He always thought he was the best, because everybody was always looking for him to get the best marijuana on the island, he was always acting like he was on top of the world . . . he walked around full of attitude . . . sitting in a restaurant full of arrogance, always with superiority.
In what way?
The way he talked to the people . . . he always liked to feel important. There was a time he started to tell people his name was Max, because he was the ‘maximum’. I was like, ‘Fucking Max, give me a break.’ Max is minimum, not maximum. But he was a funny guy.
– Alberto, drug dealer
The Lemon Juice boss’s fortunes had gone up and down ever since he was a child. Marco had begun life with a silver spoon in his mouth, but it had quickly tarnished. He was born into a rich family in Manaus, the Amazon’s capital city, to a young beauty queen whose own father was a wealthy media mogul. But life turned dark for the young boy when he first saw his father bash his mother. They moved to Rio, where before long his mother left behind her two toddler sons.
My mother escaped from the house when I was three years old because my father beat her. I don’t use my father’s name because I’m angry with him. I saw him beat my mother. I was a very small boy, but even now I can still remember.
– Marco
There was still money for a while, enough to give Marco ten years of show jumping lessons – and a nanny and maid in a nice apartment 50 metres from the beach in Rio’s up-market Ipanema district. When the cash ran out, he became the poor kid from the Amazon jungle, mixing with Rio’s rich kids, earning him the nickname Curumim – or little Indian boy – which stuck. But he was popular, winning his place in the elite group by being able to make people laugh.
He became a beach boy, with all the rich-kid toys like surfboards, jet-skis and hang-gliders, courtesy of his best friend Beto, Marco’s idol, who seemingly had everything: parents who loved him, good looks, money and as many gorgeous girls as a rock star. He was also an exceptional all-round sportsman, with tennis, surfing and hang-gliding his main pursuits. His father was a Rio property mogul. If the family flew to Aspen to snowboard, or Europe for a holiday, they’d take little Marco, paying for everything and slinging him spending money.
Marco was the funny guy in the group, the poor one. And then they go to Aspen to snowboard, and let’s bring Marco because he’s fun, so funny, makes jokes all the time.
– Rafael
My friend Beto was always using cocaine, but he was a strong guy, blond guy, much more beautiful than me. I’m nothing compared to him; he’s a very beautiful guy and very rich. More than 100 girls want to marry him. But listen, the guy did everything for me. When I turned 16, he gave me a green Volkswagen. I had no licence, but I could drive. I was his driver for two years. I drove Beto up the mountain when he was hang-gliding and after he flew I went to get him on the beach. Beto said if I crashed the car, ‘No problem, papa will buy you a new one.’ This family brought me to Europe, America, to everywhere, because before I have no money, no money and no family. The problem was like that.
– Marco
But Beto’s largesse came at a heavy cost. Four years younger and indebted, Marco did anything to please his best friend. Beto soon had his hilariously funny, pliable young acolyte, at just 14 years old, running up into Rio’s dangerous favelas – mountain slums full of criminals and drug dealers – to get him cocaine. The kid did it like a grateful puppy.
I’ve been playing narcotics in Brazil for a long time. My friend Beto put me in this business when I was a little boy. He pushed me to get cocaine, not for business – he’s a user. He would bring me to the bottom of the favela, stop the car far away, and say, ‘Go.’ Then I walk up 20 minutes, all the way to the top of the mountain with my schoolbag, past 20 dangerous policemen with guns. At the top they call . . . ‘Little boy, what you want? Black or white?’ Black is marijuana, white is cocaine. ‘I want white.’ ‘Ooh, good boy.’ I say, ‘I like cocaine.’ Bullshit. I never used the cocaine. I was a little boy, I was a child. I go up with my lunchbox and come down with a stack of cocaine for my friend.
– Marco
It wasn’t long before Marco was doing much more than filling up his lunchbox. Starting to hang-glide at just 14 years, he quickly realised a natural talent. By 16 years he was competing internationally, with his first overseas trip to Bogotá, Colombia, Pablo Escobar’s turf. Marco won and flew home with a gold trophy in his hands and white snow in his pants.
