[SPEAKER_04]: episode 7, where I sit down with executive producer Evan Goldstein and discuss all the incredible unbelievable TJ Dominguez stories that ended up on the cutting room floor.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you listen to my other podcast Queen of the Con, then you know who Evan Goldstein is.
[SPEAKER_04]: Last time you heard from Evan, we were running from the cops after trespassing onto shoplifting queen Michelle Max gigantic
[SPEAKER_04]: I hear the cops.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you think we should go?
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you think they called him for us?
[SPEAKER_04]: We're running.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because you heard the silence, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, let's roll.
[SPEAKER_04]: You thought you were getting a rest of that day.
[SPEAKER_05]: I thought that's not gonna be county lockup call my wife.
[SPEAKER_04]: I love the fear, the fear in your eyes.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think we both had fear in our eyes.
[SPEAKER_04]: I did, but mine was mixed with excitement like this.
[SPEAKER_04]: So be cool with podcasts.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's gonna rest.
[SPEAKER_05]: I know you were getting it at the time.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're like half laughing.
[SPEAKER_05]: What are they gonna do?
[SPEAKER_05]: You trust past on this shoplifting queen's mission?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: And with men what?
[SPEAKER_05]: I know we did look very suspicious though and retrospect wearing like,
[SPEAKER_05]: Disguises, I don't think it's structure.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think we blended in and we look like city inspectors We had the hard and yeah, but I'm struck at us clearly.
[SPEAKER_05]: We're not so if cops came right how do we explain that?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like why are you wearing this?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just like this is America.
[SPEAKER_05]: I can wear whatever I want
[SPEAKER_05]: Everything you're going to be friends with, Pablo Escobar's main cocaine smuggler?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, but here's the thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even think of him as a cocaine smuggler.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's weird.
[SPEAKER_04]: To me, he's the victim of a con who fought back and got his money back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, to me, he's a freaking hero.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, like, who's done that?
[SPEAKER_04]: No one.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got con.
[SPEAKER_04]: Never got my money back.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've talked to hundreds of victims of cons.
[SPEAKER_04]: They never get their money back.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, that's the most amazing thing for me listening to everything that he was talking about and all the stories and kind of how it worked, it's just how detail oriented he is.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's oil tycoons and we want to show you, you know, that there's a certain kind of theatricality to everything.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a certain flair for the dramatic.
[SPEAKER_05]: You just get the sense that he could kind of do anything.
[SPEAKER_05]: He could just figure it out, no matter what it is.
[SPEAKER_05]: He should be the new dosackies most interesting man in the world.
[SPEAKER_05]: He really should.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, are you listening dosackies?
[SPEAKER_05]: He's great.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm TJ Jimingos.
[SPEAKER_05]: I spoke for Pablo Escopar.
[SPEAKER_05]: I had 30 Lamborghinis, but if you want a cool crisp
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the interesting perspectives T.J. brings to this table is he knew Pablo Escobar like knew him personally like hung out with him a bunch of times and crazy.
[SPEAKER_04]: From what he says, he's not how you think a murderous drug lord would be.
[SPEAKER_04]: What kind of guy was Pablo Escobar?
[SPEAKER_03]: Really a family guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you could say that, it's just fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's it to that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Really really.
[SPEAKER_03]: He really was.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was a very simple guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: They didn't wear an on-goal chains.
[SPEAKER_03]: They didn't wear a Rolex.
[SPEAKER_03]: Blue jeans, polo.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just regular loafers, Tennis.
[SPEAKER_03]: Never.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you ever met him, you would not.
[SPEAKER_03]: believe that that's Pablo Escobar.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was very very well protected and loved in Medellin.
[SPEAKER_03]: Every night he'd walk around without the body guards and sit down there and pass out money.
[SPEAKER_04]: This totally tracks with what I know of Pablo Escobar.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was like a saint in Colombia and Medellin.
[SPEAKER_04]: He paid for people's surgeries.
[SPEAKER_04]: He paid for kids education.
[SPEAKER_04]: He bought them gifts.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was like, he was like mother Teresa in male form.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was so kind and generous.
