He continues: ‘I was working in a marketing company in London, going to work every day in a suit and tie but I was already hiding a coke habit. I hated the 9-to-5 life, so one day I got talking to my dealer and he put me in touch with an old-fashioned London villain, who started giving me some work as a dealer after I convinced him I had some great contacts. I had some rich mates and they were soon buying coke off me in big quantities.’
Jez soon got into the ‘transport game’ as he calls it and began making regular trips down to Spain to pick up shipments of cocaine. ‘I’d pick up the coke in a Ford Transit van and glide past customs at Dover without a care in the world. If anything, it was all too easy and I got too cocky then bang! I got nicked and ended up serving five years in prison.’
But inside prison in the UK, Jez soon made friends with a bunch of hardened south London villains, who asked him if he wanted to join their firm when he was released. ‘They had some very big ideas about cutting out the middle-man and going straight to the Colombians. God, how many times have I heard that one, eh? It’s a lot easier said than done.’
Jez agreed to base himself in southern Spain, from where he dealt directly with two of the Colombian cartels. ‘At first it was all very civilised,’ explained Jez. ‘Then a shipment of coke worth about £500,000 went missing. The Colombians went ballistic and blamed us and we pointed the finger at them. Trouble is, we both didn’t trust each other, so it was always going to end in tears.’
Within days of the feud flaring up, one of Jez’s team of Brits was shot dead in the street outside his house in south London. ‘The Colombians were then given the £500,000 to try and end the row,’ explains Jez.
‘A few weeks later we switched to another Colombian supplier for obvious reasons but when the old crew of Colombians found out we’d dumped them, they were so angry they got me nicked by the Spanish police after I’d picked up a load of Charlie from a yacht anchored in a small port on the Costa del Sol, near Gibraltar.’
Two years in Málaga’s notorious Alhaurín prison followed. And, as ever, this provided Jez with ‘a load more useful contacts’.
He remembers: ‘This time I got in with a bunch of Colombians who had a “vacancy” on this island and that’s how I ended up here.’
He continues: ‘It couldn’t be better here. I simply organise the transit of the shipments of coke and completely keep out of the day-to-day stuff. Sure, I’d be in big shit if one of my shipments went missing but I get paid a massive handling fee and the Colombians are, crossed fingers, extremely happy with me. They never show up here because their presence would be flagged up immediately, as it is a very small place.
‘I’ve managed to buy this house, start the B&B business and live comfortably without making anyone round here too suspicious. If I acted like the rich white man up on the hill, and blinged myself up and drove a flashy motor I’d soon be in trouble. Either the police would come knocking to demand a big bribe or one of the local lads would try and force me off the island, so they could take over my job.’
Twice a month, Jez charters a small yacht and takes it out into the Caribbean and picks up a shipment of cocaine, which he then brings ashore on the island. ‘It’s usually kept in a safe house for about a week. Then I charter the same yacht and sail back out into the Caribbean where the shipment is transferred to another vessel. The Colombians are happy because they feel this is a failsafe system as the most important thing when trafficking coke is to keep it on the move. By switching from one boat then back to the island before going out to another vessel it is creating a very difficult trail to follow.’
Jez has been living on the island for eight years now and he is convinced that his system is so airtight he could continue doing it ‘for many, many years to come’.
‘No one here knows what I do,’ he insists. ‘They all see me as some eccentric middle-aged English bloke with a small legitimate business and maybe a hand-out or two from my rich family back in the UK. I am incredibly careful not to talk to anyone about what I do. Even my current girlfriend – a local girl – has no idea what I am up to. I don’t even share the coke that I am given when each shipment passes through.
‘The key to survival in this game is obviously not to trust anyone else. If any of the locals knew what I was up to, they’d come up here when I am holding a shipment, slice my head off and steal the produce. D’you realise that just one shipment of coke is worth a lifetime of income to the people who live here? They could live like kings if they got hold of it. I know I have to watch my back.’
