While serving a sentence for car theft in federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut , Lehder decided that, upon his release, he would take advantage of the burgeoning market for cocaine in the United States. To that end, he enlisted his prison bunkmate, former marijuana dealer George Jung , as a future partner.
Jung had experience flying marijuana to the U. Inspired by the idea, Lehder decided to apply the principle to cocaine transport and formed a partnership with Jung. While in prison, Lehder set out to learn as much information as possible that could be useful to him in the cocaine business. He would sometimes even spend hours questioning fellow inmates about money laundering and smuggling. Jung allegedly said that Lehder kept countless files and constantly took notes.
Lehder's ultimate scheme was to revolutionize the cocaine trade by transporting the drug to the United States using small aircraft. After Lehder and Jung were released both were paroled , they built up a small revenue stream through simple, traditional drug smuggling.
Specifically, they enlisted two young women who were US citizens to take a vacation to Antigua , receive cocaine, and carry it back with them to the U. Repeating this process several times, Lehder and Jung soon had enough money for an airplane. Using a small stolen plane and a professional pilot, the pair began to fly cocaine into the United States via the Bahamas , in the process increasing their financial resources and building connections and trust with Colombian suppliers, while spreading money around among Bahamian government officials for political and judicial protection.
Their unconventional method of drug-smuggling began to gain credibility. In the late s, the Lehder-Jung partnership began to diverge, due to some combination of Lehder's megalomania and his secret scheming to secure a personal Bahamian island as an all-purpose headquarters for his operations. That island was Norman's Cay , which at that point consisted of a marina, a yacht club, approximately private homes, and an airstrip.
In , Lehder began buying up property and harassing and threatening the island's residents; at one point, a yacht was found drifting off the coast with the corpse of one of its owners aboard. As Lehder paid or forced the local population to leave, and began to assume total control of the island, Norman's Cay became his lawless private fiefdom. By this time, he had forced Jung out of the operation, and international criminal financier Robert Vesco had allegedly become a partner. Jung used his prior connections to take up a more modest line of independent smuggling for Pablo Escobar and stayed out of Lehder's way.
From through , the Cay was the Caribbean's main drug-smuggling hub, and a tropical hideaway and playground for Lehder and associates. They flew cocaine in from Colombia on all sorts of aircraft able to land fully loaded on the airstrip, reloaded it into various small aircraft, and then distributed it to locations in Georgia , Florida, and the Carolinas.
Lehder was believed to have personally kept one kilo out of every four that was transported through Norman's Cay. Lehder expanded a runway to 3,foot 1, m , protected by radar, bodyguards, and Doberman attack dogs for the fleet of aircraft under his command.
At the height of his operation, kilograms of cocaine would arrive on the island daily, and Lehder's personal wealth mounted into the billions.
He accumulated such staggering wealth that on two occasions he offered to pay the Colombian external debt. In , through Pablo Escobar , who was a Colombian Congressman at the time, Lehder did so again, this time in an attempt to prevent his extradition.
Their government's approval of the extradition of Colombians encouraged Escobar and Lehder to participate in politics. Lehder founded the National Latino Movement Movimiento Latino Nacional , in Spanish , which managed three congressional seats, and popularized itself by making speeches against extradition.
Lara had campaigned against the cartel's activities, and his murder marked a change in Colombian politics. President Belisario Betancur , who had previously opposed extraditing any Colombian drug lords to the United States, announced that he was now willing to extradite.
Lehder was a leading individual on the crackdown list. Escobar had paid some of Noriega's closest colonels to inform him of Noriega's intentions. Lehder's downfall was assisted by his blatant bribing of Bahamian officials, and the attention the activities on Norman's Cay were attracting.
After Brian Ross 's September 5, report, on the U. The government had frozen all his bank accounts and taken over his property and possessions, and he went from being a billionaire to nearly bankrupt.
While on the run in the jungle, he got sick with a fever. Even so, he was left very weak. When Lehder recovered, Escobar hired him as a bodyguard. Eventually, Lehder wanted to rebuild his fortune, but he was captured at a farm he had just established in Colombia, when a new employee of his informed the police of his location.
Having captured one of the Cartel's most powerful members, the U. In , Lehder was extradited to the United States, where he was tried and sentenced to life without parole, plus an additional years. In , in exchange for Lehder's agreement to testify against Manuel Noriega , his sentence was reduced to a total of 55 years.
Three years after that, Lehder wrote a letter to a federal district judge, complaining that the government had reneged on a deal to transfer him to a German prison. The letter was construed as a threat against the judge. Within weeks of sending that letter in the fall of , Lehder was whisked away into the night, according to several protected witnesses at the Mesa Unit in Arizona.
Lehder's brother, Federico Guillermo Lehder, who operated on the periphery of the business, might have been mistaken for Carlos, thus causing the reports of Carlos' being free and living overseas. According to journalist and author Tamara S. Bureau of Prisons' version of the federal Witness Protection Program.
Inscoe-Johnson argued that Lehder had not been released, despite Internet rumors to the contrary. Inscoe-Johnson also believed Lehder will never be released: allegedly, he would be privy to secret information regarding the CIA 's and his own involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. On July 22, , he appeared in the U. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to contest his sentence. Lehder appeared pro se , arguing that the United States failed to carry out its obligations under a cooperation agreement he had entered into with the United States Attorney's Office, after he held up his end of the deal.