[SPEAKER_04]: Everybody loved him.
[SPEAKER_04]: They didn't care that he was this notorious drug lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like he could walk around without security guards.
[SPEAKER_04]: No one there was trying to kill him.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's like cocaine Robinhood.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like just, you know, cell, cell cocaine to the rich
[SPEAKER_05]: You could very easily say that it was a lot safer, probably doing cocaine in the 80s and it is now with all the fentanyl, you know, the worry for kids now.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's like you can experiment and just die, die.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just a pinhead size of fentanyl can kill anyone.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean those were the good old days, but what was not so good about those days, especially if you're flying, there is no GPS.
[SPEAKER_04]: You've got to rely on your papers.
[SPEAKER_04]: You've got to look out the plane window, the cockpit window, cockpit windshield.
[SPEAKER_04]: and decide how you're going to get to where you're going and just buy what it looks like in the clouds and whatever.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's just by visuals.
[SPEAKER_04]: So how TJ managed to stick the landing every time in Columbia, that runway, and I have a picture of this on kokanear.com.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you click gallery, there's a picture of the secret runway in Pablo Escobar's secret layer.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like surrounded by a tree, like you can barely see it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: How he landed a plane each and every time on that runway is just a miracle without dying so many pilots across trying to do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's no beacon back in those days.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no GPS back in those days.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, basically flying by the sheet of your pants, I've landed the airplane 10 times with bullet holes all over it.
[SPEAKER_03]: and I'm going to go and do it again tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fear is not part of my chemistry.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're all going to die one day.
[SPEAKER_03]: When we're flying in Columbia in the jungle, there's a patchy helicopter that would be donated from the United States to the government of Columbia, the fight the war and drug.
[SPEAKER_03]: The war on drugs was a hell of a war that was basically under the radar, the people lost their lives and that stuff didn't make the newspapers because we had it coming.
[SPEAKER_03]: We were bad people, that's the way they thought of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So here we are, because we're bogies.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're in a foreign country and we have military looking for you can't fly high so you got a fly under the radar, under 500 feet.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we are on the dead, we're on the treetop level, we're flying into the jungle, different from a lot of other people that smuggled, we were flying two hours into the country of Colombia.
[SPEAKER_03]: We weren't picking up on the shore.
[SPEAKER_03]: So here we are going through the jungles at 500 feet or low or lower.
[SPEAKER_03]: to try to stay away from the visual of helicopters, military, and at that point you're everybody's enemy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Look, the authorities want to arrest you.
[SPEAKER_03]: The bad guys, they want to bring you down.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've landed the airplane many, many times with bullet holes in the airplane where the bullets hit the the the duffel bags.
[SPEAKER_03]: We put 20, 30 depending on the packaging inside a military duffel bag.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well that's what stopped the bullet continuing to go through the airplane.
[SPEAKER_03]: And even just finding that landing strip is next to impossible.
[SPEAKER_03]: Next to impossible.
[SPEAKER_03]: What we would have to do is we would land in the beginning of going penetrating the airspace of Colombia.
[SPEAKER_03]: We would land and pick up a native local pilot that would fly by the seat of our pants.
[SPEAKER_03]: One incident on the way down there, the ceiling was low, the clouds were heavy, and we couldn't find the landing strip.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, uh, I remember talking on the radio.
[SPEAKER_03]: Light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them up, light them
[SPEAKER_03]: So I said like like something so they lit some tires we see the black smoke coming up and then we followed the black smoke down We make up the like we landed the airplane after that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I said this shit's never gonna happen to me again So I went to my electronic guy my what I used to call after the James mom movie a cute and I said Q man look what I have we don't died out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know we're running out of fuel
[SPEAKER_03]: and they're telling us, you know, you know, we hear you, we know you're here, but we can't land and can't find a lady group.
[SPEAKER_03]: How can I correct that?
[SPEAKER_03]: And he said to me, simple, we'll just make an airport out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we mean simple, how do we, how are we going to get an airport out there?
