Jorge Valdes dismantles the "Medellin Cartel" myth, revealing a fragmented network of Escobar and the Oshoa brothers that he managed before fleeing to Panama in 1979 with $7 million in cocaine. After surviving torture at La Modelo prison and negotiating his release through corruption, Valdes abandoned his empire at age 31, converting to Christianity and earning a PhD while serving a life sentence. He critiques the War on Drugs for ignoring Big Pharma's role in overdoses and demands a shift from supply interdiction to addressing poverty and demand, arguing that true fulfillment lies in faith rather than the hollow power of the drug trade. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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From Businessman to Drug Lord00:13:13
Hello world.
On this episode of the podcast, we talk to ex-narco drug lord.
His name is Jorge Valdez, and his story is absolutely mind-bending.
He was born in Havana, Cuba in 1956, and by the age of 10, his family boarded one of the last freedom flights from Cuba to Miami.
While working as an accountant in his early 20s, his first client was La Puerta del Sol, a small grocery store which turned out to be a front for a group of international drug dealers.
In 1977, he took over the entire organization.
As the head of U.S. operations.
And that group went on to be called the Medellin Drug Cartel.
We cover all the details on this podcast from crashing his plane loaded with over 200 kilos of coke in Panama to actually buying presidents.
Like he literally bought the president of Costa Rica.
He talks about doing business with Pablo Escobar and eventually forfeiting over $60 million to the U.S. government.
So if that long winded intro doesn't wet your whistle, folks, I don't know what will.
This was a fascinating podcast and I hope you enjoy.
Cool.
Well, thanks for coming on, Mr. Valdez.
Yeah, my pleasure.
You pulled up in a Rolls Royce.
I wasn't expecting that.
How do you like that thing?
What is that, a ghost?
Yeah, it's a ghost.
Is it a ghost?
Yeah.
I didn't expect you to be, you know, back up to that level yet.
When I read your book, I thought you kind of had to like hit rock bottom at the end of everything.
Well, I did.
I hit rock bottom.
I ended up forfeiting over $60 million to the government.
Yeah.
Went to prison again for really the bottom line was that they just wanted my money.
I had been retired for four years and they just contended that I lived in this multi-million dollar ranch and had jets and million dollar cars.
Yeah.
So, did you keep some of the Rolls Royces after?
Did you have them hidden somewhere?
What did you do?
Well, I'll get to it.
So, what ended up being is that at the end, when I get arrested, and I'm like, what the hell did I get arrested for?
I haven't done crap.
When I retired, there was no investigation.
And my attorney said, they want the money.
And it was a perfect timing for us, and it was a perfect place, Mobile, Alabama.
Never been there in my life.
But it was a period where the government was seizing assets, and the more they seized, the more credit that office got.
So if they had taken my seizure New York California, Miami it would have been a large seizure, but it wouldn't have been as significant as MOBY Alabama.
Yeah, you know, all of that I gave them was equal to probably what they had ever confiscated in their entire lifetime.
So they're like, lots of money, little time, little money, lots of time.
And i'm like, do you know how much I got?
And they're like uh no, but we know who does.
So the Us attorney walks to the back of the office, opens a door and here comes four federal agents, DEA, CIA, I mean DEA, Customs, FBI, and IRS.
And they're like, they knew how much toilet paper I bought.
For four years, they had a task force just literally assigned to me.
And they knew every part.
I tell people, you know how long it takes to go from being a multimillionaire at a young age to having zero?
About four and a half minutes of signature.
But you know what?
I was happy.
I was fine with it.
I had become a Christian.
in September, in July.
I had a man preach to me for four years, which is part of my story, three years.
And then I was miserable and I couldn't understand why.
I had all the power in the world.
I had all the money.
I went out with the most beautiful women in America, you know, had three jets, you know, had a million dollar house in Vail, two million dollar house in Four Miles Beach, you know, 20 million dollar ranch.
I lived a heck of a life and I was young, young kid, literally.
And, but I was so miserable and I couldn't understand why.
And so when I walked away from the business, and we'll get to that later, when I walked away from the business, number one, I thought I was going to get killed within a couple weeks, right?
Because we really didn't have a very good retirement program in the cartel, okay?
And that's another thing I want to tell you.
There was no Medellin cartel, all right?
So a lot of people keep talking about Medellin cartel and Pablo Escobar.
There was no such thing.
That's a lie.
That was actually, and I'm glad that recently one of the Ashore brothers has come out and said the same thing.
What do you mean when you say there was no Medellin cartel?
There was no Medellin cartel.
What does that mean?
Like, you know the Sinaloa cartel, El Chapo?
That's a cartel, right?
It's a 19th organization.
One organization controls everything.
What happened during this, when I got started in 1976, there was one organization, right?
Which I joined when I was 20 years old.
And that was it.
That was who was bringing 85% of all the cocaine to the U.S., right?
It was 1976.
We were not even on the DA radar.
From that organization in 1976 to the 80s, I went to prison in 1979.
In 1980, different.
factors, people left that organization and started their own group, right?
So, and then you had other people come on, like you had Pablo Escobar come up in 81.
Right.
You had uh, you know uh, the Oshoa Brothers come on.
You know you had Gasha, come on and, and three or four other ones.
I mean people that were much, much richer than Pablo Escobar.
Pablo Escobar did not have the wealth that the Americans talk about, or or, or even what people claim a lot of people had.
So you know, like recently I heard so you know him personally.
Yeah, I know him very well.
Uh, recently I even put a contact on my life so, but recently I I heard somebody else said that you know, the Falcons were worth billions of dollars right uh, a lot.
We were talking before we started that the guy I had on here before knew Willy Falcon.
It was a lie okay, I grew up with them, so I mean, i'll tell you they didn't have money, they didn't make a lot of money, they didn't have Pablo, but really the people that had the most amount of money.
No one ever knows about them period, because the problem was what Pablo was was the most violent, and because he became very, very violent and didn't give a damn about whose life he took, didn't care If kids died, if white, you know, whoever, whoever got on his way, he didn't care.
He didn't care if he blew up a whole Supreme Court building, you know, the Justice Department president, he didn't give a damn.
So because he did that, he became very, very known, right, and very notorious.
So the DA is looking now at Medellin, Colombia, and they're saying like, well, there's the Pablo Escobar group.
The Oshoas didn't work with Pablo, very little.
You know, there's Gotcha.
You know, there's a guy, Frank Jimenez, which had more money than most of them.
A lot of people don't even know his name.
And so instead of saying, okay, we're going to go after Pablo, then we're going to go after this guy, this guy, they just said, we'll just bunch them all together.
Call it the Medellin Drug Cartel.
And that's how the name came about.
Okay.
Okay.
But every organization had its own pilots, its own supplies, its own accountants, lawyers, its own assassins.
So, you know, and they, not to say they didn't do things together, okay, because I did.
With three or four of them at the same time in each load, but not like you have EL Chapo and you said, there's the Sinaloa cartel right, and that's one group, there's one head, and that's it.
You know, and that's that's how that was during that that period of time.
So that's very interesting.
So when I walked away, you know the thing, that all of them together, because the problem was, I worked with all of them together and I even worked with the Cali cartel afterwards And they were against the rivals, right?
When the Cali cartel was just beginning, when there were no rivals, the rivals only became, and it really wasn't the million-dollar cartel against the Cali cartel.
It was the Cali cartel, and that was a cartel, one group against Pablo Escobar, right?
Because what ended up happening is that Pablo would make each group give money to fight the war that he was fighting for extradition.
And it was something that was going to benefit all of them, right?
Because Colombia was fighting that you can't extradite us to the United States.
You can't extradite a citizen of a country when you're extraditing them for a crime that is not a crime in their country So the United States how can what can they charge Pablo any of them?
What why was I charged two times?
Conspiracy right doesn't mean crap you and I plan a trip right you make a phone call to find the pilot done.
That's it.
It doesn't matter if we ever did or not.
We're guilty.
We can be given, when I went, during my time, the max was 15 years.
Now you're given a life center.
So Pablo said, hey, extradite me to India because I killed cows in Colombia.
So that's why it was fighting.
And all of them were fighting, were benefiting from the fact.
And at the same time, they were pretty happy that Pablo was taking all the heat.
So that's how that went about.
Well, one thing is they could not, understand is the unknown right.
So why is George Valdez walking away, making over a million dollars a month?
He hasn't seen cocaine in three years, since he got out of prison.
You know he's living a life that people dream of.
He has got power, he's got everything.
Why would he walk away?
And when they can't figure that out well, the best thing to do is just take that, take that x out of the equation.
But I didn't care and uh, because I got to a point in my life that I was miserable.
And Recently, there's going to be a big, big six series series coming out, I think November, on a major stream service.
And they asked me a question that no one had ever asked me.
And it was really interesting because I never even thought about it.
And the question was the following.
How was it so easy for you to walk away to one day say, I had enough, I don't need the money, I don't want nothing to do with this, and leave Miami, move to my farm?
And yet, Sal Magluda, El Chapo, all these people that had millions and millions of dollars, probably much more than I had when I walked away, because I spent five years in prison, they can't.
They all got jets, they all got fake passports.
You know, Sal's on the run knowing they're going to bury him for eternity if they catch him.
And he's hiding.
Who is?
Sal Magluda.
Okay.
And where is he hiding?
He's hiding at a.
You know, I think it was either the Rich Carlton Penthouse in Palm Beach, uh.
So you know, I mean right there underneath the nose, and and I answered the question very easy it was easy for me to walk away because I didn't consider myself a drug dealer.
I was a businessman before I got involved in drugs.
I had a lot of businesses, legitimate I mean.
I was uh in the drug business three years before I got arrested and my parents had no clue why.
Because I flew all over the world.
You know I I owned construction company.
You know I owned cattle comp uh farms.
I own a lot of different business.
So for me, Cocaine was just another business that I ran.
When I realized, when I came out of prison, when I went, well, first of all, when I get started, it wasn't violent.
We were all businessmen.
My godfather, who I believe started, probably would be the lead person that would have been the original, if you want to say, cartel head.
He would tell me, if you got to carry a gun to do business with someone, you have no business being with that person.
So we didn't.
We didn't carry a gun.
We didn't do anything.
We were business people.
I mean, he owned construction company.
the largest coal mines in Colombia, the largest emerald mines, I mean, very well, airlines, very wealthy people.
So when I realized I come out of prison, I go in in 79, I come out in 85, and I realized it wasn't the world that it was, you know, my clients, 80% of our, the coke they were bringing in was going to California.
My client was 80%?
Yeah, my clients were the high society of America.
They were the movie stars, they were the musicians, the real famous names everybody knows.
So I come out and all of a sudden there's a thing called crack, which I didn't agree with.
Number two, there's people killing each other.
And I was still, I went back for two more years and then I realized that this is just not me.
So for me then, it's just like if you have a company that manufactures this water and doesn't sell or you don't like that water anymore, you stop selling it.
You shift and you go to another business, right?
So for me, it was easy.
I went back to building my orange groves.
You know, I was the number one horse breeder in America.
I had the best stud in the world.
And I could do that transition no problem at all.
Difficult to give up the power.
The money, I have more money than I could ever spend the rest of my life.
I walked away when I was 31 years old and I had everything.
But they can't.
Walking Away from the Cartel00:04:26
Why?
Because their identity is a drug dealer.
So you take, like you see ballplayers today.
Why can't they just go out in the height of their career?
Why they get traded and they still want to play?
Because they don't know nothing else but to be a ballplayer.
You know, like I told John Smalls one time.
And I said to him, I said, what are you?
He said, a ball player.
I said, really?
I said, John, what happens the day you can't throw a 100 mile hour fastball?
I said to me, you are a child of God giving a tremendous gift to make millions playing a game.
Right?
So that's why you see all these people that they can't, you know, and to a certain extent, I almost think that it becomes a game for them that the payoff is getting caught, you know, and you've seen it over and over again with all of them.
Because at the end of the day, How much money can you spend?
How many cars can you drive?
How many mansions can you have?
You know, when you got X amount of millions of dollars, you can live the rest of your life super comfortably.
I mean, you can't go to strip joints and blow $100,000 a month.
Right.
But, you know, that's, and that's, and that was the thing.
So I walked away.
And when I walked away, and originally I thought my life would be in danger, I hired this guy to teach me karate because I'd done karate for a lot of years.
And the first day he came, He said, I'm going to teach you about the sword.
Man, I was so excited.
I mean, I love weapons.
And I'm like, man, we're not going to waste time throwing kicks and punches.
I've done that.
But he turns around and shows me a Bible.
And I was so pissed because I was a hardcore atheist.
I'm like, dude, first of all, I'm paying you a lot of money.
I don't believe in that book, what the book talks about.
So tomorrow you leave that bullshit sword home and bring the real sword.
And here's a guy with a seven-degree black belt.
and got up in my face, first person that had the guts to get up in my face.
And he's like, young man, what I got to give you, you got no money to pay.
I said to myself, man, this guy's a seven-degree black belt.
I reached behind my back.
I didn't have a gun.
I said, this guy's going to introduce Jesus into me.
I'm going to pay for it.
I said, dude, don't get excited.
While the steam room is heating up, waste your time, you know?
And for three years.
And people say, what did he say that made you change your life?
And I said, really nothing.
Because for two hours of getting my ass whooped, I was just getting what?
Waiting for him to.
While he was reading the bible to me, I was just getting over the ass whooping.
He'd given me for two hours.
Yeah so, but it was everything he did.
See, he lived in what I called a very crappy world, right?
I mean, I lived in this 10 000 square foot house 15 000.
My guest house was 5 000 square feet.
His house was 1200 square feet.
You know, he dove a whole beat up car, had million dollars with the cars, uh.
And then he's telling me how madly in love he is with this woman that he's been married to for 25 years.
So i'm like 25 years.
She must be in her 40s.
Man, how can it be?
I mean, I'm surrounded by supermodels and I hate them.
And he's in love with this.
I'm like, man, this lady's got to be like, I mean, some hot chick.
I got to go check her out.
And when I saw her, I thought the guy was sick.
And I'm like, it's impossible.
And the thing about now, I think she's gorgeous and she's a great person.
I love them to death.
But in my world, you know, there was identifiers that gave value to your life.
He had none of them.
So why would he be happy and I'm miserable?
You know?
And I kept asking him, and he never invited me to church or anything like that.
And he gave me a really neat answer, which is part of what I do today.
And his answer was, you know, I have an intimate relationship with Jesus.
And I'm like, what?
I said, first of all, you don't know that guy exists.
How can you have an intimate relationship with someone don't exist?
I'm surrounded by people that die for me, and I don't have an intimate relationship with them.
You don't have time for ancient myths, right?
Yeah, I mean, dude, how do you know he exists?
He said, well, I know air exists, and I can't see it.
So I'm like, and that's all he would say.
And really, what I wanted him to say to me was, like, oh, you know, I wanted him to battle me because I could fight.
That I could do.
But I couldn't fight someone they want to fight back.
And for three years, he didn't waver.
Didn't waver.
And, uh, I never forget it was July 1st, 1990.
About 10.30 in the morning, my divorce was final from my ex-wife.
Facing a Life Sentence00:05:18
And I saw her dragging away my little girl, which was everything in my life.
The main reason why I finally walked away from this world.
And I saw her crying.
I went to my room.
I got on my knees.
And I'm like, I can remember that until today.
I said, first and foremost, Jesus, I don't believe you're real.
I want to be honest.
I'm honest.
Number two.
If you're real, you're probably looking at me and saying, you're so bad, you stay down there and I'll stay up here.
Number three, but if you are the reason that man is happy and you change his life, change mine, I'll die for you.
You know, and Christians say that when someone converts, there's angels in him.
And I'm like, man, Cubans, they must not be able to play to the Cubans because I didn't hear shit.
You know, I'm like, and actually in three months, my life went from bad to horrifically worse.
I get arrested.
I was at a horse show and no clue why I was arrested.
When they bring me in on this conspiracy, my attorney said, don't worry, you're going to go home.
The only person testifying against you is a pilot and he died.
He killed himself using a DEA airplane to smuggle in the fog in Alabama.
And he said, they don't have anything against you.
It was a conspiracy, 160 people, and they had all been indicted.
And their head guy had gotten life and he I knew and he had transported for me years ago.
Way past the statute of limitation, which is five years.
But he's like, just plead innocent and we're going to go home.
And I looked at him and I'm like, Alan, I've been in my attorney forever, one of the top drug lawyers in the world.
I said, Alan, here's the deal, man.
Here you are, a good Jew that I know and love.
Tell me I'm going home.
You know, I've given my life to this other Jew that ain't said nothing to me yet.
But I know one thing if my life is going to change, I got to change.
I can't continue to fight these people the rest of my life.
