Khun Sa

Khun Sa, who’s birth name was Zhang Qifu, was once known as the “Opium King.” He was the biggest heroin drug lord in the world from the mid 70’s to the late 90’s. He was born in Burma and ran his operations out of the Golden Triangle. Khun Sa had no formal education in his life and died illiterate. The only type of training he had was in the military. By the time he was 16 he raised and became the leader of his own militia. He got into the heroin trade to fund his militia and smuggling operations. At the height of his power he was in control of 20,000 men. The governments around him let him grow opium and make heroin because he would fight off the rebel armies trying to overtake the governments. Khun Sa switched his allegiances many times between being allies with governments or rebels when it suited his business. During his rule, heroin being smuggled into New York from the Golden Triangle rose from 5% to 80%. The DEA estimated that at least 45% of that trade was coming directly from Khun Sa. Also, his product was 90% pure so dealers and users wanted it the most. Frank Lucas, the Harlem drug lord who is also on this list got his heroin directly from Khun Sa. The movie American Gangster starring Denzel Washington playing Lucas is about his life. In the late 80’s Khun Sa controlled 80% of the opium trade in Burma. He owned everything, the farms, the refineries and the smuggling operation. All the money was going into his pocket. By the late 90’s with many more drug trade routes opening up and opium rising in places like Afghanistan, Khun Sa’s power was declining. Also, the DEA and other government drug authorities were able to disrupt Khun Sa’s trade partnerships with wholesale buyers across borders. This caused his income to rapidly decrease. In 1996, Khun Sa made a deal with the Burmese government that if he gave up and disbanded his militia he could retire and live off his fortune. The Burmese government accepted and Khun Sa retired to Rangoon with his four mistresses. Khun Sa got into legitimate business like mining and construction but died when he was 73. His children today are respected businessmen as well. He’s probably one of the only drug lords to not die by a bullet or in a prison cell.

Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas was an American drug trafficker who ran a heroin ring out of Harlem, New York in the late 60’s - early 70’s. Lucas was able to break the monopoly the Mafia had on the illegal drug trade in New York City but cutting out the middleman and getting extremely pure heroin from The Golden Triangle in Asia. Lucas claimed that at the height of his power he was making a million dollars in cash a day. His operation included buying the product wholesale and selling it on the streets. Lucas was born in North Carolina and decided on the life of crime after witnessing the murder of his cousin by the Ku Klux Klan. Lucas fled to New York City after getting in trouble with the law and began working for a local Harlem gangster named Bumpy Johnson. After Bumpy passed away Lucas took over as the neighborhood mob boss. Lucas traveled to Bangkok Thailand to see his friend Ike Atkinson and to try to make a connection for the heroin being sold in bulk there. Lucas made the heroin connection, which was produced by Khun Sa, and Atkinson was in charge of smuggling it back to New York. They would buy a kilo of drugs for $4,000 and when it got into the states it was worth a $100,000. Lucas once claimed that they smuggled the drugs back in the coffins of dead soldiers coming back to the US from the Vietnam War. However, Atkinson denies this and said he smuggled the heroin by hiding it in furniture crates. Lucas was arrested in 1975 and sentenced to 70 years in prison. He worked with the authorities to arrest more than 100 people in the drug trade from pushers, dealers to crooked cops. After 5 years in a federal prison Lucas was paroled but ended going back to jail for another 7 years for selling an ounce of heroin. He got out of prison again in 1991. He has recently died in May, 2019, He was 88 years old. The film American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington was about his life.

Griselda Blanco

Griselda Blanco, also known as “La Madrina,” was a Colombian drug lord of the Medellín Cartel. She was a major player in the rise of cocaine in Miami in the 80’s and all the violence that came with it. Though never convicted, it is estimated that she was personally responsible in 200 murders in what was known as the Miami Drug War. Griselda was involved in crime from a very young age. When she was just 11 she kidnapped a kid from a rich neighborhood and ransomed him off. She ran away form home at age 16 to Medellín and resorted to looting until she was 20 years old. In the mid 1970’s, Griselda and her husband immigrated to Queens New York illegally. There they established a decently big cocaine smuggling business. It wasn’t long before they got caught but they fled back to Colombia before they were arrested. Griselda came back to America in the early 80’s to Miami when cocaine was exploding on the scene there. It was the most in demand drug at the time, even more so than marijuana. The city was washed in lawlessness and corruption and Griselda’s operations were making the situation a lot worst. Her style of business was to kill anyone in her way. She set up a huge complex cocaine distribution network that brought cocaine all over the nation. She was making $80,000,000 a month. After several assignation attempts, Griselda moved to California where she was arrested in 1985. She was imprisoned until 2004, then she was deported back to Colombia. The whole time she was in prison she was still running her cocaine business with her son. In 2012 she was murdered in Medellín. She was 69 years old.

Rick Ross

Rick Ross is an author and former drug trafficker who ran a huge drug empire in Los Angeles in the mid to late 80’s, during the height of the “Crack Epidemic.” Growing up Ross was very good at tennis but couldn’t get a college scholarship because he couldn’t read. When his dream was dead he resorted to selling cocaine to make a living. His first drug connection was an upholstery teacher at a community college. Ross quickly evolved into a big time drug dealer moving a ton of cocaine. He got the cocaine from a Nicaraguan man who was exiled to the US named Danilo Blandón. Because of this Ross was able to buy large amounts of pure Nicaraguan cocaine at reduced prices. He sold the cocaine to the Bloods and the Crips at $10,000 a kilo less than regular street prices. Ross claimed that at the height of his power he could sell 3 million dollars of cocaine a day. Ross expanded his cocaine ring to multiple US cities including; Baltimore, Seattle, Cleveland, New Orleans, St. Louis, Texas, Kanas City, North Carolina, South Carolina and many more. He had thousands of people under him in his business. To hide his wealth from the authorities and his mother he bought dozens of homes. To keep from getting busted Ross’ men had high-tech police scanners and voice scramblers. Throughout his career, Ross had purchased and sold metric tons of cocaine. In present day dollars he profited somewhere around $850 million. Ross was arrested and convicted to life in prison under the three-strikes law in 1996. In prison Ross learned how to read and realized he was caught up in the Iran-Contra Affair, which was a political scandal of the Reagan Administration in which the CIA was helping distribute cocaine to fund rebels in Nicaragua. Ross also studied law and discovered a legal loop hole to get released from prison. He appealed his case and was successful. He was released from prison in 2009 and has since written a book about his life.

