FRAUD TALK – EPISODE 99

The Real-Life Agents Behind ’s “” Tell of ’s Reign of Terror In this clip from the September/October Fraud Magazine interview with retired U.S. DEA special agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña, the former agents talk about the work they did in Colombia investigating notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Peña spent three harrowing years in Colombia tracking Escobor before Murphy joined him for 18 more months that would later become the inspiration behind Netflix’s hit show, “Narcos.”

Transcript

Emily Primeaux: Welcome to this edition of Fraud Talk, the ACFE’s monthly podcast. I’m Emily Primeaux, associate editor of Fraud Magazine, and I’m joined by Javier Peña and Steven Murphy. Steve and Javier are retired DEA agents who worked together as special agents in Colombia to bring down the notorious Medellín drug cartel led by Pablo Escobar. The hit Netflix show, “Narcos,” is based on their experiences pursuing Escobar and the Medellín cartel. Thanks for joining me today, Javier and Steve.

So then, Javier, could you tell me a bit about those three years before Steve got there, what you were working on, and how you made those relationships and got the ball rolling?

Javier: Right, right. Like you said, it was 1988 and I got to mention, when I was in Austin, my big boss, they call them ASAC, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, was in San Antonio, a guy by the name of Joe Top. He knew me, I knew him, worked a lot of cases, like I said, out of Austin, we answered to San Antonio. When I got selected, I was just I think two weeks shy of getting to Bogotá, my boss from San Antonio, Joe Top, gets selected as the country attaché for Colombia, which is the big boss. We arrived in the country at the same time. Basically, DEA, you’re a worker, you’re known for your reputations, we’re both workers.

Steve and I were both good workers, so I got selected, and my boss is, “We’re going to assign you the Pablo Escobar case.”

I did not know who Pablo Escobar was. I had heard of him, but I never dealt with any of his cases. In Austin, we were too far removed. I started learning, I had a senior partner, but she was leaving country at the time. Then I worked with, like what Steve said, Gary Sheridan. Then he gets promoted. So I started slowly learning about Pablo Escobar, making my contacts. We have a specialized group of cops in Medellín that we knew from Bogotá. It all fell into place.

Our guys we worked with from Bogotá, the cops, some of them were selected to this specialized task force going after Escobar. So I already knew them.. So slowly, we started learning who Pablo Escobar was, started learning what he was doing, started learning the violence, the terrorism. By working with this specialized group of cops, we knew each other, so they trusted us and we trusted them, so it was a great working relationship. However, the first search, not like the second one, I would go there maybe two days at a time and then get out. I was not supposed to live with the cops. It was only…we’d get there, I spend two days, maybe three days, and I leave.

I’d always stay at the base because of the danger that was going on. Whereas the second search, and we’ll talk about this here in a little bit, we were actually embedded with the police. We stayed with them, we lived with them, we slept with, ate with them, so that made a big difference.

Emily: Now, Steve, since you were in Miami, did you hear a bit more about Pablo Escobar before you got there? Was he getting pretty well known at that point?

Steve Murphy: He was, and he really, really started in South Florida. He bought a property in Miami in 1980. Javier and I have been at the property. We actually did a documentary that never made television, but we were at the old house, the property he bought in 1980. He was already well on his way back then, but when I got there, Pablo and the Medellín Cartel control South Florida. The had no influence whatsoever. It was all Pablo, so if you were involved in the cocaine business in any manner at all, you were directly or indirectly working with or against the Medellín Cartel.

Our cases all tie back into the Medellín Cartel, but I never had a case that got me up to that top level where Pablo was, and I don’t think I even got close.

Emily: Then you go down to Colombia. Did you know you were being tasked to the Medellín Cartel and Pablo Escobar, or was it when you got there and you met Javier that you were like, “This is what I’m working on”?

Steve: Yeah, you don’t know ’til you get there. I showed up, and Javier was already working with a guy named Gary Sheridan. Gary and I actually got to be pretty good friends because we had some mutual law enforcement contacts here in the United States, and then I got to know Javier through Gary, and then Gary got promoted, moved to Barranquilla, and that’s when Javier and I became full-time partners. When you get in the office, they give you a few days to get acclimated. You have to get your embassy’s security clearances, read-ons, and all that stuff.

But after you’re there and…I mean, I already know who Pablo is, and then I find that these two guys are working, even I’m thinking, “Wow, I might have a shot to actually work on this case.” Then we just…Javier and I and Gary all just hit it off together as friends. It’s just amazing how the whole thing worked out.

Emily: Yeah, it sounds like it. You said that three days later, he surrendered himself. What was the plan then for the two of you?

Javier: When he surrendered, and obviously, we did not like that. We were very much against it. The conditions he surrendered to, it was out of a movie.

Emily: It was good basis for a TV show. [laughs]

Javier: I know and we never thought of it. You know what? Back then, somebody mentioned, “Hey, one of these days someone is going to do a movie about this.”

I said, “Who would want to know about Pablo Escobar?”

Boy, was I wrong, right?