You know, I just, and I can't continue to lie.
He said, if you do that, they're going to give you a life sentence.
A life sentence for what?
And then he tells me about the indictment.
I said, but Alan, I walked away eight months before the minimum mandatory laws were enacted.
In other words, when I walked away from the cartel, the most they could give me was 15 years, like they did the first time, conspiracy.
Right.
15 years.
But now that law had changed.
And that 15 years became a life sentence.
Well, three life sentence.
A life sentence, conspiracy to import that you didn't import.
Conspiracy to possess what you were going to import.
Conspiracy to distribute what you were going to possess that you were going to import.
That's the law of the land.
Wow.
So, I mean, who can win?
That's crazy.
So I'm like, I'm going to put it behind me.
I said, if I get a life sentence, I don't give a shit.
I said, I'm dead anyway.
If I die in the streets, but my life has got changed.
If my life doesn't change, I don't care.
I don't care.
I don't care about living anymore.
And I go in front of the prosecutor and what my attorney argues, look, he's going to confess to dealing, but really what the most you should give him is violation of parole because I went back while I was on parole, right?
I got 15 years the first time.
The most you could do is five if you never had a prior offense.
And then I had 10 years on parole.
So here I am going to confess that I violated the parole, right?
No wiretaps, not a single freaking picture.
Not a grain of cocaine, nothing.
In both trials, nothing.
And not a compromised picture with anybody.
I mean, I took care of myself.
And I go in front of the prosecutor, and he said, Look, just give him the 10.
I mean, he's confessing to it.
You know he walked away from this four years ago.
You really don't have a case.
And he's willing to give you everything he has that you can't take because the statute of limitations of that had run out way long ago.
And he's doing all this voluntarily.
The prosecutor said, Well, we'll recommend it.
It was up to the judge.
And I walked through the courtroom and the judge is like, Mr. Valdez, my intention is to sentence you to a life sentence.
Young man, you're going to die in a federal prison.
And I looked at him and said, Your Honor, you can only give me what God wants to give me.
And the truth of the matter is, if my life doesn't change, I don't give it to him or I die.
Prison don't scare me.
So, you know, a year went by and I ended up getting, I was given the 10 years because my attorneys were able to argue and the prosecutor agreed that I had cooperated extensively by giving him.
So all of my assets initially they gave you life.
No, no, no.
That's when I went to because you go in front of the judge to plead, right?
It was called your arraignment and you plead guilty or not guilty.
So I went in there to plead guilty.
When I go in there to plead guilty, the judge or anyone does the judge tells you what you are exposed to, what you can get.
But you know, they they knew that it wasn't that I got caught and I'm sorry.
The good thing I didn't have that.
I knew that I could.
One of the thing that would have held me back from doing that was if I had to testify against anybody, because you hear about my first, when I got arrested in Panama, was tortured for 28 days.
Yeah, I want to go.
Okay, I want to go.
The Cuban Communist Childhood00:14:01
Yeah, back to that.
So but I walked out of uh, I went back to prison and I said I got a choice.
I can either sleep 12 hours it may say you sleep 12 hours, you sleep half of your sentence away or I can do something about my life.
So I made myself believe which is all your mindset?
Right, your whole life is your mindset, how you look at the world.
It doesn't matter that this is water.
What matters is, how is my mind looking at?
That water does it look at?
I can make a dollar off of it.
Or does it look like, wow, I'm dying of thirst.
It can satisfy me?
Or, man, maybe that water has been in heat and they say plastic has got cancer.
It's all in your mind, right?
It's all how you look at it.
So I said, I'm going to make believe I'm in a monastery.
And I began to study.
I got another bachelor's degree.
I taught myself Greek.
I started half of my master's.
When I was released from prison, I went back to Wheaton College in Illinois and I finished my master's.
Then I went to Loyola University, got a PhD.
When I graduated, I was one of five Hispanics in the whole country with a PhD in New Testament and Ethics.
And I was named a Hispanic Doctor of Student America by the Pew Foundation two years in a row.
And then I was recruited by every university.
And then I looked at my salary, $90,000.
And I got six kids.
How do I educate them?
Because for Cubans, education is everything, right?
So I, and then my dad had died.
And my children, that little girl and her two other siblings, were living in Georgia.
And I'm in Illinois.
And I'm getting this job in California.
And I'm like, I told my wife, I'm going to move to Georgia and I'm going to be a full-time dad to those kids.
And she's like, what are you going to do?
I mean, your dream is to teach.
I said, yeah.
I said, that's been my dream for the last seven years.
I said, but my kids don't care about my dream.
How are they going to remember me?
I had to send a check every month and had a good summer.
I want to be there.
And I did.
And I moved.
Didn't know what to do.
And I started a little cleaning company in the basement of my house.
Yeah.
Taking out water damage and fire damage and cleaning toilets.
And wrote my book.
It was a bestseller at that time.
And so I was out there preaching.
And at the same time, I was out there cleaning carpet.
And then in 10 years, I built it into a multi-million dollar national, international company the cleaning business.
Yeah, wow and uh, we had, we did jobs in London, we did jobs in Grand Cayman, all over the United States, and then my our, my customers were governments and uh, at the end i'm sitting there on the last job and i'm in Louisiana and we had just built the first Catholic Catholic church inside any United States prison, at Angola, a place that no one uh, a prison called Angola in Louisiana.
You were building church inside.
I built, I built one inside my prison.
Yeah, this was just when we built our company.
We made a, we made a decision me and two other partners, my brother and my other partner that we give 10 off the top to our foundation to impact other people's life, because I determined that what makes a great company is not great technology, great employees, great customers, it's a company that gives back and uh, and so we create a foundation that I ran and I still run today and uh, and one of the things the foundation did is build this church, because it's a prison that There were two or three evangelical chapels, but there was no Catholic chapel in Louisiana,
very Catholic state.
And those men are never going to go home.
6,500 men, mostly sentenced to life or death.
And in Louisiana, life means you die there.
Three cemeteries.
You know, it's where they did the movie Dead Man Walking.
So we had just finished a huge job, three year job.
And I sat there.
You know, I lived in a motorhome for those three years.
I had a big motorhome, which was my office because our job, since they were governed, we had to go and park.
Like right there, you know, there's no, be a hurricane, national fire, whatever the catastrophe could be.
And I'm sitting there and I just, it dawned on myself, you know, I got two kids left, two young kids left.
And my other four literally don't know me, right?
My oldest son, by the time he was 13, I had been in jail 10 years.
And yeah, we're very close.
All of them are very close.
I've educated all of them.
And I told my wife, I'm going to quit.
And she's like, you're going to what?
I said, yeah, I'm going to stop.
I'm going to retire.
56.
And she's like, man, you worked your life to get to this point.
And we were.
We were making millions.
You know, we had jets again.
I had a 90-foot yacht.
And I said, look, I don't need a jet.
I don't need a yacht.
And I got enough money to live very comfortably the rest of my life.
And I don't need no more zeros.
And I quit.
And I went to run the foundation in Mexico.
We took my kids and we moved to Casamel, Mexico for five years.
And I wanted my kids to learn a different culture.
I wanted them to see my wife and I grew up poor.
And all of a sudden we were not poor.
We're very wealthy.
And we're living in a mansion.
And we had fancy vacation and private jets.
And my kids going to the best school.
And I looked at her and I, like, even though we were very careful, we never gave our kids more than $100 every Christmas.
And they said, You take that and you get three gifts.
Jesus got three, you get three.
You're no better than Jesus.
And they all were great with that.
You get three what?
I said, Jesus got three gifts.
That's all you get on Christmas.
Okay, okay, okay.
So I thought, I need to show them what the real world is.
And the world we live now is not real.
This is not real.
This is a fantasy world.
And I said, let's go to Casanova for one year.
So we bought a house over there, an apartment on the ocean, and we stayed five.
And we created a foundation.
Through the foundation, we created a program.
The kids had a lot of problems with obesity and drugs.
And my wife and I were doing Iron Man, and we created a program through Iron Man called I Stay Noted Drugs, Obesity, and Violence.
So what we did is we would take these kids, started with my daughter actually my son, they used to do iron kids so they go to a track and then uh we, I started using gang techniques, like with the gangs.
They loved colors, right.
So uh, a t-shirt with a color.
So I gave him a white t-shirt.
I said, everybody starts running.
We hired a coach and uh, and here's how you're going to advance in this program.
I don't give a damn how fast you are in life, that's not going to get you anywhere.
What's going to get you somewhere in life is that you are a good human being and that you've got good morals and you've got good work ethics.
So we're going to create a point chart and you're going to get points for number one, showing on time.
And that was the biggest challenge of the whole program in Mexico, getting kids to show up in time.
And number two, if you bring another kid, you get a program.
If you're overweight, then we had a nutritionist and we put you in a program.
And as you lose weight, we go ahead and you get points.
You know, how you treat teachers, how you treat your mother.
And as you get points, then we give them a green jersey and we taught them how to swim.
And then they get more and more points and we give them a red jersey.
Now they can ride a bike and we give them a bike.
So now that we're doing triathlon, we started with two kids, my daughter and my son and a couple kids from school.
And by the time we left, we had 300 kids that had lost amazing amount of weight that were on a Friday night.
I have pictures on my Facebook.
These kids on a Friday night working their butts off at dark.
I'm saying like, what kid in the world Friday night is out here sweating on the track trying to become better?
You know, and uh, and it worked, and it was, and it was amazing.
And uh, then my wife wanted us to come back to the States because she wanted the kids to go to high school in the United States.
And we came back five years ago and uh, I was happily retired.
I was like I walked my dog in the morning, I exercised for an hour and a half and by 11 o'clock I was done for the day.
Man, life was good, that's great.
And uh then, through a series of events, it's almost like God called me to.
Hey, I did a big event in Houston And I didn't realize that it was for big CEOs, Catholic CEOs.
And this guy asked me, like, what are you doing?
I said, well, I'm retired.
He's like, really?
And what do you do?
I said, well, I get up at 5 o'clock every day of my life.
I feed the kids.
I walk the dog.
And I exercise for an hour, hour and a half.
And I'm done.
And he's like, why are you so selfish?
Good for you, man.
It's a great life.
He said, why are you so selfish?
And I'm like, I mean, you don't know me.
Why do you call me selfish?
He said, look, you got so much to offer the world.
Why do you want to do this?
And I had already done that, right?
I wrote the first book.
And when I wrote the first book, I started talking all over the country.
I was doing some of the largest events in America in 98.
And then I saw things.
I started doing a lot of religious events to religious organizations and I saw things that I didn't see in my world.
And it really just jaded me.
What do you mean?
Well, you know, I saw people be not what they were supposed to be.
I saw a big televangelist one day in a studio where I was hosting a program.
Someone asked him for water.
He asked for water and a guy brings him a glass and he just slapped it off his hands.
He says, You know better than to give me water in a glass.
I take Perrier.
And I'm like, man, I would have kicked your ass so bad.
And just different things, you know, different things that it just, and the division among them, you know, and the hatred.
And, you know, and it's like, look, I don't care if people are Baptist, if people, like I tell right now, look, you know my mission?
I don't care if you're Baptist, Muslim, if you worship dogs, if you worship cats.
I don't care if you're gay, straight, quadruple, whatever you want to be.
I'm not going to tell you what to be.
That's up to you.
All I want to share with you is how the love of a Jewish carpenter changed my life.
If the shoe fits, wear it, man.
If not, buy another pair of shoes.
Yeah.
You know?
Let's go.
And to impact people's lives, to impact kids' lives, so that hopefully they don't go through what George Valdez went through.
And to send books to prisoners so they can find why is the world in despair that we're at?
Because there's no hope, man.
Yeah, you've clearly experienced a lot in your life, and I think it's very good that you're sharing it.
I kind of want to skip back real quick to the beginning.
We just told the last half of it, sort of, after you got out.
I found it really interesting in your story how you talk about at the moment you got on the plane from Cuba to go to Miami, you were in an emotional coma because you were so young.
You didn't know what was going on.
You were feeling pain for the first time in your life and you sort of didn't know what to do.
You didn't know whether you should cry, whether you should be confident.
You didn't know what to do.
You just kind of went to the plane and emotionless.
You know, and it was, I tell people there was three cataclysmic events in my life.
That was number one.
First of all, my friends were very wealthy.
So.
We got everything.
So communism did not affect us at all.
What I felt as a 10-year-old kid, I had a bicycle, I had all the toys I wanted.
We had television in our house, we had a chauffeur, we went to the beach after school.
So life was good for me.
So all of a sudden I'm waking up at 5 o'clock in the morning and my mother says, get dressed.
And I'm like, where are we going?
She says, to Miami.
So I went to get to pack a little suitcase of toys.
She said, no, no, just the clothes on your back.
And I was very confused.
I had no idea what was going on.
And my mother was very religious.
It was a period when we would go to school and Fidel would teach us about communism, right?
You're a 10-year-old kid.
You're impressionable about everything, right?
But we would come home and my mother said, that's all bullshit.
God, God, God, God.
That was everything for her.
So her whole thing is, my kids are not going to grow up in a communist country.
They cannot worship God freely.
So explain to someone who doesn't understand the history of communists.
Communism and Cuba and Fidel Castro's regime.
Explain why they were so against religion and Christianity and all that.
You know, if you read some of Fidel's books, which I was able to read when I went to Cuba, and it was really interesting because, you know, he was raised by priests, right?
Fidel went to the best Jesuit schools in Cuba.
Communists believe, well, let's go back.
If you read the writings of Karl Marx and Max Hengel, right?
The Communist Manifesto.
Oh, it's a perfect world, right?
Everybody's the same.
Everybody makes the same.
Nobody abuses anybody.
You know, there's no class distinction, right?
And so Fidel comes along and I tell people, I didn't think that Fidel was in reality wanted to be a communist because I think Fidel came to the United States looking for help and they didn't.
They turned his back.
So there was two superpowers.
He was smart enough to realize that, hey, I go with one or the other or I'm going to be wiped out.
But the thing about it is that in the communist ideology, they teach you that man is the center, that there is no God, right?
That God and religion is an opiate.
It's a drug used by institutions to control people.
So the first thing that they do in school when we're little was start teaching us through a program called the Pioneers, like the Boy Scouts.
And they would teach you all this, right?
And Fidel, the supreme leader, is the best and all of that stuff.
I mean, to me, it was all good.
You're 10 years old.
What do you know, right?
Exactly.
But I come home and my mother's like, as a matter of fact, if it was out to my dad, he would have never said nothing because my dad was very rich.
Life was good for him.
And he wasn't going to rock any boats.
Religion as an Opiate00:15:57
But not my mom, and my mom was five feet.
I tell me, if my mom was five five, Osama Bin Lan would have had nothing on her because she was a terrorist.
And she's like, no, and i'm taking my kids out of here and we're going to Miami now.
Think about that.
Think about her conviction to abandon a life of wealth to come to the United States with nothing.
40 years of age, three little kids 10, 9 and five but at the airport, what happens is so, as i'm going to the, to the airport with them, i'm in sort of a daze, right in a daze because confused.
What's going on?
Why?
Maybe we're just going for a weekend.
You know, I have no idea about anything.
Maybe we don't need to pack anything because we're just going to go and come back.
Because then, you know, they didn't tell me much.
All they said is just pack.
We're going to Miami.
And so we're waiting to board the airplane.
And I see my, we're the last people, Valdez, of course.
So I see my mom crying and my dad is, I'm not going.
And I was like, so my mom comes up to me and grabs my hand and grabs my brother and sister and says, George.
You go to Miami.
I'll see you one day.
They made a mistake and they said she couldn't come.
And my dad, of course, didn't want to come all along anyway.
So he's like, you ain't going?
I ain't going.
Right.
So I'm like, and that's when I become in a daze.
That's when I become comatose.
I'm walking to the airplane and my world changed.
I went from being a 10-year-old kid playing with kites on the street, baseball, which was my life, to becoming a man all of a sudden, to become my father and a mother to my brother and sister.
And we come to Miami and my dad got in the plane as we're finally leaving.
And we come to Miami, and what do we do?
11 of us go live in a one-bedroom apartment with one bathroom, writing down what time we're going to piss because everyone had to go to school work, right.
So here we go, from a house that was one square block to a little 800 square foot apartment in little Havana, you know.
With it, with 11 of us all together, wow and uh.
So my father, you know, went to work uh, as a janitor for JAY Byron's, which is like a JC Pennies and uh, making minimum wage 85 cents an hour and never complained.
And I was like, I was mad because a month later we moved into a house, because one of the things that Cubans did that was really great was you come to Miami and you go live in somebody's house for free for a month or two months so you can save enough money to rent your own apartment.
Right.
And then you do the same for somebody else.
Right.
Right.
And that's how we helped each other, you know.