Osiel Càrdenas Guillèn

Osiel Càrdenas Guillèn right now is serving a 30 year prison sentence in Houston, Texas. He was the former leader of the Gulf Cartel in Mexico. The Gulf Cartel is the oldest drug trafficking operation and criminal syndicate in Mexico today. Guillén assumed power over the cartel after it’s main leader Juan Garcia Abrego was arrested in 1996. For three years many people tried to take over as leader for the cartel but Guillèn succeeded by killing Salvador Gómez who was his friend briefly in charge. This earned Guillén the nickname Mata Amigos, which is Spanish for “Friend Killer.” Guillén started what is known as Los Zetas which is the Cartel’s paramilitary group that fights against the government and the Cartel’s rivals. They are known for their brutality. This is probably why no one ever tried to challenge Guillén’s authority. The Gulf Cartel’s power got so big that the US Department of the Treasury sanctioned Guillén under the Kingpin Act, which prohibited US citizens and their businesses to do any sort of business with him. It also froze all of Guillén’s assets in the US. In 2003, Guillén was captured in a shootout with the Mexican Military. He was held in prison there until 2007 when he was extradited to Texas and convicted of drug trafficking, homicide, money laundering and death threats to US agents. He still remains incarcerated today.

El Chapo

El Chapo, which means “Shorty” in Spanish (he’s 5’6”) is one of the greatest drug lords and smugglers in history. He was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, which he founded in 1988. While Chapo was running it, the cartel was one of the largest international crime syndicates and drug trafficking operations to ever come out of Mexico. Between 2009-2013 Forbes magazine had El Chapo on their list of “Most Powerful People in the World.” The DEA estimates Chapo’s influence and wealth was equal or greater than Pablo Escobar’s.

Chapo was born into a poor farming family in Sinaloa Mexico. He was first introduced to the drug trade by helping his abusive father grow marijuana. In the late70’s Chapo started working for one of Mexico’s rising drug lords at the time, Héctor Luis Palma Salazar. His job was to find smuggling routes into the USA. Chapo graduated to supervising logistics for the drug kingpin, Miguel Àngel Félix Gallardo in the 1980’s. After Gallardo was arrested, Chapo decided to use his knowledge and start his own cartel. He called it the Sinaloa Cartel and it became very successful because Chapo had a vast network of tunnels he used to smuggle drugs into the United States.

In 1993, Chapo was captured in Guatemala and then sent to Mexico where he was sentenced to 20 years. In 2001, he escaped his maximum federal prison and became a fugitive. The United States government and Mexico put a $8.8 million dollar bounty on his head. In 2014, he was arrested again and held in Mexico. But he escaped again in 2015 awaiting sentencing through a tunnel under his jail cell. Mexico recaptured him in 2016 and sent him to the USA. In 2019, he was found guilty on many criminal charges. He is currently serving a life sentence in America.

Pablo Escobar

Pablo Escobar was born on December 1, 1949 in Rionegro, Colombia. His father was a farmer and his mother was an elementary school teacher. He 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 and then sand them down and sell to them to smugglers. Allegedly, Pablo also ran a counterfeit diploma business around this time. He became successful at making and selling fake Highschool diplomas to dropouts in the city. In his late teens Pablo met a man named Oscar Benel Aguirre and the two of them stole cars and sold 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 a Mexican executive.

In the early 1970’s Pablo started working for a man named Alvaro Prieto, who smuggled contraband. Pablo was tired of all the hassles of kidnapping people and wanted a change. When Pablo was just 26, before he even got into the cocaine business he made $3 million from smuggling other contraband. By 1975, smuggling blackmarket goods was getting harder, more dangerous and the profits were shrinking. Back then there were no drug cartels, just a few drug kingpins, but no one was getting their drugs out of the country. Pablo saw an untapped market of getting cocaine into the US. Pablo would 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 smuggled insane amounts of coke into the US. He quickly became one of the wealthiest criminals alive. Pablo started what was known as the Medellin Cartel. He pretty much had a monopoly on the American cocaine trade. They built complex and extremely organized smuggling and distribution networks to get tons (literally) of cocaine across the US border. The Medellin Cartel smuggled around 70 to 80 tons of coke to the US a month. It was estimated that Pablo Escobar was responsible for providing 4 out of every 5 lines of cocaine in America. By the early 90’s Pablo made around $30 billion dollars.

In 1991, Pablo was always on the run from the Colombian government. Many of the police officers and government officials were corrupt and on Pablo’s payroll but they couldn’t let him off the hook completely. The Colombian government and Pablo came to an agreement that Pablo would go to prison for 5 years. Under one condition, that Pablo could build his own prison. So Pablo built a swanky luxurious prison that he ran his drug empire out of. But that didn’t keep him there for long.

In December of 1993, Pablo escaped his “prison” and was a fugitive once more. He got into a shootout with the Colombian National Police and was shot and killed. Pablo’s immense wealth was seized by the Colombian government. They took his properties, cars, 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.

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