Anyway, so when he surrendered, it was basically nobody could go into the prison. No visitors, no checks. There was no control. Took his sicarios with him. He negotiated a five-year prison sentence. The main thing, like I said, was that prison was off-limits, and it was by the government of Colombia. Nobody could go close. Nobody could go check on it, so it was like, “What’s going on?” We knew that he was going to continue his trafficking activities.

Basically, that period, I think was about a little over a year, we were just monitoring. We started working other cases obviously. That’s where Steve and I hooked up. There was a lot of other drug investigations in Colombia. Pablo was not in our sights. He surrendered. I said everybody was disappointed, was mad, and obviously, you got to be mad, all the people he killed. He killed some good friends of ours, other innocent people, but it was part of the plea agreement. Columbia is their country. It’s not our country, so we couldn’t do anything about it, so we worked other cases, obviously, for a little over a year.

Then until, like he said, that fateful night that he escaped. Steve and I were there the following, the very next morning. We arrived at his prison, and it was something out of a movie material what we discovered inside the prison.

Emily: Why is that? What was it about it that made it so “special”?

Javier: Steve, you want to? Steve does a good job.

Steve: Yes. You know what? We’ve been in prisons all over the world with suspects and so forth. This was the farthest thing from a prison you’ve ever seen in your life. It was more of a country club.

When you got to the entrance, there were two sets of green steel bars to present the facade, the appearance that this was a prison, but once you got inside that second set of steel bars, it’s wide open. You got to the back perimeter of the prison up where the outer perimeter fence is, there’s a hole in the fence so you can come and go as you please. Pablo was building a series of cabanas and chalets on the hillside behind the prison.

He was throwing parties up there. He had plans for the place after his five years in prison. It just confirmed everything that we suspected, that it’s a country club. The guy had a two-room suite for his prison cell. It had — you’ve seen the pictures I believe — a microwave oven, refrigerator, freezer. He had a king-sized bed. He had a fireplace in his bedroom. He had a Jacuzzi tub in his private bathroom.

Now, all the prisons I’ve been in, what they have are called group showers.

Emily: Yeah. [laughs]

Steve: It was just a real, real joke, what was going on up there.

Emily: So then why do you think he decided to escape?

Javier: Well, it wasn’t that he…he decided at the last minute. He was there and he had already done like one year, so he’s got four more years to go, right? Like Steve said, he had chalets, apartment built into the sides mountains, camouflaged. You know what, when you ask the question, “What decided for him to escape?” You know, it was, you know what, basically his ego. That’s probably what it was, that super, super ego that he had. The real story is he thought a couple of his lieutenants were stealing money from him, which was not true, so he called them into the prison, and they were his two favorite lieutenants, and these guys were loved by their underling traffickers.

In the drug world, they were good bosses. They love their bosses. However, the Pablo sicarios in Medellín at an old site found some money, it was about 10 million. The money had deteriorated, so they take it to Pablo, and the sicarios do not like the two lieutenants because it’s jealousy. They say, “Hey, boss.” They sort of egg him on. They say, “Hey boss, look what your two favorite lieutenants have been holding on you.” And they throw the money in front of him deteriorated in public property. In that instance, Pablo, where he calls those two guys into a meeting, and they had their own security, but Pablo made a point. “Tell them it’s a friendly, friendly meeting, no security. I just want to talk to them and see what’s going on.”

They come in thinking it’s, you know, and all of a sudden, they see the money and Pablo just goes ballistic. They try to explain to Pablo. The real story is they forgot they buried it, so Pablo just cannot hold it back.

He goes insane, he goes ballistic. What I’ve heard from people inside, Pablo himself killed one of them. One of his best friends himself, clubbed him. Sicarios killed the other guy. That information goes back to the government of Colombia, and then they decide, “All right, we’re going move him.” They kept the plan kind of quiet. They kept it real quiet. They surprised Pablo when they went to the prison and says, “Mr. Escobar, we have to move you.”

Pablo says, “What do you mean you got to move me? Part of my contract with the government or the president is that I’m staying here,”

And they said, “No, the president has changed his mind.”

And that’s when it all went to you know what. Pablo’s trying to call the president in Bogotá who’s not answering the phone. The military guys, it was only about 20, they said. Why 20 guys? Why didn’t they send the police? The police would have taken care of this.

Anyway, there’s a firefight and Pablo walks out of that door, opens the door, takes about seven, I think, eight sicarios, and he had some money. He took it with him and off he goes, like I said, into the night trying to reorganize.

Like I said, we get the information, we get the news, we know what’s going on, so the very next morning… In fact, the government of Columbia asked for us to go there in person. I’m glad we did because, by going there in person, firsthand, we saw the evidence firsthand. We saw a lot of what he didn’t have time to carry with him. He left behind, so it was good for us that we were actually there.

Emily: To go a little bit off of — I mean, it involves Pablo — but the culture in Colombia at the time, what was it like for the Colombian citizens in Medellín, in Bogotá? Because you hear these stories about how there were people who loved Pablo because he built homes and helped people who were in poverty, but then, Javier, you talked about how much murder happened under him.

What was the overall feeling like there?