That's how we were overcome.
We were able to overcome, you know, 10 year old getting off the airplane and seeing signs that said, No animals, no Cubans.
This ain't Havana.
Go back to Cuba.
Speak English.
I'm telling you so.
I'm like, what the hell's going on?
I didn't see no distinction.
I didn't realize that people hated people.
Yeah.
So anyway, we go and then we started to go hungry.
All we would have for breakfast was one glass of this powdered milk from Vietnam that would not mix with two raw eggs.
And that's all we had until nighttime.
And nighttime we would have rice and beans.
And I remember finding out a friend of mine was having lunch.
He had just come from Cuba a year earlier than us.
And I come to find out and I'm like, How is it that you can afford lunch?
And he's like, oh, we get food stamps.
I said, really?
What the hell is that?
He said, oh, it's a little thing the government gives you.
And with that, we go to the grocery store and we can buy food.
Man, I thought I'd discover the universe.
I go back to my dad.
I said, hey, dad, remember I've been telling you that my friend, he has lunch.
And he's like, you know, he was that type of man that didn't speak much.
And I said, he told me that he gets food stamps.
I said, dad, do you know about food stamps?
He says, Yeah, I do.
I said, well, why don't we get food stamps?
He says, son, that's for poor people.
I'm like, holy shit.
We haven't gotten to poor yet, man.
We got to dig our way out of whatever state is it, climb up to poor.
And I said, dad, are we not poor?
He said, no, son.
We just don't have any money.
And then I'll never forget that.
He took his two fingers, put them in my chest, and he says, you get up early and help feed your family.
I was 10.
I weighed 70 pounds.
I was like a skinny rail.
And I'm like, I've been getting up since 4.30 in the morning and I'm 64 now for the last 54 years.
But we did.
And we struggled and we survived, you know?
And this is the thing that a lot of times as I speak, I talk about, like, how we see in the world here what's happening here in America, you know?
With the government giving you now all this extra money.
Now there's people that need help.
Yeah, without a doubt.
But I'm going to tell you something.
With the stimulus checks and stuff.
Yeah, with the stimulus check.
Now people don't want to go back to work because they get more with a $600 and they're unemployed than they did before.
And what they don't realize what they don't realize is that the government is creating the new slavery of America.
The new slaves.
Why are we the slaves?
Because what does the slave?
The slave is you just sit back and wait till the master tell you something because you're not going to be creative.
You're not going to be entrepreneur.
You're not going to lose your work habits.
You're going to lose your desire to succeed.
Your drive, everything.
You're just going to sit back and wait till the master sends you a check.
And then what happens?
One day the master doesn't send a check.
And it goes on like that.
And the middle classes disappear, right?
And, you know, I'm a capitalist at heart, but I believe that it comes with a responsibility like when we did in our company.
So I'm happy and I applaud a Jeff Bezos that leaves the company, you know, JP Morgan, wherever he was, he was working at Goldman Sachs and goes to his garage to sell books and becomes a multi-billionaire.
Happy for him.
Great.
That's America.
But damn it, man.
Don't do it at the expense of people that can't live a dignified life.
You know, pay a wage where someone like my dad and my mother came and with minimum wage salary back then, they were able to save enough in three years where we got the down payment of a little house.
You know?
So in America today, how do we have disparity?
How do we got people dying, unemployment so huge, and the stock market going to the roof?
So the distinction in classes are so big that you know what edges in?
Same thing that happened in Cuba.
I told this to my dad.
I said, Dad, you hate communism?
He says, of course.
I said, you know why?
I said that because you were part of that 5% that own 95% of the wealth.
So when you have 95% of the people have nothing and here comes a good talking guy, charismatic, and he's going to make everything equal, guess where they're going to go with that guy?
And that's what we're going to have here in America.
That's what conservative values, I mean, all kinds of things are going to disappear.
Why?
Because people are going hungry in our country.
People can't make it.
When we worked hurricanes, people would say, look, they're stupid.
Why don't they abandon their house?
I said, abandon their house?
He said, do you realize that poor guy can even has never hasn't ever in his life put a full tank of gas He goes from paycheck to paycheck from two dollars of gas to three dollars of gas.
Where the hell is he gonna go?
How is he gonna survive?
You know like people today?
Whoa, you know the health is more important than the economy.
I said bullshit.
Yes human life is very important, but you know what?
The economy is the health of so many freaking people Now I can go to quarantine for well, we were two months dude.
I was in quarantine for 10 years.
You know, you know three by eight no sex.
Well, part of it.
No bourbon, you know, no Netflix.
So quarantine to me is nothing but some people, that single mom, 40 of the mothers raising children by themselves what does quarantine do kill them?
And I talked about.
I said look, why don't we talk about the 70 000 good Americans that die every year of a drug overdose?
Right, you know well the government.
Why are we not worried about it?
It's interesting.
We can't find money for things like that, for drug overdoses, for things like education, but as soon as something like coronavirus hits, we find trillions of dollars.
We print it.
We print it like it's going out of style right, because we're not backed by gold anymore.
I worked for the Federal Reserve BANK.
I was the youngest employee, 17.
17 years old.
Yeah, I worked for them for three and a half years.
That's who put me to school.
So I know the inner workings of the FED and I know all of that.
The thing about it is that right now, the disparity is so horrific.
That's why you're going to see people talk about socialist.
Uh, congresswomen got listen.
In 10 years, in 10 years, I promise you, I promise you that's all going to be in our country.
What is?
Socialist agenda.
Well, without a doubt.
But look, in reality, what's America?
We're a socialist country.
80% of our GDP goes to social services.
Right.
You know?
So the thing about it is, when we have this disparity of wealth, and the richer are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and people can't support their families, and people are hurting, you know, what's going to happen?
Someone's going to come in there and say, hey, you know what?
We're going to take all the money from the rich people.
What do you think the majority of people are going to say?
What do you think the answer is?
Well, the answer, number one, a balanced capitalism, right?
Capitalism is the best formula.
Why?
Because people are incentivized to create, right?
To work harder.
Why should you and I make the same when you don't want to work and I want to work?
Right.
But it cannot be at the expense.
Or if I invest and I take the risk, I risk my own capital to buy machines or a factory.
I pay the lease.
Yeah, exactly.
So when you go ahead and you get all that tax break so that you can invest in machinery.
Right, and in people, and you buy the stock back.
Well, I'm happy because I'm a big Apple stockholder, so I was happy, right?
But you know what happens to the rest of America?
Nothing, so they sit there and it makes no difference to them, right?
And they're hurting and they're hurting big time.
You gotta hear it.
And the drug overdose is the same thing with the war on drugs, the biggest joke in the world.
I mean, the biggest joke in the world, right?
We spend billions of dollars.
I tell, I told this to a senator not too long ago, listen, stop the you're not going to eliminate the cartels, trust me.
You kill one.
There's 10 worse ones than him in line.
It's not going to.
As long as America consumes 85% of the narcotics in the world, someone's going to supply it, right?
Supply and demand.
Now, I know how to win the war on drugs, right?
How?
Another thing is, here's the other thing.
So I say, we spend billions on a drug and war to go out to 15%.
Cocaine, right?
It's less than 15% of the drug overdose.
Cocaine is less than 50%?
15%.
Less than 15%.
Why aren't we going out to Big Pharma, which is 61%?
Right, right, right.
Oh, guess who did not shut down in the coronavirus?
Big Pharma.
Twice the overdoses we've had because of this virus.
I know a lawyer from around here who defended a Colombian ship captain.
Who was sentenced to, I want to say it was over 50 years for pulling the ship into the port of Tampa with hundreds of kilos of cocaine.
He defended this guy.
This guy, the ship got ambushed on the way from Columbia to Tampa by pirates.
They put the cocaine on the ship, held the gun to the captain's head, said, If you don't bring this in Tampa, I'm going to kill you and your whole family.
So he ended up doing it, and they ended up just getting this guy.
What this guy, my friend who's a lawyer, he said most of the people that end up going to prison are just the pawns of the operation.
The big, the big, the head honchos that are running the businesses, they're protected because either they're paying people off or they're not put, they're not out there getting caught by people because they're just not in the line of fire because they put the pawns out there to smuggle the stuff and they can get caught.
Yeah.
And the thing about, look, there's a lot of corruption, right?
You know, in America, we call it a lot.
In South America, we call it corruption.
In America, we call it lobbyists, but it's corruption.
And, uh, So you ask me, how do you win the war on drugs?
I'm going to tell you this.
I call it a five-pronged approach.
Number one, when we went to Colombia, because when we started, Colombia did not grow any drugs, right?
It was all Peru and Bolivia.
We bring it to Colombia.
We started to crystallize it into cocaine.
We used to bring the paste.
Then we started to grow.
How?
Well, I'll give you one perfect example.
So we went to the people that grew bananas.
And this is just numbers, for example.
So I said, how much do you get paid per acre?
Well, we get paid ten dollars.
And at the end of the season uh, the big international banana companies come and say well, we don't need no more bananas.
Said well, we don't even have roads to take it to the city and sell the rest, we got to burn it.
And we, we don't have enough money to make it to a year.
So here I come, the big bag drug lord right, and I said, hey buddy, forget about ten dollars, i'm gonna give you a thousand dollars.
Now that man is a very religious anti-drug, anti-everything, I said, i'm gonna give you a thousand dollars to grow cocaine.
What do you think he's gonna think about?
The morality of cocaine?
Or he's gonna think about feeding his family?
Exactly so Multi international quit exploiting South American growers and farmers, and then you will see.
You will see what will happen.
That's number one.
Number two, and it's not that I'm against law enforcement.
Listen, when the government, when the president was attacking the FBI, I defended the FBI.
There's bad people everywhere, but there's a lot of good people in law enforcement that go out every day and might not see their family so that they can go ahead and protect you and I, right?
Sure.
I was never able to buy an FBI agent.
I was never ever able to buy a DEA agent.
And we bought in 1977.
We're spending hundred.
We're spending a million dollars a month in corruption.
A million.
The math today.
Where did that money go?
Paying people, paying judges, paying politicians, paying everybody that would take a payoff.
And it was easy for the FBI and DEA because all we would have paid him thousands of dollars just to tell us who's under investigation or not.
Right?
Not to blow a case.
So we didn't.
Nowadays, it's lobbying.
So there might be some bad FBI agent.
Hell yeah, there's a bad FBI agent.
But I'm going to tell you, as a whole, it's a damn good agency.
So is the DA.
Law enforcement as a whole is a good agency.
That guy, that demonic guy that killed that African-American man, you can't throw all the people in the world, all the good officers that risk their lives.
Now, is there police abuse?
Of course there's police abuse.
There's humanity abuse.
It isn't a badge.
It's people.
People are evil.
There are people that are evil, deranged mentally.
But there's a lot of good people, a lot of good people that leave their house every day so you and I are safe, right?
Right.
So that's the number one.
So number two, you go to stop dealing with the multi-international doing that.
Number two, you come to the United States and you take a lot of this money that you're spending in interdiction and fighting the cartels.
I'm not saying you stop law enforcement.
You go on, but you don't need 100,000 agents that ain't doing crap.
You're confiscating very little.
And then you invest in the communities.
You invest in non-for-profits that are working their ass off and they can turn communities around.
I can tell you two perfect examples of what can be done to change those communities.
And then you spend money in mental health because a lot of the addicts are only addicts because the mental health problem in America is enormous and people just don't want to deal with it.
So you invest in the people where you attack all of a sudden, not the supply, you attack the demand.
Investing in Community Rehab00:08:52
See, Nixon had it right.
Nixon, when he started the war on drugs, the first president, he went after to help the addicts.
He created the methadone clinics in New York for the heron and he cleaned up New York.
Reagan came in and said, I'm a tough cowboy, bullshit.
I'm going to go after the suppliers.
And we were so happy.
It was in the midst of my reign.
I was so happy.
Because number one, I don't give a shit.
Come after me all you want.
You're not going to get me.
That's number one.
And number two, just don't mess with my demand.
Right.
Because as long as somebody wants it, we'll figure a way to get it.
But that's what Nixon was doing was messing with your demand.
No, that's what Reagan did.
Reagan, that's what I'm saying.
And that's what we've done ever since then.
Right.
And what do we call it?
Insanity, right?
Doing the same shit over and over again with expecting a different result.
So we spent billions.
And every year we lose 70,000 Americans to drug overdose.
And in reality, that number is probably 140,000.
I just saw a study by John Hopkins where it says, we're talking about direct, but we're not talking about people that die driving under the influence of drugs.
We're not talking about many other deaths that are caused because of drug addiction.
Yeah, exactly, suicide.
But nobody does that, right?
You know when we worry about it?
When someone in our house dies, God forbid, or someone close to us.
Then we're all we're worried about it.
We want to do something about drug addiction, right?
But in the meantime, why?
Who's talking about it?
Nobody's talking about it.
Well, now this year 140,000 will die twice as much, right?
Because big pharma there.
So I go out to big pharma and I said to big pharma, I said, look, drugs don't kill people.
You're not killing people.
People killing themselves with the drugs you make and the money that you make.
You got a more responsibility to help and invest in those communities.
I call it the LeBron James model.
You know what LeBron, I'm not a fan of LeBron James.
Why?
basketball.
He's a great athlete.
I'm a big fan of him as a human being.
Well, he left Miami.
I was a Miami Heat fan.
Is that why you like him?
No, I do like him a lot because what LeBron James has done is what every, every African-American leader and every person of color Latino needs to do.
He created that school.
He put all the money out of his pocket.
Those kids are outscoring every other kid in Akron, Ohio, and he's teaching the kids and teaching the parents.
If you don't educate your community, listen, we can burn America to the pulp.
We ain't going to stop people from hating people.
We got us in biblical times, man.
You think LeBron James should run for president one day?
No, I don't know.
I know you can't vote, but.
No, I can.
You can, right?
Yeah, I got all my rights back.
What?
I mean, this was 40 years ago now, remember?
Oh, okay.
So, 79 was my conviction.
You pulled some strings.
So, no, no, after a while, I can't own a gun, though.
You know?
Right.
I still cannot own a firearm, so that's one thing.
Yeah, that's wild.
Do you watch basketball?
Are you a fan of the NBA?
Yeah, I'm a big fan, yeah.
Do you think they should start it back up?
Yeah, they should.
Yeah.
Of course.
But now it's all money, right?
Right, of course.
It's all about money.
It's all about the owners make all the money.
Think about all the people that are going to lose their jobs if they don't start it back up.
There are a lot of people that are going to buy it.
We think about all those rich basketball players.
We think about the LeBron James and the Carrier.
But there's a lot of them that are living day to day right exactly okay yeah, so you know.
So we, we got, we got that problem, so we got to invest in the community, and this is what I tell the people.
So look, it's wonderful, you got Michael Jordan donate 100 million.
I'm like hey dude, where were you when Kaepernick was freaking?
Where were you guys protesting?
When this guy, yeah was, was his career devastated.
You know, are we doing this now because because now is, is is expedient, or is because it's about time?
But let's be real, i'm a person of color If I think for a minute that every person, and you talk about prejudice, there's just as much prejudice now.
Have people of color had a worse chance?
Have African Americans in America have suffered a lot?
Yeah, they have.
There's no doubt about that.
But no matter what we do, we're not going to change people's perspective.
If people hate you, they're going to hate you no matter what.
No matter if you are what.
But what we can change is they can respect us.
And unless we start with another thing, criminal justice reform.
Now, there's where you got the big, there's where the root of all the problems exist.
If I was leading all that money that's been given, I said, this is what we're going to do.
We're going to go after those politicians.
We're going to stop that crap.
Because when they passed the 1986 Act that passed, and all of a sudden, you get five years for 10 grams of crack, but you need 1,000 grams of powder, it's 100 to 1, whatever that number is, 100 to 1.
I'm like, didn't we figure this shit out that who deals with crack?
People of color.
Latinos and blacks who deals with powder.
White Americans, right?
So why haven't we been protesting this when all of a sudden we realize that they are locking up our kids that are not criminal and giving them a life sentence because the prison system is a money-making enterprise for special interest groups.
They don't look at inmates like people.
They're inventory.
So unless you, and like Van Jones is done with the Cardano, listen, elected officials are that elected.
They don't walk up to Washington and say, hey, I'm here.
I'm your leader.
I'm your congressman.
We put their ass in there.
Well, you know how we change America?
We get them people, their sorry ass out of there, and we pass laws that are just.
And we enforce rehabilitation instead of punishment.
And the punishment must fit the crime.
And then if we do that and we help those kids to be rehabilitated, to learn a trade in prison, instead of just warehousing them in overcrowded prisons so that it becomes very tumultuous, right?
Then you know what?
Those kids will go back to their communities and they'll change other kids.