Behind Jez’s bravado are the eyes of a nervous man.
As he admits: ‘Living life in the fast lane with manic smugglers and trigger-happy Colombians is no laughing matter. I’m very lucky in a sense. There can’t be many people who do what I do and still keep their sanity, not to mention staying alive! Maybe one day a shipment will go missing and then the Colombians will come after me but I like to think I’ve served all the time I ever will serve and that this is the bit of luck I’ve been waiting all my life for.’
But ‘luck’ is something that few people who earn their living in the cocaine underworld can rely on. They prefer to keep their eyes peeled and not trust anyone. These men have become true legends in the cocaine business …
CHAPTER 6
CHRIS
Chris is one of those legends. He’s an American-born light aircraft pilot from Florida who has flown hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of coke from special pick-up points in the Caribbean to the US mainland, usually in nondescript twin-engined Cessna aircraft. Chris refers to the murders, the close shaves and the network of gangs behind the smuggling rings and how he’s survived them all with remarkable casualness. He claims he’s never had a snort of coke in his life and has no intention of ever doing so. Chris also says he once ‘helped’ America’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in exchange for immunity from prosecution but they then cut him loose because of the US’s obsession with prioritising terrorism.
Chris vividly describes the remote landing strips he’s used in the past and how even in ‘honest’ America, crooked policemen, politicians and farmers play a vital role in making sure cocaine gets onto the streets of every town and city.
‘My favourite time to fly is just before dawn, when I can speed down the runway without headlights and then simply disappear into the sky,’ says Chris. ‘That’s the bit I really like. Soaring high above the deserted islands of the Caribbean in a single-engine aircraft. Everything feels free and relaxed up there,’ he continues, pointing to the clear blue sky above us. ‘No one can get me. I am in charge of my own destiny. I like that time the best.’
Chris’s ‘job’ flying shipments for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels is a ‘top level’ post way above the usual coke-connected sidelines of dealing, packaging and trafficking in trucks. Often he’d deliver cocaine to a distributor in Central Florida and then head to a small Caribbean island airstrip with sports bags stuffed with millions of dollars, always keeping a couple of six-inch stacks of cash for himself. ‘I’d hand over the cash to whoever and then take off for home. That was always the nicest, most relaxing flight of all.’ Within hours, Chris was back at his home in Florida, stacking the twenties and fifties into the safe at the back of his garage.
But it’s not always plain sailing for Chris by any means. He explains: ‘The Mexican and Colombian distributors in Florida were constantly trying to cut costs by hiring immigrant truckers to haul the coke north. It used to really piss me off. I’d have flown in from somewhere and find myself handing tens of millions’ worth of coke over to some illiterate driver. I lived in constant fear that one of them would strike a deal with the Feds, who constantly monitored the freeways throughout Florida for traffickers.’
But Chris always takes special measures to try and avoid any problems. He’s become an expert at covering his tracks wherever possible. ‘I usually stay in a rundown motel at least twenty miles from the airstrip. I also avoid people, pay cash for everything.
But if anybody asks, I usually say I’m delivering planes to rich folk.’
Ten years after President Reagan declared his ‘war on drugs’ in the mid-1980s, Chris got himself trained as a pilot after spotting a useful gap in the employment market. Initially, Chris went to a flying school in Central Florida for training in dealing with all the tricky weather conditions he knew he’d be facing. ‘I loved it the minute I got up there in skies. I just needed to find a lucrative way to make money from what I loved doing.’ He soon got to hear about the ‘cash business’, as he calls it.
‘At first I flew a bit of weed north from Florida to Connecticut. But it soon became clear that the big money only came with the white powder, so I switched allegiances. I knew full well that if I got arrested I’d get much longer jail time but, boy, the money was five times as much.’ Chris then took over some of the best coke routes from smoked-up Vietnam vets, who’d dominated the dope-on-planes business in the 1970s and 1980s.
