Julian Crowley
From being born in a village in Columbia with no electricity, Pablo Escobar worked his way up to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world.
At the peak of their operations, he and his associates in the Medellín cartel smuggled around 15 tons of cocaine every single day, and protected their shipments by offering snooping officials “lead or silver” — lead for bullets or silver for a bribe.
In 1989, Forbes magazine estimated that he was the world’s seventh-richest man, with assets of close to $25 billion, and control of 80% of the global cocaine market.
Despite being a ruthless, murderous drug lord, Escobar was also a compassionate family man (he once reportedly burned $1 million in cash to keep his daughter warm while on the run) but that doesn’t make his illegal exploits any less ominous.