United States v. Lehder-Rivas , Fed. In May , Lehder requested the Supreme Court of Colombia and the Colombian government to intervene in order to comply with the extradition agreement established between Colombia and the US, which stated that a maximum sentence of 30 years would be applied to any extradited Colombian citizen.
Lehder argued that, having already served 20 years in prison, which corresponded to two-thirds of the year maximum time stated in the treaty, he had completed his legal sentence and should therefore be released. In May , Lehder's lawyer declared to El Tiempo that a habeas corpus petition had been filed, alleging that Lehder's cooperation agreement had been violated and that "a court in Washington" had less than 30 days to respond to the notice.
According to his lawyer, Lehder was transferred to a minimum security prison in Florida. He was visited regularly by family members and had access to TV and a computer with only email access. An article published by Cronica Del Quindio in January reported that Lehder could be released and extradited to Germany at any time.
Lehder was released from prison on June 16, and escorted to Germany by two US officials on a regular passenger flight from New York to Frankfurt and handed over to German authorities.
Carlos grew up in Armenia until his parents divorced when he was 15, after which he emigrated with his mother to New York. Lehder started out as a stolen car dealer, a marijuana dealer, and a smuggler of stolen cars between the U.
While serving a sentence for car theft in federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, Lehder decided that, upon his release, he would take advantage of the burgeoning market for cocaine in the United States. To that end, he enlisted his prison bunkmate, former marijuana dealer George Jung , as a future partner. Jung had experience flying marijuana to the U. Inspired by the idea, Lehder decided to apply the principle to cocaine transport and formed a partnership with Jung.
While in prison, Lehder set out to learn as much information as possible that could be useful to him in the cocaine business. He would sometimes even spend hours questioning fellow inmates about money laundering and smuggling.
Jung allegedly said that Lehder kept countless files and constantly took notes. Lehder's ultimate scheme was to revolutionize the cocaine trade by transporting the drug to the United States, using small aircraft. After their releases both were paroled , Lehder and Jung built up a small revenue stream through simple, traditional drug smuggling. Specifically, they enlisted two young American women to take a paid vacation to Antigua, receive cocaine, and carry it back with them to the U.
Repeating this process several times, Lehder and Jung soon had enough money for an airplane. Using a small stolen plane and a professional pilot, the pair began to fly cocaine into the United States via the Bahamas, in the process increasing their financial resources and building connections and trust with Colombian suppliers, while spreading money around among Bahamian government officials for political and judicial protection.
Their unconventional method of drug-smuggling began to gain credibility. In the late s, the Lehder-Jung partnership began to diverge, due to some combination of Lehder's megalomania and his secret scheming to secure a personal Bahamian island as an all-purpose headquarters for his operations.
That island was Norman's Cay, which at that point consisted of a marina, a yacht club, approximately private homes, and a 3, ft long airstrip. In , Lehder began buying up property and harassing and threatening the island's residents; at one point, a yacht was found drifting off the coast with the corpse of one of its owners aboard. As Lehder paid or forced the local population to leave, and began to assume total control of the island, Norman's Cay became his lawless private fiefdom.
By this time, he had forced Jung out of the operation, and international criminal financier Robert Vesco had allegedly become a partner. Jung used his prior connections to take up a more modest line of independent smuggling for Pablo Escobar and stayed out of Lehder's way.
From through , the Cay was the Caribbean's main drug-smuggling hub, and a tropical hideaway and playground for Lehder and associates. They flew cocaine in from Colombia on all sorts of aircraft able to land fully loaded on the 3, ft airstrip, reloaded it into various small aircraft, and then distributed it to locations in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. Lehder was believed to have received 1 kilo out of every 4 that was transported through Norman's Cay.
Lehder built a 3,foot 1, m runway protected by radar, bodyguards, and Doberman attack dogs for the fleet of aircraft under his command. At the height of his operation, kilograms of cocaine would arrive on the island daily, and Lehder's personal wealth mounted into the billions. He accumulated such staggering wealth that on two occasions he offered to pay the Colombian external debt. In , through Pablo Escobar , who was a Colombian Congressman at the time, Lehder did so again, this time in an attempt to prevent his extradition.
Their government's approval of the extradition of Colombians encouraged Escobar and Lehder to participate in politics. Lehder founded the National Latino Movement Movimiento Latino Nacional , in Spanish , which managed three congressional seats and popularized itself by making speeches against extradition. Lara had campaigned against the cartel's activities, and his murder marked a change in Colombian politics.
President Belisario Betancur , who had previously opposed extraditing any Colombian drug lords to the United States, announced that he was now willing to extradite. Lehder was a leading individual on the crackdown list. Escobar had paid some of Noriega's closest colonels to inform him of Noriega's intentions.
Lehder's downfall was assisted by his blatant bribing of Bahamian officials and the attention the activities on Norman's Cay were attracting. After Brian Ross 's September 5, report, on the U. The government had frozen all his bank accounts and taken over his property and possessions, and he went from being a billionaire to nearly bankrupt. While on the run in the jungle, he got sick with a fever. Even so, he was left very weak.
When Lehder recovered, Escobar hired him as a bodyguard. Eventually, Lehder wanted to rebuild his fortune, but he was captured at a farm he had just established in Colombia, when a new employee of his informed the police of his location. Having captured one of the Cartel's most powerful members, the U.
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