The Cocaine Cowboys - More4

[OllieWinchester]

Watched this documentary last night on More4. Was all about the influx of cocaine into Miami in the 70's to 80's, and the people who orchestrated it. It was quite long (2hrs 40 mins) and the opening credits didn't promise much as they were quite cheesy, but it was absolutely fascinating. The amount of cash these guys were raking in was nothing short of incredible, and they had a lot of the main guys involved in the documentary as talking heads. Well worth a watch...

[fluffnik]

I've seen it.

This activity should be in the tax paying "white" economy, even if it would do a little less good...

[taldo]

watched this before and really enjoyed it, very interesting.

[OllieWinchester]

I just found some of the figures incredible, they reckon these guys imported $2 BILLION worth of cocaine into the United States over less than two decades!

That Riva guy was pretty scary too, totally nonchalant about the number of people he killed. Anyone able to see if this is able to buy on Amazon or anything? I would look but all shopping sites like that are blocked at work...

[Stu R]

Very interesting stuff. Will have to watch it again as I nodded off (irony!)

Pablo Escobar is the one I always think of first when this stuff gets mentioned, absolutely dwarfs what everyone else was doing. Forbes estimated he was the 7th richest man in the world with a personal fortune of $9 Billion, and at one point he even offered to clear Columbia's 10 Billion dollar national debt. [paraphrased from Wikipedia]

There's no shortage of fascinating stuff out there about these people. It's a totally different world. Killing Pablo is a good read to get started

[shoggoth1]

As someone else recommended on here, Snowblind by Robert Sabbag is a good read. About Cocaine smuggling in the 70's before heavy weight organised crime was involved.
His other book, Smokescreen, about dope smuggling is good as well.
(You can get the two books in one).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snowblind-Smokescreen-Robe...

[chippy2010]

Seen this a couple of times, very clever these guys the way they set up garages and boat repairs and just sent a transporter to pick the vehicle full of gear and if they got pulled they had a work order etc and simply said they had just been called to collect a vehicle/vessel.