[SPEAKER_03]: So we put a piece of equipment that would send a signal that my airplane would follow.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is basically how airplanes and airports work.
[SPEAKER_03]: You follow a directional signal.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what we would do is right before we left, I radioed down to Columbia.
[SPEAKER_03]: They cranked up the electric plane.
[SPEAKER_03]: They turned on the transmitter.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in my airplane, we'd hone in on that signal and follow that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now we go sleep.
[SPEAKER_03]: The airplane's going to be on automatic pilot following that signal and come right down to that strip.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's how we corrected that problem.
[SPEAKER_05]: The thing that fascinates me is just he's a problem solver, you know, it's, you could put him in anything and he'll just figure it out.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think people forget a plain load of cocaine is so valuable.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't realize how much it went for on the street.
[SPEAKER_04]: Each plain load of cocaine.
[SPEAKER_04]: was worth 30 million dollars wholesale.
[SPEAKER_04]: In the 1980s, cocaine sold for as much as $600 a gram.
[SPEAKER_04]: And do you know how many grams are in a ton in a plain load?
[SPEAKER_04]: 900,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are 900,000 grams in a plain load.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why Pablo Escobar is paying him five million dollars a trip.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it's worth like 540 million on the street.
[SPEAKER_04]: So five millions like nothing.
[SPEAKER_04]: He should have paid him 10 million dollars a trip.
[SPEAKER_04]: whether it's cocaine or anything else.
[SPEAKER_04]: That much weight of anything in a plane is not easy to deal with.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just just the flight like aerodynamics alone.
[SPEAKER_04]: And even put it in taking it out.
[SPEAKER_04]: You need manpower.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't forget when I'm doing whether I'm doing marijuana or I'm doing cocaine, we're talking about a long ton with just 2,000, 20 and 20 pounds.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a lot of weight.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't care what you call it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It'd be cabbages.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's still a lot of weight.
[SPEAKER_03]: You need manpower to offload that off the airplane.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you're sitting there for eight or nine hours in a small cockpit, you know, that's how long it takes to go deep into Columbia and back to the Bahamas.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you're all clammed up, you're all like, you know, folded.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you just can't jump back there like a deer and start grabbing these duffel bags.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are army duffel bags that we use with 30, 20 depending on the packaging and the cocaine.
[SPEAKER_03]: and flipple out because they're like 80 pounds, you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: So you just can't do that, so you need a crew to offload the airplane.
[SPEAKER_03]: When we land, we land short, and when we land short, we cut one engine, which is the site that has the door to the airplane.
[SPEAKER_03]: We cut that engine so the crew doesn't get chopped up by an engine.
[SPEAKER_03]: And now we have a perimeter, even though I'm paying for this, I have a perimeter of machine guns around me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's 30 million reasons why I'm telling you that I could be robbed.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if I'm robbed, I'm dead.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't have 30 million dollars to pay Pablo for something that I can't explain.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, because you have to explain what happened to that product.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I have a perimeter of machine guns around me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I have a pickup truck or a van that will pull up.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I have my other crew on the radios giving me signals to land.
[SPEAKER_03]: One light up front, one light in the back, we land in between the two lights.
[SPEAKER_03]: Cut one engine, keep one engine running because we need to move fast.
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't have to start the other engine.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_04]: The planes on the ground, they turned off one propeller so the guys can unload the coke and not get there.
[SPEAKER_04]: heads or arms chopped off by the prompt, but they leave the other propeller running.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Case they need to fly out of there quickly.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, just to get get at dodge.
[SPEAKER_05]: He's always trying to prepare for things, you know, fortune favors the prepared.
[SPEAKER_04]: True, but there are some things that you cannot prepare for.
[SPEAKER_00]: For beer forms, striking South Florida.
[SPEAKER_03]: The hardest thing we had to conquer was really the weather, because we got swells out that are eight-time feet or higher, you know, I lost people's lives, you know, guys that were my guys that I lost to weather, the weather, you know, speedbows hit the waves and crashing, loosening my guys, being eaten by sharks, loosening the load, so the weather was a factor.
