A career in drug trafficking is like a firework shooting for the sky.
It goes up fast, makes a lot of noise, there’s a moment of flash and glamor, but then it all comes
down, turning into ash and soot. Law, rivals, or often drug traffickers’ own allies, almost always
end their success prematurely. Pablo Escobar, the king of Columbian snow’s story is the apex
tale of how bright but fast the star of a drug trafficker burns out. Welcome to Nutty History
and let’s find out how rich Pablo Escobar was and how he spent his ill-gained fortune.
Born to a modest earning farmer and a teacher, Escobar was worth a whopping 37
billion dollars by the time he was in his thirties.
He was one of the richest persons not only in Colombia and South America but the entire world.
At his peak, in addition to his assets and cash, he also had ten billion dollars’ worth of drugs
waiting to be shipped to Mexico and eventually to the United States. But that wasn’t always the
case. Even though Pablo Escobar and his cousin Gustavo Gaviria hailed from middle-aged families
that were doing good in a decent locality of Medellin, it wasn’t enough for the two of them.
The two cousins dropped off from school and began forging diplomas, stealing tombstones, abducting
businessmen, and later committing grand theft auto, which earned them their first jail visit
in 1974. This arrest turned out to be the turning point in Escobar’s life. Soon after their release,
the pair of cousins turned their attention toward drug trafficking with a focus on snow white.
This was Escobar’s first taste of real riches and soon along with his allies, Escobar formed
the Medellin Cartel which put him on the map of the entire world. At the height of its power,
the Medellín cartel dominated the cocaine trade, earning an estimated $420 million a week. Escobar
was receiving millions of dollars in cash each day through his drug sales and other illegitimate as
well as legitimate businesses that he had started after becoming rich. It is absurd to think after
knowing that, that when Pablo was nothing but a petty thief, he was barely making three dollars
a day. In 1984 his wealth crossed a million dollars and there was no looking back for him
as his assets multiplied nearly every hour from thereon. Naturally, such huge piles of cash were
beyond management through laundering, so Pablo began investing in safe houses to store his cash.
Escobar wasn’t just buying these lavish, top-of-the-class manors with his money,
he was also storing his money in them like they were vaults. Money bills have been found under
couches, beds, floor tiles, walls, buried under the soil on lawns of these properties,
and they don’t even account for a substantial amount of Escobar’s wealth as more money is hiding
somewhere that nobody except a deceased Escobar knows. Nicolas Escobar, the nephew of Pablo, found
decades-old currency bills worth eighteen million dollars in plastic bags hidden inside the walls
of his apartment in 2020. This happened 27 years after his uncle’s death in a police encounter.
Nicolas inherited this apartment from Pablo after his death. Interestingly, it wasn’t even the
first time he had found such wads of cash poking through walls or floor tiles in this apartment.
Such apartments are a very small part of a very grand collection of properties Pablo Escobar
amassed in a fleeting amount of time. The jewel of his real estate crown was Hacienda Napoles,
a seven-thousand-acre estate located between Bogota and Medellin. Named after the city of
Naples in Italy, Hacienda Napoles cost somewhere around sixty-three million dollars to Escobar back
in the day. It included a soccer field, huge life-like dinosaur statues, artificial lakes,
a bullfighting arena, a classic car collection hangar, not a garage, a hangar, as well as an
airstrip for his drug trafficking planes, a tennis court, and a zoo. Yes, a Zoo! We will come back
to it later. Moreover, it was the meeting spot for the leaders of the Medellín cartel, Gonzalo
Rodríguez Gacha, Carlos Lehder, the Ochoa Vásquez Brothers, among others. Escobar had many visitors,
both related to his criminal activities and others who would go there on vacation. La Manuela was
another castle of his dreams which he constructed in the municipality of El Penol and he named it
after his youngest daughter. This property was targeted many times by Los Pepes, the paramilitary
group that played a major part in bringing Escobar down. Spanning eight hectares, La Manuella also
had a soccer field, a swimming pool, and a round structure to the main house. Interestingly,
while authorities in the USA were unable to get a hold of Escobar, Pablo Escobar was purchasing
safe houses in the United States as well, the most infamous of them being La Casa Rosada in Miami,
Florida. This property was located in a privileged area of Miami Beach with a striking view of
the sea and a perfect location to build a pier. Authorities managed to seize the property in 1987.
Interestingly, in 2014, Christian de Bardouare purchased the property in hopes of finding
Escobar’s hidden treasures by demolishing the construction. He ended up selling it in 2020.
Other properties include Casa Magna in Mexico and the infamous prison he built for himself, La
Catedral, among a total of 141 homes he purchased in the entirety of his life. He also bought and
constructed residential buildings for his men in the Caribbean islands which are now nothing
but ruins and shelter for local animals. Most of the other properties are now under the control of
their respective governments and are turned into tourist attractions, restaurants, or theme parks.
Escobar, Gaviria, and their associates Lehder, Ochoa brothers, and Gacha never had imagined
before how much US dollars would pour in when they started trafficking snow-white across the ocean.
