani diplomats who were moving to London; Marks would then intercept the furniture to find the drugs – this arrangement netted him a profit of £7,500. Marks expanded his enterprise, employing two friends from Wales, Mike Bell and David Thomas, to stash the drugs and help with transportation. The gang became unsatisfied with the way the profits were being split (80% of the money they made went to Durrani) and contacted James McCann, a gunrunner for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Marks and Plinston persuaded McCann to smuggle hashish into Ireland from Kabul, which the pair would then ferry over to Wales and into England; McCann would get the drugs into Ireland through the freeport at Shannon Airport using his IRA connections. Marks avoided the attention of HM Revenue and Customs by creating a paper trail that indicated he made his money from selling stamps and dresses.
By 1972, he was making £50,000 with each shipment. By the end of the year he was approached by Hamilton McMillan of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), a friend from Oxford University, who recruited Marks to work for MI6 because of his connections in the hashish-producing countries of Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan, for his ability to seduce women, and for his contacts with the IRA. The next year, Marks began exporting cannabis to the United States to The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, hiding the drugs in the music equipment of fictional British pop groups that were supposed to be touring the country; he further expanded his operations with other smugglers and other methods of trafficking, often using his Oxford connections. As McCann was in danger of being executed by the IRA should MI6 tip them off about his involvement in drugs, Marks then gave up the smuggling operation at Shannon airport. Following the Littlejohn affair, MI6 ceased their relationship with Marks, while his American operation came to an end after police opened a speaker full of cannabis and arrested gang member James Gater, leading to other arrests in Europe. Marks was arrested by Dutch police in 1973, but skipped bail in April 1974; the British press then made him a nationally known figure, reporting that he was feared abducted by the IRA for his connections with MI6. With most of his fortune confiscated by the authorities, he made his way to Italy, where he lived in a Winnebago for three months before returning to England in secret in October 1974. At this point he began a relationship with Judy Lane; the couple married in 1980 and had three children together. He had previously been in a five-year relationship with Rosie Lewis, with whom he had a daughter.
Marks then connected Ernie Combs, member of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, with John Denbigh, a man with connections in the hashish-producing nation of Nepal. With the help of the Yakuza, large quantities of the drug would be exported to John F. Kennedy International Airport in the guise of air conditioning equipment, where Don Brown's mob (headed by Carmine Galante) would then take possession of the drugs. A 500-kilo deal was set up and executed on 4 July 1975, leaving Marks a wealthy man. Other deals up to 750 kilos followed, and Marks continued to live under assumed names in the United Kingdom. In 1976 he travelled to America, and set up a 1,000-kilo deal between Combs and 'Lebanese Sam' – making himself £300,000 in the process; he continued to regularly set up deals between his various American and Far East connections. In need of a new identity after his alias of Anthony Tunnicliffe was compromised in a police sting, in 1978 he bought Donald Nice's passport.
"Between 1975 and 1978, twenty-four loads totalling 55,000 pounds of marijuana and hashish had been successfully imported through John F. Kennedy Airport, New York. They had involved the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Thai army, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Pakistani Armed Forces, Nepalese monks, and other individuals from all walks of life. The total profit made by all concerned was $48,000,000. They'd had a good run."
— Marks concluding the JFK episode of drug trafficking in his Mr Nice autobiography; the run had ended after the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began intercepting the drugs and arresting Mafia associates in New York.
