At the height of his power, Pablo Escobar was estimated to be worth around $30 billion in today’s money. That number is very difficult to visualize however, and the goal of this video is to explore just how completely absurd and unreal making $22 billion a year selling cocaine really is.
This video was done in a collaboration with the Court of Source. Check out his great video here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngYhp…
Court of Source Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIdc…
Music by Ross Bugden:
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (December 1, 1949 – December 2, 1993) was a Colombian drug lord and trafficker. His cartel, at the height of his career, supplied an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States.[2][3] Often called “The King of Cocaine”, he was the wealthiest criminal in history, with an estimated known net worth of US $30 billion by the early 1990s.[4] He was also one of the 10 richest men in the world at his prime and lived in his self-built Hacienda Nápoles.[5]
Escobar was born in Rionegro, Colombia and grew up in nearby Medellín. After briefly studying at Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellín, he left without a degree and began to engage in criminal activity that involved selling contraband cigarettes along with fake lottery tickets, and grand theft auto. In the 1970s he began to work for various contraband smugglers often kidnapping and holding people of interest for ransom. In 1975 Escobar began distributing powder cocaine himself and began the first smuggling routes into the United States. His infiltration to the drug market of the U.S. expanded exponentially due to the rising demand for cocaine, and by the 1980s it was estimated that 70 to 80 tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the U.S. on a monthly basis. His drug network was commonly known as the “Medellín Cartel” and often competed with rival cartels domestically and abroad resulting in high-rate massacres and the deaths of police officers, judges, locals and prominent politicians.