During his ‘career’, Chris reckons he has piloted more than thirty different types of planes, and found himself in some pretty hairy situations. ‘Listen, over the years I been in this business, I’ve done some high-risk stuff like flying into northern Mexico, landing on ramshackle runways without any lights to guide me. Then there were flights through the Sierra Madre, where trigger-happy farmers galloped alongside my plane on horseback, shooting their pistols into the air. It sure is a wacky world out there.’
Chris denies being addicted to danger, but he definitely has a taste for the better things in life. ‘Look, I got a lifestyle to maintain here. That means taking a few risks. So what?’
Chris openly relishes the challenges of aerial smuggling and down the years has even devised ingenious ways to avoid detection: ‘Mostly it’s about flying as low as you dare to evade the radar, and then not worrying about where you put your wheels down. It’s all part of the job as far as I am concerned.’
Chris’s connections to the Mexican and Colombian cartels make him a highly trusted person within a very deadly environment. He says he’s seen one double-dealing villain shot dead in front of his very eyes after daring to steal a million dollars’ worth of coke from underneath the noses of the Colombians.
Chris flies anything up to 250 pounds of cocaine on most flights. He charges $400 per pound, which adds up to more than a $100,000 per trip, plus $5,000 expenses. Like all those involved in the cocaine game, Chris often worries that others will talk. But he admits it’s hard to resist the pull of yet another big payday. ‘I pride myself on my professionalism,’ says Chris. ‘This is my career and I don’t really want it all to end with me being put in prison.’
Chris is realistic enough to accept that for all the care he takes to avoid detection he’s been under close surveillance by the authorities and is fully aware that he’d be pressured to cooperate with the Feds if caught. ‘I know I’d have no choice but to refuse to disclose anything about the cartels because they would almost certainly retaliate against my family.’
Chris also realises that anything he’s told other traffickers is sure to be used against him by the Feds if they manage to ‘turn’ anyone in Chris’s ‘team’. He explains: ‘My biggest fear is that I’ll be sacrificed by an informant who knows only too well I won’t go after them in the same way that the cartels would.’
Chris was once arrested by the Feds, who wanted him to provide evidence against his cocaine bosses. ‘I strung them along for a while by feeding them with small bits of information which they thought was great but I knew would not help them prove anything against my people,’ he recalls. ‘Then they cut me loose without any explanation after the Twin Towers attack. It seemed they were told to drop all the less important drug investigations and prioritise terrorism. I understood why they did that but there was a period of time after that when I was very vulnerable. If any of my bosses had heard I’d even been talking to the Feds I would have been killed.’
Chris continues: ‘Luckily, it never slipped out and I just carried on flying as if nothing had happened but I still fear the day when someone hears that I was helping the Feds all those years ago.’
He knows only too well that if he was ever caught again, he’d also lose his house and his cash, as well as any aircraft registered in his name. ‘I’ll never make that mistake again. I’m gettin’ real close to the time when I can retire … I’ll miss the buzz but if I can get there without serving a prison sentence it will be the best result of all.’
But the Caribbean isn’t just a staging post in cocaine’s deadly journey around the globe. Its hot weather and golden beaches attract millions of tourists every year, and it’s perhaps not so surprising that cocaine dealers can make a huge annual ‘salary’ providing cocaine to some of the region’s rich, famous and wealthy visitors.
CHAPTER 7
TONY
Ex-public schoolboy Tony, originally from Hampshire, England, is proud of his job as a coke dealer on Barbados, even though he’d get at least ten years in prison if caught by the police. Tony’s lived in Barbados for more than twenty years. He says he prefers the island to his native England. He boasts how cocaine has provided him with a sizeable income since he arrived penniless in the Caribbean and spent the first three months sleeping on the floor of a friend’s apartment on the less fashionable east coast of the island.
‘I originally came here with aspirations to work in the hotel trade. Yawn yawn, eh?’ says Tony. ‘I soon realised there were more hotels than road signs here and decided I needed a more exciting career with better money. Cocaine dealing made perfect sense. There are a lot of rich and famous people here who need my services.