Unless we change our communities, unless I look at my latest grandbaby, right?
Born in January.
Fat, gorgeous.
And my wife and I set up a college fund for all of our grandkids.
I said, That kid's gonna have every chance in life to succeed.
But there's a little African-American kid born in a community in America with a father in jail, a mother that might be on drugs or a prostitute, crying in the crib with no one changing his diaper.
And who's gonna raise him?
The gangs are gonna raise him.
And where's that kid gonna end up?
The kid's gonna end up in prison.
And then it becomes a vicious cycle.
And if the father goes to prison, 80% chance the kid goes to prison.
So it becomes a vicious cycle.
So, unless we attack all those different fronts and then we educate our children, because a lot of them cannot even go to school because they gotta eat, they don't have any money.
So government, you want to do something?
Pay those kids money to get a trade electrician and a plumber makes 85 bucks an hour, 80 of all middle middle management.
Don't make that in America.
So help them, believe me, if you invest in a, in a, in a young person, and if you show them why, think about this.
Why does a young kid at the age of 12 Kill someone, get in a circle, take an unbelievable beating, almost to death to join a gang so someone can tell him 24 hours a day what the hell to do why?
Because he's looking for meaning and belonging and someone that loves them, and that's what the gang does.
And then we complain right, but we don't care, You know, so we have this horrific death by a demon because if you look at the guy's eyes man to me was like he was demonic.
Yeah, I mean he's being filmed freaking filmed.
Yeah, there's nothing there.
There's nothing he's just looking at like I don't give a shit if I'm gonna die in prison I'm gonna kill this this piece of whatever in his eyes, right?
Not a human being, not a son, you know, not a brother, nothing.
Didn't give a damn about nothing.
So, yeah, they shouldn't kill that guy.
They need to put him in a jail for the rest of his life because that's, if you tell me, die in prison or Sparky, the electric chair, say, take me to Sparky, buddy.
Yeah.
Because prison.
And for a guy like that, he ain't going to make it anyways.
So, but that's how I look at it.
Well, there's a big difference between the local police and other types of military.
I mean, and even higher up levels like the FBI and the CIA or even Navy SEALs.
There's a huge difference in the amount of training.
And education.
And education.
You have to have a college degree to be a DA or FBI.
You don't to be a cop, right?
So that should be something mandatory.
And there should be more money invested in weeding out.
Everybody knows, listen, that ain't the first complaint the guy's had.
So why did he have six and he's still doing this crap?
Yeah, I think the basic underwater demolition SEALs training, there's hundreds of people that get flushed out of that course every single day when they go through training.
Sure.
Basically, not only is it physical endurance, but it's your character and your mental endurance to be able to get through that kind of torture.
Survival and Bank Deposits00:15:09
Only the people that can make it through that are the people that are going to have the type of character that it takes to go to another country and deal with a completely foreign community and try to weed out the bad people.
I mean, there's so many different variables to it.
Yeah.
And it's so easy to become a cop.
It is.
Anybody can become a cop.
Exactly.
Two hours of training a year, I think, you have to go through.
No, it's horrible.
And that needs to be flushed out and that needs to be cleaned up.
But, you know, at the end of the day, again.
I go back to the same thing.
When I came from here, I was 10 years old, and I see the woman, you know, with a big billboard, no animals, no Cubans, and go back to Cuba.
And then I go to school and I see the girls laugh at me and say, Hey, George, are you going to a party Saturday?
Oh, I didn't know about it.
And then she's like, Ah, ha, ha, we don't invite people like you.
Go back, go back to where you came from.
And on and on.
And yeah, and I've been with my mom on the phone when I've had somebody say to me, Speak English, you're in America.
I said, Dude, I don't know if you know this, but we spoke Spanish here 200 years before you guys came.
But the thing about it is, you got to come to grip with the fact that we'll call it racism, prejudice, it's going to exist forever.
It's never going to stop.
I don't care what anybody says.
My job was not to make those people like me, right?
My job was to better myself, become somebody and make them respect me, right?
And that's, I come out of prison a twice convicted drug dealer.
If I didn't reinvent myself, if I didn't get a school and get a PhD, I'd be called a twice convicted drug dealer instead of doctor, right?
So we got to educate our kids.
That's basic because an uneducated nation is a controllable nation, right?
And then if they don't have no education, people are going to survive.
It's survival of the fittest.
I tell people, when I came out of prison, if no one would give me a job because I have a big billboard that says, twice convicted drug dealer, don't hire me.
And I couldn't feed my family and kids, you know what I was going to do?
I wasn't going to worry about it.
I was going to go back to Miami and smuggle drugs again.
I knew how to do that.
Why?
Because I got to eat.
And had my life not changed?
Yeah.
Had I not given my life to Christ?
Yeah.
Had I not.
mentally change, but I got to eat.
And when you got to eat and when you got to survive, you will do whatever it takes, right?
That's human nature.
Yeah.
I think it's also the nature of people who are really young, like in their late teens, early 20s.
I feel like what I've seen consistent is people who are raised in certain environments who don't have a lot of money, don't have the means to survive necessarily, they sort of gravitate towards the easier way to make money.
Like a young girl could gravitate towards a strip club or porn, or a young guy like you in his early 20s, if you were in the perfect environment you were in Miami and there was cocaine dealers everywhere that's a really easy way to make money quick.
So a lot of young people gravitate towards those.
You know, the quick money when they're younger, I think well I, I think it's.
I don't know if it's the quick money uh, because it's not easy money, by no means, but I just think it's survival.
You know survival yeah, people want to make.
You know everybody wants to be rich right, nobody wants to be poor, and especially when in our Latino communities, right In the Latinos, we look at soccer players.
They're our idols, right?
And, you know, Ronaldo, they make millions and millions of dollars.
African-American, they look at LeBron.
They look at all this Michael Jordan.
They want to be like them.
That's why every kid wants to be a rapper or musician, but they're not going to be.
But every kid can be educated and have unbelievable potential and become a Ben Carson.
Or they can become a Barack Obama.
You know, what's the difference?
They were all raised poor.
You know the difference?
Somebody believed in them.
Somebody invested in them.
So my message to my color community is, instead of burning down our nation, Let's go back and burn our communities with education, with love.
Instead of letting those kids kill over $125 a pair of LeBron James shoes, do like LeBron James.
Go back and talk to those kids and help those kids.
Listen, with the money you make, if you just spend $20, $30 million like LeBron, you don't have to sell the Ferrari.
You don't have to sell none of that.
Trust me.
I know.
You're still going to live a hell of a good life, but you're going to change a lot of people's lives.
But what happens with our colored communities?
You know, Latinos and African American.
When we make it, what's the first thing we do?
We get the hell out.
And where do we go?
We go to the white community who we have criticized all our lives.
Right.
You know?
So we got to recreate our communities.
So back to the story.
So I so yeah, you were 21 years old and you were well, I was 10.
And I worked very hard, right?
Because my father, like I told you, my father was a man.
Very proud.
Would never take no money.
You know, and I delivered newspapers.
I cut grass.
I was a father and a mother.
to my children, my brothers and sister.
I had to take them 10 blocks to school, come rain, come shine, come heat in Miami.
But it was the greatest days of our life because we were united as a family.
We struggled together.
I said when people struggle together, they get closer together.
And I had a life plan planned.
I mean, my life was set in my mind.
The day, three days after I came from Cuba, my cousin comes by and he has a candy apple red GTO convertible with white interior.
And I'm like, damn.
I never seen something that beautiful.
So the day I have that, I'm going to be somebody.
So I was focused.
I'm going to go to school.
I'm going to work.
I'm going to get out of college at 20.
I'm going to get out of law school at 23, 24.
I'm going to be a millionaire at 30.
That's my plan.
And it doesn't matter what.
At the age of 17, I became the youngest employee in the Federal Reserve Bank in Miami.
And I worked full-time at the Federal Reserve Bank, and I went to the University of Miami at night full-time.
Wow.
I had no life.
For three and a half years, right?
No life.
I got up at 5.30 in the morning.
I was at the bank at 6.30.
I got home at 3.45, 4 o'clock.
My mother had dinner for me.
I'd be schooled at 5 till 10.
I'd come home and study till 2 o'clock and sleep three hours.
And that's it.
That was my whole life.
Because I graduated top of my class.
Because I always felt that the person that comes in second place is actually the first loser.
So I didn't like to lose.
I always want to be first.
And then, when I'm about to graduate from the University of Miami, now here's a kid.
I was, if you look in the dictionary at that time when I was 20, for the word nerd, it definitely had my picture in it.
I mean, I had braces, glasses, I dressed like a nerd, I drove an old beat up Chevy Vega with a big old rust hole on the side.
And my accounting professor asked me, he had moved from Michigan and he was a partner of Price and Waterhouse and didn't speak Spanish in Miami.
He said, Hey, you want to come work for?
My office and if you come and just do my Spanish clients, i'll give you a secretary, an office space.
You can start your own business.
To me, that was like the first sign of god right, because it's like that's the other thing.
When I left at 10 in that airport in Miami, I made a decision, god ain't real, this is all.
My mom is crazy because if we're going to America to worship god freely and we're going from wealth to poverty, where is god right, like we do a lot of times?
Yeah so, and I live my life like that, but Never did alcohol.
All the alcohol I did in my life by the age of 21 fit in a little teacup.
Never smoked.
Never sold drugs in my life.
Worked full-time.
I remember I had this girlfriend.
We'd go to a party.
And, you know, in the 70s, it was everybody smoking marijuana.
And I smell it and I leave.
And she's like, but we're not doing it.
I said, I don't care.
I'm a federal employee.
I can't be around these people.
They're losers.
I'm going somewhere in life.
I can't ruin my career over nothing.
And that's how I lived.
And so I went to do the clients for my professor, and I'm like, okay.
He said, I got this client who's a little grocery store, you know, and he said he'll pay us a thousand dollars a month.
Now, at that time, I made big money at the Federal Reserve Bank.
I think minimum wage was like maybe a dollar.
I was making $350 an hour, three and a half time minimum wage.
You know, I had a mid-level management salary.
I was living, I thought it was big.
So, you know, $350 an hour, I was taking home $120.
And all of a sudden, I get paid $1,000 to go to this grocery store and do their books for three hours every Monday.
Man, of course.
I'm on my way.
So I go there in the first, and literally, literally, it was about the width of this room and about maybe like a little strip in a strip shopping center, right?
Okay.
You know how those little stores.
And I go into the back office.
This is 1976.
And man, I see a grocery bag with $100,000.
Didn't think nothing about it.
I'm like, man, it must be since they never had an accountant or never set up their books, must be all their sales.
They haven't deposited them.
You know, here it is.
Was it your job to count it?
Right.
Well, I was setting up the accountant, right?
I'm setting up the whole accounting.
I got to do the bank deposits.
I got to do their payroll.
I got to do the whole deal.
$100,000, wow.
So I left, didn't think nothing about it, came back next week, $75,000.
Now I start thinking, you know, wow, how can this store make so much?
Impossible.
The third week, I go there and there's another $100, $110, and there's all the receipts of what they have purchased for the month, and it added up to like, I don't know, $800 to $2,000, something like that.
And I'm like, no, I gotta talk to these people.
So I called them in and I'm like, hey, Abra, let me give you a small accounting lesson.
In accounting, We buy something, we buy that can of Campbell's Soups for $1, and if we sell it for $3, we got $2 profit.
Now, I've counted this month over $300,000.
That means that if you're making triple on everything you sell, you must have spent $100,000 to buy all this.
Right.
But all I see is like less than $2,000.
Doesn't add up.
Even up to that point, never thought, nothing more than that.
And he laughs, and he's like, We're not in the grocery business with drug dealers.
I'm like, holy shit.
A drug dealer.
And I didn't even know what the hell that was, right?
Because in high school, all we know about, you know, kids took pills, you know, uppers and downers.
I'm like, what?
And so imagine this freaking nerd all of a sudden find out, and he said, look, George, you work for the federal government.
You know how to open foreign bank accounts, don't you?
I said, yeah, I do.
And he's like, well, how much?
Well, I knew that it cost about 700 bucks in Grand Cayman.
And of course, I didn't want to get involved in nothing.
I was happy with my $1,000 a month.
You know, and three other clients, I was making three grand a month doing the Spanish clients.
I was like in heaven.
And I'm like, about $10,000.
I want to give a number of that.
They'll just walk away.
You told him it was $10,000?
Yeah.
I said, it costs about $10,000.
He said, okay, we need you to open three.
And I'm like, what?
Three?
Damn.
So I left.
I acted like very, very serious and all that.
I said, look, I can't travel for the next three or four weeks.
I figure this is how much time I need to figure out who the hell I can find.
We knew it because in the Federal Reserve Bank, we had busted in an audit a bank.
This guy owned three banks and he had taken like $3.5 million, which in the 70s, that's like $50 million.
And when that note became due, he'd have another bank in Grand Cayman, Number Bank, pay that loan, right?
And he kept it like that for years.
When the reason they got caught was when the Federal Reserve Bank went to order, his secretary went home the Friday early and she forgot to make the entry.
It was sitting on her desk and they come in and that's the first thing they went to look for.
They probably would never caught it.
Anyway, so, but I did and I went and opened those bank accounts for him and I was like, I thought I was the richest man in the world.
I'm, you know, I'm making, I made like 27 grand.
And then one day he comes and he tells me, and this all happened within six months.
He kind of said, my partners would like to talk to you.
They want to start a business.
And I'm like, okay.
So I met with them, and this is what was interesting how he got me because Manuel, like I said, he was a very educated man.
He was a businessman, you know?
So the first thing he asked me, he said, look, I want to open a banana import company, and I need you to do a feasibility study for me.
Had he come in there and said, look, here's $30,000, build me a banana company, then I'm like, nah, shit, something's wrong with this.
But, you know, you do a feasibility study, and that's how a business is supposed to do, right?
Right.
So I did the feasibility study and they could make a lot of money.
Little did I know that what they wanted to do with the bananas was just bring drugs, right?
So this group, so I said, look, I don't work for anybody.
For me to abandon, because, well, we want you to be the president.
I said, look, for me to abandon my accounting practice, I got to get paid $6,000, $7,000 a month and I got to be equal partners because I'm not going to put up my name and sacrifice my whole career for a business that you guys might walk away one day.
And they're like, fine.
So here I'm 20 years old.
I'm partners with these guys in this banana company called KISS.
So we went out.
I went all over Europe to find this boat to bring the bananas from Colombia and ended up finding one in Sacramento, California.
You had no clue?
No freaking clue, man, at all.
I'm like, okay, you know what?
They deal drugs, but they're big, legitimate business.
They have a lot of stuff going on.
So as long as I don't do anything wrong, there was no money laundering laws, none of that.
Drugs, cooking was not in the DA radar, so it was not.
Like a big deal.
The whole thing with drugs was heroin and marijuana at that time.
So he's like, uh, so we find the ship we buy and we're gonna convert to refrigeration.
So I go out there to oversee the whole conversion for about three months and while i'm out there, the guy that's doing the refrigeration a younger guy, a couple years older than me and I used to play baseball a lot.
I was gonna be, I wanted to be a major league baseball player and uh, he had a softball team and i'm there by myself in Stockton California, right living in the ship right, yeah so, And the guy's name was Mel.
So he's like, I go over to his house and we have barbecue.
And then, you know, I join his team.
And then he kept kidding me.
He said, you know, that boat is really to bring in cocaine.
I'm like, Mel, you're full of shit, man.
You think I'm going to put my name on a boat that's going to bring in drugs?
You're crazy.
No, no, no, man.
The Genius Idea to Fly Cash00:15:51
It is.
You need to hook me up.
Hook me up.
And I'm laughing at him, right?
But bugging the hell out of me.
Yeah.
During this period, this group started saying to me, After I set everything up and we had everything just going perfect, we had the boxing, we had the ship register in Grand Cayman.
I mean, everything was perfectly okay.
We had offices, we had warehouses, distribution, everything.
They're like, you know, you can make so much money.
Oh, because I went and I said to him, you know, the guy that's doing refrigeration keeps bugging me, telling me that this is a cocaine boy boat.
And I'm like, I thought he was an idiot.
How the hell am I going to put my name out there?
Right.
Didn't say nothing at that time.
But later on, they start saying, you know, you can make a lot of money representing us in the United States.
And I'm like, what do you mean representing?
He says, I do.
I said, I'm partners with you in this shipping company.
And they're like, no, no, in all of our businesses.
Now I knew that we're talking about the drugs, right?
Right.
So I'm like, Look, I'm not interested, man.
I just want to get this going.
It's a great business.
We're going to make a lot of money.
And we were going to make a lot of money, right?
Because they grew their own bananas.
But they kept at it, kept at it.