In the late 1970s, the Trafficante crime family, under the leadership of Santo Trafficante, Jr., were importing Colombian cannabis into the US on freighter ships, thus driving down the price of the drug on the streets in America. In December 1979, Trafficante exported 50 tons of cannabis direct from Colombia to Marks and his contacts in the UK, enough to supply the entire British market for the drug for almost a year. In 1980, Marks was arrested by customs officers for his part in importing £15 million of cannabis; police had followed associates of the Trafficante family to a large stash of cannabis. When arrested, he was in possession of numerous pieces of incriminating evidence, as well as £30,000 in cash. Defended by Lord Hutchinson, Marks pleaded 'Not Guilty', concocting a story that he was an agent for MI6 (concealing the fact that his relation with MI6 ended in 1973) and the Mexican Secret Service that had set up an identity as a drug smuggler in order to close the net on James McCann (wanted in Britain for his IRA activities). The jury found him innocent of drug smuggling, but guilty of using false passports and Marks was sentenced to two years imprisonment, but was released after five days having already served most of this time before sentencing was passed. HM Customs then arrested him for his part of a 1973 smuggling operation but following a plea bargain and time off for remission he served just three months of a three-year sentence.
Released in May 1982, though with most of his employees still in prison for the crime Marks was found innocent of, he spent the next year running a legitimate wine importing business but he continued to spend more money than he was making and the savings he made from drug smuggling in the 1970s began to dwindle. In 1983, McCann was still at large and his smuggling enterprise was flourishing; he offered Marks the chance to sell 250 kilos of cannabis and Marks accepted. Dutch police confiscated the full shipment and arrested Mickey Williams, a member of the London underworld who had agreed to help Marks on the deal. Marks then travelled to the Far East to set up cannabis deals with Salim Malik, a Pakistani hashish exporter who he had met through Durrani (Durrani had since suffered a fatal heart attack) and Phil Sparrowhawk, an exporter from Bangkok; they would smuggle their product over to Ernie Combs in America. He also arranged a 500-kilo deal with Mickey Williams, who had travelled to Bangkok after his release from prison in Amsterdam. Marks laundered his money through various fronts: a travel agency, a paper mill, a wine importers, a bulk water transportation company and a secretarial service.
In 1984, he was approached to sell $300,000 worth of cannabis to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent looking to fund and arm the Mujahideen in their war against the Soviet occupation (Operation Cyclone). The agent's contact on the APL ship suffered a heart attack and died on the journey to the US, leaving the drugs in the hands of US officials; the agent subsequently fled to Brazil to avoid prosecution. Though under surveillance, Marks continued to expand his underworld operations and set up a massage parlour in a Bangkok hotel with the help of Phil Sparrowhawk and Lord Moynihan. In 1986, he settled in Majorca, and continued to make vast sums smuggling Salim Malik's hashish into America. The DEA were meanwhile tapping Marks's phones and keeping him under surveillance and having arrested Ernie Combs they came close to busting a large shipment of cannabis, when Marks was tipped off; the ship was redirected to Mauritius and the operation aborted. As he continued to avoid DEA stings he continued to make millions and continued to add to his underworld contacts, finding that he could use Chinese triads to launder his drug money more effectively.
"A Philippine-brothel-owning member of the House of Lords [Moynihan] was staying at the house of a Spanish Chief Inspector of Police [Rafael Llofriu]. The Lord was being watched by an American CIA operative who was staying at the house of an English convicted sex offender [Jim Hobbs]. The CIA operative was sharing accommodation with an IRA terrorist [McCann]. The IRA terrorist was discussing a Moroccan hashish deal with a Georgian pilot of Colombia's Medellín Cartel. Organising these scenarios was an ex-MI6 agent [Marks], currently supervising the sale of thirty tons of Thai weed in Canada and at whose house could be found Pakistan's major supplier of hashish [Malik]. Attempting to understand the scenarios was a solitary DEA agent. The stage was set for something."
— The DEA's efforts to apprehend Marks were made extremely difficult thanks to the many wide-ranging contacts Marks had; in September 1987 many of these contacts were with Marks in Palma.
When friends of his were busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Marks decided to retire from drug smuggling to concentrate on his legitimate businesses; citing the fate of his friends and contacts, who were either in jail, informing the DEA or smuggling heavier drugs. In 1988, DEA agent Craig Lovato arrested both Howard and Judy Marks and extradited the couple to the United States. Arrests of those involved in Marks's various criminal activities were made in England, Spain, the Philippines, Thailand, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Switzerland, the United States and Canada. This was the work of 'Operation Eclectic', set up in 1986 by both the DEA and Scotland Yard and aided by numerous law enforcement organisations from around the world.
