Science has determined that Nicholas Cage is the greatest actor of our time, and possibly
of all history-past, present and future.
During his distinguished Hollywood career, Cage has portrayed the full range of the human
experience: from angrily yelling at bees to angrily yelling at terrorists.
Yet turns out one of his films had its premise based on real history, just like Hollywood
hits Schindler's List, Lincoln, and Pacific Rim 2: Uprising.
That movie is Face/Off, and today we're going to look at the real-life face swap a powerful
Mexican cartel leader pulled off in an attempt to evade the feds.
For those of you who might not remember the Nicholas Cage movie Face/Off, or perhaps never
saw it because your taste in film is terrible, Face/Off is the heartwarming story of an FBI
agent played by John Travolta, swapping faces with a terrorist, Nicholas Cage, in order
to foil a terrorist plot.
Wacky hijinks ensue when the terrorist has his gang force the surgeon who performed the
face swap to graft the FBI agent's face on him.
It's sort of like a Freaky Friday with guns and terrorists.
We'll wait if you want to pause this video and go watch it right now, but for those of
you with good taste in movies who’ve already seen it we'll continue our episode as planned.
Juan Carlos Ramirez Ramirez was born on February 19th, 1963 in Palmira, Colombia.
He was born to a fairly well-to-do upper middle class family, and was renowned as a child
for his great manners and intelligence, excelling at school work.
After serving with the Colombian Navy for a few years, Ramirez moved to Miami and studied
at the University of Miami and got a degree in economics and then a masters in business
administration.
In 1986 this mild-mannered and educated young man began to get into drug trafficking, working
for the Cali Cartel.
Ramirez may have once been a well-mannered child, but his reputation quickly grew violent,
and it's believed that ultimately he had as many as 150 people killed on his orders, many
of them inside the United States.
One of his most violent acts was the murder of a whopping thirty five members of Victor
Patino's family, a former member of the Cali Cartel who had turned informant.
After being caught, Patino offered to give up details of the Cali Cartel's operations
in Colombia and the US, including smuggling routes, methods, safe houses, and accomplices.
While it was a gold mine for the authorities, who gave Patino leniency in sentencing in
exchange for the intelligence, the act ultimately saw most of Patino's family killed by Ramirez
in retaliation.
In the early 1990s, Ramirez had made quite a reputation for himself and had a wide array
of traffickers working for him to get his drugs into the US and beyond.
It was then that he was approached by the infamous drug boss Joaquin El Chapo Guzman,
who offered to move drugs faster and safer throughout South America and finally into
the US.
While other traffickers wanted 37% cut of profits, El Chapo asked for 40%- and when
you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, that's quite a steep three percent.
Yet El Chapo promised that he could not only move drugs safer, and reduce the amount that
were discovered by authorities, but that he could do it quicker.
At the time Ramirez's traffickers were taking a month or more to move drugs into the US
and routinely running into difficulties with law enforcement.
With an extensive network of smugglers, secret tunnels, aircraft, trucks, and bribed officials
on both sides of the border, El Chapo cut down the time to get large shipments of drugs
across the border from up to 60 days, to just a single week.
Even better for Ramirez, while on the Mexico side the smugglers were often met and protected
by Mexican government Federales who had been paid off to keep the smugglers safe from both
law enforcement and rival cartels.
With a fast pass into the US, Ramirez's drug empire exploded.
His drugs would make their way to Los Angeles, and from there they were then distributed
amongst local networks and the remainder shipped to New York in trucks and hidden in regular
civilian vehicles.
Once arriving in New York, the drugs were once more disseminated amongst distribution
networks, with cash being shipped back to Los Angeles and then back to Ramirez across
the border.
At the height of his smuggling, Ramirez was bringing in multi-thousand kilograms of cocaine
into the US, and this very quickly led to his being targeted by the American DEA and
Colombian authorities.
The heat became so intense that Ramirez was forced to go into hiding in Brazil, where
he owned many luxurious properties.
Believing he could get a better deal for himself, and that he would ultimately be discovered
anyways, Ramirez decided to turn himself in to Colombian police in 1996.
Rumors persist however that Ramirez's enemies were closing in on him as well, and many even
within his own cartel wanted him gone.
By the time of his arrest, Ramirez was believed to have smuggled in as much as twenty metric
tons of cocaine into the US, making him one of the most prolific traffickers in history.
Ramirez was sentenced to 24 years in prison, but as most drug lords do, he continued running
his empire from behind prison bars largely unfazed by the change in scenery.
Just three years later, Ramirez was given an early release because the Colombian justice
system is totally not corrupt and hey, he probably learned his lesson anyways.
The United States though was far from impressed, and very quickly set to work on capturing
Ramirez for themselves.
With the US after him, Ramirez knew he was in real trouble and needed to hide.
He began by bribing government officials to destroy all legal evidence of his existence,
to include financial records, birth certificates, even driver licenses.
Then he purged his face from every photograph of him that he and his men could get their
hands on.
Lastly, he had to do something about his real, very recognizable face.
It was time to change faces.
Ramirez underwent a grueling session of plastic surgeries all aimed at changing his appearance
as dramatically as possible.
His nose, lips, mouth, ears, cheeks, chin, and even eyes were all altered, and the entire
time surgeons were forced to work under armed guard as cartel enforcers watched their every
move.
So many surgeries however were not without risk, and if something completely unavoidable
happened to Ramirez while under the knife, well, the guards were there to ensure that
the doctors paid with their lives as well.
With a new, very artificial and strange-looking face, Ramirez did his best to leave his old
identity behind, and it worked- for a while.
Yet Ramirez might have changed his outside, but the one thing he forgot to change was
his voice, and that's what ultimately would get him busted.
American DEA officials heard Ramirez's voice over a telephone call and were able to pinpoint
his location, and then positively identify him regardless of his mangled face.
See, in the Face/Off movie they cover this tiny plot hole, making sure to show that the
surgery the characters undergo includes work on their vocal chords to match their new appearances.
Ramirez should have watched more movies.
Using intelligence provided by the US, Brazilian Federal Police officers raided one of Ramirez's
mansions, finding him along with tens of millions of dollars in cash stashed in the mansion's
walls.
He was quickly extradited to the United States and tried for drug trafficking.
There would be no early release here, and Ramirez very quickly turned song bird for
the US government.
In a bid to shorten his already hefty sentence, Ramirez even took to the stand and testified
against his former trafficker, El Chapo in 2018.
Ramirez's plastic surgery was ultimately a foolhardy attempt to evade law enforcement,
whom likely would have gotten their man anyways.
With the constant murders or captures of drug lords all across South and Central America,
it's little wonder that anybody still wants the job.
After all, when's the last time you heard of a drug lord living a long, happy, and free
life?
How far would you have gone to disguise your own identity?
Let us know in the comments!
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