How Pablo Escobar Spent His Billions

Most of us have dreamed about what we’d do if we had a lot of money. Buy a fancy car. Buy a mansion with an enormous swimming pool. Send our parents on a trip to Paris.

But what do you do when you have more money than you are able to deal with?

While it’s impossible to know exactly how big of a money pile drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was sitting on at the time of his death in 1993, it’s estimated that his net worth was $30 billion USD.

That’s $59 billion USD in today’s money. In 1976, Escobar helped to found the Medellin cartel in his native country of Colombia. The cartel’s primary business was exporting cocaine and other illegal drugs. Escobar’s fortunes grew quickly, especially as he began to eliminate rivals and expand operations.

He was innovative in finding new methods for drug smuggling and willing to take risks that other bosses wouldn’t. One of his more unique smuggling methods was hiding cocaine in airplane tires. Depending on how much product pilots flew, they could earn as much as $500,000 per day. By his late 20s, Escobar had assumed sole control of the Medellin cartel.

From the mid-1980s throughout the early 1990s, the cartel was incredibly successful. At its height, it pulled in an estimated $420 million a week or nearly $22 billion a year. Some 80% percent of the cocaine business worldwide was facilitated by Medellin. Escobar especially monopolized cocaine smuggling to the US.

At one point he was moving 15 tons of cocaine into the US every day, or of the Americans doing cocaine, 4 out of 5 were scoring it courtesy of the Medellins’s smuggling operation. Despite his money being gained through illegal means, Escobar was featured on the Forbes' list of international billionaires for seven years straight, from 1987 until 1993.

In the year 1989, Pablo Escobar was listed as the 7th richest man in the world. As you can imagine, Escobar had a crazy, lavish lifestyle. He partied hard and owned countless luxury cars, as well as 15 planes, six helicopters, and several boats.

That’s in addition to the fleet of vehicles and submarines he bought for drug smuggling. Yes, you hear us right, two submarines. He also specifically bought a Learjet for flying cash around. Escobar purchased a professional soccer team, and dozens of luxury houses in Colombia and throughout the world. His main home was a 7,000-acre estate known as Hacienda Nápoles (named after Naples, Italy) in the jungle a few hours from Medellín.

Reportedly, Hacienda Nápoles cost around $63 million. The immense main house, built in the style of a Spanish Colonial mansion, had every luxury a guest could wish for. There was also an individual, opulent party house.

The sprawling estate had swimming pools, an airstrip, stables filled with expensive horses, a soccer field, tennis courts, a go-kart course, a bullfighting arena, artificial lakes, a vintage car collection, and life-sized dinosaur sculptures, reportedly made from genuine prehistoric bones.

Last but not least, Hacienda Nápoles had a private zoo filled with some 200 animals, including zebras, hippopotamuses, giraffes, elephants, and lions. Many of the animals were smuggled into Colombia aboard Escobar’s drug planes. To top it off, the entry road leading to the Hacienda Nápoles estate had an arch adorned with a replica of the single-engine Piper Cub airplane that had carried Escobar’s first load of coke to the United States.

Among the several properties, Escobar owned in Florida was a minimalist mansion in an exclusive Miami Beach neighborhood. The 8 bedroom house had floor-to-ceiling glass walls, wrap-around terraces, expansive lounge decks, an outdoor kitchen, an infinity-edge pool, and soaring palm trees.

Best yet, the 30,000 foot [2787 square meters] property was situated on the waterfront with an incredible view of the downtown Miami Beach skyline. Then there was Escobar’s secret vacation party spot built on the quiet, rural La Isla Grande just off the Colombian coast.

This luxury complex consisted of a mansion, waterfront apartments, a palm tree courtyard centered around an enormous swimming pool, and a helicopter landing pad. The estate had more than 300 well-appointed rooms for guests. Reportedly, the bathrooms even had solid gold showerheads.

Escobar’s most famous property was a prison, however, it was a prison, unlike any others. By 1991, the glamor of Escobar’s lifestyle was beginning to pall next to the extreme violence.

Numerous adversaries wanted him dead, some indeed placing a bounty on his head. Escobar turned to the Colombian government. After six months of secret negotiations, he was able to work out a deal. Escobar would go to prison, but he would get to choose the location.

Entering prison would give Escobar protection from possible assassins, as well as prevent him from being extradited to the US. Escobar designed and built his prison, the luxurious La Catedral or ‘The Cathedral’ high in the mountains above Medellin.

Unofficially La Catedral was called “Club Medellin” because it was more like a resort than a prison. Escobar’s bedroom featured a circular, rotating bed and his bathroom had a private jacuzzi. The property included a soccer field, a discotheque, a bar, a large patio, and an enormous swimming pool with an artificial waterfall.

La Catedra also had an office with cellular services, radio transmitters, computers, and a fax machine which allowed Escobar to continue to run his business from “prison”. While living at La Catedral, Escobar regularly hosted drug and booze-fueled parties. Often friends, family, prostitutes, professional soccer players and other celebrities would visit.

Away from his crazy life, Escobar poured a lot of plutocrats into charity work. Keenly aware of his public image, he sought to generate goodwill. He bestowed to churches and hospitals in Medellin and other municipalities in the region. He built soccer fields, parks, and paved roads.