Beto told me, ‘Marco, take this.’ So I arrive back in Brazil with seven hang-gliding pilots, a trophy and 100 grams of cocaine in my underwear. Nobody checked anything.
– Marco
To Marco it was the perfect set-up; trafficking drugs gave him the means to fly, and flying gave him the means to traffic. It catapulted him into a playboy lifestyle. On his second overseas trip to America, at 17, his career of commercial trafficking began.
Believe me, when I go to California there is [a man like] Pablo Escobar – a boss, selling drugs around Brazil, around the world – he came to me and says, ‘Marco, now listen to me. You go to America. I have many friends in America, international, so you can make more money.’ I take 3 kilos the first time, came through easy. There is another Pablo Escobar . . . came to my hang-glider.
I compete everywhere in the world and always I bring narcoba [drugs]. I take cocaine to America, to Italy, to Spain, to Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, everywhere. I’m a Brazilian champion, so when I come, they check but they don’t really check.
– Marco
The trafficking gave Marco his own cash for the first time. It gave him freedom to fly, and he would often soar in the skies above Rio, sometimes 3000 feet up – so high that the arms of the famous statue of Christ would fade out, then disappear. Sometimes he’d circle with 10 or 20 others, flying close for a chat, before swooping through the sky like a god – with adrenalin in his veins and peace in his heart. Often, to enhance the bliss and awe, he’d smoke a joint before launching off.
Ooh, it’s the best you know; a very good sensation if you smoke a joint to fly. Wow. I always smoke and fly, smoke and fly, you know, like meditation. I have flown many places in your country, you know. I fly everywhere over there: Adelaide, Stanwell Park, Byron Bay, the Gold Coast, I fly everywhere. I fly competition for 12 years, I always carry some cocaine.
– Marco
A near-fatal accident when he was 19 undoubtedly instilled a deep sense of invincibility. It was as if some angel was perched on his shoulder. He crashed his glider into a sheer Rio cliff. Miraculously, his glider clipped a single isolated branch and snagged on it, leaving him precariously dangling 700 metres up. A friend flew his glider close, calling, ‘Marco, you okay?’ There was no answer, but the friend couldn’t risk going closer and getting entangled. Two helicopters flew in to rescue him, but it was a sensitive and complex mission to ensure the wind from the rotating blades didn’t blow him off, into a death plunge.
I hang by one tree for four and a half hours. I need two helicopters to help me, because my position in the rock is negative [concave], so they cannot get me. After four hours, a helicopter pilot rescued me. It was like a miracle. I have no injury and they put in television, newspaper and radio.
Straight after his TV interviews, he borrowed a glider, went back up to the top of the cliff and took off again. Those who knew him weren’t surprised.
The accident undoubtedly swelled his sense of invincibility, which equipped him well for drug trafficking – never showing any fear – but also making him dangerously reckless.
Blithely, he flew all over the globe with his hang-glider loaded up with blow, even to notoriously tricky countries like Australia. Twice he flew to Sydney for competitions, making double his usual trafficking fee, at $10,000 a kilo – ‘Australian people love cocaine so much.’ He breezed into Sydney on his first trip with 5 kilos, as part of a 12-pilot Brazilian team. ‘There are 20 hang-gliders and only one has stuff – mine. But they don’t check at
all.’ On the second trip to Sydney, he took 7 kilos, tipping a friend to bring some coke too, telling him it was easy. Marco made it in, but his friend, and friend’s partners, didn’t.
When I came second time I call my other friend in Brazil, I say come over because it’s no problem.
I flew Rio-LA, LA-Honolulu, Honolulu-Sydney. My friend came the other way; he flew Rio, Argentina, Auckland, Sydney. But in Auckland, there was this very small dog, and they found the stuff in his hang-glider. They don’t arrest him because he was in transit, so they call the Australian police and say, ‘There are two Brazilian guys arriving with drugs in their hang-glider.’
Did they go to jail?
Yeah, my friend went to jail for five and a half years in Sydney.
– Marco
The court was told that 20 packets of cocaine weighing more than 2.6 kilos were brought into Australia from South America compressed inside the struts of the dismantled hang-glider . . . In his defence Sonino, a Brazilian hang-gliding champion, said he had come to Australia for a world hang-gliding championship in January.