[SPEAKER_03]: If the weather was good, we're coming into Miami, then what we would do is, if it was a sports fishing vessel, for example, I would bring in the boat ahead of time.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would then have the boat at the marina.
[SPEAKER_03]: The captain with the boat would have a first mate.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything fit the part, the white outfit, the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now that captain of the vessel didn't get his hands dirty.
[SPEAKER_03]: I had two mechanics flown in to take that boat apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: The floors came up, part of the engine came off.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then inside either the fuel or the water tank, there would be a cell in the cell will be protected by a barrier of either fuel or water.
[SPEAKER_03]: It'd be like a donut.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in that center, it would be 500 kilos or more of cocaine.
[SPEAKER_03]: So then when the mechanics put the boat back together again, then the cap that will come on board and bring the boat back as your return on a charter.
[SPEAKER_03]: and then we had the big fish, you know, the big multimillion that houses, he would dock the boat there, jump off the boat.
[SPEAKER_03]: He would leave, and then my crew of mechanics will come in, take the boat apart again, and it will be taken apart during the day, because at night time, you're stealing something.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: You see a bunch of guys taking a photo part at night.
[SPEAKER_04]: You think what is happening?
[SPEAKER_04]: They're breaking into my, my neighbor's boat.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So during daytime.
[SPEAKER_04]: So oh, they're just fixing a book.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: We bring in like a washing machine.
[SPEAKER_03]: I bring in some big coolers.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as we're replacing or refrigerator or washing machine, these are just
[SPEAKER_03]: The things that I use to store 50 kilos, 100 kilos, back and forth, back and forth, nothing's getting fixed.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything's just getting offloading to give you something to look at.
[SPEAKER_04]: The theater involved is just spectacular.
[SPEAKER_04]: So to the observer who doesn't know what you're doing, right in trying your eyes.
[SPEAKER_04]: It looks like you're swapping out refrigerator.
[SPEAKER_03]: Swapping right in front of your scene for these rich people's boats.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Working on the turbo, working on this in toolbox is big toolbox because you know the cocaine, you know tools in there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the washing machine's got cocaine.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, everything got cocaine.
[SPEAKER_04]: The refrigerator's got cocaine.
[SPEAKER_04]: The big toolbox is got cocaine.
[SPEAKER_03]: So fuck, okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was it.
[SPEAKER_03]: To give you a neat list of shit, brought back lobster, brought back a mighty mighty for you, grouper, to keep you happy here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just came back from a chart of the bomb, and here we want some groupers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow, thanks.
[SPEAKER_04]: And these are my neighbors.
[SPEAKER_04]: These are looking at the rivers that you're just keeping.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I bet.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and now again, these are not townhouses.
[SPEAKER_03]: These are multi million dollar houses.
[SPEAKER_03]: that you own?
[SPEAKER_03]: Chad, I own or I least, depending on the, okay, at the beginning, I'm buying them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then later on, I got a little wiser and realize it.
[SPEAKER_03]: If I lose this damn thing, I don't need to own any deletion on their corporation that has got nothing to do with me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Different name, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I came up with different, you know, I had a team of lawyers that worked on a lot of this stuff for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you call the houses, the windows, windows, openings.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why do you call the houses window?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because window is an opening.
[SPEAKER_03]: And all that is, it's just an opening to come in.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just an opening to come in.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's nothing that stays in that house.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is not a safe house.
[SPEAKER_03]: Somebody could call it a safe house.
[SPEAKER_03]: But when I'm coming in with a speedboat, enough I'm off loading now, when I come in with a speedboat or a sports fishing vessel, you have a sea wall.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's say I'm coming in with a speedboat into that house.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I come in the the the boat that's a shadow boat is going to the marina the loaded boats going to the house again Here's some here's a footnote that I just thought of back in the day and some coming into the house We're running for 54's at the beginning You know big speedboats in these boats have opening sauce system.
[SPEAKER_03]: They'll reberate every window in your house
[SPEAKER_03]: So I came up with exhaust system that went into the water that would open and redirect the exhaust into the water.