Javier: In Medellín, the poorer neighborhoods, the poverty neighborhoods, they call them comunas. A lot of these young kids, I call them thugs. They’re kids, but they’re already learning to be criminals, 13, 14, 15, they idolized Pablo Escobar. You talk about it and we talk about it, that Robin Hood aura that Pablo Escobar had about him, and obviously, we dispel that. He’s no Robin Hood.

Anyway, so sicarios idolized Pablo Escobar. They were learning. Pablo was a grandeur type of a guy back then, drove around with tons of bodyguards. They go to clubs, restaurants. They close it down. They party. Pablo would pick up the tabs.

Escobar was building in soccer fields, schools, homes, so he would help the sicarios, but then in the end, and the other side of the coin is, he wanted them. And they all wanted to work for him. You’d be surprised as to the amount of people out there. He would have a meeting, and I refer to it as la terraza, the terrorist, and it was the old Catholic Church. Obviously, we didn’t know it was a Catholic church. We find out afterwards, but there’d be 200 or 300 of these kids, all wanting there to work for Pablo Escobar. You know what, Escobar had that charisma. He’d hug them, he’d kiss them, he’d give them money, he’d build homes, so everybody idolized, “Boss, I’ll work for you. I’ll kill for you.”

It was that attitude that we were dealing with against Pablo Escobar. At the beginning, people were hiding him. We’d go in and we’d find out later that people sneak him out, smuggled him out of an area. They’d warned him. During the first search, we didn’t have that many people call it in and say, “We know where Pablo Escobar was.” No one wanted to go up against Escobar. It wasn’t until the second time that things basically turned around.

Emily: After his—

Javier: After the escape, right.

Emily: Yes, okay, but you also talk about . What is that, silver or lead?

Javier: Yes, the concept is you want a bullet or you want some money? I briefly explained it, but the story, and it wasn’t a story, it was a fact.

Like I said, a sicario going into the judge’s office, and basically he says, “Hey, judge, we’re being sent by Mr. Pablo Escobar, and in this briefcase, there is—”

I think it was like $100,000. Back then, a hundred thousand in Colombia was a lot of money.

He said, “Judge, all you got to do is drop the charges, and this money is yours.” And the judge kicked him out. Then the next day, they kill the judge and his family. That’s where that concept of the Pablo Escobar’s, that meanness, that evolved.

You want money or you want a bullet? From there on, people started accepting those briefcases. I don’t blame them. I’d do the same thing…take the briefcase of money, my family’s not going to get killed.

Emily: That must have made things really hard for y’all when it came to getting any information about him because you talk about not just like the kids who want to be like him and to work for him, but then you also have judges, and law enforcement, and people who are getting paid off.

What was it like trying to get into his circle, get information?

Javier: We didn’t mention it, but at the beginning, the mistake we made was we were getting cops to work with us that were from Medellín. I remember a couple of lieutenants at our search block, and then all of a sudden, we’d have great information of where Escobar was at, and when we would get there, Escobar was gone.

It was like, “Wow!” We had a tight sealed plan. Later on, we learned — and a couple of guys, police, ended up going to jail — what happened is Pablo got to their families in Medellín. He knew their families, said, “Hey, tell your kid if they want to see their parents alive, they better start telling me information.” So that’s what would happen.

From there on, we just brought in guys that were from Bogotá or other besides Medellín. There was still a lot of corruption with the money, so you really had to know who to trust, who not to trust, who not to give information to. The good thing was that our task force, that specialized group we had, was pretty much controlled after we made mistakes. Emily: You said things were a bit different the second time around, what changed that year after you got there, Steve? What made things, not easier, but what changed after his escape to make investigating him just a little bit easier?

Other than the fact that it sounds like you were using police from Bogotá and you were living, eating, everything with them, but can you give me a little bit more about what life was like then?

Steve: It was a total commitment at that point because the government…this self-surrender program, where they allowed him to surrender to his own custom-built prison, that was unheard of anywhere in the world. That was extremely embarrassing for law enforcement.

The entire government of Colombia was embarrassed for that, but we challenge our audiences to put yourself in the shoes of the president of Colombia. Can you imagine the pressure he’s getting from the public, from the opposite political party especially, but his own political party? “Hey, you went in there saying you’re going to stop Pablo Escobar, you’re going to stop the murders, the bombings, the indiscriminate killing, what are you going to do about it? You’re not doing what you said you’re going to do.”

The truth is when Pablo surrendered, the bombing stopped. It did stop for a while, but like Javier told you, it took less than a year for Pablo’s ego to get control of him to where he killed Moncada and Galeano brothers, and we’re off to the races again.

This time, there was a total commitment, not only from the Colombian government, but also the U.S. government. Like Javier said, we didn’t just say, “Hey, we’re going up to Medellín to work.” The government of Colombia called the ambassador and says, “Hey, we want Peña and Murphy up here with us.”

Emily: This has been another edition of Fraud Talk. You can find every episode of Fraud Talk at ACFE.com/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Be on the lookout for the September/October issue of Fraud Magazine.

On September 1, my full interview with Javier and Steve will be available on Fraud-Magazine.com. This has been Emily Primeaux. Signing off.