Medellín Cartel

you know i um i i don't it doesn't sound like the colombians to me either it sounds like the mob maybe but i will say that i don't think it's so fanciful that in 76 the colombians might do a hit because by 78 they're doing hits all over the place yeah yeah you know and this is just i mean a couple you maybe a year and a half before you're two years so

yeah So it's interesting to think of that crew that were at the formative stages of the Minion cartel with Pablo Escobar.

So Derber's supplier in Colombia was a fellow named Vincenzo Velasco Peterson, who interestingly was half British, half Colombian, who was his main supplier.

He would later go on to become the import-export broker for Escobar.

And there's a book that features him pretty heavily.

He was... a very very violent figure so even though the medellin cartel hadn't taken on a violent complexion or hadn't even formed yeah yeah there were certain you know violent elements sure within within the scene but what's also interesting is that he only trafficked in marijuana he did not traffic in cocaine or heroin or quaaludes or any other yeah contraband so I don't have a full picture of why the hit went out on Derber.

It was a quarter of a million dollar contract on his head.

There's some suggestions it could have been because there was skimming along the supply chain and the Colombians weren't getting their cut.

Give me a line

... uh, aspiring soccer star gets an injury, falls out of the game, ends up working for the Medellín Cartel, meets Pablo.

Uh, big Netflix deal-

All right

By the end of the 1970s, Blanco would have no choice but to return to the United States.

Now head of the Medellin Cartel, Pablo Escobar had effectively taken over our home city.

Everyone who was anyone in the drug business was working for him, even the Ochoa brothers.

For the first time, Blanco had met an opponent tougher and more remorseless than she was.

He described himself as a former special activities contract pilot.

His biography said he'd worked as a Learjet captain in connection with a DEA operation targeting Pablo Escobar and and the Medellin Cartel, and that he later became involved in aviation connected to the covert arming of the Nicaraguan Contras.

And then there is Barry Seal.

If you know anything about the murky history of the 1980s, that name should ring a bell.