He well-established food programs and also created reforestation projects. Escobar even built a new neighborhood, Barrio Escobar, from scratch in Medellin, with 1,000 homes for families who previously lived in the slums. Cynics viewed this act as Escobar buying public loyalty and building a place where he could hide drugs, guns, and money.

According to some locals, Escobar would occasionally show up in the town square and hand out money. He also once dressed as Santa Claus and handed out presents to children. His charitable acts earned Escobar the nickname of ‘Robinhood’. He even got himself elected to Colombia’s Congress in 1982 per his public service reputation. At this time the authorities were just beginning to grasp the scope of his criminal enterprises and the public wasn’t yet aware.

The Minister of Justice condemned Escobar and got him removed from the position. Later Escobar retaliated by having the Minister killed. Allegedly in the late 1980s, Escobar offered to pay off his country’s national debt of $10 billion if he would be exempt from any extradition treaty. Colombia declined the offer.

Despite his lavish lifestyle, extravagant purchases, and charitable donations, Escobar simply wasted a lot of money. Yes, wasted. It was definitely a case of ‘mo money mo problems. For many months Escobar took in so much money, he couldn’t launder it faster enough.

The Colombian banks refused to touch his dirty cash, so he stockpiled some in Swiss accounts. At this time, he was spending $2,500 on rubber bands for his cash each month. Piles of cash simply sat around in warehouses.

Escobar was losing 10% or $2.1 billion due to stored paper money being shredded by rats or destroyed by the elements. Escobar started hiding money all over the place.

He dug holes and buried piles of shrink-wrapped cash in Colombian farming fields, and caves and also stashed money in the walls of cartel members' homes. Often after having his hitmen hide money on his behalf, Escobar would kill them.

That way nobody else knew where the money was buried. In 1992 after he boggled some rivals and buried them on the grounds of La Catedral, the Colombian government decided to move Escobar to real captivity. Catching wind of the plan, Escobar and his family went on the run, alternating between various safe houses.

On a cold winter’s night while the family was living in a hideout in the Medellín mountainside, Escobar's daughter, Manuela, became hypothermic. Escobar reportedly burned $2 million in order to keep her warm. The Medellin cartel began to crumble under pressure from authorities and rival gangs.

Eventually, the law caught up with Escobar and he was gunned down during a shootout with Colombian National Police in December of 1993. Most of Escobar’s immediate family continued to hide, worried about rival gangs including the Los PEPES and the Cali cartel.

At first, the Escobar family was suitable to buy out an entire bottom of a hostel and have guards guarding them around the timepiece, but this soon proved to be too precious, especially with no new plutocrat coming in.

Eventually, a lot of the Escobar family moved to Argentina, where due to limited funds they lived an ordinary middle-class lifestyle. After Escobar’s death, Los PEPES and the Cali cartel were able to steal some of Escobar’s property.

They also forced Escobar’s family to sign over liquid assets. Meanwhile, the Colombian government was suitable to recover several of Escobar’s cash caches, especially when authorities rounded up members of the Medellin combination, who revealed the sap for some locales.

The Colombian government seized Hacienda Nápoles, La Catedra, the vacation mansion on La Isla Grande, and several other Escobar properties. The majority of the animals at Hacienda Nápoles were transferred to regular zoos, but due to cost and the trouble of moving them, four hippopotamuses were left behind in one of the lakes.

The government then ignored the property for many years. Treasure hunters, fueled by rumors of riches hidden on the property tore down some walls of the main house.

In 2007, the government transformed Hacienda Nápoles into a theme park featuring life-sized dinosaur models, family-friendly hotels and a water park. Escobar’s hippos have multiplied and there are currently upwards of 60.

While they are a popular tourist attraction, they are upsetting the local ecosystem and have damaged nearby farms. Authorities are attempting to control the population. La Catedral also lay vacant for many years and eventually residents of the region scavenged it, stripping bathtubs, pipes, tiles, and roof materials.

Fortune hunters destroyed walls and dug up the grounds. No money was ever found. The property has since been rehabilitated by Benedictine monks who’ve turned it into old folks' homes.

The mansion on La Isla Grande is being reclaimed by nature. It’s a destination for audacious trippers who want Instagram bragging rights. Getting there requires a boat ride to the island and several hours trek through the jungle.

In the US, officials had seized the majority of Escobar’s property including the Miami Beach mansion long before he died, in 1987. The house was eventually sold and more recently in 2016 was torn down.

While being razored, two hidden safes were found. One safe was picked before it could be opened. The owner of the property moved the other safe to a bank for security. He has never divulged the contents of what was found inside.

Over the years, people have found hidden Escobar stashes of cash and gold bars. In 2015, a farmer found 600 million USD buried in plastic barrels in a field he was digging. The money was seized by the Colombian government.

As Escobar kept most of his money hiding spots to himself, a lot of them are still out there, undiscovered. Cash deposited in Swiss banks also lies unclaimed, as only Escobar knew the account numbers.

Who knows, if you go exploring the jungles of South America, you just might come across a mysterious stash of cash--a remnant of Escobar’s drug empire.