Today we’ll be running down the Top 7 Most Extravagantly Wealthy
Drug Dealers Of All Time!
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While most try to be law-abiding citizens, the lucrative
world of drug trafficking can be too enticing for many to resist. As such,
a select few have managed to become
drug lords and make billions!
So, stick around to the end to find out who once
lit up $2 million in cash to keep his daughter warm!
At number seven on this list is Gilberto Rodriguez
Orejuela and his brother Miguel.
These two made their claim to fame
by being heads of the Cali
Cartel, so named due to it being located
in the Colombian city of Santiago de Cali in Colombia.
They made their fortune mainly by trafficking marijuana
in the 1970s and cocaine in the 1980s, and at one point controlled
80% of the American market and 90% of the European market.
Now, rather than kill and assassinate their enemies,
the Orejuelas stood apart for generally opting to use bribes
instead to get their way.
Therefore, when they were eventually arrested by
Colombian authorities in 1995 and extradited to the United States,
they both agreed to plead guilty and receive 30-year prison
sentences in exchange for having 29 of their family members
be given full immunity.
As a result, the two are still locked up today in
prisons located in the United States, and are not set to be
released until 2030.
Taking the sixth spot on this list is Jose
Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha.
That’s because despite coming from humble beginnings
as the son of pig farmers. In the early 1970s, he began
to associate himself with some of the drug lords farther down on
this list. Eventually, he became a leader of Colombia’s infamous
Medellin Cartel.
This allowed him to become insanely wealthy,
and thus he ultimately acquired about $5 billion
in assets throughout the 1980s.
But, he soon made many enemies amongst rival cartels,
with this being compounded by the fact that both Colombian
and American authorities were on his tail.
Yet, this all came to a head-on December 15th 1989
when he was gunned down by police at the age
of just 42.
Coming in at the fifth spot on this list is drug
kingpin Khun Sa.
Interestingly enough, Sa began his life as a soldier,
having served with both the Chinese Republican and Burmese
Armies as a young man.
However, during the 1960s, he formed his own private
army known as the "Ka Kwe Ye" or “Home Guard” unit and
soon began to use it to smuggle opium from the so-called
“Golden Triangle”,
which is an area between Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar.
Yet, despite effectively being the area’s so-called
“Opium King” between the years 1976 and 1996, his influence
eventually began to decline. Thus in exchange for no jail time,
he surrendered to the Burmese government in January of 1996.
As a result, he ended up settling in Yangon, Myanmar,
where he lived a quiet yet luxurious life on the $5 billion
he acquired until he died in 2007.
At Number Four on our list is Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez
and His Brothers.
Now, the Ochoa brothers stand apart for actually
being part of a cartel that will feature a little farther down the line.
That’s because they were leaders in the infamous Medellin
Cartel in Colombia, which was founded by the oldest
brother Jorge in the mid-1970s. By 1984, their power was so
grounded that the cartel made a public announcement that each
Columbian extradition of a member of their cartel would result in ten
murdered Columbian judges.
However, after the Columbian President César Gaviria
Trujillo offered drug traffickers reduced prison sentences
to be served in Colombia in order to entice them to surrender,
Jorge ended up doing so.
As such, he served a five-and-a-half-year prison
sentence for drug
trafficking before being released in July of 1996.
As a result, Jorge now stands apart for being
the only true free man on this list!
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Number Three on our list is Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar.
While India may not be widely known to be a site
for major drug trafficking, it turns out that it most certainly is!
That’s because the Mumbai-based criminal syndicate
known as D-Company is currently one of the largest cartels
in the world. It reportedly operates in India, South Asia,
Africa, the UK, Western Europe and the Middle East while sharing
similar networks with al-Qaeda.
As a result, Kaskar was formerly one of the Ten Most
Wanted Men in the World, as he has been charged with international
crimes for terrorism, drug trafficking, extortion, murder,
and targeted killing.
However, due to him currently living in either
Pakistan or Afghanistan and using a courier-based money
transfer system known as hawala to make his cash virtually untraceable,
both he and his $6.7 billion in assets likely will not be seized
anytime soon!
Yet, suppose you do manage to give the police
information leading to his arrest. In that case, you could be
in for a cool $25 million payday!
At number two on our list is Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
Often known as “The Lord of the Skies” due to his
method of transporting cocaine using his huge fleet of jets,
he began his rise to fame when he viciously took over the
Mexican-based Juárez Cartel by assassinating his boss.
From there, he brought the operation to new heights,
as despite coming from a poor family, he employed his
relatives as employees to make a family-bound drug empire.
However, his ultimate demise came in a way
you might not expect.
You see, due to the authorities beginning to
crack down on his activities, Fuentes chose to undergo facial
plastic surgery and abdominal surgery liposuction to change
his appearance on July 4th 1997.
However, the operation would ultimately fail,
and Fuentes would die due to surgical complications.
And while the surgeons would later go on to be tortured
and killed by the cartel, this didn’t change the fact that
Fuentes would ultimately never get to spend the modern
equivalent of $25 billion that he left behind!
And finally, the man who takes the Number One spot
is the one and only Pablo Escobar!
Now, we think you’d agree that Escobar’s addition
to this list isn’t all that surprising.
After all, anyone who watched the insanely popular
television drama Narcos knows that he had an insane net worth,
and that he was easily one of the biggest drug kingpins
in modern history.
Now, Escobar’s claim to fame was that his
Medellin cartel not only managed to ship out 70 to 80 tons
of cocaine from his home country of Colombia to the United States
per month, but that throughout much of the 1980s and 90s, his
cartel was responsible for about 80% of the global cocaine trade.
However, in order to keep up this monopoly, he
often had to use dirty tactics at home, and was known to order
the assassinations and massacres of politicians and law
enforcement officials.
Yet, despite this, he was able to keep up a positive
image by giving back to the community, as he was known for
building soccer fields and houses in the areas under his control.
And in fact, he eventually became so rich
that at one point, he reportedly lit a fire using $2 million in cash
when his daughter became ill with hypothermia.
Regardless, his reign couldn’t last forever.
That’s because despite amassing a net worth
that is the equivalent to about $30 billion at today’s exchange rates,
he was eventually cornered by Colombian officials on December
2nd of 1993, with many believing that he ultimately died via
a self-inflicted gunshot to the ear.
So iRichers, which drug dealer did you think was the most notorious?
Let us know in the comment section.
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