Before Cocaine

Pablo Escobar was born on December 1, 1949 in Rionegro, Colombia. His father was a farmer and his mother was an elementary school teacher. Pablo was one of seven children. He started his official criminal career when he was just a teenager. It’s said Pablo would steal gravestones from forgotten graves in the cemeteries of the nearby city called Medellin. He would then sand them down and sell to them to smugglers who would ship them out of the country. His brother Robert Escobar, who became Pablo’s account for his cocaine cartel, denies Pablo stole and gravestones. He said that the cemeteries would give them to Pablo because the families stopped paying for the deceased one’s gravesite care and that they would both share in the profits.

Pablo’s son said that his father also ran a counterfeit diploma business around this time as well. He became successful at making and selling fake Highschool diplomas to dropouts in the city. This is when he met a man named Oscar Benel Aguirre and the two of them stole cars and ran small time street scams like selling fake lottery tickets. Pablo then graduated into the more intense life of crime like kidnapping people and holding them for ransom. He reportedly earned $100,000 for ransoming off a Mexican executive.

Getting into the Cocaine Business

In the early 1970’s Pablo started working for a man named Alvaro Prieto, who was in the smuggling contraband business. Pablo was getting tired of all the work and hassles of kidnapping people for a living and wanted a change. Alvaro Preito had one main goal in his life, to earn a million dollars by the time he was 22 years old. Before Pablo even got into the drug business he made $3 million from smuggling other contraband. He was 26 years old.

In 1975, Pablo was getting frustrated because the blackmarket goods he was smuggling was getting harder and more dangerous to smuggle and the profits were shrinking. Back then there were no drug cartels, just a few drug kingpins, but no one was getting it out of the country. Pablo saw an untapped market of getting cocaine into the US. Pablo would first buy and transport the cocaine paste from Peru and turn it into the powder in Medellin. At first, Pablo put the coke in plane tires and had the plane fly to America. The pilot would return with up $500,000 a trip. Pablo knew he hit the jackpot.

Becoming the King of Cocaine

With how much blow Pablo smuggled into the US he quickly became one of the wealthiest criminals alive. Pablo started what was known as the Medellin Cartel and he pretty much had a monopoly on the American cocaine trade. Pablo and his associates built complex and extremely organized smuggling and distribution networks to get tons (literally) of cocaine across the US border. They even bought an island in the Bahamas to put an air strip on for the pilots and a refrigerated warehouse stocked with cocaine. The also built a hotel on the island because why not? The cocaine traffickers needed someplace to sleep. It got to the point where it was estimated the Medellin Cartel was smuggling 70 to 80 tons of coke to the US a month. At their peak they were sending huge airliners with as much as 11 tons in one trip. Pablo’s brother Roberto also said that Escobar had two small submarines that were able to transport huge loads too. By the late 80’s the Cartel had 142 planes, 32 yachts, 20 helicopters and around 140 homes and offices in their operation. It was estimated that Pablo Escobar was personally responsible for providing 4 out of every 5 lines of blow snorted in America. By the early 90’s Pablo made around $30 billion dollars. He was now one of the richest men in all the world.

El Padrino

You could say that money was not an issue for Pablo Escobar. He could buy whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He was called the King of Cocaine so he built himself a castle. His 5,000 acre estate was called Hacienda Napoles. Pablo’s main house was a huge Spanish Colonial house. On the property’s entrance gate Pablo put the first airplane he smuggled coke on. The grounds had a private airport, a full sized bullring, a go kart racing track and even a private zoo. Pablo loved cars and had an enormous collection of luxury and vintage cars and motorcycles. Pablo also had a sculpture park of dinosaurs and Wholly Mammoths that his kids could play on.

In Pablo’s private zoo he had a wide selection of exotic animals. These included; hippos, giraffes, elephants, ostriches, exotic birds, antelope and horses. After Pablo had died in a shootout with the Colombian government, they were in charge of taking care of the zoo but the cost of feeding and maintaining the animals became too much. So the Colombian government donated most of the animals to local and international zoos. However, many of the animals escaped, especially the hippos and now there are a huge population of wild hippos in Colombia because of Pablo. Experts consider this a good thing because they were close to extinction in Africa.

Forbes List

It wasn’t exactly a secret how Pablo Escobar made his money. Everyone and their mother knew he was the head of the Medellin Cartel and everyone knew what they did. Regardless of this, Pablo still made it on Forbes magazine’s World’s Richest Billionaires list 7 years in a row from 1987-1993. In 1987, Forbes estimated that Escobar had over $2 billion. His business partner Jorge Louis Ochoa, who owned 30% of the Cartel, also was featured on the list. They were the only two Colombian billionaires to make the cut. In 1993, on Pablo’s last year on the list, Forbes wrote, “We suspect that, as have his fellow drug lords the Ochoa brothers (now languishing in jail), Escobar will soon leave this list. Perhaps, this earth.”

Too Much Cash

Some of Pablo’s cash. (photo credit: Pinterest)

At the height of its power the Medellin Cartel was bringing in 70 million dollars a day in cash. Just think about that for a second. Picture 70 million dollars in cash. One million dollars is 10,000 100 hundred dollar bills. That weighs about 17 pounds. $70 million is almost 1,200 pounds in cash to store everyday. They had so much cash that they had warehouses full. Pablo and his accountant Roberto (who were brothers) factored into their profits that at least 10 percent of the cash would get damaged. The cash could either get damaged on the ride over or eaten by rats where it was stored. That’s around 2 billion dollars Pablo didn’t care about.

Speaking of having an insane amount of cash. Pablo’s brother and accountant, Roberto had to spend $2,500 dollars a month just to buy all the rubber bands to keep the stacks of cash together. Also another insane story is when Pablo and his family were on the run from the Colombian government his daughter got hyperthermia from being outside in the cold mountain side air. To keep his daughter warm Pablo took 2 million dollars in cash, made a bon fire and burned it.

Pablo built his own luxury prison

Pablo Escobar’s “prison cell” (photo credit: InsideHook)

In 1991, Pablo was sick of always having to run away from the Colombian Authorities. Most of the authorities were corrupt and on Pablo’s payroll but they couldn’t let him off the hook completely. So Pablo and the Colombian government came to an agreement that Pablo would go to prison for 5 years. Only Pablo would build his own prison and it would be close to his family home.

So, like his estate, Pablo built a luxury prison for him and his men to live in. It had a full sized soccer field, a disco club, a jacuzzi, and a private bar. The prison was nicknamed Club Medellin. It also came equipped with a private phone and fax line so Pablo could still run his business. Pablo wanted to build his own prison not only to deck it out with luxury but because he was afraid of getting assassinated in a regular prison. Pablo had made a lot of enemies over the years on both sides of the law.

$1.3 billion buried

In December of 1993, Pablo had escaped prison and was on the run again from the Colombian National Police. He got into a shootout with them and was shot and killed. A lot of Pablo’s immense wealth got seized by the Colombian government. They seized his cars, properties, guns, gold and whatever cash they could find. Pablo was notorious for hiding cash all over Medellin and Colombia. The DEA estimates that there is still over a billion dollars of his cash hidden or buried. People have used sonar technology to locate some of this treasure but there is still a ton out there.

Featured