Drug Baron

A drug lord, drug baron, kingpin, or lord of drugs is a type of crime boss in charge of a drug trafficking network, organization, or enterprise.

Crime barons may be difficult to bring to justice: usually, they do not possess illegal goods. Rather, they are insulated from their drug trade by layers of underlings. Prosecutions of drug lords, therefore, result usually from carefully planned infiltrations into their networks, often using informants from within the organizations.

When a group of independent drug lords collude with each other, in order to improve their profits and dominate the illegal drug trade, they form an organization called a drug cartel.

Organizational role

Since the 1970s, research on organized crime leadership (and, by extension, drug lords) has evolved. Where once studies emphasised the importance of the leader's human capital (e.g. individual traits), it has now developed to focus upon the leader's social capital (e.g. information and resource brokers, social status, access to information).

List of well-known drug lords

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo

Known as "El Padrino" (The Godfather) and "El Jefe de Jefes" (The boss of Bosses) was born in 1946, and is the founder and former leader of the Guadalajara Cartel, the first Mexican Cartel ever established. He had strong ties with the Cali Cartel and Escobar's Medellin Cartel as he distributed drugs for them. He controlled almost all of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border in 1970s and the 80s. Until the end of the 1980s, Guadalajara Cartel headed by Félix Gallardo was one of the most powerful cartels in the world. He had a huge political involvement and bribed political authorities to protect himself and his business. After his capture in 1989 for the alleged murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, Félix and allegedly the Mexican Government decided to divide up the trade he controlled as it would be more efficient and less likely to be brought down by law enforcement.

Félix Gallardo instructed his lawyer to convene the nation's top drug narcos in 1989 at a house in the resort of Acapulco where he designated the plazas (turfs) or territories. The Tijuana route would go to his nephews, the Arellano Felix brothers. The Ciudad Juárez route would go to the Carrillo Fuentes family and to Rafael Aguilar Guajardo. Miguel Caro Quintero would run the Sonora corridor. Joaquín Guzmán Loera and Héctor Luis Palma Salazar were left the Pacific coast operations, with Ismael Zambada García joining them soon after and thus becoming the Sinaloa Cartel, who was not yet a party to the 1989 pact. Félix Gallardo still planned to oversee national operations and remained one of Mexico's major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred in the 1990s to the Altiplano maximum security prison and lost all remaining contacts with other drug lords. On 18 December 2014, federal authorities approved his request to transfer to a medium-security prison in Guadalajara (State of Jalisco), due to his declining health. He still strongly denies any involvement in the murder of Enrique Camarena. He was particularly known for using less violence and many even attribute the current bloodshed due to the turf war between rival cartels to the fall of Félix

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (December 1, 1949 – December 2, 1993) was a Colombian drug overlord. Often referred to as the "World's Greatest Outlaw", Escobar was perhaps the most elusive cocaine trafficker to have ever existed. He is considered the 'King of Cocaine' and is known as the lord of all drug lords. In 1989, ''Forbes'' magazine declared Escobar as the seventh-richest man in the world, with an estimated personal fortune of US$30 billion. In 1986, he attempted to enter Colombian politics. It is said that Pablo Escobar once burnt two million dollars in cash to keep his daughter warm while on the run. Escobar was the boss of the famous Medellín Cartel, the most powerful drug empire to exist and is said to have had over twice the power and money of their rivals, the Cali Cartel. Pablo was known as ''Paisa'' Robin Hood, for his contributions to the poor, but was also known for murdering anyone who got in his way. His carrot-and-stick strategy of bribing public officials in the Colombian government, and sending hitmen to murder the ones who rejected his bribes, came to be known as "silver or lead" or "money or bullets". When the Colombian government launched a manhunt for Escobar, it needed assistance from the DEA, the CIA, the Cali Cartel, and Los Pepes. On December 2, Search Bloc killed Escobar on a rooftop.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes

As a top drug lord in Mexico, Amado Carrillo (1956–1997) was transporting four times more cocaine to the U.S. than any other trafficker, building a fortune of over $25 billion.
He was called El Señor de Los Cielos ("The Lord of the Skies") for his use of over 22 private 727 jet airliners to transport Colombian cocaine to municipal airports and dirt airstrips around Mexico, including Juárez. He was a member of the Guadalajara Cartel and worked for Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. After Félix was arrested, Amado formed the Juarez Cartel. In the months before his death, the DEA described Carrillo as the most-powerful drug trafficker of his era, and many analysts claimed profits neared $25 billion.