– Sydney Morning Herald, 13 November 1987
Marco was undeterred by his friends’ bad luck. Trafficking was his game; he was brazen, confident and loved it. But he had a penchant for tempting fate. On his way out of Sydney loaded up with drug money, he risked a kamikaze-style joke, crazily baiting an immigration officer. He pulled out a $10,000 wad, waving the notes in the official’s face, taunting, ‘You are crazy, man, I want to stay here for two, three months, I have $10,000 to spend, all this money here, but you only give me a month visa.’
I was joking with the guy. I’m always joking you know, that’s my biggest problem. Always joking. The guy let me go inside the plane, the engine was already on . . . and then the door opens again, two officers come and look . . . then they say, ‘That’s him,’ then, ‘You follow us, let’s go.’ I follow them to a small room, I take in my backpack, the other US$28,000 I had inside my professional book [containing photos and his CV]. He asked me, ‘You have more money?’ I say, ‘I have.’
– Marco
Marco had US$38,000, but no Australian dollars. On the advice of his Sydney buyer, he’d spent days traipsing around Kings Cross, carrying plastic shopping bags stuffed with Aussie dollars to change at banks and money changers. So legally, the cash didn’t belong to Australia. It worked.
After 45 minutes, they ask many things, you know, and I start joking, joking, joking. I say to the officer, ‘You can say the money is from drugs, you can say whatever you want, but this money belongs to America and not to you, man.’ I say, ‘Man, you have to kill me to take my money. You have to shoot me. If you want to take my money, I make a big problem here . . . I call my embassy. This money don’t belong to you.’ It’s already 45 minutes, people waiting in the flight. I say, ‘What do you want?’ And the officer says to me, ‘Next time I get you.’ And then I say to him, ‘Okay, I see you next time, bye-bye.’
– Marco
Aside from traversing the globe with his glider worth its weight in cocaine, Marco spent time instructing students and also flying ultra-gliders above Rio’s beaches with advertisements for companies like McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Pepsi. It wasn’t until his late twenties that he first flew to Bali after a close friend urged him to come. He was quickly lured by the lifestyle the tropical isle offered. The azure sparkling oceans and sunny days let him swim, surf, jet-ski, and hang-glide endlessly.
My life was 24 hours – morning surfing, afternoon flying. I love sport, I do sport all the time.
– Marco
Soon he was travelling between three homes, in Bali, Rio and Amsterdam, quickly getting a profile in Bali as ‘the man’, or the boss of top-grade dope, selling to rich expats, tourists and surfers. In Amsterdam he had an X-ray machine at home to check the drugs were invisible, before sending his horses to Bali and Brazil.
Marco was the best serving these kind of really rich people; the really high-class, rich people. These people like skunk, the good weed – it’s like drinking French champagne. The right level of people, the people who have a big house, these are the customers. No one is smoking Sumatran weed. Bad smell, bad taste. They wanna get the best.
– Andre
He was the guy to get weed from. Anybody who was anybody who wanted to buy weed would buy it from him. He had a monopoly. He rode around on a motorbike with a fluorescent yellow windbreaker with big block letters saying Lemon Juice. Guys say to him, ‘What are you doing, man, why don’t you just go to the cops and get the handcuffs on now?’ Everyone knew Lemon Juice was weed. The cops I’m sure knew too. And he’s like, it’s just advertising it, you know.
– Gabriel, American surfer
Marco was the pioneer of the Lemon Juice dope runs, also introducing his inspired idea of using paragliders to carry dope. It had changed the game, by giving horses the ability to carry up to 12 kilos in one run. Many of the big dealers, like Rafael and Dimitrius, had started out in the business as Marco’s horses, and most of his friends were doing runs, even if it was just a little bit in their shoes.
Marco’s horses were often educated, middle-class, wealthy and even included one of Brazil’s top male models, working for Armani and Gucci, flying between South America, Europe and Bali. With his hot looks and fame, he breezed with only scant checks through customs, easily trafficking kilos of dope. He was a playboy who’d had trysts with stars like Madonna and Princess Stephanie of Monaco, and had once worked with Cindy Crawford, impressing the guys when he sat chatting with her one night in a Bali bar.
