Original subtitles

(siren)

BONNIE KLAPPER: There is a huge percentage of people

involved in the drug trade that are never caught,

that are never identified, that are never prosecuted.

♪ ♪

Everyone knew about the Medellin Cartel,

they knew about Pablo.

But this person, he was not on anybody's radar.

He really was an invisible.

CHRIS CASCIO: One of his nicknames was the Gray Ghost.

He did a really good job of not giving anybody his real name.

LUIS RENDON: The faces were other people.

Meanwhile, he was a puppet master above all of them.

RUBEN OLIVA: He was the world's greatest drug dealer

no one ever heard about.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

KLAPPER: If you combine what the drug trafficking business earns,

I'm sorry, Mr. Bezos, but you're not even on the radar.

Typically when drugs

are produced in Colombia,

they transit through

Central America,

ultimately through Mexico,

and the drugs are sold in the United States.

Now the trafficker has a big problem.

It's very hard to get the money back.

The cheapest, most effective

way, though it does generate

a lot of bulk,

is simply to send cash.

Just find some containers,

sometimes with the knowledge of the shipping company,

often without the knowledge,

load the money up into the containers,

and then bulk ship to Colombia.

And without a tip, you're never going to discover that.

(horns honking)

RENDON: Working out of the US Embassy in Colombia,

we get 10 or 20 tips a day from sources that have information

on money laundering, narcotics trafficking and so forth.

KLAPPER: The agents, they had been contacted

by an informant in Spain,

and honestly, for months,

they had just blown off the informant.

They get so many tips, so much information,

but the informant was persistent.

(ship horn blares)

RENDON: The information was that millions of dollars

was concealed within big bags of ammonium sulfate.

This is a fertilizer,

legitimate companies were transporting this fertilizer

from Mexico to Buenaventura, Colombia.

I was skeptical.

I was like, this is probably

another one of those phony allegations.

But we went to the port of Buenaventura,

and sure enough...

MAN: There it is.

RENDON: There was millions and millions of dollars

in bulk cash.

It was a magnificent way for the organization

to smuggle bulk cash,

because the US Customs can't detect it through x‐ray,

and even when you probe it,

it's so deep you wouldn't be able to touch it.

KLAPPER: $40 million in cash.

RENDON: It was the largest boat cash container seizure

in US, Mexico and Colombian history, probably in the world.

KLAPPER: So, they knew they were onto something big.

Possibly one of the biggest invisibles ever.

And that's why they came to me.

I had a reputation as the go‐to person for money laundering.

I sat down with the two Homeland Security agents

who said, "We've seized over $40 million.

Imagine the magnitude of the organization

and the volume of drugs that it's producing.

But where do we go from here?"

(phone ringing)

I receive a call from a Colombian attorney

with whom I'd worked previously.

He said to me, "I have three clients who need to come in.

They just sustained the seizure of enormous amounts of money

and their lives are in danger."

I said, "Did they just get a big hit in Buenaventura?"

And his response was, "How did you know?"

I said "Well, bring them in and we'll all find out."

They were sort of between a rock and a hard place.

Someone was going to come after them for that lost $40 million.

On the other hand, they had US law enforcement

breathing down their necks.

They had to make a decision,

which created the greater risk to them,

and ultimately, they ended up with

what I like to call the "good guys."

Once they were signed up,

they went back to Colombia to act as if nothing had happened.

And you have to remember, they themselves were not familiar

with whose money they were laundering.

He was an invisible.

So our instructions to them were, number one, stay calm.

Number two, gather as much intelligence as you can

about the group you were working with.

And most important, try to get us real names.

♪ ♪

CASCIO: One of his nicknames was the Gray Ghost.

When we first started hearing about him in 2004,

I was a special agent on behalf of the DEA

assigned to the Caribbean, Atlantic,

and the drug transportation organizations

working in and about those areas.

We were getting a series of fishing vessels

that were loaded from 2,000 to 4,000 kilos of cocaine.