And one day, I got this genius idea.
And I'm like, okay, I know how to get rid of Mel.
I'm going to try to find out what cocaine goes for in Miami.
At that time, it was going for $2 to $44.
And I'm going to give him a crazy price.
And then he's just going to leave me alone.
I said, next time when he come and ask me, i'm gonna say, look, we are man, we're drug dealers now.
But you know, you want to buy some.
It's 72 000 a kilo.
I'm making almost double.
Yeah, he's like, oh man, that's high.
I said, yeah, I know it's coming.
It's right off the tree.
I didn't even know it comes from the tree or where the hell it comes from.
I couldn't tell.
I couldn't tell cocaine from freaking cotton, you know, from sugar.
Yeah and uh, he's like, oh man well, i'll talk to my partners.
I said yeah, you do that.
I'm like, went to bed happy.
Next day I leave for Colombia And I'm like, why don't I do the same thing with the Colombians?
Why don't I tell them, I'll handle everything for you, but I got to be equal partners.
And I ain't got no money to put up.
You guys got to put up.
Now, at that time, you buy a kilo in cocaine for $22,000, right?
So they're bringing in 300 kilos, right?
200 kilos when we started, which was $4.4 million.
It was four of them.
I said, I'll be the fifth.
So you figure five people divided by 4.4, it's about $810,000 a piece.
What the hell?
I didn't even know that much money exists in the world.
So he's like, so I said, that's what I'm going to tell him.
I said, and I'm going to say, look, I'll handle all the operations.
I'm equal partners, and you got to put out my money because I don't got no money.
And I was convinced that we're going to take this nerd kid and turn him around and kick his ass all the way back to California without an airplane, you know?
Right.
So sure enough, the minute he opened his mouth, I said, look, I've been thinking about it, Manuel, and I'll do it.
But this is the deal.
And he's like, I got to talk to my partner.
I said, Yeah, you need to do that because it's a big decision.
And I went to my hotel and I was happy.
I knew that that was over with.
Next morning, they picked me up to take me to the airport, and the chauffeur says, Manuel wants to see his office.
And I thought we had to go over some books or something.
And I get it, him and the other three partners are sitting there, very stoic looking, you know?
Like a wall.
I'm like, Oh shit, I really screwed up.
They're going to kill me.
They're going to think I know too much.
You know, all this shit starts going through your head, you know?
And he looks at me and he says, We'll do it.
We'll front you, but we'll keep your profits so that you have your own money to invest.
And I'm like, you guys really need to think about this.
I've never seen drugs in my life.
No, but you're pretty sharp.
You can handle it.
I can't tell the difference between cocaine and nothing.
I said, are you crazy?
Are you guys sure?
You want to put a 20-year-old kid in charge of this?
And they're like, yeah, we're sure.
And within six months, we were importing.
600 kilos.
I was making between a million and three million dollars a month, and I set up the entire organization pilots, distribution.
How do we get the money?
Created all the foreign bank accounts in Switzerland, Grand Cayman, Liechtenstein, Tortola.
How many partners?
It was for them and me.
I was a fan.
That group was, if you want to call any group the Medellin Drug Cartel, that would have been the group that became the Medellin Drug Cartel because it was the only group at that time.
There was other people bringing two kilos, three kilos, but a concerted group that was bringing, by the time 1979, we're bringing 800 kilos a month to 1,000.
No one, when no one even knew when you used to like guys saying, well, I was selling one or two kilos, you know.
And so in 79, at this time, Sal Magluda, who is my closest friend, says to me, Hey, the government of Bolivia wants to deal, wants to make a deal with you.
And so we went and we met with this captain of the Bolivian Air Force.
And they're like, Look, we can sell you all you want at $10,000 a kilo.
And for every kilo you buy, I'll give you another one on credit.
And I'm like, I'll be doing numbers.
And I'm like, We're going to make $7 million a month.
And so I went to my godfather, Manuel, and he's like, No, you're crazy.
The Bolivian government.
Government yeah, oh yeah, the Bolivian government.
How did that happen?
Oh, everybody knows, they were like.
You saw the movie Scarface.
Yeah, the guy that comes to kill Tony Montana, right guy named Roberto Suarez yeah, that was our partner Shotgun.
Yeah he yeah, he didn't come to anything.
That guy was so big, that was our partner.
He overthrew five governments, you know very, very powerful.
Wow, the government of Bolivia during that period of time was run by the drug, by the drug industry.
Okay, and so I go to my guy.
He's like, no, forget about it, there's no way, You know, you run everything for us.
If something happens, what's going to happen to the organization?
So nothing's going to happen to me.
Don't worry about it.
And I flew to Bolivia and we made the deal.
And when we are going, and to get the story in greater, like, juicy detail, then you got to buy my book.
Because, you know, if you don't buy the book, I can't tell the whole story.
Yep, of course.
But like I say, I'm coming clean.
Cliff Notes.
Yeah, Cliff Notes.
I'm giving the Cliff Notes.
Yep.
So I fly to Colombia and I'm going to show the strip to the pilots where the plane is going to come from Bolivia.
Refuel in in Colombia, then go to Nicaragua.
I was going to wait for Nicaragua because I had a meeting with Somoza, the general of Nicaragua, because we were going to start bringing in cocaine in his refrigerated government uh, fishing boats, or refrigerated boats okay, and uh.
So I called Bolivia to tell him that okay, the planes will be there tomorrow.
And my partner there says, you need to come here.
They screwed you.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
He said, the only cocaine that's here is what you paid for, which was like 130 kilos and they're like none on credit.
And I went down there and you know I threatened them that I was going to kill them and they looked at me like are you crazy?
You either the craziest person in the world or you got the biggest set of balls we ever met, yeah.
But you said that again, we'll kill you.
And i'm like, i'm 23 years old, i'm just a kid yeah, and look like a kid.
I didn't even look intimidating.
So I get on the airplane because I had to be in Nicaragua and there was no way to catch a plane from Bolivia to Nicaragua.
You know, back then there would be a flight once a week, twice a week.
So I'll get on the airplane, go back to Colombia, not a problem.
And then from there, I'll keep on the airplane to Nicaragua.
One day they landed there and refueled.
Then Somoza was going to send me in a jet to go pick up my ex-wife in the Dominican Republic because I was going to Europe to pick up this brand new Mercedes converter I had bought.
And we're going to spend a month in Europe.
Land in Colombia, perfect.
Everything went like clockwork.
Then we leave for Nicaragua the next day, and the first alternator goes out.
And they're like, you think we should turn back?
I said, we turn back.
We're turning back to a jungle.
How the hell are we going to get another alternator here?
Let's just, can we make it to Nicaragua on one?
So now the alternators was because we had a bladder, right?
In those airplanes, you had to have a big bladder, which is, you know, rubber, like Goodyear used to make them.
And then we have extra fuel, and the fuel would be pumped out to the tank, so we would have longer range, right?
Okay.
Because when you load those airplanes with 400 kilos of cocaine, then the range of it drops, right?
So you put extra gas, and then you'd be able to land from Bolivia nonstop to Colombia.
And where does the cocaine go?
Like what?
What part of the plane do you put the?
Do you have to hide it or you just no no, you don't even hide it on top of the bladders.
Yeah, in duffel bags.
Yeah yeah, oh yeah.
No, we had every country paid off.
Okay, we had everybody wherever.
Wherever that airplane flew over, somebody that ran a radar was paid off and some president was paid off to make sure the guy that ran the radar was paid off.
So yeah, we did it.
Man, we flew like like we're just delivering toys for uh, you know, go ahead, check the plane.
I dare you.
Exactly, so we, so i'm going.
And then the other alternator breaks and then we crash landed in Panama.
Right, so you see a copy, if you see a picture of my book.
The plane landed like this, we should have all died when the plane lands in Panama, immediately the police came and got caught in a tree or something.
No no, we ran out of fuel and we crash landed.
Thank god it was a banana field that had just been cut days earlier, so it was all like rains and mushy, so it was like like mud.
Yeah, so the plane just died, otherwise it could have exploded.
So I jumped out, The guy, my partner, the guy that I hired to transport it for me, Harold, he jumps out and says, blow the airplane.
Take the flare gun and let's blow the freaking airplane.
And I'm like, oh, hell no, we're not.
I said, dude, there's $7 million of cocaine in that airplane.
He said, George, you can make it again.
Blow the airplane or you can go to jail.
I said, I'm in my country.
I drive anybody I want out here.
I ain't worried about going to jail in South America.
So the police come.
And I had a Sansonite briefcase that had a false bottom and I always kept 100.
I traveled with a hundred thousand dollars all the time and I took out.
That's the mistake I made.
I took out 200, but I should have just told the guy what was going on and say hey, here's ten thousand dollars, which is today's money, is 200 000 to a guy that probably made ten dollars a week, a month.
He would have guarded that airplane with his life.
I said, look, we crashed, we're looking for some land to buy and we had a problem with the other and we crashed and he couldn't go in the airplane because we had to literally jump off.
So he had to bring a ladder to be able to go in the airport.
Right, right.
So I felt good about that.
And I said, hey, here's my passports.
Can you stamp them so that we came in legally?
Take us to a hotel.
I'm going to make some phone calls so I can get someone tomorrow morning from Costa Rica.
So Costa Rica was only about 10 miles from there.
And we have spent over a million dollars to get that president elected in Costa Rica.
So we have a lot of power in Costa Rica.
We knew it would be totally safe.
We'll take the cocaine right in a car, right through the border.
How did you spend $10 million to get a president elected?
Because that you, you end up having all kinds of connections all over the world.
Right, everybody knows somebody.
See that the people wonder like, how do you bribe somebody?
Everybody has a best friend and the best friend has a best friend and you can always get to somebody you know.
Like they'll say, money corrupts and absolute corrupts, and absolute money corrupts absolutely.
Well, that's it.
I mean when people are making nothing and people need money, like well today, so cost a billion dollars to run for president, short of being a Bloomberg and paying for your own election right you, You got people giving you a lot of money, they're not giving you a lot of money because they like you, because you're pretty and you talk nice, they give you a lot of money because you're going to do what they say, and that's the bottom line, right?
We wanted to buy the Playboy Hotel in Costa Rica because it was a good way to launder money.
So I knew that we had no problem.
So we went to the hotel.
I made a phone call and they sent a car the following morning.
So I went to a police station to pick out the passports.
And when I went to a police station to pick out the passport, I saw these gringos.
I'm like, we're fucked.
I said, we got a problem.
FBI?
It was the head of the DEA for Panama.
It was the consul general for Panama.
And it was the head of the G2 for Panama.
They come and they had all the cocaine in a table just like this.
And they put us behind it, they took pictures of us and uh, I said I want to talk to my attorney, good luck.
And they're like, dude, you're in Panama, this is Napoleonic Law.
We can keep you seven years without you talking to anybody.
I'm saying sure, say sooner or later somebody big is going to come see me.
I'm convinced of that.
Exactly the following day the attorney general comes.
And when the attorney general comes I said look, Don't waste my time.
I got two questions.
How much money to buy the cocaine back?
How much money to leave?
He's like, Noriega already sold the cocaine.
$250,000 for you to leave.
$100,000 for you, $50,000 for each of the other ones.
I'm like, okay, so take this number and this code, call this number, and I told him the code to give, and I said, tomorrow you have the money here.
And then, sure enough, two days later, he comes.
He says, everything's set.
We're going to take you to Panama City.
How did that work?
How do you make a phone call from Nicaragua and get someone?
From Panama.
From Panama.
To the United States.
They wired money?
No, someone flew it.
Someone flew cash the next day.
Remember, we're talking about 1979.
So you had someone ready to go on call at all times to deliver money anywhere in the world?
We had all kinds of emergency programs in place.
So, like, for when we went to deliver a car, we always had a suicide car.
Which meant that if a cop is following you and you got the cocaine in your car, I'm the suicide car, I'm to ram your car and destroy you.
And take me to jail for whatever you want, but nothing's going to happen to the cocaine.
So we had all kinds of contingency plans, right?
And then we had all kinds of codes at that time.
Remember, during this time, there's no cell phones.
This is all dial phones, you know?
Right.
And satellite phones.
And the number that they would call is a satellite.
And when they call that number, no one is supposed to call that number unless any of us major the major people in the organization were in deep trouble got it.
Okay, so whoever had that He was given that code and told where he knew what he had to deliver where how much money and to who that's insane So yeah, so anyway It happened like that.
So you can look they're gonna take you Panama City They're gonna rough you up make it look good for the DEA and you're going on to Costa Rica show me the airplane tickets everything ready I make the mistake and I go back and I tell Harold in front of the pilots, don't worry man, I just bribed the attorney general, we're out of here in two days.
Two days came, they picked us up, flew us to Panama City, private jet, everything beautiful, and we get to Panama City and there's a room, big conference room, nothing, four chairs up against the wall.
Torture in the Panama Dungeon00:04:48
So they tell us to sit down, we sit down, and all of a sudden they open the door and they bring this Panamanian kid, completely naked, handcuffed, probably about 5'1".
9,500 pounds, they threw him on the floor, feet handcuffed, hand handcuffed, and they took a broomstick and stuck it up his ass.
And blood just splattered all over the place.
Until the kid just, I thought they killed him.
And they looked at us and they looked at us and said, We caught him with 10 pounds of marijuana.
In other words, we got you guys with 250 kilos of cocaine.
Think what's happening.
This big old, two big old Georgia pilots, 621 and 63, the minute they saw that, we'll tell, we'll tell.
Because the story was that I was, Just flying I was gonna meet with the Sandinistas and I was supposed to give them the suitcases that I thought had guns and they were gonna pay me $25,000 Which would have been nothing in Latin America, right?
I didn't know there was cocaine in there So if we stuck to that story would have been no problem because we crash landed in Panama We didn't land in Panama to do something Panama So the attorney general was gonna leave us on the fact he had no jurisdiction over us, right?
But when the minute that that he saw that they told him number one not only is George Valdez the biggest drug dealer in America He just bribed the attorney general And that shit hit the fan.
They sent them to Miami and they took me and Harold, their boss, and they took us in a dungeon for 27, 28 days and they tortured us day and night, day and night.
To the point that for five years, every time I went to a bathroom, I pissed blood.
They would just come in and just beat us till we passed out.
They would throw gasoline on us, cattle prod to my testicles.
I would jump this high and somehow pass out.
But it's interesting, as I tell you about mindset, one of those times that I pass out, I had this vision.
And the vision is I'm shaving and I see my son, my youngest son, who was only six months old, but he's about seven or eight.
And he comes and he's crying.
And he's like, I'm like, why are you crying, Georgie?
He's like, Dad, my friend said that my father is not a man.
And I said that day, I'm going to die in this son of a bitch, but I'm not giving him nothing.
And my fear was that I would lose my mind.
And there's just a new book that came out by the daughter.
Of Harold, the guy that was arrested with me, well, he sent her letters and we were separated in the United States, right?
He went to another general.
He sent her letters relating all of the tortures he went through.
And she had read my book.
And when she read my book, she's like, God, man, it's like unbelievable what they went through, what these guys went through, my father and George.
And my fear was there was this guy in a cell.
Now, this cell had no bathroom, no toilet, no water sink, no nothing.
There was a spigot of water that would come.
From the ceiling and whenever they open it it had bugs, uh.
And there was a thraw at the end of the cell where once a week, they would take a fire hydrant hose and just flush all that out.
So there was excrement all over, we smell like, we smell like horrible and uh, I remember there was this.
How old were you at this point?
I just turned 23, 23 I. There was a little rat that was coming around us right and I kept looking at him like Mickey.
If they don't get me out here soon, i'm gonna eat your ass.
Right now you're my only companion, but i'm gonna eat you and uh feeding you, Oh no.
So he, so I see this guy across this dungeon, right?
And you can read about the joke because it's very infamous, called La Modelo from the 1800s.
And he kept all day long, he had been there six months and kept all day long just licking the bars, right?
He had just totally lost his mind.
And my whole thing is, I don't want to die.
I want him to kill me, but I can't lose my mind.
I can't sit on like a vegetable and, you know, have my parents wipe my butt and all that crap.
So when we just couldn't take it anymore.
One of the beatings I told the guard listen tell Noriega to kill me because if you don't kill me He knows that I got the power that when I get out of here I'm gonna rape his family I'm gonna kill them and then I'm gonna kill him Well, I knew for sure right that you told him tell it to Noriega.
Yeah, and I just knew for sure he would kill me and sure enough the next day he comes but The funny thing is I had so this feeling of relief.
I'm about to die and it's good You know, I'm fine with that.
Well, he comes laughing And he comes up to me and he's like, why are you threatening me?
I didn't tell on you.
Threaten your pilots.
Right.
Caught Without Bail Money00:14:39
He's like, by the way, you paid the wrong guy.