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán

Guzman is the most notorious drug lord of all time, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In the 1980s, he was a member of the Guadalajara Cartel and used to work for Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. After Félix's arrest in 1989, Guzmán formed the Sinaloa Cartel along with Ismael Zambada García and Héctor Luis Palma Salazar. He is well known for his use of sophisticated tunnels—similar to the one located in Douglas, Arizona—to smuggle cocaine from Mexico into the United States in the early 1990s. In 1993, a 7.3-ton shipment of his cocaine, concealed in cans of chili peppers and destined for the United States, was seized in Tecate, Baja California. That same year he barely escaped an ambush by the Tijuana Cartel led by Ramon Arellano Felix and his gunmen. After being captured in Guatemala, he was jailed in 1993 and in 1995 he was moved to the maximum-security prison called Puente Grande, but paid his way out of prison and hid in a laundry van as it drove through the gates. On 22 February 2014, Guzmán was arrested again.
He is considered a folk hero in the narcotics world, celebrated by musicians who write and perform ''narcocorridos'' (drug ballads) extolling his exploits. For example, Los Traviezos recorded a ballad extolling his life on the run. In July 2015, Guzman escaped a second time from a maximum-security prison through a hole in a shower floor that led to a mile-long tunnel, ending at a nearby house. A large-scale manhunt ensued. On 8 January 2016, Guzmán was captured by the Mexican Marines.

Osiel Cárdenas Guillén

Osiel Cárdenas Guillén (born 18 May 1967) is a former Mexican drug lord who was the leader of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas. Originally a mechanic in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Guillén eventually became involved in the illegal drug trade the Gulf Cartel before becoming its leader in 1997 by assassinating drug lord Salvador Gómez Herrera. Guillén recruited over 30 deserters from the Mexican Army's special forces unit, the '' Cuerpo de Fuerzas Especiales'', to form the cartel's armed wing; this group would go on to be among the founding members of Los Zetas, another Mexican drug cartel. In 1999, Guillén and a group of Gulf Cartel gunmen threatened two U.S. federal agents at gunpoint, which triggered a massive combined effort from American and Mexican law enforcement agencies to crack down on the leadership structure of the Gulf Cartel and led to Guillén becoming one of the most wanted criminals in the world. Guillén was arrested in Mexico in 2003 and deported to the U.S. in 2007, where he remains incarcerated to this day.

Jorge Alberto Rodriguez

Jorge Alberto Rodriguez, also known as Don Cholito, is a notorious Argentine-born, Puerto Rican and Colombian mixed drug lord from New York, who headed the 400 criminal organization, a dismantled secret cell of the Cali Cartel. Pulled into the drug trade at age 12, he left home at age 14 to begin working for his Father, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, who headed the Cali Cartel. Within six years he had amassed a fortune exceeding over US$300 million by shipping drugs from Colombia to nearly every state in the U.S. He was one of the most ruthless international drug lords unknown to law enforcement or governments. During that time, the murder rate and cocaine-related hospital emergencies in the United States doubled. He was arrested on July 6, 1990, in Tallahassee, Florida and sentenced to a 25-year prison term for a number of federal violations. Following his conviction, Rodriguez continued to operate his illicit business from behind bars, importing as much as 12,500 kilograms of cocaine into the U.S. each month and ordering numerous murders of informants, witnesses, in the U.S. and Colombia. He reigned and flourished while incarcerated until he was placed in court-ordered high-security isolation in 1994. According to the Bureau of Prisons, Rodriguez was released in 2012.

Marcola

Born on April 13, 1968, in Osasco (a city located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil), Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, known as "Marcola" is one of the founders and the current leader of Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), the largest and the most powerful Brazilian criminal organization. A Brazilian with Bolivian origins, Marcola (whose criminal career began when he was a child, at the age of nine and currently serving a sentence of 234 years in prison for murder, drug trafficking and other crimes) is the current leader of PCC and commands this powerful crime syndicate from inside the Taubaté Prison, one of the most infamous prisons in Brazil. Under the command of Marcola, the PCC expanded its influence outside Brazil, to having a presence in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Paraguay and Peru. The PCC is notorious for its use of violence, for its numerous confrontations with police officers and because of their violent conflicts over territory control and the control of drug trafficking against another powerful Brazilian criminal organization, the Comando Vermelho (or CV), a powerful crime syndicate based in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Griselda Blanco

Griselda Blanco (1943–2012), known as the "Godmother of Cocaine", was a drug lord who operated between Miami and Colombia during the 1970s and 1980s. During the height of her operation, she smuggled nearly of cocaine into the U.S. every month through a network in south Florida. She was noted for her ruthlessness and use of extreme violence, employing tactics such as publicly assassinating people in broad daylight, bayoneting a rival trafficker inside Miami International Airport, and inventing the drive-by motorcycle shooting execution method. It was estimated that she was responsible for the homicides of 200 people in Colombia, Florida, New York, and California. Arrested in 1985 for drug-trafficking charges, she was subsequently convicted and spent almost 20 years in a U.S. prison. She was killed by motorcycle hitmen in Colombia on 3 September 2012 as she was coming out of a butcher's shop.