As the crewmembers were coming in from the boats,

a certain name kept popping up when we would speak to them.

Don Luis.

For them, he was a "Don" meaning "respect,"

and Luis, that was his first name,

so these guys referred to him as Don Luis.

At the time, other names were more prominent in Colombia.

Don Luis, as we knew him, wasn't getting a lot of attention.

But we knew if we were catching 11 different boats

for the tune of 22 tons, that we knew belonged to him,

this was a pretty significant target.

Our primary goal was to try to get him identified

and trying to really understand his organization

and the depth of his organization.

My partners and I, we turned every rock we could,

traveled all over Central and South America

trying to track down leads.

So we really were on a hunt.

2006, 2007, I received some information that he was the guy

behind the scenes of a Bogota soccer team

who invested in the team and who was paying the bills.

He owned it, but not on paper.

Some of the stuff we weren't sure

what was rumor and what was fact,

and it became, you know, like a passion of ours.

Like, we were going to get this guy identified

and we were going to get him arrested.

We received information that his first last name was Caicedo.

But we knew Luis Caicedo was a very popular name in Colombia,

so we had to really do some digging

to get his second last name.

And ultimately, we got the phone call from a well‐placed source

that he used to be a police officer

and then we had to try to figure out what agency he worked with

and how many years ago.

We had individuals in Colombia looking through that paperwork,

and that gave us the second last name.

Velandia was his mother's last name,

and that was the hard name to come up with.

Literally within hours we were able to get a photo

from a visa application

with those two names together, the Caicedo Velandia.

We were getting information from our intelligence sources

in Colombia that he was known as Don Lucho.

KLAPPER: Chris Cascio, he and his people

had identified Lucho before anyone else.

They got a drug indictment against Lucho.

The problem was they had no idea

where he was or how to capture him.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

RENDON: They basically gave us a tip on a person named Max.

Max was a high‐ranking member

of the narcotics trafficking organization

based out of Bogota.

He was not the top of the hierarchy.

He took orders from the boss, the cartel kingpin.

We were working collaboratively

with the Colombian National Police

in trying to identify Max.

Because we didn't have his identity.

But after following him around, doing tactical surveillance,

we thought this was a high‐level worker of the organization.

KLAPPER: This high‐ranking member,

he decided to take his family to the United States on vacation.

We obtained his flight plan.

RENDON: So once he landed in Miami,

we were able to greet him at the airport

and introduce ourselves as federal agents

and notified him that he was under arrest.

I don't think he had any idea

that anybody was looking for him.

It was a big shock.

(jet passing overhead)

♪ ♪

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RENDON: When Max told us who his boss was,

Luis Caicedo, AKA Don Lucho, we were pleased.

This guy was operating for a long time

without being discovered.

CASCIO: I didn't want to get too excited,

'cause it had been a number of years

that we were looking for him.

DAVID MARWELL: He was a massive target and worked for years

without anybody knowing anything about him.

♪ ♪

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Upon soliciting Max's cooperation,

he laid out for us the entire enterprise.

The entire cartel.

KLAPPER: Once we arrested this high‐ranking member,

we were able to obtain a tremendous amount

of physical evidence

documentary evidence, testimonial evidence.

We actually discovered Lucho was part of what has become

the new generation of how to run drug businesses in Colombia.

Designed to limit his exposure

and to remain small and tightly controlled.

Lucho decided, I'm the CEO, I have high level partners,

everything else will be outsourced.

I need drugs, I'm not going to own the labs

like Pablo owned labs.

I'll contract with people to make the drugs.

I need transport, I'm gonna contract with people

who have the planes and the boats.

I need killing, I need murder.

I'll outsource to the hitmen.

(gunshot)

It was almost as if he had sat down with accountants

and investment advisors and decided,

"How can I make the most money and incur the least risk?"

And that's really why he was able to stay invisible

for so long.

While Lucho was clearly the brains behind the organization,

he had partners.

One of the most prominent ones

was an individual named Julio Lozano.

Julio was extremely valuable for his connections to the labs,

to the product.