He took big amounts, 3 kilos, 6 kilos. All my good friends bring Lemon Juice to Bali. No one touched him because he was famous.
– Marco
He was one of the most beautiful guys I’ve met in my life. The motherfucker was beautiful. He’s the best friend of Curumim. Curumim liked to hang out with him because he was one of the most famous faces in the world at that time. All the girls kill themselves to fuck him. I was jealous, because every girl wants him. He caught all the rich bitches; even the Princess of Monaco, he fuck Madonna, he was the man.
– Rafael
Marco paid his horses around $2000 a kilo to traffic, still making a good profit after deducting hotel and flight costs. He bought a kilo of dope in Amsterdam for $3000 and in Bali sold it for $500 per 25 grams, adding up to $20,000 per kilo.
Most of the guys in Bali start this business working for Marco. Marco was the first one, and almost all the guys start carrying drugs for Marco.
– Andre
Marco was living the high life, doing a chef course in Lausanne, Switzerland – ‘I make good food, believe me’ – snowboarding in the Austrian Alps, and ‘snowboarding’ in Bali; another Marco-coined expression that caught on as a euphemism for using cocaine. He shouted friends trips on live-abroad surfboats, and once paid for Rafael to take a trip to Sydney with him. He was always fun, chatting to everyone in a plane or bar, sniffing coke in the plane toilets, shouting rounds of drinks, breaking into Gloria Gaynor’s ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’. The air was always electric around Marco.
He was always pushing the boundaries, tempting fate. Hang-gliding in Sydney with Rafael, he’d insist on launching from forbidden spots, and end up being chased by police. He’d also always travel with drugs for personal use, once nearly getting busted. ‘Inside I had 100 grams of cocaine, 30 grams of Lemon Juice, but this time I make small eggs, I put in my ass.’
Arriving at Sydney Airport with Rafael, Marco was collecting his luggage from the carousel when a little dog started sniffing his backside. It became a running joke among the dealers that he’d passed wind as he picked up his bags. Again, he got away with it.
He was always sniffing inside the aeroplane. All the time he travel, he put something in the ass just for himself, it’s crazy.
– Andre
His life was a blast – he was living his dream, until the day he crashed a glider in Bali and died. For years he’d been making disparaging jokes abo
ut paragliders using ‘plastic bags’, believing it was a lesser sport than hang-gliding. But one afternoon, untypically flying a ‘plastic bag’, he lost control and crashed hundreds of metres to earth.
Lying there unconscious, with blood pouring out of his nose and mouth, it looked hopeless. He’d broken his femur, hip and ankle and split his intestines. ‘When the doctor in Denpasar come to see me, he says I’m already dead.’ But his long-time loyal friend Gui, the guy who’d called out to him on his first crash into the cliff all those years earlier, wasn’t giving up without a fight.
Gui organised a plane to take him to Singapore, where he’d get better medical care – in Bali they were already talking about amputating his foot. While waiting for the plane, Marco, who’d lost 3 litres of blood, had a transfusion from a friend with a matching blood type. It took 24 hours to organise the flight, as the pilot insisted on cash upfront. Once he had it, they took off.
Flying over Jakarta, Marco had a heart attack and died, but was resuscitated. With the plane’s oxygen then depleted, Gui told the pilot to go down. The plane made a pit stop in Jakarta to fill up on oxygen. Marco was critical, slipping in and out of consciousness. When he finally made it to Singapore General Hospital, he was in bad shape and looked unlikely to make it.
This is the most emotional story ever. When I have the accident, I die. Marco survives again. Oh, you don’t believe, you don’t believe . . . My heart stopped, back again, first time. Second time, inside a flight, third time in Jakarta. I have three heart attacks. You don’t believe . . .
In Singapore I’d been in a coma for one month, the doctor says, ‘Marco is already dead’, they bring the priest, my mother came, he say, ‘Marco is already dead.’ And then he make like a prayer, ‘Maria, Marco bye-bye’, and then the priest says to my mother, ‘You have to pay $100.’ My mother gives money to the priest. The priest goes away . . . after five minutes I open my eyes, ‘Mamma mamma.’ Then my mother tried to find the priest but he already escaped.
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