Pablo Escobar buried gold and wads of cash from $50billion drug fortune in secret locations
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In children’s stories treasure is usually buried on desert islands.
But there is more gold and cold hard cash buried in Colombia that Long John Silver could ever have imagined.
Infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar hid millions – perhaps even billions – of his incredible fortune across Colombia before he was killed in a shoot out with soldiers in December 1993.
There is no map leading to his buried treasure.
Escobar shot the henchmen who hid his loot in order to keep the underground stashes secret.
Most of the money has never been found.
(Image: AFP)
(Image: AFP)
(Image: AFP)
Now two former CIA agents are on a mission to find Escobar’s missing millions.
The hunt has taken Doug Laux and Ben Smith to the scariest neighbourhoods in Colombia and brought them face to face with some of Escobar’s most dangerous gangsters and assassins.
At the peak of his empire Escobar made a staggering £45million every day and bought huge country estates, planes, and priceless dinosaur fossils for his children to climb on.
Even so, the money kept coming in faster than he could spend it.
The Colombian banks refused to touch his dirty cash, so he stashed some in Swiss accounts.
That money is now lost for good as only Escobar knew the account numbers. He hid far more, shrink-wrapping it in huge stacks and burying it in plastic barrels or metal boxes along with thousands of gold bars, wherever he thought it would be safe.
Soon a fifth of all $100 bills in existence were buried in Colombia.
Escobar’s brother Roberto, 71, was an accountant for the gang and served 12 years for criminal conspiracy before being released in 2004.
He said: “Pablo was earning so much that each year we’d write off ten per cent of the money because rats would eat it in storage or it would be damaged by water or lost.”
Escobar was behind 80 per cent of all cocaine smuggled into the US during the hedonistic 1980s.
He had to buy a bigger plane to carry all the money he made and was even inspired by James Bond to build an fleet of submarines to smuggle the powder.
(Image: AFP)
In turn his rapid rise to power, his violent reign of terror, and his luxurious lifestyle inspired another Hollywood hit, the classic Al Pacino gangster film Scarface, and the popular Netflix series Narcos.
By the time he died, aged 44, Forbes Magazine listed him as the seventh richest man in the world.
Roberto said: “We had so much money we would spend £2,000 on rubber bands, just to hold the rest together. We’d holiday in Las Vegas and have dinner with Frank Sinatra on petty cash.”
Escobar built a new neighbourhood, Barrio Escobar, from scratch in Colombia’s second city Medellin, with 1,000 homes for families who previously lived in a slum known as The Garbage Dump.
It earned him the nickname Robin Hood for sharing his fortune with the poor. Crucially it also gave him a fortress in the heart of the city where he could hide drugs, guns, and money because the residents were so grateful they became his personal army of soldiers and spies.
He also built three private zoos filled with elephants, giraffes, and hippopotamuses, including one at his extravagant Hacienda Napoles ranch deep in the jungle.
After his death the hippos were set free. Around 30 now roam wild, terrorising children and fishermen.
Escobar’s son Juan Pablo, 40, said: “It was like living in Disneyland. Giraffes, elephants, motorcylces, a lot of things to do and a lot of money to spend.”
(Image: AFP)
(Image: LatinContent Editorial)
Escobar’s is rumoured to have buried much of his money near his many homes dotted across Colombia, Mexico, and Florida.
Sceptics dismiss the stories as a modern day El Dorado that have lured rival treasure hunters into an Indiana Jones style race to find the lost loot.
One team of treasure hunters was led by Scots Guard John Miller, who masterminded the kidnapping of Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 1981.
He took six SAS veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan to Colombia in 2009 in search of the treasure. But those close to the drug lord insist the treasure really does exist.
Steve Murphy, one of the drug agents from the DEA who helped find Escobar for the US government before the crime lord was shot dead on a rooftop in Medellin, said: “It’s not a legend. “We know for a fact that Escobar and his sicarios – or hitmen – did shrink wrap money and bury it or hide it in caves. Then he would kill them. That way nobody knew where the money was buried.”
Colombian newspaper El Espectator even has photographs of some of the recovered treasure, including £4million dug up in three plastic cans in November 1989.
The following year £25million was discovered along with 150kg of gold bars.
In 2009 another £5million was found in the jungle where Escobar founded a series of cocaine factories and £10million was found hidden at the Hacienda Napoles ranch.
Two years ago there were even reports a farmer named Jose Mariena Cartolos, 65, found £450million buried in hundreds of barrels in a field he was digging to start a palm olive plantation.
So far the Colombian government has only recovered £75million of the missing money.
(Image: Reuters)
(Image: AFP)
(Image: Reuters)
More than 10 times that amount could still be buried, waiting to be found. Former CIA agent Doug Laux, who filmed the latest treasure hunt for the new Discovery series Finding Escobar’s Millions, said: “The evidence has been dug up – plastic barrels full of cash, gold bullion, jewels and guns. It’s pure bling bling. The Colombian cartels invented that.
“That is just a fraction of Pablo’s billions. He couldn’t have all that cash just lying around, so he had to bury it in safe houses and the properties of people he trusted.”
Hunting for the treasure is a risky business. A location scout was shout dead in Mexico while looking for a suitable places to film Narcos in September, prompting Roberto Escobar to warn Netflix not to film in Mexico or Colombia, or give staff bodyguards.
Doug, who once infiltrated the Taliban to expose the supply chain for their IED roadside bombs, and his partner Ben ventured into even more dangerous territory. They used state of the art technology including bomb hunting drones that take such detailed aerial pictures they can spot the slightest footprint on the ground, and scanners that can “see” through walls and floors.
They also used their CIA skills and contacts to arrange meetings with Escobar’s closest allies and unearth their secrets.
That included Escobar’s sister Luz Maria, 62, who has spent decades trying to atone for her brother’s crimes, including leaving letters on the graves of his victims.
Posing as documentary film makers they met several of his deadliest surviving lieutenants, including hitman ‘Popeye’ Vasquez, who ordered the murder of 3,000 politicians, journalists, and rival gangsters, and drug runner Juan Esteban, ‘the Scorpion’ who now runs Barrio Escobar and revealed there was “crazy” amounts of money hidden in empty houses and buried across his turf.
Doug said: “Looking for Pablo Escobar’s money in Colombia, you are kicking a hornet’s nest as hard as you can. The danger is extraordinary, there is every chance you will get killed.
“Men like Juan have probably been looking for this treasure for 30 years, but if there are more stashes and more money to be found, I want to be the one who finds it.”
Finding Escobar’s Millions is on the Discovery Channel on Tuesdays at 10pm.