[SPEAKER_03]: So as I'm coming into the house, I'm coming into the house, so you heard what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I can actually come into the seawall with the agents running for that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was turning off easier to loud.
[SPEAKER_03]: So now as we come up against the seawall, I got a crew inside the house.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, four guys, three, four, five guys.
[SPEAKER_03]: Their job is to offload the boat.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I'm gonna climb off the boat.
[SPEAKER_03]: When I climb off the boat on rock, I'm shaking like a leap, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Good drilling and flow.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're here, but we're not here yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not over until it's over.
[SPEAKER_01]: Get it off the boat.
[SPEAKER_03]: Get it off the boat.
[SPEAKER_03]: boat, so I want some fresh legs.
[SPEAKER_03]: These guys climb off the boat and now they got to carry inside that house.
[SPEAKER_03]: A ton of cocaine.
[SPEAKER_03]: So now another captain jumps on the speedboat and he takes that speedboat away from that house.
[SPEAKER_03]: He'll take that speedboat to another marina, which I know the owner of the marina.
[SPEAKER_03]: The boat was sitting there in the morning and we'll be taking an operator trader and put it set away house for storage and to be gone over mechanically.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then the cocaine was sitting in that house that night.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reason why that night, I don't most of the night, until my movie, everything, during traffic.
[SPEAKER_03]: So then tomorrow morning,
[SPEAKER_03]: when the sun comes up and people are making their coffee and they're going to work.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's when we move our cocaine with a chase car behind it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It'll be either a van, or it'll be in big Lincoln town car with giant trunk.
[SPEAKER_03]: And what I would do to those cars because we're playing 200 kilos back there, 4,500 pounds, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Even if it's your brand new car is gonna drop the bumper.
[SPEAKER_03]: You've got to solve this problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: So here, you got to think like a cop, okay, I'm a cop, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm looking at a brand new car and I'm looking at one driver or two drivers in the front seat, but I'm looking at this tailgate that's dragging touching the floor.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna sit in the seat on myself, what the hell do they have in their trunk?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's making that car so heavy.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a new car, it's not like the shocks are shot.
[SPEAKER_03]: So being a car guy, I came up with the idea of putting air shocks into that car.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I took all the vehicles that we used to move the cocaine, brought them to my dealership.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nobody knew this in New York.
[SPEAKER_04]: Your Lamborghini dealership.
[SPEAKER_03]: My Lamborghini, why am I working on a tanker?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I happened to be a friend of mine, man.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm just doing a favor for a guy, crazy guy, I was to put air shocks and he's got them.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know why.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nobody wants me to do it, so I'm helping him out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, the whole perfect behind it was I put a hidden compressor air compressor in the engine compartment with hose is running into a little hidden dial.
[SPEAKER_03]: I take the glove compartment off the car inside and back of the glove compartment.
[SPEAKER_03]: There'd be a little button in a, uh,
[SPEAKER_03]: a level, a level to show left, you know, up and down.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this little level is basic, basic math, you know, doing two is four.
[SPEAKER_03]: This little water level, today they probably have an app for all this, but back I just said they didn't.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I got this little level sitting there and I got this little compressor.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we turn on the compressor,
[SPEAKER_03]: And what this compressor does is it sends air to the rear shot and it raises the rear.
[SPEAKER_03]: So now that I got 200 kilos, that's it for example, on the trunk of the car and the bumper is like off the floor.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you barely.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I turn on this compressor.
[SPEAKER_03]: I look at the little level.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when that little bubble's in between those two hatch marks, I'm good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now the car is sitting level.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I put my driver in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And now it's a car that blends in, and that happens during the daytime, nine to five.
[SPEAKER_04]: This never occurred to me that if you put hundreds of pounds of Coke or marijuana in the trunk of a car, it's going to weigh it down, yeah sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: But after hearing this from TJ, I noticed it now.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just saw yesterday this big car, I was a Lincoln.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the trunk was like, wait, like it was like, what's in that trunk?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, what's in the trunk?
[SPEAKER_05]: What's so heavy in the trunk?