He had a man named Claudio Silva.

Claudio had a big farm.

Claudio was very happy to set up a crematorium on his farm,

and when Lucho directed,

the bodies would end up in Claudio's crematorium.

RENDON: These three gentlemen were known as

the Dons of the organization,

hence the name Don Julio, Don Claudio, and Don Lucho.

KLAPPER: Lucho also partnered with someone

who was far from invisible:

a very major trafficker called Loco Barrera.

Loco was part of the organization,

mainly for the deterrent value of his name.

People knew you did not want Loco anywhere near you,

because you were going to end up dead,

as would your entire family and everyone else you ever spoke to,

down to your dog.

So Loco was more the threat that was held over anyone's head.

Don't mess with Lucho, or you're going to have to deal with Loco.

JEREMY MCDERMOTT: The relationship between Don Lucho

and Loco Barrera for me is the prototype

visible/invisible relationship.

All eyes were on Loco Barrera,

who's handling the operational side of the business.

Nobody knew that behind him, pulling the strings,

making the deals and the big money was Don Lucho.

RENDON: Don Lucho is a very serious man,

and with that amount of money that you have

and to leverage over police, military,

you're able to influence a lot of people.

KLAPPER: In a legal business,

someone's trying to steal your trademark,

someone's engaging in libel or slander,

you can seek redress through the legal system.

Drug trafficking, there is no redress.

Someone steals your drugs and steals your money,

you can't go to court to get it back.

You have to take law enforcement into your own hands.

RENDON: If you crossed his path, you basically got killed.

KLAPPER: Lucho had a head of security.

An individual who went by the alias Sillas,

means "chairs" in Spanish.

Sillas was an ex‐sicario, a hitman.

He had been shot in a drug gun battle

and he was paralyzed from the waist down.

Lucho installed him, in his wheelchair,

in a room with video cameras, recording equipment;

he was listening to everyone.

You transported for him,

your chats were going to be intercepted.

You sourced drugs for him?

Your chats were going to be intercepted.

And Sillas oversaw this whole operation.

The most important part of Sillas' job

was to execute the executions.

He would get word from Lucho, "This person stole from me."

He would get word from someone else in the organization,

"This person slept with my wife."

Whatever the reason, Sillas would then subcontract

to a closed group of sicarios, hitmen.

As the organization became more powerful,

Sillas would direct the hitmen,

or the police, who were also working for Lucho,

to simply kidnap the targets

and bring them to Claudio Silva's farm.

CASCIO: Sometimes with the violence,

it's part of their culture

that if they don't enforce violations of their code,

then everyone's going to take advantage of them.

So they have to set examples,

whether it's members in the organization,

people that they care about, people that they're fond of,

and when they get to that level, like Lucho's level,

and if he doesn't handle it, then everybody's going to do it.

RENDON: The organization had a code that they used internally

to document payments.

So it might have been yellow for payments,

or it might have been blue for cocaine shipments.

But red always meant the color of blood.

Yeah, pretty much you're taken out.

(Max sighs)

MARWELL: Ultimately, we made a tactical decision

to pursue Lucho.

CASCIO: Our primary goal was to try to get him extradited

and brought to the United States to face charges.

MARWELL: This operation was unprecedented.

KLAPPER: Agents infiltrated Lucho's organization.

MARWELL: We, from an undercover capacity,

actually ran the cartel.

RENDON: So Max was very cooperative,

and he was willing to work right away with the US government.

Nobody in Don Lucho's organization

knew that he was under arrest.

KLAPPER: We decided to take advantage of the situation.

RENDON: We put him up in a location in New York

and set up an undercover operation.

KLAPPER: We set up a war room,

and the agents infiltrated Lucho's organization

and ran it as if they were this high‐ranking individual.

How? The various high‐ranking members of his group

typically never met in person.

Everyone shared an email address and the password for the email.

When they needed to communicate with each other,

they would draft an email and leave it in the system.

Undetectable to law enforcement.