Yeah.
I'm like, how much?
I knew that was a clue that was giving me that I should have paid him.
He says, $250,000.
I said, let me ask you something.
Is that like a going price here in Panama?
Because I paid the other guy $250 for four and now we're just two of us and it's still the same price.
He laughed and he's like, So we went to the same routine, right?
And two days later, he came and got us.
They took us to this room and they washed us down with these fire hoses.
Now, if you ever get hit with a fire, that's when you see protests that get hit with fire hoses.
The torches were nothing compared to the fire.
The water.
Oh, my God.
That water full force at your body is just like bullets coming at you, ripping your skin apart.
It's horrific.
So he takes us to the airport.
We're sitting there.
Waiting for an airplane to come to Miami, I mean to Costa Rica, and also I see like 15 Interpol agents.
They didn't even ask my name or nothing.
They picked me up like a sack of potato, and I weighed at that time 180, 185, and they threw me in an airplane to Miami.
I got to Miami, DA and all that was waiting there.
Take us to the court, and I get charged with heading the largest drug conspiracy in the history of America.
I'm given a $7 million bond.
They used that specific language?
Yeah.
Now, think about this.
$7 million.
Then in court, we got it down to $2 million.
But you only get bail denied if you murder someone.
You're a danger to the community, right?
Now, I'm saying to myself, I'm 23.
I don't have a freaking speeding ticket.
I got a family.
I got a college degree.
I can substantiate my lifestyle.
You know?
I pay taxes.
Thousands.
I pay hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of taxes.
Yeah.
Yeah, because by then you pay.
Fifth Amendment source income, right?
And you pay taxes.
I said, Al Capone didn't go to jail for selling alcohol.
He went to jail for taxes.
So I'm not going to go to jail for taxes.
I make enough money.
Hey, this is another business.
Pay taxes.
And I did.
And then we challenged it, right?
Because we have a constitutional right to bail.
And because why am I a danger to the community?
First of all, the drugs disappeared.
Noriega sold them.
So they didn't even have drugs.
Then you have a wiretap.
Then you have a picture.
So they have me there on a sworn complaint.
Which means no indictment nothing.
I hired the best attorneys in the world right I had Alan Dirchow it I had Marty Weinberg I had Shelby Hasman who became a judge a federal judge in Miami his brother-in-law was one of the chief judges in the appellate court with these Miami guys Marty was out of Boston.
Okay, I mean Marty charged me in that time $25,000 just to tell me whether he would take the case or not And then so I paid a million dollars with the lawyers at that time $10 million today $50 million And so we went to fight the bail, right?
And we hired Alan Dershowitz, which you've seen him all over the place now, and a famous Harvard professor.
And we knew that we would get it because how can they say, I haven't killed anybody, you know?
I'm alleged to be a drug dealer, but there's no drugs.
So, but a federal judge issued this ruling.
In this court's opinion, Mr. Valdez is not only a danger to his community, his community being the whole United States.
And based upon that is why drug dealers don't ever get bail anymore.
Because up to that time, everybody got bail.
A murderer got $100,000 bail, was huge.
A kid, 23-year-old, $2 million?
Unheard of.
Six months later, seven months later, no indictment.
They take my case in front of a grand jury in Miami, won't indict me.
A grand jury in Central Florida will not indict me.
A grand jury in Northern Florida, they will not indict me.
And the judge finally says, if you don't have an indictment by Wednesday, I'm gonna cut him loose right right because they held me six months on a complaint right so go to court and The judge asked the prosecutor do you have an indictment says no we don't they couldn't get a diamond.
There was nothing.
What could they indict me for?
You know They didn't have nothing right so they go ahead and I'm up.
I'm like I start kissing my parents about to walk out of the courthouse.
Here comes a marshal Arrest them arrest them.
He's just been indicted in the northern district in the middle district of Georgia in Macon, Georgia.
I'm like, Macon, Georgia?
I don't even know where the hell that is.
I've never been there in my life.
So what ends up happening is Harold Rosenthal, the guy that I hired to bring the pilots in, he had a case pending of which he even faked his death.
So when we came to the United States, the judge looked at him and said, well, welcome back, Mr. Rosenthal.
He said, Your Honor, I'm the second Jew to come back from the dead.
Everybody just cracked up.
So anyway, they made me that I was their supplier.
But I only met these people, and that was a case three years prior because the guy faked his death, left, and disappeared.
I just met them two months earlier.
Right.
Right?
So we hired all these lawyers, and our defense was that we're going to go in there and confess that I'm a drug dealer.
Oh, by the way, they go and they lure that captain of the Bolivian Air Force, they lure him to Panama, and they arrest him in Panama and bring him to the United States and say, here's the guy that sold the drugs to George.
And the guy's not cooperating.
I put this, his attorney.
So we go in there, and I and we thought, yeah, I'm a drug dealer.
I'm the biggest drug dealer in America.
But we were fighting the case not to win a trial.
We thought we could, but we thought there was a great chance we can't because a Cuban in Macon, Georgia, there's no way with an all-white jury.
Right.
You know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But we're fighting to win an appeal on the venue.
Okay.
In other words, again, you have a constitutional right to be tried where you commit your offense.
You cannot sell drugs here right now in Tampa and be charged in California.
Unless there's a venue to California, right?
The buyer's coming from California or whatever.
So we're like, I'm a drug dealer.
I'm the biggest drug dealer in America, but you have no right to try me in Macon, Georgia.
You want to try me?
Try me in Miami.
That's the only place.
You allege that at the Foreign Ambassador's Hotel on Easter Day, I pop out this map of Colombia, right?
The cafeteria is like this, right?
Everybody's sitting next to each other in the cafeteria, and I tell this pilot, This is where we're going to go to pick up the cocaine.
That was the whole indictment against me.
Wow.
That was the whole indictment.
That's it that I said that which we proved took pictures had impossible.
There's no way someone can even pull up a map the tables are like this at that whole cafeteria But anyways, we're like okay I'm being railroaded It doesn't matter So we're winning a trial and because there's no way that the courts will ever and we had a judge a guy that was a judge in my defense team.
He had been a judge and his brother-in-law is in the New Orleans Court of Appeals.
So you know we knew that we would win.
Okay, I hired a Gene Baker the dean of the Harvard Law School Jesus.
I had the best money could buy.
And we went.
I get convicted.
But the funny thing is, I get convicted, but the captain of the Bolivian Air Force gets found innocent.
And I'm like, if that son of a bitch didn't sell anything, what did I buy?
What do you mean?
He said innocent and I'm guilty.
Yeah, how does that work?
What happened was, you know, ego kills people.
So I've always wore.
What kills people?
Ego.
Ego.
Your ego will kill you all the time.
Okay.
I always wore a suit, right?
I've always.
dressed, you know, like a business person.
Right.
Well, Alan Ross, this attorney who later on I would meet and make him, who had just been out of law school, he gets the guy's wife to go to JCPenney and buy the cheapest clothes, and then he has signs with her because she didn't speak English, right?
So whenever he went like that, she would cry and all that.
So he had the guy looking like a beggar.
Now I walk into the courtroom with bodyguards in a limo, dressed like freaking John Gotti or something.
Right.
With my ex-wife, who was a beauty queen.
And that judge looks at me.
So he only has one attorney.
I have five in my table.
And that judge looks at me and says, Mr. Valdez, how can you tell this court you're innocent?
You got a million dollars with the lawyers.
Everyone knows that a young man cannot afford that.
I mean, it was like crazy.
Like crazy.
And so I get convicted.
I'm given the highest sentence, 15 years, 15 years special parole, $250,000 fine.
And I go off to prison to wait for my appeal.
And I had a blast in prison.
You had a blast.
Yeah, I saw your guy say he had a hard time.
When you're nobody, you have a hard time.
But if you got money in prison, I went there and a lot of people worked for me or someone wanted to work for me.
So, I mean, I had brand new sheets every day.
I did not wear the sheets that the inmates wore.
I went to Tallahassee, which at that time was one of the most dangerous prisons in America.
They call it Gladiator School because in Tallahassee, in Washington, D.C., every crime is a federal crime.
So what happens is anybody commit, whereas the federal inmate during that period of time was more of a white collar smuggler.
You know yeah, people that were not violent, right.
Well, in Dc you had all those murderers rapists, all that and they all went to Tallahassee.
So every week I was a state prison.
No fed, it was a fed okay, but in Dc every crime is a federal crime right, because it's a commonwealth okay, yeah.
So every week it was four dorms, 150 men, like a barracks, like a military barracks and uh, every week they would search and they have this drum, 55 gallon drum, Full of shanks, all kinds of weapons, all kinds of homemade knives and stuff like that.
And I was just 23, but everyone knew I had more money than anybody else.
I bought every guard that I could, you know, and whenever they brought meat for beef stew, I would buy all the meat.
I had the only inmate that I went to eat, and I had a tablecloth on my table.
So I lived like a king because I also, in exchange, I kept the peace in the prison.
Then I get transferred.
Well, I bribed.
Because I could have never gotten transferred to Eglin Air Force Base, which was a camp, right?
At that time they called it Fed Camp.
That's like a free-for-all camp.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the bars, they do a red line on the ground and don't cross that.
But you go out and you work in the military base.
You know, Eglin is the largest Air Force base in the world.
So you go work there and you're driving a truck.
You're like a free man.
So when I went to Eglin, well, what happened was one of my attorneys became very good friends with the designating officer in Atlanta who designated inmates because I was never, should have never been designated to Eglin.
Right, because I was a very high profile.
Uh, I was what they call original jurisdiction, which means you're the head of a big family and all the cases go through Washington.
But this guy was about to retire and I gave him fifty thousand dollars to designate me to Eglin.
So I get sent to Eglin man, I walk into the prison right straight to the captain's office, the Warren's office.
I don't know how the you got here.
You don't belong here.
I don't know who you paid off.
I'm like Warren.
You mean that federal employees take bribes?
I didn't know that.
And he's like, get out of here, but I'm watching you.
And don't ever think that you're going to work in that base.
I said, sir, I'm just here to do my time.
I got three years left.
I'm not causing no problem.
I don't have a single write-up in the prison.
I got a great resume.
I'm just doing my time.
So they assigned me to a dental office and the hospital, which is the best job there.
I wore a white suit.
And I ended up having a relationship with one of the females that worked in the hospital for about a year and a half, and then they thought that something was going on on a Friday.
So, on a Friday, we had the dental office locked up, cleaning all the instruments.
And the associate warden comes, and when the door was locked up, he's like, What the hell is going on here?
I'm like, We got locked up because this instrument you don't want the image to have access to the instrument.
And you know, that person came and said, Yeah, he was just cleaning up, I'm just supervising him, and he's like, Couldn't say nothing.
Next Saturday night, Sunday night, when the job assignments come out, people come to my bunk and they're like, dude, you're out of there.
I'm like, what?
Yeah, they assigned you to the base.
I'm like, they assigned me to the base?
Oh, man, that's my punishment?
He said, the word is that they think that you have something going on with one of the female workers.
Right.
I'm like, all right.
So I go to the base, and then after a week, you know, I'm assigned a crew.
So I go up to the guy running the crew and I said, look, I'll make a deal with you.
I'll give you $500 a week.
You pick us up in the morning, sign us out, give me the truck, I'll take the crew, I'll supervise them, but leave me alone.
You go, he had a girlfriend, go see your girlfriend.
Yeah.
Oh, are you crazy?
I'll be damned if I'm going to let, he was a big old rat, I'll be necked if I'm going to let some spick go ahead and tell me what to do.
I said, I'm just suggesting that I can do this and you can have fun and you can make some money.
So on Friday, I disappeared all the equipment out of this big old military truck that we drove, all the lawnmowers and the weed eaters.
And so he checks us out.
He goes to check us back into the prison.
And as I'm about to go in, he comes running.
Valdez, Valdez, Valdez.
Betrayal Inside Prison Walls00:09:45
And I'm like, what's the problem?
He said, you son of a bitch.
Where's my equipment?
I said, in the back of the truck.
We just left it there a couple of minutes ago.
I said, that's my crew.
Six of them.
I said, come here, guys.
I said, I'm the driver, by the way, so I don't look in the back.
Where did you guys put the Toro, you know, $7,000 Toro, three of them?
And they're like, in the back of the truck.
Man, he was just about to cry.
I said, look, I'll make you a deal.
You take my original deal and I'll go around the prison.
I'll find out what the hell happened to your equipment.
And if I can't find it for you Monday morning, I'll give you the money.
How much?
He said, $38,000.
I said, I'll give you the money.
He said, okay, okay, please, please, please.
This is my whole retirement.
This is my second job.
I retired from the military three years ago.
I said, all right, no problem.
We had hidden it on the beach.
And I'm like, oh, we can all, I'm like, I hope nobody runs into this freaking equipment.
I'm going to lay out $38,000 for this freaking joke.
We come back and the money was there.
I mean the equipment was there and he let me do whatever and I meet a girl that came to visit her father who later on I got married to her and I used to leave the base every day.
I used to laugh.
I said, if a prison inmate goes out of this big secure Air Force base, what the hell are the Russians doing?
And I bought an apartment right outside of Eglin and I went home every day.
I went home every day.
I ate good.
I had sex.
For how many years?
For two and a half years.
For two and a half years.
And at the end there was this lieutenant who was a friend of mine.
He was really, really cool.
And so I'm walking, right?
They finally released me.
I did all my time.
And so I'm walking out.
He says to me, please tell me the truth.
Were you seeing your wife?
I said, I was.
And he's like, where?
We would spend all day long looking through this entire freaking base.
I said, you're looking at the wrong place.
I was outside the base.
He said, you didn't have the balls, did you?
I said, yeah, I did.
He said, I left every day.
I said, I left every day.
I got out and I was angry that I didn't have to work again.
How old were you when you got out?
I got out in 85, so I was 29.
Okay.
And I didn't have to do a damn thing for the rest of my life.
You still had all your money?
No, I had not all my money, but I had a lot of money.
At the beginning, I made a lot of money still while I was in prison.
But I was angry.
I was like, they set me up.
They didn't get me right.
They didn't get me straight up.
I got to get even.
It was all again going back to the ego of having to do, saying that I can do it again.
And then the people that I got started in the business when I got out, that I left it, when I realized I wasn't going to leave prison.
I left the whole organization, the airplanes, the sheriffs that guarded the loads when the airplanes landed, the buyers, the transportation everything, the suppliers.
They betrayed me.
So how did they betray you?
Well, I was supposed to go back and be part of the organization.
But they did me a favor because had I been part of the organization again, I would have been in like Detroit, because later on they went crazy.
They started, you know, killing people.
It was part of the whole boat races deal.
Yeah.
And that was different, right?
And when you got out, wasn't Pablo established by then?
When I got out, Pablo was very established by then.
Yeah.
And he was very notorious.
And so I started smuggling again.
And for about almost two years, well, two years.
And then my mother kept telling me, Son, see I tell people my mother was the best at tough love and that's why I tell parents you got to be because my mother will constantly said to me what you're doing is wrong I Wanted to buy him a mansion.
I want to buy him house.
I had whores living in mansions and my mother lived in the same $20,000 house That they bought when they came from Cuba.
They won't take a penny from me.
They won't take nothing and son what you're doing doesn't please God and mom There is no God.
Don't be stupid and and constantly but my mom will say that she will cut me no slack if you get arrested You're gonna kill your father and I again And but the minute she finished saying that she was like what do you want to eat for dinner tonight?
And she would make me my favorite food.
So she showed me.
She wasn't going to cross the line.
She would tell me what was wrong.
But then she showed me love.
So what happens is you got to teach your kids what true north is.
So that when your kids go crazy, like it can happen.
Because if it happened to me, it can happen to anyone.
I mean, if you look at my life, I was destined to be somebody great.
I didn't have to do that shit.
I mean, I thought I would be fed chair by the time I was in my 50s.
You know, I had a great job since I was a young age.
I started at 17.
Think about it.
37, I could have retired from the Federal Reserve Bank.
with full retirement.
Yeah.
You know?
So anyway, I had the whole world open up to me.
But lo and behold, I made the wrong choice.
So she kept adding and adding and adding.
It started to really bother me.
And then I started to see the world change.
Now I had to go around with bodyguards.
Now I had to carry a gun.
And this is when Miami started to become like really militant with the police.
Miami became the most dangerous city in the world at that time.
85, it was like really taking off.
It got really, really bad.
The King Cowboys movie was based on that.
Yeah, I mean watch those kids the people that make cooking cowboys.
Yeah, right on tour studios.
Yep follow them Yeah, I know Billy Corbin.
I'm very I just filmed something really important for them.
Oh, did you follow them and see what's gonna come out six episodes?
