Making a Deal With a Cartel Boss | Locked Up Abroad

Boston is the university capital of the United States. There was a lot of rich kids who just wanted to smoke pot, and it was a perfect market for us. We felt indestructible; people were getting hired, they loved our product.

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Our business grew and became successful. We had this big pile of cash, plenty of women, and we were just having a blast.

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And then one night I met this Colombian guy, and he told me there's someone I should meet in Colombia. This guy in Colombia, he runs an organization, a cartel that grows 50 tons of marijuana a year, and we call him El Pedrino, the Godfather. He knows you; he wants to meet you.

I was 20 years old, and some godfather in Colombia had heard about me. They wanted me to go to Colombia to meet them. That got me excited; this was a big opportunity. Colombia was known to have top-quality marijuana, and here was my chance to get right to the source.

It was dangerous and breathtaking and scary, but the thing is, I'm a high-risk junkie. I had a need to always push things to the limit, to build something and keep building it and building it until it blew up.

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So the next morning, I was in a private plane flying into northern Colombia to meet the Godfather. He says, "Come on in; you look like someone who is deadly serious." The mysterious, hard-wired kind of person. The feeling that I had was a feeling of distrust. I'm not sure what's going on here; I'm out of my element.

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We get about 10 miles down the road, and we get to a military checkpoint. The Godfather handed me the bag with this. I open the bag, and I see 50,000 pesos, and I see it revolving. He says to me, "I want you to offer the guard the pesos first, and if he doesn't take it, I want you to shoot him." What have I got myself into?

Then I realize this is a test. They want to know if I've got the balls to go out there and actually shoot someone in the head who doesn't take a bribe. So I had no choice; I had the money and the gun. There were so many thoughts going through my head. I hate violence; I've always hated violence, and I didn't want to shoot him.

So I really hoped that he would take that money. The guide looked at me; I looked at him. I take a deep breath and hand him the bag of money. I could tell that he was bewildered. I needed him to take that money. He looked at me and slowly walked back towards the Godfather, threw the bag. I thought, "Thank God!"

And then I walked back, and he asked, "Is everything okay?"

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And I said yes. Going on that journey was— that was the test, right? He's challenging me to see who's the craziest in the room, is it him or is it me? As we got deeper into the jungle, we got to a farmhouse. I noticed that there were farmworkers who were also carrying shotguns and rifles. It was clear to me at that point in time he was running a very serious operation.

And then as we got over the hill, I could see down in the valley, as far as my eyes could see, the most beautiful crop of marijuana plants. I'd never seen so much marijuana in my life; this was at least 20,000 acres. This is unbelievable! This is probably the largest marijuana field in the world.

The Godfather explains to me that they've been growing here for 120 years and distributing a crop in South America. And then he got down to business. The Godfather wanted to know if it was possible to move mountains of marijuana safely from this farm to the U.S. Their hobby is 50 tons per year, and I thought, that's a lot of cubic footage. It seems insane.

And then he said, "I'll give me," and he walked me to this barn.

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When he opened the door, there was like floor-to-ceiling U.S. currency. There were just hundreds of bales of cash.

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I just looked at that money, and I thought, I loved this guy. And then I fell in love with this project. Then the Godfather told me it would make me filthy rich, that I would make 10 to 13 million dollars a year.

I said, "Perfect! I've been doing the same on a very small scale, but I know how this works now." So I said yes, and I'm in. But then he said, "Once you agree, you can't get out until I say you're free to go." I had no idea what kind of impact that would have on my life.

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