[SPEAKER_04]: It made me wonder.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: They didn't have a compressor.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, now I'm gonna start looking for it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I noticed it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Once you point it out, it's like you can see.
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, maybe they weren't doing anything illegal.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe it was like bricks from a home deep open building.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they'll be anything home.
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe not.
[SPEAKER_04]: But, yeah, it definitely draws your attention if you're authorities, if you're law enforcement, if you're a cop looking for the unusual, if you're usual.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, why you riding so low in the back?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, maybe they're riding dirty.
[SPEAKER_04]: The other interesting thing TJ talks about is something I never even considered.
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought cocaine was cocaine, like a white powder.
[SPEAKER_04]: But,
[SPEAKER_04]: As he explains here, there's a lot of different types of Coke.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like chocolate, you got the dark chocolate, the white chocolate, the milk chocolate, the this chocolate, the one with peaches.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, different flavors, flavor the month.
[SPEAKER_05]: You get a little vanilla, you can get a mango, chile, chile lime, cocaing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because as the cocaine is shipped over here, it has different labels.
[SPEAKER_03]: people come up with their own names to tag the cocaine.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why you would ask me, do they do that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because they might have a different process for finishing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some might be with ether, some might be with gasoline, some might be with diesel, finer cocaine.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not that it's any better award.
[SPEAKER_03]: The appearance it's really where it's at, but they're all pure cocaine, 98 percent, 90, you know, it's going to burn pure.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, but it has different appearances.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, if I have a lab that I'm using ether, cost medically is very, pretty looking, it's pearlescent, it's a fish gale.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I don't want, I'm going to charge a little more money.
[SPEAKER_03]: If my clientele maybe is like, you know, the big movie stars or celebrities, and they don't want the yellow stuff that's kind of like, you know, gum.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm going to get money from mine.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm going to label my cocaine.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to call it some of the names that you see.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, there it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: FBI is one brand that we use, so be FBI will be DEA.
[SPEAKER_03]: It will be fully a one of the things out.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I'm just in part of it will tell me what brand to pick my coke from.
[SPEAKER_03]: He would say, pick your 350 pieces from DEA or FBI or FUDIA or from Lucky.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's another branded day, Lucky.
[SPEAKER_05]: I had no idea, Coke had brand names, but have you ever thought, what would you try to brand your Coke game?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'd call mine euphoria.
[SPEAKER_05]: Ooh, yeah, that sounds good, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Snow Bunny.
[SPEAKER_04]: leave it to the straight guy, snow bunny, sounds like a playboy centerfold.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what's interesting, TJ didn't do this alone, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: He had a team of people around him.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're only ever as strong as your weakest link.
[SPEAKER_04]: And in the end, it was Jack, who brought TJ down, the pilot who taught him how to fly and became a fixture in his organization, and then turned on him when he got arrested and served him up to the feds.
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, Jack was the weakest link in that case.
[SPEAKER_05]: It was his freedom.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, Jack was his freedom.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even know the godfather, but I'm gonna go along with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know it's a big movie and I tried to do that shit.
[SPEAKER_04]: It just boars me.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, well, I don't, I can't call you on news.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's his brother, Fredo, that sold them out and he gives them the kiss of death.
[SPEAKER_05]: I know it's you, Fredo.
[SPEAKER_02]: In nothing to me now.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the brother, you're not afraid.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't wanna know you or what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jack was his Fredo.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you've been watching the table.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like cocaine air.
[SPEAKER_04]: I couldn't have done it without you.
[SPEAKER_04]: You made it a lot better.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I could have done it without you, but a lot of the genius lines you've heard in cocaine air that I said were written by Evan Goldstein.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll give you credit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like in that, in episode two,
[SPEAKER_04]: the whole Star Wars stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was just starting with it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Star Wars is probably the movie theaters.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I moved on, but you're like, and his only Obi-Wan Kenobi and the drugs smuggling Jedi.
[SPEAKER_04]: And like you have all these brilliant lines.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I'm better because of you and this cocaine air is more interesting because of you.