The sheer quantity of currency bills was so overwhelming that according to George Jung cash
became more of a problem than a profit. The money management part was so tedious that it began to
suck all of the fun out of the entire operation. These traffickers including Escobar tried to
convert dollars into Pesos with willing Columbian banks but there was so much currency conversion
they could offer. So, as stated earlier, Escobar began to stuff his houses with cash,
but when they too had no space left, he had to look elsewhere, beyond Columbia. As the currency
flooding in was dollars, Escobar decided to send it back to US banks. These banks had rooms set up
with counting machines and even employees from the bank in special rooms reserved for Escobar
and his allies. But these sorts of transactions were calling for US authorities’ attention.
According to observers, Escobar’s men were smuggling cash out and then dumping it into
non-interest-bearing checking accounts, 250 million dollars or more annually. When US banks
became too hot in the mid-eighties, Escobar began to fly his money to off-shore banking havens such
as the Bahamas, Aruba, and the Caymans and the British Virgin Islands. Pablo Escobar bought a
Learjet specifically for flying his cash. Though there has been more regulation in modern times,
this method is still quite popular among drug traffickers. However, Escobar and Gaviria’s
personal preference was trade-based money laundering, a technique they developed like
an art form. Pablo Escobar did this by buying easily sold items such as clothes or electronics
from a legitimate company in the United States and then selling the items on the other side of the
border for pesos. It was an effective way to clean large amounts of cash. Escobar also worked with
accountants including his brother to exploit the banking systems in the United States and Europe.
Out of all Pablo Escobar’s methods of laundering money, depositing amounts smaller than ten
thousand dollars to avoid Bank Secrecy Act reporting regulation was the most popular.
It's no rocket science to acknowledge that it took a lot of brainpower, strategy, tactics,
innovations, and ingenuity from Pablo to make him so successful. He may have not been moral
or legitimate, but he was a genius no doubt. There was a time when Pablo had a monopoly
over the entire east coast of the US’s drug market. His rivals, such as the founders of the
Cali cartel who were also legitimate businessmen were no match for his domination of the industry
until authorities began cracking down hard on Pablo Escobar’s operation. He wasn’t just
a genius at his work, Pablo knew how to party as well. He earned billions and spent billions as a
billionaire playboy would. His estate, Hacienda Napoles, had over fifteen hundred employees
and three zoos to entertain his guests along with a petrol station as well. His parties would
include go-kart and bike races inside his estate, bullfighting, and tours of his zoos displaying
exotic birds, horses, elephants, rhinos, and hippos, some of which are still roaming there.
These drug-fueled parties had loud music, gambling in the in-house casino, hot, young girls, a spa,
and plenty of wealth flaunting around the sculpture garden. The nearby cottages were
all beautifully appointed for guests and Escobar himself with planters, hanging baskets, and
luxurious upholstery and drapes. One of them had a bathroom built like a bunker, with reinforced
cement walls that must have been more than 3 feet thick. Escobar was so rich by the mid-eighties
that he had offered to clear Columbia’s debt of ten billion dollars if he would be exempt
from any extradition treaty. To save himself from the US's attempt to bring him to justice,
Pablo also put a lot of effort into winning the support of the Columbian population. Pablo Escobar
was responsible for over four thousand deaths but he also spent money building hospitals, stadiums,
and housing for the poor to bolster his image as the Columbian Robin Hood. He also purchased a lot
of stocks in one of the biggest soccer teams in South America, Atlético Nacional. Players like
Faustino Asprilla, Juan Pablo Angel, Ivan Cordoba, Andres Escobar, and Rene Higuita, who pulled off
that Scorpion Kick against England, were basically on payroll from Pablo Escobar at that time.
To keep himself out of the hurtling clutches of the law, Escobar also invested a lot in his
political campaign and managed to be elected to an alternate seat in the Country’s congress in 1982.
However, that made the spotlight on him brighter and he was forced to resign two years later. The
ambitions of Pablo Escobar had no ends as he was dreaming to become the President of
the country one day but the law was chasing him wherever he would go and in the late eighties,
Pablo Escobar was the seventh richest man in the world, he was also a fugitive. As there was
virtually no end to his cash reserves, he managed to live on the run mostly without any issue.
But there is so much money can buy, when Manuela got sick while the Escobar family was in hiding,
Pablo burned nearly two million dollars in bills to keep his daughter warm. The Colombian
government meanwhile seized his enormous fleet of 142 planes, 20 helicopters, 32 yachts, and two
submarines. The rivals took care of his prized classic car collection, sending it up in smoke.
There was a time in his life when he would weigh the cash instead of counting it and it
was believed that at a time, he had 40 tons of it. He would write off ten percent of cash every year
to rats chewing and destroying it. Rats! But when authorities caught up and defeated him,
all the wealth in the world could not bring him back. After his death, most of his assets were
seized by authorities but there was plenty of wealth to share among the family and relatives
he had left behind. Pablo Escobar’s wife inherited up to ten million dollars, which have helped her
to lead a dignified life along with her son. His dearest daughter Manuela is currently worth over
a hundred million dollars. But there is no denying that the world will never forget how the Escobar
family came up with their fortune. Tell us in the comments if you think it is acceptable for these
families to inherit illegally earned money or not? And as always thanks for watching Nutty History.