Marks was taken from Palma to Modelo prison in Barcelona, and then to Alcala-Meco in Madrid. There he was handed a 40-page document which detailed the allegations of his drug smuggling activities between 1970 and 1987, charging him with operating a racket as described in the RICO act. In his autobiography, Marks stated that "although the charge against Judy and some others were absurd, the formal accusations against me, in general terms, were true." The recently passed Sentencing Reform Act meant that he was facing a minimum of ten years to a maximum life sentence without the possibility for parole. The Audiencia Nacional ordered his extradition to Florida. After being shown the prosecution evidence against him, Marks attempted to construct the defence that his smuggling operations were directed to Australia and that he never exported to the United States, and therefore never broke US law. He again cultivated the myth that he was a spy for MI6, and claimed that he was set up by the CIA because he had discovered that CIA agents were smuggling drugs into Australia. He and his lawyers spent hours reviewing the phone tapping evidence to make the coded conversations about smuggling into America seem to suggest that the drugs were actually being smuggled into Australia; research was done into weather patterns to prove tentative links between what was said by Marks and his associates and what was happening at the time in Australia. Marks and his wife were extradited in 1989, and he was given the Miranda rights on the flight from Spain to the US.
In Florida, Judy pleaded guilty to her small part in the racket and was released, having already served some months in prison in Spain. The money Marks made from his smuggling operations was spent on legal fees. He refused to plea-bargain or to inform on his associates, gambling that he could again convince a jury that the authorities had got the wrong man. As the trial began in July 1990, Peter Lane, his brother-in-law and fellow smuggler, wrote to Marks to inform him that he was going to testify against Marks in court to get a more lenient sentence himself. Marks still was confident of beating the DEA in court, but Ernie Combs also agreed to testify for the prosecution so as to secure the release of his wife, and Marks had little choice but to change his plea to guilty to racketeering charges. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail and given a $50,000 fine; though he had originally been sentenced to 15 years he was taken back into court after the judge realised he had misspoken and said that his 10 and 15-year sentences were to run consecutively and not, as he had originally stated, concurrently.
He spent seven years imprisoned in the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana, a rough prison. He had originally been sentenced to Butner, but agent Lovato insisted that he instead serve time at Terre Haute. One of the six most secure prisons in the country, Terre Haute had the worst reputation of the six for gang rape and violence. Despite this, Marks remained on good terms with the many violent inmates housed there as he was "British and a famous non-rat" and avoided conflict "by being nice, charming, and eccentric". During his time there he befriended many notorious criminals and members of four of the reputed Five Families, including: Gennaro "Gerry Lang" Langella (Colombo crime family); James "Jimmy C" Coonan, John "Johnny Carnegs" Carneglia, Vittorio "Little Vic" Amuso, and Frank "Frankie Loc" LoCascio (Gambino crime family); Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato (Bonanno crime family); and Joey Testa (Lucchese crime family). He also made friends with Veronza Bowers, Jr. (Black Panther Party) and 'Big Jim' of the Outlaw motorcycle club.
Owing to his status as an Oxford University graduate with alleged connections to the British Secret Intelligence Service he was treated as a potential escapee and spent many weeks in solitary confinement, though he never attempted to escape or threatened other prisoners or prison staff. During his time in prison he found success as a jailhouse lawyer for the other inmates, securing one overturned conviction. He gave up cigarettes for the last three years of his sentence. In January 1995, Marks was granted parole after a prison officer testified that he was a model prisoner who spent much of his time helping his fellow prisoners pass their GED exams. He was released in April 1995.
Life after release
Following his release from prison, Marks published an autobiography, Mr Nice (Secker and Warburg, 1996), which has been translated into several languages. In addition to Mr Nice, he compiled an anthology called The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories (Vintage, 2001) and more recently a follow-on from his autobiography; Señor Nice: Straight Life From Wales to South America. Señor Nice differs from his previous book as drugs are not central to the story and, while autobiographical, the book is more Marks's own exploration of his ancestor, the pirate Sir Henry Morgan. In 2011 he penned a thriller entitled Sympathy for the Devil.
