25 Insane Things You Didn’t Know About Pablo Escobar & Infographic
Pablo Escobar is the biggest drug lord the world has ever seen! His name is a synonym to Cocaine & Colombia and today we’ll be looking at several insane things you might know know about him!
With the release of the Netflix original series: Narcos we decided to revisit this iconic article and upgrade it with an amazing infographic containing the facts that stood out most to us.
Born December 1, 1949, in Antioquia, Colombia, young Pablo decided from an early age that he was destined for greatness telling people even as a child that someday he will become president of Colombia! In the beginning he was selling stolen tomb stones that he would sandblast to remove the engraving and later resell them.
He moved on to contraband with everything he could get his hands on up until one day when he realized the potential of using his smuggling routes to distribute cocaine.
The rest, perpetuated him into legend and we strongly recommend you guys checking out the drama series Narcos available on Netflix for more details on how he rose to power, how he grew it and at the end lost it.
It is hard to estimate how much money he made in total, but in 1989 the Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $30 billion, but hearing that everyone around Pablo started laughing because Forbes was not even close!
His son even contacted Forbes himself and said: “Forbes is lying! Forbes couldn’t have, can’t, and won’t ever have access to or review the accounting books from mobsters so they can calculate their alleged fortunes, not even close to the real figures (and not all mobsters keep accountability books, my father was one of those).”
At the end of the infographic you will find the original 25 facts list for extra details that you might like to read. Here are 15 things you didn’t know about drug lord Pablo Escobar!
We even took the time and made this awesome videos that you can share with your friends:
Now here are the 25 facts about Pablo Escobar we originally featured!
1. Pablo Escobar spent nearly $2,500 a month on rubber bands just to hold together his bricks of cash.
2. He used to hide his money in walls, basements, storage units and other places. Now imagine that if a house caught fire, he would lose $100 million in just a few minutes. Every year due to natural occurrences like floods, fires, rats and so on he would lose almost 1 Billion dollars. Rats only would eat almost half of that!
3. After being locked up only for a little while, he and his family were on the run, but it is not easy to cross the Colombian jungle, and his daughter was freezing. The only solution was to burn $2 million to keep him and his family warm during the night!
4. His biggest fear was extradition for him and his fellow narcos, so they offered to pay the entire Colombia’s nation debt, which was $10 billion at the time in order to call truce their differences. The state declined!
5. His drug empire was bigger that his own government. People referred to him as “Plato O Plomo”, which means “accept bribe, or face bullets”.
6. He was one of the main suspects of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
7. He bought a Learjet to bring his cash back to Colombia. It could carry almost $100 million per trip. In addition he bough an island on the way back so his jet could refuel. He later transformed the island into a paradise for him and his drug friends!
8. Escobar was responsible for 80% of the cocaine traffic worldwide. Almost all cocaine in the US was getting in from someone who was buying from him or from his own network. Same goes for Europe where he would sell to the highest bidder and let them take all the fire.
9. Despite his vicious ways to get the power he needed, he was seen as a modern Robin Hood among poor people. He built hospitals, houses, schools, churches and often gave away parts of his cash to the people.
10. When he was young, Pablo was a very ambitious kid; he told his friends that he wanted to become a millionaire by the age of 22. He even wanted to become the President of Colombia. He failed on his second wish, becoming only a congressman for a while until he had to quit due to political pressure.
11. He started his criminal career at an early age, by selling stolen tombstones which he sandblasted. He later started selling contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets.
12. He earned $100,000 as ransom by kidnapping a Medellin executive in his youth among other things!
13. Pablo Escobar was responsible for killing a presidential candidate, a justice minister, an attorney general, more than 1000 police officers and 200 judges.
14. Although Forbes tried to estimate his net worth, his son Juan Pablo Escobar once said: “Forbes is lying. Forbes couldn’t have, can’t, and won’t ever have access to or review the accounting books from mobsters so they can calculate their alleged fortunes, not even close to the real figures (and not all mobsters keep accountability books, my father was one of those).“
15. While he was on the run, it was difficult to get from a safe house to another, so he and his army of bodyguards used a public bus. Escobar was actually the bus driver.
16. Pablo Escobar once made an unbelievable public comment: “I’m a decent man who exports flowers“.
17. He liked to romanticize all the big criminals, so he even bought the Bonny & Clyde’s getaway car.
18. When Pablo Escobar and his wife first started dating, he was 24 and she was only 13 year old.
19. A great film that portraits perfectly the cruelty that Escobar was capable of is “Escobar: Paradise Lost“.
20. He liked to entertaine himself by pulling elaborate and cruel pranks. One time he asked one of his men to bring him a cup of coffee, and he put an Alka-Seltzer in his own mouth so he can foam. Then he accused his man of trying to poison him, while the other men tied him up and pointed a gun at his face for ten minutes. Hilarious!!
21. At his children birthday parties, he used to fill the Piñatas with cash instead of candy.
22. He purchased for him and his family 20 square kilometers of land, and turned it into an incredible recreation place that included even a zoo filled with exotic animals he bought from all around the world. He even spend 1 million to train some Himalayan Egrets to stay in one single tree.
23. One of his most ingenious methods of smuggling cocaine into U.S. was soaking jeans into liquid cocaine, being one of the first ones to ever distribute this way.
24. His son Juan Pablo Escobar wrote a book called “Pablo Escobar Sins of My Father“, in which he described him very well.
You can get the book here in English or the original version in Spanish.
25. Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993, and the United States described the incident as the largest man-hunt in history.
Thank you for having the patience to read our today’s article about 25 things you didn’t know about Pablo Escobar, and we hope you enjoyed it!
So, do you think that all that charity work that he has done in his life excuses all the crimes that he committed?
Read more about: 10 MOST FAMOUS GANGSTERS OF ALL TIME