Okay, so yeah Billy Corbin great great guys.
Yeah, if I'm I've been approached by every Hollywood studio there is and You know Billy came to me three years ago no five years ago and he's like We're doing this whole series on these guys and They're selling grams at the discotheque and all of a sudden they're millionaires and we're like there's a missing link Where the hell is this missing link?
So we start to find out and start asking and asking and I think it was a prosecutor said to him, oh you want to find the missing link?
Find George Valdez.
He said we never heard of him.
He said exactly because he was not.
He ran that like a business.
He was at his office at 8 o'clock in the morning left at 6 he didn't go around racing boats parting.
He ran his business like a bit.
The only way we found out about him was because his attorney turned on him.
My first attorney, who was like my best friend in the world yeah was the one that was telling them everything about me and I didn't even find out for seven years.
Mel Kessler and uh.
So they came in, approached me and i'm like look, I don't want to do this.
Why do you want me to be part of what you guys are doing?
I said i'm not like those guys.
I said what, what?
What all these people have in common?
Good family high school dropouts become drug dealers, make a lot of money, live a lavish lifestyle, kill people, die, or spend the rest of their life in jail.
Okay?
George Valdez.
Poor family, good family.
I was not a high school dropout.
I got three degrees.
Number two, I didn't kill anybody.
I did my time.
I went to prison for 10 years, but I reinvented myself.
And I went and got a degree.
And I got another bachelor's and a master's and a PhD.
You don't want to have that label put on you.
I say, and my life is about I don't give a shit about doing another drug movie.
That's stupid.
There's plenty of them done already.
I said, I want to do something where it gives people hope so that the thousands of books I sent to prison and the letters I get back, if God changed George Valdez, he can change me.
If George Valdez changed, I can change.
I realize now money's not everything.
When and if I ever do anything, I said, it's going to be because I'm going to give people hope and realize that there is redemption.
You're going to suffer the consequences of these choices.
But your past does not have to define you.
And you can change.
And America is the most amazing country in the world.
America loves to elate superstars, loves to destroy them.
But at the same time, when you're sorry and they see that you are truly repentant, America is the greatest place in the world to see that reborn, that rebirth of a human being, you know?
And look, I came out of prison at 40 wondering how I was going to feed my family.
And I ended up making millions legitimate.
So I told him, I don't want to do that.
Now, if you want to do something like this, I said, I'll do it with you.
I said, I turned down Chuck Norris.
I turned down James Brewbreaker, who did Bruce Almighty, God Almighty, all these people.
Ten Hollywood studios I've turned down.
Number one, because when I first wrote my book and started telling my story, my little kids, them, suffered a lot, right?
Because nobody in the neighborhood wanted them to play with them.
You know, it was like, oh, yeah, people come by my house and say, look.
You can imagine who lives there.
Now it's sad right, because I remember I tell my kids when I was in school there was this kid whose uncle was an uncle distant uncle, was in the mob and nobody talked to this kid.
Yeah, now people find out who my kid's father is and they're popular and i'm like it's sick.
Yeah, it's a different culture.
It's a different culture.
CIA Agents and Cartel Friends00:02:11
Yeah, I say we, we make heroes out of those narcos.
Right, you know on Netflix, shows that are yeah exactly, and it's all I mean.
And i'll be honest with you, I enjoy them myself And I got to catch myself.
Narcos, you enjoyed that?
Yeah, because it's a lot of fiction, right?
It's a lot of pretty amazing.
But it's fun, right?
It's very well done.
Yep.
And, you know, and I know a lot of the backgrounds, so I can sit back there and be like a critic.
Do you think it's pretty accurate because you were there?
Not at all.
Really?
Not at all.
Well, think about it.
There's not that many of us alive from that whole world, right?
Of course.
So if there's not that many of us alive, who's telling Narcos what really happened in 76?
Do they know?
There's two names of two people that no one has ever mentioned.
That were bigger than that could buy and sell Pablo 20 times Really yeah 30 times and You know so they made this whole thing about Pablo and all that because people love that right?
It's fascinating, you know So Pablo went ahead and built the Robin Hood he built all cities for for a lot of poor people.
I read his brother's book a long time ago, but did his brother say that he made us all pay for the freaking building of the city?
Right everybody had to pay.
Yes, you know, but but he did you know and And the reason that the powers of the world come along is because of what we talked earlier about the situation where that kid has no chance in life but a life of crime.
Right?
So not too long ago, an Angola died.
You saw the movie American Made.
What?
With Tom Cruise?
No.
Okay.
I haven't seen that one.
It's about this guy, Barry Seals, who was a CIA agent.
They said that he worked for the CIA.
He was an agent and worked for the cartel.
He ended up taking pictures of Pablo and other members from Medellin.
Okay.
And he got killed, right?
They put a contract on his life, killed him.
The man that killed him was a friend of mine, ended up becoming a very close friend of mine.
He died on Angola not too long ago in Luciana.
And he tells you the story.
He got a degree in architecture and he was barely making it.
And all his friends were out there dealing drugs with girls and nice cars and all that.
The Spy Who Got Killed00:04:41
They invited him one day to come and do a job with him.
He didn't even know what it was.
The guy ends up killing somebody.
He ends up telling him, oh, this guy was a child molester.
So he's like, here, take $10,000.
He said, but I didn't come here to kill nobody.
He said, yeah, but you came with me.
And from there on, he becomes one of the worst assassins the cartel had.
Killed tons of people.
Always justified that he's killing bad people, right?
Because that's how we do in life.
When we cross lines, we justify it.
We have reasons for what we do.
And so, long story finally, I was supposed to go to California.
Like, I went every month.
And that day, I went up to my jet.
And when I went to put my foot in my jet, I started to throw up.
And I went inside the office in the hangar.
And I had diarrhea, man.
And it was coming out of both hands.
And I was like, man, I was sick.
I hadn't eaten nothing.
I got up great.
I got dressed.
I always would have breakfast on the airplane, right?
Because we would leave like at 7 o'clock in the morning to go to California.
And so they would always have a platter in the jet for me.
And so when I felt a little better, I went out and I did the same thing again.
And I told this guy, my right-hand guy, I'm like, Eddie, you go.
I can't go, man.
I'm going to shit all over this plane.
Yeah.
And tell him I'll go next week.
And he ended up getting murdered.
They were waiting for me and they murdered him.
And at the funeral, I had baptized his daughter.
Like six months earlier, and at the funeral, the little girl sitting next to me, she said, Godfather, my daddy went to be with Jesus and i'm like it was the first time since I was 10 years old that I shed a tear.
I said, number one, when will my daughter tell that to someone?
I'll never see her again?
And number two, if there is, if there is a Jesus, we ain't going there.
And and I left.
And then I had a friend of mine that had walked away from the marijuana business and I had a big horse opera.
I was making three million dollars legit racing horses, Breeding horses.
Wow.
You know, I was charging, I bought the best stallion in the world, paid a million dollars.
I was charging $3,000 stud fee, breeding 150 mares.
And then I ended up, I went around and we bought the best brood mares in the country.
So, and then I had an orange grove that was going to be making me $7 million a year.
So, I mean, I was like set.
And about three months passed.
Oh, so I used to kid with that.
That's what I said.
How'd you get out?
Because he used to bring his mares to breed to my stud.
He said, well, it's like being pregnant, George.
You're either pregnant or you're not.
You're either in or out.
Right, i'm like all right and rubbed it off.
And then the final story was I ended up my ex-wife dropped off my daughter to visit and I wasn't supposed to visit with her, and I was partying with some movie stars in my house.
And uh, they call me from the gate and hey, your daughter's here.
So they bring her.
I tell the maid, take her to her room and i'll uh, i'll, have breakfast with her tomorrow morning.
And when they take her to the room, she takes to the room.
And I went back to my party and uh, All of a sudden, about 2 o'clock in the morning, I hear her knocking on the door saying, Daddy, it's Crystal.
It was the first time in my life that I began to feel filthy, disgusting.
You know, a guy that people used to say that ice ran through my veins.
I couldn't care less about anything or anybody.
And I just could not open the door because I felt here's the only thing left in my life that's pure and holy.
If I open the door, I'm going to contaminate her.
And I kicked the women out the window.
And I went into the shower and I scrubbed the filth off of me.
Then I went underneath my sheets and I was shivering.
And when I thought she was quiet, I ended up going to get water.
And when I opened the door, she was by the floor crying.
I said, enough.
That's done.
I'm going to change.
My life changes today.
And this is the thing I tell people about change.
I didn't know what that meant.
What does change mean in a life as complex as mine?
Well, all I knew is that if I'm going north, I'm going to start going south.
If I'm going east, I'm going west.
First thing I did is move out of Miami.
I thought that the sun rose and settled in Miami.
To me, Miami was heaven.
Right?
I had power.
People respected me.
Wherever I go, I didn't have to pay for nothing because someone would pay for me.
And I called.
That night, I called my mom and I said, I'm done.
And she knew what I meant.
And she's like, Jesus heard my prayer.
I'm like, no, no, no, no.
It's nothing to do with Jesus.
This is crystal.
Crystal, damn it.
And then the next day, I called and I'm out.
I said, I didn't do nothing at that time.
All I did is say, send the airplane.
Don't send it.
The Pseudo-American Dream00:05:33
And the high payoffs.
I had a guy that rented the entire operation for me.
And I said, they come to me and they're like, Well, how much money do you want to give you?
I said, I don't want nothing.
I kept thinking about my guys and pregnant or not pregnant.
I said, I don't want nothing.
I'm out.
I just, I said, look, you don't want me no more because I've lost it.
I lost my nerve.
No, the truth was I was just devastated.
My whole life was.
Right.
And I left Miami.
Didn't go back for four years.
And I only 90 miles away in my ranch.
And I lived the life that I lived.
And I was happy, man.
I, you know, had tons of women, got divorced, had jets, had everything.
You know, I spent two months in Vail.
I spent summers in my house on Four Miles Beach.
Then the spring, I'd be at the horse shows all over the country.
And then I'd be at my ranch.
And that's it.
Yeah.
How old were you at this point?
I was, I walked away when I was 29.
Yeah.
So, no, I was 31.
I was 31 at that time.
So I was 31, 32, 33, 34.
I had everything in a human being.
This is what I tell people.
We sacrifice our life.
Because we live in a world in search of the American dream, which doesn't exist, right?
It's what I call the pseudo-American dream.
The American dream, the real American dream was a World War II generation, you know, that worked hard, put their kids to school, saved their money, retired, owned one house, never got divorced.
They had marriage problems, but divorce was not an option, right?
They hated the war, but to serve was an honor.
They'd rather be an hour early than a minute late.
People of immense integrity.
That was the American dream that built this most amazing nation.
The American dream today is, I want two houses.
a bunch of cars, a bunch of horse, you know, money, that, and I'm happy.
The problem is most people would die in search of that dream and not realize that if you ever reach that pinnacle like I did, you find out there's nothing there.
It's empty.
I didn't realize why I hated women when the most, the woman I respected the most in my life was my mother.
So, you know, and that's what I try to tell kids today.
I said, don't sell out.
There's choices and consequences.
There's consequences for every choice we make.
The material aspect of that, like what you just talked about, it influences so much.
You know what I mean?
Why do you think today that material stuff like that?
Because you mentioned even in your book that you guys, you and your family would drive around rich neighborhoods and admire the houses and the cars and stuff like that.
And you thought that that was the main thing you were striving for.
That was your motivation to get money to buy that stuff.
And it seems like so much stuff, especially like in media today, that's what drives kids is that material aspect of it to motivate them to get from point A to point B.
Yeah.
And it is because we're inundated with it.
From the moment we wake up right, we are told, if you have this, you're going to be happy.
If you have this basketball shoes that cost 125, even though you live in the ghetto, you're going to be happy, you're going to be somebody.
Your identity is identified with things, with material things.
Right, we don't realize that we come into a world with an emptiness inside of us and society is quick to tell you I can feel it for you, George.
Oh, you like that car.
Oh, what's your favorite Corvette?
Buy every single model color.
They come out which I did and you'll be happy.
Yeah, you're happy for a moment, but then you're empty again.
Oh, women.
Who can be happy with one woman?
Have three, four of them.
Go to bed.
When I got married to my wife, when I gave my life to God, I'm an extremist, right?
I don't know how to live halfway.
I'm either really, really bad or really, really good.
You're all in or all in?
All in or all in.
I don't understand about lukewarm.
You know, when I became a Christian, I became celibate.
Now, here's a guy that went to bed every day of his life with minimum two women.
Yeah.
And different women.
All of a sudden, I became celibate for seven years until I meet my wife.
And.
You know, you know what my prayer was for the two years when we were engaged?
Can I have sex with just one woman?
That was my prayer because I didn't think I could because that's how you demoralize yourself.
That's how that's how sin or bad choices or or habits or addictions are, right?
Look, the problem is not cocaine, alcohol, any of that, none of that.
Yeah.
Pornography.
All of those are nothing but medicine to try that society tells you, listen, you're empty.
Go get drunk.
You'll be happy.
You know, do drugs, right?
So when you go to start drinking, you don't drink a gallon of vodka, right?
You're going to die.
You start a little bit, a little bit, and before you know it, you're drinking a gallon of vodka, you're passing out, and then you wait till next week.
Same thing, pornography, you know?
Same thing with any drugs.
You don't shoot an ounce of heroin, you'll be dead right there, right?
And we cross lines, lines that we never think we could cross, right?
And we cross them.
And when we cross them, we feel bad.
And then we cross them again, we don't feel as bad.
Like, first time I cheated on my wife, I couldn't sleep for two nights.
Second time, I think I only missed sleep one night.
Third time, it was automatic.
That's what I'm supposed to do.
A dichotomy in the cartel.
We're faithful to death.
I would die for you, right?
I remember getting a call from the guy that I left in charge of everything when I finally retired.
They were going house to house looking for him to kill him.
I was eight blocks away from him in my house.
Two o'clock in the morning.
And literally, it was so bad that people were knocking on the house to see where he hid.
He called me.
I didn't have time to call a bunch of people.
Shot Twenty-Eight Times00:05:01
I got on my car and I drove in the sidewalk.
I got shot 28 times.
where my car looked like a strainer and I didn't even get a scratch.
But I would die for him, right?
Because I felt that, like I told everyone that worked for me, no one gets killed for telling the truth.
But what happens is, the dichotomy is, we're super loyal to each other, but you just can't have one woman.
You're not a real man.
You got to have two, three mistresses.
So am I faithful or am I not faithful?
I can't be, say, I'm a man here, I'm faithful here, and I'm a cheat here.
You either cheat or you're faithful, right?
And that's how all of life is.
And for me, that emptiness, I mean, you end up having so much money.
I remember one time, so I had a sofa that was catty corner.
Imagine that sofa there catty corner.
And I'm sitting there in that sofa.
And in that corner, my housekeeper comes and says, I haven't swept behind there in a couple weeks since you're here in your office.
Would you mind moving the sofa so I can sweep?
And I'm sure I moved the sofa and there's a bag with $700,000.
I didn't even know who the hell dropped it there.
I didn't even know how long it'd been there or what it was doing there.
That's how much freaking money we had.
You know, we're doing $50 million a month in 77.
You know?
And so money's not what motivates you.
Now, power is very addictive.
When people say, do you miss your life?
I said, oh, shit.
Especially when I fly coach.
Of course I miss my life.
But I don't miss the consequences on my life.
The emptiness on my life.
Or we'll trade it for how I felt and how I feel now and the meaning I have and the purpose I have for my life and what I know what I was created for.
But power is what I do every day still miss.
And that's why you see multi-billionaires sell everything to become a politician, right?
Because that power is so addictive, man.
That power that, especially when I came out of the world and someone would do something to me and I would sit back and I say, you know, that son of a bitch, if he thought about doing that, forget about doing it.
Thought about it, he would hung himself.
And now they do it like george is a Christian.
He's not going to do nothing.
You know?
And, you know, I needed anything.
I remember going to concerts and sitting like right there in the front without even paying for the $10,000 seats.
You know?
You live that and you can get whatever you want and you can buy whoever.
So very, very addictive, but it's so empty.
And what happens, it eats you up inside.
You know?
And my life had meaning the day I walked, after I forfeited all those millions and I walked into that cell in Mobile, Alabama.
And I remember another inmate saying, Milky way, Milky way, Milky way.
I'm like, what the hell is Milky Way?
And this guy said, I said, dude, what's the big deal about a Milky Way?
He's like, oh, they only get them every two weeks.
I said, how much are they?
A dollar.
I had not had a meal in two days because I was arrested in Springfield.
Every time they moved me from one place to the other was during meal time.
So I missed all those meals.
I was dying for the Milky Way.
And I sat there in that steel bed and I said to myself, damn.