Marks stood for election to the UK Parliament in 1997, on the single issue of the legalisation of cannabis. He contested four seats at once: Norwich South (against future Home Secretary Charles Clarke), Norwich North, Neath and Southampton Test; he picked up around 1% of the vote. This led to the formation of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA) by Alun Buffry in 1999; the party reformed as Cannabis Law Reform in 2011.
He also argued for the legalisation of cannabis in numerous television programmes in the United Kingdom. On 1 October 2010, he was interviewed on Ireland's The Late Late Show. He has acted in gangster movie Killer Bitch, starred in 2009 film I Know You Know, appeared as Satan in the 2006 movie adaptation of Dirty Sanchez, and had a cameo appearance in the 1999 film Human Traffic.
In the music world, he appeared as a guest on the BBC music quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He also collaborated with Welsh group Super Furry Animals on their album Fuzzy Logic and on their singles The Man Don't Give a Fuck and Ice Hockey Hair. He featured on the album Angel Headed Hip Hop with Lee Harris and River Styx. He also worked with former Happy Mondays guitarist Kav Sandhu, and appeared at numerous British music festivals, including: (Glastonbury 2009 & 2011), Beautiful Days, RockNess, Camp Bestival, Kendal Calling, and the Sonisphere Festival. In 2012, he was featured on the Reverend & The Makers track MDMAzing on their third album @Reverend Makers.
He was the subject of a biography High Time (1984) written by David Leigh and also of a biographical film entitled Mr Nice, named after his autobiography of the same name. Released in October 2010, the film featured Rhys Ifans as Marks, and Chloë Sevigny as his wife Judy.
In 2013, Marks recounted his story in an episode of the television series Banged Up Abroad.
Marks and comic writer Pat Mills collaborated on comic strips which tied in to Sony's inFamous 2 video game.
Marks continued a series of 'book-readings' into 2014. In these live events he regaled his audiences with tales of his smuggling days and his time in prison, as well as offering insight into drug production and the arguments for legalisation of cannabis.
On 25 January 2015, it was announced that Marks had inoperable colorectal cancer. He died of the disease on 10 April 2016, at the age of 70.
El Chapo
Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera was born in the rural Mexican town of Badiraguato. The date of his birth is believed to be April 4, 1957, according to Time magazine, although other outlets list December 25, 1954, as his birthday. Guzmán’s childhood was shaped by his family’s poverty and his abusive father, a violent man who was in the drug trade.
By his teens, Guzmán had been kicked out of the family home and was forced to make his own way. With little schooling in his background, he eventually found himself following his father's path, growing marijuana for small amounts of cash.
Rise to Power
By the late 1970s, Guzmán had proven his value in the narcotics business and begun working with another rising young dealer named Héctor Luis Palma Salazar. Guzmán oversaw the movement of drugs from his home district of Sinaloa, a crucial drug trafficking area on the western end of Mexico where narcotics flowed north to coastal cities and into the United States.
By his late 20s, the quiet but savvy Guzmán, whose 5'6" frame had earned him the nickname, “El Chapo” ("Shorty"), was supervising logistics for another drug kingpin, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, founder of the Guadalajara cartel. Guzmán kept a low profile, but when his boss was eventually arrested for the 1985 murder of an American Drug Enforcement Agency agent, he quickly emerged as one of the new faces of the Mexican drug world.
Drug Kingpin
Inheriting some of his former boss’s territory, Guzmán founded his own cartel, known as Sinaloa, in 1989. By the early 1990s, Guzmán was on the radar of the DEA and FBI and considered one of Mexico's most powerful and dangerous drug traffickers.
As the power of the Colombian drug cartels like Medellin and Cali began to wane, Sinaloa was among the Mexican organizations filling the void. Under Guzmán’s direction, it took control of the cocaine trade extending from South America to the United States.