‘I first got into it when I did a temporary job as a hotel barman in a well-known upmarket resort. A few of my friends on the island did coke at the time and this rich customer asked me outright when I was serving at the bar if I could get him some. I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no but I got on the phone to my flatmate and he gave me a dealer’s number and within half an hour I’d made a tidy $100 profit out of the deal, which was more than I would have earned for two day’s work in that hotel.’
Tony goes on: ‘A few days later this same guy rang me again and said he wanted another eight ball [three and a third grams] that afternoon. I rang the same dealer and made another $100 and told my one and only customer that I was looking to expand my business and would appreciate any recommendations.
‘Well, I soon had a dozen of his friends on the phone to me putting in orders. I did a biggish deal with the dealer I knew but was very careful not to say I was dealing myself, as I knew that would piss him off.
‘What I really needed was to find a new supplier who would sell to me wholesale but I knew that the dealer I was using at that time was supplying top quality coke and that was why this guy and all his friends wanted my product.
‘I was lucky. I went back to the dealer and we agreed a bulk deal, which meant we both made a good mark-up. I knew I had to keep those early customers happy so they would spread the word.’
Tony’s next lucky break came when he got a call from the personal assistant of one of Hollywood’s most powerful movie executives, who happened to own a villa on the island. ‘This guy was A-List and his PA had heard about me from that first guy who originally bought off me in that hotel. His PA was completely paranoid about her boss being exposed, so I had to meet her in a local bar to pick up the cash for his order. Normally I don’t need cash in advance but she offered it so I agreed to a meeting to hand over the cash.
‘Well, I nearly fell off my chair when I looked inside a large envelope she passed me and realised it contained $20,000. This was serious stuff. So off I went, organised the coke and then met her back in the same bar and handed her back the same envelope with the coke inside it.’
Tony believes that part of his success in the early days was down to his posh English accent. ‘Back then people out here trusted an English voice more than they do today!’
Tony’s VIP movie mogul customer soon
began ordering $20,000 worth of coke from him every time he was on the island. ‘I was expected to drop everything whenever I got a call from his PA but for that sort of money I was more than happy!’
Over the following ten years, Tony reckons he ended up delivering half of his cocaine to that same movie producer. ‘I travelled all over the world with coke for that man. He was insatiable. I have no idea to this day whether he did all the coke himself or whether he shared it out among his friends. But then I never actually met him!’
That particular ‘cash cow’ came to a sudden and dramatic end when Tony’s VIP customer died after a drug binge. ‘Wow. That was a pretty tricky time because he was found dead in his bathroom from a cocaine and alcohol overdose. In the end the cause of death was covered up for the sake of his family. I’ve been asked a couple of times if I felt guilty about what happened to him, but I don’t see it as my fault. He made a decision. He was rich enough to hire a doctor to get him off the booze and coke if he’d really wanted to.’
Unperturbed, Tony continued to build on his upmarket Barbados contacts and says that during the peak holiday season over Christmas time, he has 200 different customers each week. ‘I make an average $500 from each one of them so the money is incredible and the ironic thing is that quite a few of those customers know that I dealt all the coke to that guy who died but it doesn’t seem to bother them in the slightest.’
Tony claims that among his best customers at that time of year are many of the journalists who swamp the islands writing stories about all the celebrities who go on holiday there every winter. ‘It’s a bun fight but I get my business from both “ends”, so to speak; the journalists and the celebs. It couldn’t be better.’
Today, Tony still has numerous rich and sometimes high-profile clients and is sometimes flown across continents with special consignments of cocaine for his wealthier customers, whom he first made contact with on Barbados. ‘They’re all professional people, who need a discreet dealer who isn’t interested in who they are. I never ask awkward questions and I make a point of not trying to be their friends if I deal with them direct, but usually it’s through their assistants. It’s much better that way for me and them.’
Cocaine Confidential Page 5