The others would check the email in draft form,

because it was never sent, and receive their instructions.

So by using this method of communication,

it enabled him to operate undetected for so many years,

but it also enabled us, once we had the keys,

to become part of his organization.

Once we had the key, once we knew the emails,

we were able to take over as if we were that person.

MARWELL: All the people that worked it

had never been in a position similar to this

where in an undercover capacity

they are running a cartel operation.

They are in control of the network.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

KLAPPER: So we infiltrated and we began issuing the orders.

"Oh, you have drugs in Venezuela? Send them here."

"Oh, you have money in the Netherlands, send it there."

We would issue the orders to the transporters,

to the money launderers,

and then we would seize the drugs and seize the money.

MARWELL: This operation was continually unnerving,

unnerving for all those that were involved in it.

RENDON: Running a drug trafficking organization remotely,

it's very stressful.

KLAPPER: We had a very fine line to walk, a balance.

We didn't want to get greedy and seize too much

and lose the chance to capture him.

On the other hand, we wanted to seize as much drugs

and as much money as possible.

MARWELL: We were literally doing narcotic deals

and/or money laundering deals all over the world.

We did it in Ecuador, we did it in Argentina,

we did it in Colombia,

Morocco, Spain, Rotterdam.

I mean, it was unprecedented.

It took a lot of cocaine off the streets

in all these various countries.

I believe the entire amount of money that was seized

was something to the tune of $175 million.

RENDON: Working with Max proactively

in an undercover capacity meant dealing with him every day,

20 hours a day, working through weekends,

working through holidays non‐stop.

So you start to understand in a personal way what led him

to be a worker for a major drug trafficker like Luis Caicedo.

I personally think he got involved

because he had no choice.

Once you get in deep, you can't get out,

and that's what most of these guys

who are the underlings of the kingpins say.

You know, if you get out of an organization,

you're either gonna get killed

or your family's gonna get killed.

You really have no options but to work for them.

We would go for walks,

we'd take him out to drink some pop, some shakes,

to kind of decompress from the investigation.

When you're dealing with a high‐level person,

anything could happen.

Ambushing, people trying to break him out

of the undercover location we were at.

So you're talking about me with another 10 to 15 agents

just to even take him outside for a breath.

KLAPPER: Every day was filled with tension,

because we never knew when Lucho would say,

"There's a mole, we must shut it down,

we must end communication."

The chatter over the wires was that Lucho was getting worried.

He could not understand how in an organization

that had evaded seizures

was getting hit one after another after another.

RENDON: Things were running dry.

There were no more cocaine shipments to send anywhere,

there were no money pickups,

and some people stopped responding,

because everybody got scared of what was happening.

Don Lucho was like, "What in the hell is going on?"

MARWELL: These narcotics cartels,

they factor in losing loads of dope.

What they get really upset with

is when their money is confiscated.

KLAPPER: Lucho had suffered very few seizures

before our investigation started.

We knew that with a certain number of seizures

someone was going to figure out that there was a leak.

Day in and day out, "Is it time to shut it down?"

"Is today the day?"

"Ah, well, just one more load. One more seizure."

Until finally we decided, it's too hot,

there's been too many seizures,

we have to go in for the kill shot.

We have to get Lucho.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

RENDON: The belief is that arrest warrant

went through the Colombian government,

and Don Lucho was able to obtain that

from the Colombian government through corrupt means.

And so he saw his name,

and he absconded to a country that would offer safe harbor.

KLAPPER: Lucho felt some heat in Colombia,

so he had moved his family to Argentina.

MARWELL: But we didn't know precisely where he was.

So having some of our cooperators contact him

via email, we were able to triangulate

some of his coordinates.

KLAPPER: So Lucho was living in an enclave

where a lot of Colombian narcos build their houses.

You can always tell in Argentina.

Gated communities,

monstrous‐size houses, lots of security,

and that's where he had relocated.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

RENDON: So the plan to capture Don Lucho

was having Max set up a meeting with Don Lucho in Argentina.