Part of the success stemmed from Sinaloa’s creative smuggling methods, most notably a series of air-conditioned tunnels that ran under the Mexican-U.S. border. Another method involved hiding cocaine powder inside fire extinguishers and cans that were labeled “chili peppers.”
"What Al Capone was to beer and whiskey during Prohibition, Guzmán is to narcotics," said Art Bilek, executive vice president of the Chicago Crime Commission. "Of the two, Guzmán is by far the greater threat . . .And he has more power and financial capability than Capone ever dreamed of."
In addition to cocaine, Sinaloa trafficked heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine into the U.S. and beyond. Eventually, the cartel’s tentacles touched five continents and grew to be the biggest drug operation in the world.
Guzmán coupled that success with serious muscle. He established gangs with names such as “Los Chachos,” "Los Texas,” “Los Lobos” and “Los Negros” to protect his empire. Over the years, Guzmán’s men have been accused of committing more than 1,000 murders throughout Mexico, the casualties including both incompetent henchmen and rival bosses.
(Photo: Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg via Getty Images) READ ARTICLE: Thug Life: The 5 Most Notorious Drug Kingpins
Arrests and Escapes
In 1993, Guatemalan authorities arrested Guzmán and extradited him to Mexico, where he was convicted and sentenced to a maximum-security prison for 20 years.
Even behind bars, however, Guzmán maintained his power. Through bribes he arranged for conjugal visits and was largely allowed to run his drug operation. With his near-mythical lore already established in Mexico — many villages in his home district saw Guzmán as a Robin Hood-like figure — his legend grew in 2001 when, with the help of bribed prison guards, he escaped prison via a laundry cart. A federal investigation led to the arrest of 71 prison employees, including the warden.
On the lam but not out of the drug business, Guzmán only tightened his control and expanded his fortunes over the next decade and a half. In 2009, Sinaloa was reportedly pulling in $3 billion annually, putting Guzmán’s net worth at around $1 billion. That earned him the No. 701 ranking on the Forbes list of the world's richest people.
Guzmán quickly became the No. 1 drug target of the U.S. government, which offered a $5 million reward for information that led to his arrest. In 2012, the U.S. authorities froze the American assets of his family members.
An aggressive assault on drug cartels started by the Mexican government in 2006 failed to uncover Guzmán, who moved freely around his country. He even got married during that time period, celebrating the event with a large party that included police officers and local politicians among the guests. In all, it is believed Guzmán has married at least three times and is the father of nine children.
In February 2014, Guzmán was finally apprehended in a hotel in the Pacific beach town of Mazatlán, Mexico. Declining requests by American officials to have Guzmán extradited to the United States, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto vowed that Guzmán wouldn’t escape again.
“[It] would be more than regrettable,” Nieto said at the time, “It would be unforgivable for the government not to take the precautions to ensure that what happened last time would not be repeated.”
Yet, less than 18 months later, Guzmán orchestrated a second daring flight from prison in July 2015. For this escape, Guzmán slipped through an opening in his cell’s shower section, made his way down a 30-foot ladder, and then traveled through a tunnel network that connected his cell to a house that was still under construction about a mile away.
On October 17, 2015, Guzmán was reportedly injured on his face and leg when escaping a failed military manhunt to capture him in the mountains of northwest Mexico. Around that same time, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, he conducted a secret interview with American actor Sean Penn. Guzmán wanted to make a movie about his life, and managed to connect to Penn via Mexican actress Kate del Castillo.
Recaptured
On January 8, 2016, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced on Twitter that Mexican authorities had recaptured Guzmán after a shootout earlier that morning in the city of Los Mochis.
"Mission Accomplished," the President wrote. "We have him."
The drug lord's apprehension came one day before his interview with Penn was published on Rolling Stone's website. It was unclear whether his communication with the actor contributed to his capture, although Mexican authorities cited the monitoring of his electronic exchanges as helpful to the process.