[SPEAKER_04]: So thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just, you know, this guy is so fascinating to listen to it.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's so interesting and he's such a, he's such a born storyteller too.
[SPEAKER_05]: He's kind of how he has.
[SPEAKER_05]: How he kind of takes you through and kind of puts you there, you know, it's not just like telling you what happened.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's telling you how it feels, what he's thinking, what he's seeing, all that kind of stuff that, you know, it kind of puts you there and it helps you imagine like,
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh my god, this was absolutely insane.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, one of his main guys when he was, you know, on the rise and at the pinnacle of his cocaine career was this guy named Yeo, who, he describes what Yeo means and how he met him.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, he was a Cuban from the Bolton, the Mario Bolton.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was a, he was let go from Castro.
[SPEAKER_03]: He had been in Cuba for a murder.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, seven years he had been doing for a murder when Castro opened up the gates and said, go to the United States.
[SPEAKER_01]: For Fidel Castro, it was tantamount to an active genocide.
[SPEAKER_01]: With one fell swoop, he ridd Cuba of thousands and thousands of undesirable.
[SPEAKER_01]: The amplitude of his presence, he cleared the bounds off the streets of Havana.
[SPEAKER_01]: Murderers, thieves, pervers, prostitutes, the retarded crippled, the winos all were rounded up, sent to Mario Hybrid, and put a board-boats bound for Miami.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, you always that kind of guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hardcore would just assume shoot you as say hello to you.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I said to you, everyone's gonna want, man guy really pisses me off, I don't wanna like, I don't want the guy shot, yeah, you're okay, I'm just pan, I'm just saying, I don't like him, I didn't say I want you to shoot him.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I had to be a little careful with you regarding that, I don't want him to tell, oh, great deal, I took out your problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't say that at a problem, I just said I didn't like the guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was yeah, y'all, y'all means cocaine, by the way.
[SPEAKER_03]: in the slang world, you know, like they say Perico is another term that they that the Cubans used.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Perico is translated into parrot and you would sit and say, why parrot?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, simply because the joke back in those days was that if he did cocaine, you wouldn't stop talking.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you were like parrot.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's how the name parrot did the fine doing cocaine came about.
[SPEAKER_03]: His nickname was cocaine and he's helping you with your cocaine.
[SPEAKER_03]: Good with my cocaine.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, this was really kind of just a tip of the iceberg of all the stuff that got left on the cutting room floor, the stories, TJ told that I didn't have time to include in the main episode, so we're going to include them here.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not any less fascinating or interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: We just ran out of time.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I was trying to keep each episode a half an hour, which is the sweet spot according to research.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I didn't have time for them, but there are some incredible stories this man has lived an incredible life.
[SPEAKER_04]: Stay tuned next week for a whole other episode of TJ's life stories that ended up in the cutting room floor.
[SPEAKER_04]: Some are super fascinating like his prowess with the ladies.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right?
[SPEAKER_04]: He had so many women.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, man.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they kind of, it's not, again, I defend TJ, it doesn't seem to be his fault.
[SPEAKER_04]: They kind of threw themselves at him.
[SPEAKER_04]: Money power is specked, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: They calm, it's like, moths to a flame.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, money, money, money, money.
[SPEAKER_04]: To use some incredible photographs documenting TJ's life, go to CocaineAir.com.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you're enjoying CocaineAir, please hit that share button and text it to your friends and family right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you feel comfortable, leave us a five-star review.
[SPEAKER_04]: Reviews are really help other listeners find us.
[SPEAKER_04]: CocaineAir was created, written, and executed, produced by me, Jonathan Walton, for Jonathan Walton Media.
[SPEAKER_04]: executive producers, Evan Goldstein, and the inimitable T. J. Dominguez.
[SPEAKER_04]: Audio engineering by me Jonathan Walton.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sound design and editing for this episode was done by Mike Smith.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the cocaine air cover art is by Bobby Animation.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've got a lot of fascinating untold stories like cocaine air coming down the pike at Jonathan Walton Media, so subscribe and keep an air out.