He wanted to meet because he wanted to know what was going on

with, you know, the organization and all the recent seizures.

KLAPPER: "Guys, we've got to be careful.

The gossip, the chatter is that

he's beginning to get suspicious."

The tension was enormous.

Are we really going to get him?

RENDON: So when we got on that plane, I was scared, man,

I was like holy (bleep), like, this is happening.

We were going to go forward with capturing

the biggest drug trafficker in the world.

CASCIO: There's so much corruption

in different countries, you have to be really careful

when you actually let people know that you have a target,

you want to put handcuffs on him,

because if you do it too soon and they get word of that,

then the guy runs, and you can't find him.

RENDON: The meeting point was going to be

around a shopping center

in a highly public Argentine community.

♪ ♪

KLAPPER: Is he going to be‐‐ sorry, Lucho‐‐

but is he going to be dumb enough to show up

more or less unaccompanied at a meeting?

RENDON: Don Lucho, people were scared of him.

Not just in Colombia but all over the world.

MARWELL: We were all on pins and needles

waiting to see how this happened,

and we were just hoping that everything would go okay.

RENDON: Our agency coordinated with the Argentine authorities.

CASCIO: Depending on your relationship

with local law enforcement,

sometimes you get to go out on the operation,

sometimes you don't.

RENDON: So the Argentines set up surveillance

around the meeting point.

They basically did everything in country,

'cause as diplomats overseas,

we have no law enforcement authority.

CASCIO: The safe place to keep us is at the embassy

so we can't get in any trouble or do anything silly

or screw up their operation.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

RENDON: All it is was a very covert operation.

There was no lights and sirens.

Once they saw him, they went ahead and apprehended him.

He knew the gig was up.

KLAPPER: The moment he was in custody, we received word.

And we all shouted and we high‐fived.

"We've got him. We've got him. He's in custody. We've got him."

CASCIO: When that went down, it was about a five o'clock,

five or six o'clock on a Friday night.

We were standing by at the embassy

and jumped in the car, drove to the arrest location.

There was an individual in the back of a car in a suit,

and I thought, that kind of meets the criteria for this guy,

because he wasn't just like a low‐level crewmember.

This was, you know, this was the boss.

RENDON: He looked at me with a shock on his face

I'd never seen.

His eyes were wide open.

He didn't know what was going on.

But when we identified ourselves,

he kind of nodded and said, "Yeah, I basically got caught."

CASCIO: In my ten seconds of brief conversation

in Spanish with him, we explained it wasn't an accident

why he was in handcuffs.

We encouraged him that in his particular case

it was in his best interest to waive extradition,

and if he delayed the extradition a year or two years,

the information that he could provide to us real time

was going to be stale,

and it'd be in his best interest to get on a plane

and get to the United States.

RENDON: He knew someone definitely betrayed him,

because their organization was so secret and so underworld.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

After he got caught, we were listening to these calls

of Loco Barrera making plans

to send helicopters and trucks

and armored vehicles trying to break Don Lucho out of jail.

RENDON: Loco Barrera is serious about trying to break Lucho out.

That's what kind of respect Loco had for Don Lucho.

So that's why we had to move fast and get Lucho out of there,

back to the US.

CASCIO: Back in the United States,

Don Lucho, he was looking at 20 to life.

KLAPPER: The only way in the United States

for a drug trafficker to avoid spending 10, 20, 30 years

in jail is to cooperate.

There is no other alternative.

CASCIO: The first part of this cooperation was just,

"Can you turn over any money? Can you turn over any drugs?"

KLAPPER: The Homeland Security agents wanted to seize

as much money as possible.

Their job was to convince Lucho to turn over the money.

CASCIO: Most of these guys will tell you when you lock them up

they don't have any money and they spent all their money,

or so‐and‐so owes them money, and it was true,

Lucho had a bunch of people that owed him a lot more money.

But we knew that he had moved significant amounts of cocaine,

which meant he'd made significant amounts of money.