Guzmán was returned to the same prison from which he escaped the previous summer. He has since been moved to a facility near the U.S border in Juarez, Mexico where he continues to face the possibility of being extradited to the U.S. to stand trial for numerous federal drug trafficking charges. That October, Vicente Bermudez Zacarias, the judge presiding over Guzmán's case, was murdered near his home.
On January 19, 2017, the Mexican government extradited Guzmán to the United States to face drug trafficking and other charges.
Guzman was charged in a Brooklyn federal court on 17 criminal counts, outlining his alleged reign over a trafficking organization that cut a brutal swath across Mexico. Among the U.S. charges lodged against him: murder, weapons possession, money laundering and conspiracy.
If convicted, Guzman faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. His extradition to the U.S., in the waning hours of the Obama administration, came after federal authorities assured the Mexican government that Guzman, 59, would not face the death penalty, which is not applied in Mexico.
By his teens, Guzmán had been kicked out of the family home and was forced to make his own way. With little schooling in his background, he eventually found himself following his father's path, growing marijuana for small amounts of cash.
Rise to Power
By the late 1970s, Guzmán had proven his value in the narcotics business and begun working with another rising young dealer named Héctor Luis Palma Salazar. Guzmán oversaw the movement of drugs from his home district of Sinaloa, a crucial drug trafficking area on the western end of Mexico where narcotics flowed north to coastal cities and into the United States.
By his late 20s, the quiet but savvy Guzmán, whose 5'6" frame had earned him the nickname, “El Chapo” ("Shorty"), was supervising logistics for another drug kingpin, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, founder of the Guadalajara cartel. Guzmán kept a low profile, but when his boss was eventually arrested for the 1985 murder of an American Drug Enforcement Agency agent, he quickly emerged as one of the new faces of the Mexican drug world.
Drug Kingpin
Inheriting some of his former boss’s territory, Guzmán founded his own cartel, known as Sinaloa, in 1989. By the early 1990s, Guzmán was on the radar of the DEA and FBI and considered one of Mexico's most powerful and dangerous drug traffickers.
As the power of the Colombian drug cartels like Medellin and Cali began to wane, Sinaloa was among the Mexican organizations filling the void. Under Guzmán’s direction, it took control of the cocaine trade extending from South America to the United States.
Part of the success stemmed from Sinaloa’s creative smuggling methods, most notably a series of air-conditioned tunnels that ran under the Mexican-U.S. border. Another method involved hiding cocaine powder inside fire extinguishers and cans that were labeled “chili peppers.”
"What Al Capone was to beer and whiskey during Prohibition, Guzmán is to narcotics," said Art Bilek, executive vice president of the Chicago Crime Commission. "Of the two, Guzmán is by far the greater threat . . .And he has more power and financial capability than Capone ever dreamed of."
In addition to cocaine, Sinaloa trafficked heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine into the U.S. and beyond. Eventually, the cartel’s tentacles touched five continents and grew to be the biggest drug operation in the world.
Guzmán coupled that success with serious muscle. He established gangs with names such as “Los Chachos,” "Los Texas,” “Los Lobos” and “Los Negros” to protect his empire. Over the years, Guzmán’s men have been accused of committing more than 1,000 murders throughout Mexico, the casualties including both incompetent henchmen and rival bosses.
(Photo: Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg via Getty Images) READ ARTICLE: Thug Life: The 5 Most Notorious Drug Kingpins
Arrests and Escapes
In 1993, Guatemalan authorities arrested Guzmán and extradited him to Mexico, where he was convicted and sentenced to a maximum-security prison for 20 years.
Even behind bars, however, Guzmán maintained his power. Through bribes he arranged for conjugal visits and was largely allowed to run his drug operation. With his near-mythical lore already established in Mexico — many villages in his home district saw Guzmán as a Robin Hood-like figure — his legend grew in 2001 when, with the help of bribed prison guards, he escaped prison via a laundry cart. A federal investigation led to the arrest of 71 prison employees, including the warden.