Two hours ago, I was a multimillionaire and I don't have a freaking dollar to buy a Milky Way.
Unbelievable.
And then, but I felt that for the first time in my life, my life had meaning.
I was created for something much greater than what I had sold out to.
And I had taken the shortcut and I had taken the easy road.
Not the easy road, the fast road, because people say, oh, you know, you were a millionaire because you were a drug dealer.
I said, yeah, I was in prison with 3,000 dead broke drug dealers.
I was the only one that had a lot of money.
So no, you're not a millionaire because you're a drug dealer.
Yeah, it's fast money, but it's not easy money.
Every other drug dealer wants to kill you.
Every law enforcement in the world wants to put you in jail.
Everything against you.
It's against all odds.
So there's nothing easy about any of it.
I mean, literally, we were five minutes off mark on any smuggling run.
We could lose the load and people go to jail or die.
So, I mean, everything was like clockwork.
So, you know, and then when I realized that, you know, yeah, I might not have money to eat, but, you know, I'm not empty no more.
I believe that I was created for a greater purpose.
And God will reveal that purpose to me eventually.
and I can take this horrific life I lived and these horrific choices and the consequences I paid because I was asked recently, do you do what you do to pay for the wrong you did?
I said, no, there's nothing I can do to pay for the wrong I did.
I know the wrong I did, I should deserve to die in prison.
But the truth of the matter is that God had mercy, but I paid in unbelievable ways.
I do what I do because I feel that that's my mission to make a difference in the world because I believe One person in God is a majority.
Mission to Make a Difference00:06:04
And if you look at every great movement in life, it hasn't been done by a lot of people.
Mother Teresa changed the world.
It was just a simple nun in Calcutta, Gandhi, you know, all those people, just people that felt that they could do something.
They didn't need a bunch of people.
And look, if at the end of the day, if I just changed that one kid that write me a letter the other day from prison, been in prison for six years, he's 19 years old, and he's like, I'm going to give it a shot now.
You know, I'm going to change my life just because he read that, this little simple book.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
And, and, you know we've sent 14 000 of those books this year, in as of june.
Right now, to prisons all over America.
My mission is to send a million.
My mission is to call attention to this war on drugs and to tell people, rise up, don't burn the cities, burn government, not with a torch, but with your vote.
Right, you know.
Elect people that will care about the communities, and you that, we that have made it, we people of color that have made it, you Michael Jordan, you Cali Irvin, all you guys that are now giving millions.
Well, you know what?
It's never too late, but let's go and change our community.
Let's do like LeBron James and change the acorns of the world and change all those cities.
And you watch how those kids that were destined to be in prison for the rest of their life and die and your dollar and my, because this is the funny thing about this drug war and all this bullshit, prison incarceration.
I mean, what are we?
14% of the prison's population?
We have 26% of all the prisoners of the world?
What are we?
Guess what?
Oh, it's government money.
Bullshit.
It's your tax dollar and mine.
So we can give the government money for this bullshit and we cannot, Americans cannot have health care.
Right.
Can have kids are graduating with a mortgage without owning a home.
You know?
So that's how we burn things without a vote.
Because at the end of the day, look, and at the same time, not all politicians are corrupt.
Not all politicians are evil.
There's great men and great women that feel a calling to serve.
But a lot of them are.
A lot of them are crooks.
Yeah.
You know, and they're there.
Let's have term limits, man.
You get to serve one time, get the hell out.
Federal elections.
They're going to pay for everybody's election.
Everybody gets the same amount of money.
So that the guy that can raise a billion cannot beat the guy that can only raise 100,000.
So that then people can run for office and not be indebted to the war machine.
Why are we spending so much money in nuclear weapons when we realize no one's going to drop a nuclear bomb?
But look at the virus, man.
Shut down the whole world.
Think about that.
So we got to wake up.
And when we make it, we can't abandon those left behind.
See, look at what Cubans did in Miami.
We were a minority here.
We were as discriminated as anybody ever was.
We didn't burn the city down.
We united.
We united.
And my dad made me go to the same dentist that was our dentist in Cuba, even though all he had is a freaking.
Drill that his wife was out there with the pedal pedaling to get that thing running no Nova can he put a block of ice and that was anesthesia But that was our dentist and we kept our money in our community and and well look what Miami is now.
It's hard to Consider I mean it's hard to think about uniting when all the politicians are are incentivized to divide everybody and media today look at media.
Right.
It's crazy.
Yeah, you know just for the hell of it.
I'll turn on CNN for 10 minutes and I'll turn on Fox for 10 minutes They're talking about opposite extremes of the world now somewhere in the middle lies the truth of whatever they're saying You know, and it's crazy.
Half the country loves somebody.
The other half hates somebody.
And I thought that this virus was going to unite us as a nation because we realized all our lives were intertwined.
It was the ideology of it.
Exactly.
No matter what the president, look, I didn't vote for the president.
I didn't vote for the other one.
But I'm going to tell you something.
He's my president.
And I don't like a thousand things that he does for many reasons.
All right.
But his success is mine.
Why the hell do I want him to fail?
I didn't vote for Obama either.
As a matter of fact, honestly, to be transparent, I bet this friend of mine $5,000 twice that America would not elect a black man.
Really?
So I was happy when he got elected.
I've been a Republican all my life, right?
But not the Republicans of now.
I'm a social conservative.
I believe in small government.
I believe in family values.
I believe in life.
But at the same time, I believe in all life.
So when my Catholic brothers, I'm a Catholic, fight for Pro-life.
And anti-abortion, my question is, why are we not fighting for that poor immigrant child in the borders, in a cage?
We only want to fight for the one not born.
Why don't we fight for that woman that find no alternative but to get an abortion?
No woman wants to get an abortion, you know.
But when you're barely making it, or whatever the circumstances in life are, why do we have to go to Russia and China to adopt a child, when women here, you know we can't adopt one in the U.s.
You know yeah, so it's, it's all, it's all out of, out of control.
But Our vote Matters.
Lies matter.
Everybody's lives matter.
And it's true.
The laws are made so that African Americans and Latinos will go to jail.
And it was.
When I was in prison, African Americans and Latinos were 40% of the prison population.
Whites were 60.
Now, whites and African Americans are identical.
And if you add African Americans and Latinos, then you know what you got?
70% of the prison population.
Why Our Votes Matter00:02:47
Why?
So why were we not fighting for that?
Why we did not stop those laws that said we're gonna keep you safe for bullshit.
You're gonna keep me safe by destroying communities You know locking up kids that that are not criminals.
Yeah.
Yeah, they commit an offense.
Everyone needs to pay But you're right the big I can forfeit 50 million dollars to government and get 10 years.
I didn't say I get 10 I got 10 years because of the money.
I'm not saying that but the big the big guys all they sit back there is just telling people they know a lot people tell on So they can reduce their sentence reduce the sentence reduce the sentence in prison are full of nobodies 16, 17, 18-year-old kids doing life.
Where do you think the kids are going to become?
An animal.
An animal.
Do we care?
No.
We got private prisons that are as corrupt as anything is.
And that's how we change the world.
We change the world with our votes.
We change the world by changing our communities.
Realizing that, listen, right now, you got all this corporation giving money to African-American movement, and it's great.
I'm so glad finally they're doing it.
But I bet, I would bet how many of them are really doing it because they feel it deep down inside.
But it doesn't matter as long as they give it, it's what matters.
Right, yeah.
They're doing it for their own game, for their own side.
Exactly, for PR.
So Roger Goodell right now is apologizing for how he destroyed Copper Nick's life because the guy, all he did was kneel.
He's always jumping on the bandwagon, right?
Of course he is.
He didn't say shit about it.
Because he knows right now, exactly.
Right now, he'd be freaking crucified.
Right.
So they're all hypocrites.
You know?
I love Michael Jordan, right?
Because I think he's probably the greatest athlete that ever was.
But freak, Michael, you could have given that money a long time ago.
Why now?
Because now it's popular.
We're all banding together.
Does he have a lot of major stakes in prisons too?
No, no, no.
I heard that he does.
No, if people gamble as much as he does.
But the thing is, these guys, you know, Michael's a good guy, man.
Look, like one guy said, if Michael Jordan gambles a million dollars, like you're not $10.
So he's too proud to gamble on his team.
You know, he's just the greatest athlete, man.
He just, he was unbelievable.
I admire him tremendously.
But, you know, when you got all this money, man, you can't, you got to look at the guy left behind.
You know, dude like LeBron, he moved into Brentwood.
Brentwood in California is rich, mega rich, multi million dollar houses, all white.
He's Lebron James.
He's gonna be a sceptical.
He's Lebron James, not that he's gonna be liked no no no, you know.
But that's the world.
That's the world we live in and we have to be real about the fact that since the time of Abraham, you know, we always have one human being despising another human being, and that's not going to change, no matter how many cities we burn or nothing.
Looking at the Left Behind00:03:32
But that shouldn't be our focus.
Yeah, it's good, like Van Jones said, we're raising awareness, more people are talking about it and hopefully People would have greater opportunities.
But the truth of the matter is, you know how you get the greater opportunity?
When you get educated and when you make them pick you.
Right.
You know, when I got the highest scholarship at Loyola, it wasn't because I was Hispanic like the other student said.
Oh, he's affirmative action.
No, I got it because I almost have perfect school in my GREs and 4.0 in my master's.
And because I had written five papers and published them already in a master's program when none of them had.
So, yeah.
I don't believe in luck.
I think luck is preparing yourself for the right opportunity at the right time.
If someone says right now, George, I'm going to give you Air Force One.
All you got to do is fly it to Camp David.
Man, what an unlucky guy because I can't fly Air Force One.
But if they tell me to fly, you know, a high-performance Meridian, I can because I have a pilot's license.
So, oh, I'm lucky.
No, no, there's no luck.
You know, luck is now, you position yourself.
Look at Ben Carson, man.
No father.
You know, the guy becomes one of the most renowned surgeons in America.
Did he get the job that he get?
Did he get to separate those twins because he was black?
No, because he was the brightest African-American.
Did Obama get elected because he was black?
No, because he was brilliant.
Right.
You know, did he get the first African-American head of the Harvard Review because he was black?
No.
Now, we have to fight twice as hard as others, I'll tell you that much, to be in the same category, but so what?
Fight.
You know, show the world that what you got, you earned it.
And the sad part is that we are leaving a whole community of kids behind that have no chance.
No chance, man.
I see them coming to prison.
I used to cry.
You realize that 70% of all these African-American kids coming to prison couldn't even read or write?
And so what I did, I created a program in the education department to teach them to get a GED.
So at least they'd have a high school diploma.
You should see how proud.
You see how hard they work for it.
Why?
Because somebody believed in them.
That's all kids need, man.
All kids need.
Abraham Lincoln said, a child will be your next president, your next baxter, your next lawyer, your next congressman.
The fate of humanity lies in the hands of our children.
Think about those words.
The fate of humanity.
Look at where humanity is going right now.
Because we're not educating our kids.
Latin America, perfect example.
Horrific education program.
You know why?
Because the dumber you keep the people, the more controllable they are.
You can't control an educated person.
So let's rebuild our communities.
Let's fight prison reform.
Let's fight social justice reform, you know, and say enough is enough.
And then we start to begin to change the world.
And if all we do is change the world.
Don't watch CNN and Fox.
No, don't watch them people.
You know, one adores the president, the other one hates the president.
No, look.
I don't like everything he does, and I like something that he does.
Because, you know, you got to be impartial.
I just can't hate the guy because, oh, I'm a Democrat.
I just can't.
Right.
There's nothing right, and whatever he's doing is all wrong.
Right.
No, he don't.
And at the end of the day, the bottom line is, you don't like him, vote him out.
But while he's in office, pray for him because his success is yours.
Rebuilding Communities Proactively00:05:57
I don't know if you figured that out or not.
Yeah.
So, you know, and it's we all do something wrong, but hey, I wouldn't want to be president.
No, I don't know.
I don't know.
You know, I don't know who would, especially him.
He had the he had the life before he decided to become president.
Yeah, I mean, he would love all the people hate him loved him.
Yeah, right?
Because the guy was I mean, I loved him man because the guy would go on Howard Stern and he would be cool.
Yeah, say crazy stuff, you know, I didn't like his position against Hispanics and that threw me off But you know, no one's perfect.
I am by no means man if my wife was to just Look at me for my faults.
We won't be married 25 years.
Well, that's amazing, man.
You have your message and your story is extremely powerful.
And thank you so much for coming on here and sharing it with everybody.
Let everybody know where they can find your book and where they can find you online, your website, your social media.
Yeah.
If they go to my webpage, Jorge Valdez, J-O-R-G-E, valdesphd.com, Valdez with an S, and you sign on to our community, they'll get a free copy of my book, my latest book.
You can go to my YouTube channel and subscribe.
Everything we try to do is to make a difference.
The books that we sell, none of the money comes to me.
I wish it did.
No, it goes to send it to a prisoner so that they would find a different alternative to life.
And at least, if nothing else, find hope in a hopeless situation.
So we have a YouTube channel.
We have a podcast.
I just came up with a journal, which I think is my greatest work.
I mean, I spent half of my life doing my PhD dissertation.
Three people read it.
And called Narco Mindset Journal.
And you can go to narcomindset.com.
And what it is, is my son, my 16-year-old son, well, he was 16 when he was really messed up with drugs.
He asked me to, about a year ago, I said, Dad, he's super successful now on his way to become a millionaire, married, little daughter, his own home.
People can't believe that he was addicted to drugs when he was young.
Not addicted, but he was messed up with drugs.
Anyway, came to live with me and said, Dad, why don't you write a journal that people can look at the principle you've given me throughout life, integrity.
into action.
So every week, it's a 12 week, so I pick a subject of the things that are most important, and I end up with a code at the end.
So I say like win-win for you, like proactive.
I said, why I never lost a gram of cocaine, never lost a load.
Why?
Because I was so anal about and obsessive about being proactive.
I looked at every little detail that could go wrong, from the engine to the mechanic.
I never had a pilot from the United States go by himself because why?
Well, what if there was an operation going?
Where else would he land?
I would bring a Colombian pilot.
What if they were following here and he could tell them where he was going?
So I was always very meticulous.
So I talk about that because America is the most reactive society in the world, right?
We don't know nothing about it.
How many times you hear, I never thought my child would commit suicide, really?
Or maybe you just never looked.
And so I write those items and then I apply them to your family, your work, and your personal.
And how in 12 weeks you change your mindset where he says, The mindset that I had to overcome tortures, to overcome 10 years in jail, to lose everything I have, to build a multi million dollar drug empire, and then to build a multi million dollar company.
So I just finished writing that and I'm really happy about that because it'll help people change their mindset.
Why I look at this virus as a joke?
Why am I not worried about none of it?
Well, I take the precautions, right?
I wash my hands, you know, one thing you worry.
But at the end of the day, if I live, I live for Jesus.
If I die, I go with Jesus.
So, you know, I thought I would be dead by 20.
So your days are marked.
So I'm not worried.
I'm going to live life.
I live life as if today's my last day.
Every day.
I do the best I can every day.
I love my kids.
I invest in my kids' lives, you know.
And that's the mindset.
So we're living in fear, you know?
I live with love.
I don't know fear.
The word doesn't exist.
I don't know the word.
I can't do something.
I think my word is, how can I do it?
Yeah, the news and the media panic about the virus is sort of, like you said, it's a reaction.
People want to be reactive to it instead of proactive about it.
Like you said, be proactive and take care of your health before something like this happens.
Instead, now everything's a panic.
Now you guys have to all do this.
Exactly.
The percentages of people in this country that are obese and and that's the problem learn from it learn from it take care of your health.
Yeah a friend of mine says, you know You're putting other people's risk of life.
I said look you feel that you could be a risk.
Yes, then don't go out mm-hmm and don't come around me exactly But I don't feel I'm a risk.
So let me live my life.
Yep, I don't want to be locked down.
I've been locked down too many years.
Mm-hmm.
You know, yeah, I'm not gonna do something stupid We more people died of influenza.
Why are we not worried that a drunk diver is good someone's gonna get out there drunk?
Driving kill 50,000 people Why don't we don't we stop driving cars?
Yeah, you know, no, you got to live life man and and do the best you can I mean you don't throw yourself in front of a train, you know, you don't put yourself in a position of danger and You don't hang around with the wrong people and and you try to do the best you can every day to become just a little better man a little better husband a little better father and At the end of the day if the scales you hope that the scales are on your behalf if they're not listen if there's a heaven great,
but like I used to tell my Muslim friends listen If there is no heaven, I don't lose shit.
I'm going to live a good life.
I'm going to help everybody.
And when we get out there, we're going to all be dust like you said we're going to be.
But if there is, man, are you willing to gamble with it?