And the conversation that we had was,

"You don't have to give it all up,

but you gotta give a lot of it up."

So he had a couple individuals that were in Colombia still

that we were making phone calls to.

And ultimately, we were notified that there was a car

at a certain location, a certain color,

and that in the trunk of that car

was, you know, some of his drug proceeds.

We'd roll out to these different locations with the local cops.

They'd run the dog on the car, the dog would hit on it,

and then, you know, we would open up the trunk,

and sure enough there'd be a bag of money in there.

Each of the drops, a different car would show up

at a different location, never the same location,

and bags of money in the trunk.

The first amount was right around $12 million.

About a week later we collected another $16 million, same way.

But the fourth drop in Colombia was the biggest.

We received information about an apartment,

and they had boxes and boxes of money,

and to the tune of close to $50 million

inside the apartment.

And it was in a pretty raggedy neighborhood.

$102 million was ultimately seized in Colombia.

But I explained to him that, "Listen, we appreciate

what you did in Colombia, that's great,

but that money stays in Colombia.

If you can get $10 million to the US through another country,

that's going to do a little bit more for you."

So a short time later, he arranged for a series

of four to five different drops in Panama

where we would fly to Panama, we'd go to a location,

and there would be a person there.

And the person would turn over the suitcase to us,

and we would seal it up per our policies and procedures,

throw it in our carry‐on and fly home with it.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Lucho, he pled guilty to everything

that we charged him with.

He always seemed very respectful, very sincere.

"Hey, I just want to get this behind me

and move on with my life."

You know, that was really his attitude with us.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

For someone that moved that amount of cocaine,

did he do enough time in jail?

Probably not. Probably not.

Should he have done a little bit more? Maybe.

Everything lined up just perfectly for him.

From the judge that sentenced him, to the timing of it,

everything lined up for him

where he got a favorable sentence.

RENDON: Don Lucho right now is out of jail,

and I think that he will continue to operate

the way he was before.

I think that he still has a lot of influence.

I think he still has a lot of debts

that haven't been collected.

So I think now he's still a dangerous man.

CASCIO: I would like to say

he's not going to get back into business,

but we've had guys spend the same amount of time,

go back out there and start up again.

I hope that's not what he does.

(siren)

KLAPPER: His partners, Julio Lozano,

sentenced back in Colombia, Claudio Silva as well,

paid his sentence back in Colombia.

For the Colombians, this is a way of life.

They know that there's a shot

that they're going to get arrested,

they're going to have to cooperate,

they'll get their sentence reduced,

they'll go back to Colombia,

and some significant percentage,

not having any other career path

will immediately return to trafficking or money laundering.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

MCDERMOTT: The story of Loco Barrera is perhaps

an extreme case of what happens to a visible.

As the net began to close around him,

he became increasingly desperate.

He used a frying pan to burn his fingerprints and grow a beard,

hoping that that would help him remain not arrested and hidden.

It didn't.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

RENDON: Their street value was over $24 billion

of sales of narcotics worldwide.

912 tons of cocaine.

So the magnitude just shows why they were probably

the most successful cartel

in the history of that underground world.

CASCIO: We asked him that, like, "You made so much money.

At what point didn't you just want to check out

and when's enough enough?"

He says, "Yeah, you're right. Yeah. I should have."

In his instance,

I think he enjoyed the business aspect of it,

and he was a really good businessman.

KLAPPER: When all was said and done,

we took down what, for his era, was the largest invisible,

Don Lucho.

We took down his entire hierarchy

in terms of his partners, his right‐hand men.

And we took down well over 30

of what I like to call his subcontractors.

The people who provided him

with what he needed to run his business.

We accomplished our goal, which was to dismantle.

If you're going to ask me, ultimately,

did our work have any effect on the drug trade itself?

The answer is no.

Not at least for a minute.

With him out of the picture,

younger, even more violent traffickers

have stepped into the space.

So with every great success,

all we do is create an opening for the next generation.

There are always other invisibles waiting in the wings.

Captioned by Side Door Media Services