On the lam but not out of the drug business, Guzmán only tightened his control and expanded his fortunes over the next decade and a half. In 2009, Sinaloa was reportedly pulling in $3 billion annually, putting Guzmán’s net worth at around $1 billion. That earned him the No. 701 ranking on the Forbes list of the world's richest people.
Guzmán quickly became the No. 1 drug target of the U.S. government, which offered a $5 million reward for information that led to his arrest. In 2012, the U.S. authorities froze the American assets of his family members.
An aggressive assault on drug cartels started by the Mexican government in 2006 failed to uncover Guzmán, who moved freely around his country. He even got married during that time period, celebrating the event with a large party that included police officers and local politicians among the guests. In all, it is believed Guzmán has married at least three times and is the father of nine children.
In February 2014, Guzmán was finally apprehended in a hotel in the Pacific beach town of Mazatlán, Mexico. Declining requests by American officials to have Guzmán extradited to the United States, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto vowed that Guzmán wouldn’t escape again.
“[It] would be more than regrettable,” Nieto said at the time, “It would be unforgivable for the government not to take the precautions to ensure that what happened last time would not be repeated.”
Yet, less than 18 months later, Guzmán orchestrated a second daring flight from prison in July 2015. For this escape, Guzmán slipped through an opening in his cell’s shower section, made his way down a 30-foot ladder, and then traveled through a tunnel network that connected his cell to a house that was still under construction about a mile away.
On October 17, 2015, Guzmán was reportedly injured on his face and leg when escaping a failed military manhunt to capture him in the mountains of northwest Mexico. Around that same time, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, he conducted a secret interview with American actor Sean Penn. Guzmán wanted to make a movie about his life, and managed to connect to Penn via Mexican actress Kate del Castillo.
Recaptured
On January 8, 2016, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced on Twitter that Mexican authorities had recaptured Guzmán after a shootout earlier that morning in the city of Los Mochis.
"Mission Accomplished," the President wrote. "We have him."
The drug lord's apprehension came one day before his interview with Penn was published on Rolling Stone's website. It was unclear whether his communication with the actor contributed to his capture, although Mexican authorities cited the monitoring of his electronic exchanges as helpful to the process.
Guzmán was returned to the same prison from which he escaped the previous summer. He has since been moved to a facility near the U.S border in Juarez, Mexico where he continues to face the possibility of being extradited to the U.S. to stand trial for numerous federal drug trafficking charges. That October, Vicente Bermudez Zacarias, the judge presiding over Guzmán's case, was murdered near his home.
On January 19, 2017, the Mexican government extradited Guzmán to the United States to face drug trafficking and other charges.
Guzman was charged in a Brooklyn federal court on 17 criminal counts, outlining his alleged reign over a trafficking organization that cut a brutal swath across Mexico. Among the U.S. charges lodged against him: murder, weapons possession, money laundering and conspiracy.
If convicted, Guzman faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. His extradition to the U.S., in the waning hours of the Obama administration, came after federal authorities assured the Mexican government that Guzman, 59, would not face the death penalty, which is not applied in Mexico.
curtis warren
Curtis Francis Warren is an English gangster, who as Britain's most notorious drugs trafficker has the dubious honour of having been listed on two high-profile lists: The Sunday's Times' Rich List, and Interpol's Most Wanted.
The notorious drugs trafficker earned his nickname due to this brazen criminal activities, which included helming a £1 million cannabis smuggling operation on the island of Jersey only a month after being released from a Dutch jail. one of the biggest the island of Jersey had ever seen.
Warren is serving time for a combination of offences, including drug trafficking and manslaughter.
The notorious drugs trafficker earned his nickname due to this brazen criminal activities, which included helming a £1 million cannabis smuggling operation on the island of Jersey only a month after being released from a Dutch jail. one of the biggest the island of Jersey had ever seen.
Warren is serving time for a combination of offences, including drug trafficking and manslaughter.
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