Roberto Suárez Gómez

Pablo Escobar started to buy cocaine from Roberto Suárez in the 1970s when he had just created the Medellín cartel. Suárez started building cocaine laboratories in the middle of the Bolivian Amazon jungle and in the zone of "Los Yungas" in the end of the 1960s and created the first cocaine cartel in Bolivia called "La Corporación". At first, the Medellin cartel bought cocaine at $8,000 per kilogram ($3,600/lb). La Corporación then sold cocaine-based paste to Colombian cartels, and they finished and distributed it in the east of the United States. The finished cocaine was sold directly to Mexican cartels for distribution in the west of the United States. Suárez received untold amounts of money, but as detectives and journalists discovered the corruption between Bolivia and the U.S., the empire Suárez built began to fall. Suárez was arrested by the DEA in 1988, and Escobar took over of the production and distribution of 80% of the world's cocaine.

Rick Ross

Rick Ross (born January 28, 1960), "Freeway" Ricky Ross, is a convicted drug-trafficker best known for the drug empire he presided over in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. The nickname "Freeway" came from Ross growing up next to the 110 Harbor Freeway. During the height of his drug dealing, Ross was said to have made "$2 million in one day." According to the ''Oakland Tribune'', "In the course of his rise, prosecutors estimate that Ross transported several tons of cocaine to New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, and made more than $600 million in the process."

In 1998, Ross was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of purchasing more than 100 kilograms of cocaine from a federal agent during a sting operation. Ross became the subject of controversy later that year when a series of articles by journalist Gary Webb in the ''San Jose Mercury News'' revealed a connection between Ross's main cocaine source, Danilo Blandon, and the CIA as part of the Iran–Contra affair. Ross's case went before the federal court of appeals and his sentence was reduced to 20 years. He was later moved to a halfway house in March 2009 and released from custody on September 29, 2009.

In June 2014, Ross released his book, '' Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography'', co-written by crime-writer Cathy Scott.

Manuel Noriega

For more than a decade, Panamanian Manuel Noriega was a highly paid CIA asset and collaborator, despite knowledge by U.S. drug authorities as early as 1971 that the general was heavily involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. Noriega facilitated "guns-for-drugs" flights for the Nicaraguan Contras, whom the U.S. were heavily supporting: providing protection and pilots, safe havens for drug cartel officials, and discreet banking facilities.Lormand, Eric (May 8, 2007)
"Panama: The Resume of Manuel Noriega"
personal.umich.edu He was arrested in 1990.

Ramon Arellano Felix

Ramón Arellano Félix was a Mexican drug lord who was a founding member of the Tijuana drug cartel (a.k.a. the Arellano-Félix Organization) alongside his brothers. Arellano Félix was allegedly one of the most ruthless enforcers in the organization and was a suspect in various murders. He had been linked by Mexican police to the 1997 massacre of twelve members of a family outside of Ensenada, Baja California. The family was related to a drug dealer that had an unpaid debt to the Arellano Félix Cartel. On September 18, 1997, Arellano Félix was placed on the FBI's ten most-wanted list. In a sealed indictment in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, he was charged with conspiracy to import cocaine and marijuana.. Ramon and his brothers, primarily Benjamin Arellano Felix were the undisputed leaders of the Tijuana Cartel and developed an intense rivalry with Joaquin Guzman Loera's Sinaloa Cartel. The war between both organizations lasted more than 10 years until Ramón was killed in Mazatlán on February 10, 2002, by policemen allegedly on the payroll of the rival, Sinaloa Cártel.

Ismael Zambada García

Ismael Zambada García is a drug smuggler in Mexico and co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel. Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor, José Santiago Vasconcelos, called Zambada "drug dealer No. 1" and said the fugitive has become more powerful as his fellow kingpins have fallen, including one who was allegedly killed on Zambada's orders.

Klaas Bruinsma

Klaas Bruinsma (1953–1991) was a major Dutch drug lord, shot to death by mafia member and former police officer Martin Hoogland. Bruinsma was known as "De Lange" ("the tall one") and as "De Dominee" ("the preacher") because of his black clothing and his habit of lecturing others.

Arturo Beltran Leyva

Marcos Arturo Beltrán Leyva (September 27, 1961 – December 16, 2009) was the leader of the Mexican drug-trafficking organization known as the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, which is headed by the Beltrán Leyva brothers: Marcos Arturo, Carlos, Alfredo and Héctor. The cartel was engaged in cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine production, transportation, and wholesaling. It controlled numerous drug-trafficking corridors into the United States. and was also responsible for human smuggling, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, murder, contract killing, torture, gun-running, and other acts of violence in Mexico. The organization was connected with the assassinations of numerous Mexican law-enforcement officials.

Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas was a former heroin dealer and organized crime boss who operated in Harlem, New York during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in the Golden Triangle. Lucas boasted that he smuggled heroin using the coffins of dead American servicemen,"Mexico extradites 'unprecedented' number of drug lords to U.S."
''USA Today.'' January 20, 2007. Retrieved November 12, 2011. but this claim is denied by his South Asian associate, Leslie "Ike" Atkinson. His career was dramatized in the 2007 feature film '' American Gangster'' starring Denzel Washington.

Leroy Barnes

Leroy Antonio "Nicky" Barnes (born October 15, 1933) was a former drug lord and crime boss of the notorious African-American crime organization known as The Council, which controlled the heroin trade in Harlem, New York during the 1970s.The New York Times