Narcos & Cartels

In the late nineteen eighties and through the two thousands, Detroit and Atlanta become the twin poles of the most visible cocaine wholesale network in American history. Demetrius Flenory, known everywhere as Big Meech, builds the Black Mafia Family into an organization moving roughly two hundred fifty kilograms of cocaine monthly across more than a dozen states. He runs it in public, with matching jackets, rented Lamborghinis and a record label, treating notoriety as armor. The DEA's Atlanta field division opens Operation Motor City and begins following the money and the calls. The question hanging over the whole pursuit is...

In the late nineteen eighties Colombia becomes the center of a cocaine trade generating an estimated four billion dollars a year in export revenue, with armed men holding territory the state cannot enter. Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, known as El Mexicano for the Mexican gunmen he pays from his own accounts, controls several tonnes of cocaine a year and a ranch empire stretching across four departments. His personal fortune reaches several billion dollars while local officials, police commanders and military officers stay on his payroll. Colonel Waldemar Franklin Quintero of the Colombian National Police leads the unit hunting him, working...

In the nineteen eighties, South Central Los Angeles becomes the wholesale center of the crack cocaine epidemic, its streets moving weight faster than federal agents can map the supply. Ricky Donnell Ross, known publicly as Freeway Rick, builds the largest crack distribution network the city has ever seen, moving an estimated three tons of cocaine through routes that stretch from Los Angeles to the Pacific Northwest. A DEA agent named John Oakley tracks the network for years without a path inside the operation. The question the hunt opens is whether anyone close enough to Ross can be turned before the...

In the first decade of the two thousands, central Mexico becomes the contested ground of a criminal network that stretches from the Pacific sierra to the capital's southern edge. Arturo Beltran Leyva, known publicly by his nickname El Barbas, meaning The Bearded One, builds a command structure that rivals the cartel he once served. His organization moves cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin across nine Mexican states, protected by corrupted officials at federal, state and municipal level. A federal police deputy commissioner leads the institutional hunt with a growing case file, while a navy intelligence unit builds a parallel record in a...

In the mid nineteen eighties, Washington DC becomes the deadliest crack cocaine market in the country, its corners running day and night and its homicide count climbing toward a number the city has never seen. Rayful Edmond III, known to the street simply as Ray, builds the organization behind it, a network stretching from the Trinidad neighborhood of Northeast Washington all the way to suppliers in Colombia. At its height his operation moves an estimated one metric ton of cocaine into the district every month. A DEA special agent leading the Washington Field Division opens an investigation with no photograph...

In the nineteen nineties, the Tijuana corridor becomes the most lucrative drug crossing on earth, controlled by a single family whose reach extends from Colombian suppliers to corrupted officials on both sides of the border. Benjamin Arellano Felix, known as El Min, serves as the organization's financial architect, moving hundreds of millions of dollars a year while his brother Ramon commands the gunmen in the field. The Arellano Felix brothers recruit an American street gang as their enforcement arm and place informants inside the investigations mounted against them. A DEA special agent in charge of the San Diego field division...

In the nineteen eighties and nineties, West Kingston becomes a city within a city, its poorest ward sealed from the outside world by concrete, zinc and armed men. Christopher Coke, known everywhere as Dudus, runs Tivoli Gardens as a parallel government, distributing food and school fees where no ministry reaches while moving cocaine and weapons across a network the Drug Enforcement Administration calls one of the most durable in the Caribbean. His operation stretches across more than a decade, protected by a political relationship between his garrison and a ruling party that neither side ever publicly denies. Jamaica's Police Commissioner...

In the early nineteen seventies, the mountains of Burma's Shan State produce more illicit opium than anywhere else on earth, and the mule trains that carry it south move on a schedule set by one man. Lo Hsing Han, known across the region as the Godfather of Heroin, controls the largest single trafficking network in the Golden Triangle, moving an estimated third of the world's heroin supply through routes he taxes from the poppy field to the Hong Kong buyer. Two governments and a generation of Drug Enforcement Administration officers in Bangkok build a case against him without a bilateral...

In the years after Pablo Escobar's death, Medellin's criminal economy runs through a single quiet clearinghouse, the Envigado Office, coordinating debts, violence and cocaine exports across the city's comunas. The man behind it is Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, known as Don Berna, a former Escobar bodyguard who made himself indispensable to Colombia's paramilitary peace process while keeping his networks moving. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York estimate the organization exported multi-ton quantities of cocaine to the United States and Europe, protected by a peace law his lawyers wielded clause by clause. Investigators at the DEA and the United...

In the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, Bolivia's vast lowland territory of Beni becomes the source of a cocaine paste supply that feeds trafficking networks across the continent. The man behind it is Roberto Suarez Gomez, known as El Rey de la Cocaina, the King of Cocaine, a cattle rancher who turns his family's airstrips and land records into the financial backbone of an entire industry. He controls enough of the paste supply to offer his government roughly three billion dollars for his own immunity, with a military government providing the cover and an interior minister on his...

In the late nineteen nineties, on the flat border corridor between Tamaulipas and Texas, the Gulf Cartel runs cocaine and marijuana through a landscape of diesel heat, bribed checkpoints and negotiable inspectors. Osiel Cardenas Guillen, known publicly as El Mata Amigos, the Friend Killer, rises to command that corridor by removing the men closest to him before they can move against him. He then does what no trafficker in the record had done before, recruiting deserters from Mexico's elite airborne unit to build a private army that outguns most state police. DEA agents working out of Brownsville, Texas, build a...

In the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties, Colombia becomes the center of a cocaine trade moving roughly eighty percent of the supply reaching the United States. Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellin Cartel and known to his own people as El Patron, meaning The Boss, builds a billion dollar empire through bribery, public works and open war on the Colombian state. His organization earns an estimated sixty million dollars a day at its height, protected by a payroll that reaches police commanders, judges and politicians. A dedicated Colombian pursuit unit, the Search Bloc, forms under a colonel who...