El Cartel de Medellin Organized crime has been a problem since the early 1900s and has grown to become a major problem for law enforcement. The start of organized crime is known to be part of the prohibition from the early 1920s. In the 1920s organized crime groups were first known to society members as gangs. Most gangs were known to be immigrants from the same group that gather together to commit illegal crimes on other society members or the government. In the United States, organized crime is also known as racketeering.
In 1970, congress passed an act known as the RICO act. RICO stands for "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act” (Organized crime, 2003). This act made it easier for law enforcement officials to prosecute individuals who have not committed a crime but has been found guilty of being the head person in charge of an organized crime group. In order for a organized crime group to succeed in a committing crime, history proves that blackmail, bribery, and other forms of manipulation have been used by gang members to gain what they want form society members. One of the best ways that organized crime groups have continued to succeed in the United States is because they have been known to have connections with many different levels of law enforcement and within the government. Organized criminal groups are known to be the main contributors of drug trafficking. Today the types of crimes committed by organized crime groups have grown.
As organized crime groups have become smarter, the types of crimes committed have increased and changed. One group of organized criminals that this paper will focus on is the group known as “El cartel de Medellin.” This paper will explain the structure, history, operation, activities, and participants of the el cartel de Medellin. Suggestions for law enforcement offices to use in the future will be determined.
History
The el cartel de Medellin is a organized crime group that originated in Columbia and has been known to be one group of criminals thought to be involved with the smuggling and drug trafficking into the United States. This large group of organized crime was started by a man named Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria. Pablo became known as one of the biggest drug lords of Columbia. The el cartel de Medellin” became known worldwide in the 1980s and was known to have organized members in over seven different countries (Information delight, 2003). The “el cartel de Medellin members were responsible for over 80% of cocaine distribution in the world; in countries such as Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and many other countries (Information delight, 2003). Many members of the el cartel de Medellin was also known to have controlled large amounts of real estate. In their home town, they were generous towards the poor community members. By “1991 the American department of defense created a list of individuals that are known to be affiliated with the el cartel de Medellin” (Newsweek international, 2003). In 1993 the leader of this organized crime group was gunned down by authorities.
Structure

The El Cartel de Medellin, or The Medellin Cartel, was an organized crime group composed of drug smugglers that originated in Medellin, Columbia. The Medellin Cartel was organized and built by Pablo Escobar during the 1970s and continued through the 1980s. The concept of this organization was for all the main drug smugglers in Columbia to come under one main organization or dealer which was Pablo Escobar in order to distribute and transport drugs from Columbia to the United States of America. Besides the mastermind which was Pablo Escobar there were five other key players involved in the functions related to the Medellin cartel. The five key members included Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, Juan David Ochoa, Jorge Ochoa, and Fabio Ochoa. There were other figures associated with the Medellin Cartel such as Max Mermelstein, Jon Roberts, and Mickey Munday. The organizations main business partner was Carlos Lehder. Pablo Escobar the founder and person in charge of the Medellin Cartel gained his reputation after the death of Fabio Restrepo which was a famous drug dealer in Medellin. After Restrepo’s death all the men who had been previously employed by Restrepo were informed that the new man in charge was Pablo Escobar and that they would be currently employed by him. Escobar was known for his violent and ferocious ways on the streets of Medellin; it is because of this reputation that anyone employed by him was feared as well. From that point on, the small time cocaine dealer began to build his empire with five other popular drug suppliers by drug trafficking in turn making himself one of the most wealthiest and powerful men in Columbia.
Juan David Ochoa, Jorge Ochoa, and Fabio Ochoa were brothers who all served as drug trafficking members for the Medellin Cartel. Their role in the cartel was to receive a commission for the business by intervening as intermediates.
Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha played a major role in the manufacturing and distributing of the cocaine. His advancement in the organization was based upon his pioneering of new trafficking routes though Mexico and trough the United Sates primarily through Texas and California. Gacha also owned a number of different ranches in these areas in which he could distribute cocaine. Another reason Gacha was such a major attribute to the Medellin Cartel was the fact that he was the initial owner of Tranquilandia which was one of the largest cocaine labs located in the middle of a jungle.
Carlos Lehder’s connection with the Medellin cartel was significant. Lehder made drug trafficking easy. He had his own island called Norman’s Cay. Having this island was a conduit for planes that were trafficking drugs because it allowed planes to arrive freely.
Each member had there own way of contributing to the organization of the drug cartel even though they were all independent drug smugglers. It is like a hand, the fingers make it complete. Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, Juan David Ochoa, Jorge Ochoa, and Fabio Ochoa were the individuals who made Escobar’s business configuration complete (Frontline, 1995).
Operation

Operations first began for the Medellin Cartel because all the drug dealers in Medellin knew everyone involved with trafficking and wanted to know what was going on in their industry (Medellin Cartel, 2008). There were six men involved: Pablo Escobar, Jorge, Fabio, Juan Ochoa, Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha were the main organizers for trafficking operations that first started using “Carlos's (Lehder) island as a launching point for the exportation of their many exports” (Medellin Cartel, 2008). They “used Medellin as headquarters for drug trafficking organizations and they cultivated a Robin Hood image, building 500 small houses for slum squatters and financing the construction of 80 soccer fields for the young men” (Abadinsky, 2003). The Medellin Cartel had private planes and their own airstrip that could net $10 million dollars per flight by smuggling about 400 kilos of cocaine (Cran, 1997). These operations would dispatch each bale of cocaine into the water at marked locations where high-speed motor boats would then make the pick. By this time, the Medellin Cartel had such a high-demand for cocaine in the United States they could not get make enough trips to meet the demand. At the height of their operations, they would bring in anywhere to 400-500 kilos per shipment and would be running five flights a week in to the United States, which would translate to a million dollars a day in profits (Cran, 1997)
Operations started to turn sour when entire shipments would belong to one individual and they would be taking a loss in profits due to drug raids, so they decided to mix the shipments. Now each shipment would hold merchandise from three different groups so if the shipment was compromised, each group would only lose a third on their shipment, which would spread the risk for each group. By putting the shipments all together, it essentially made this a major industry instead of each group trying to go into business by themselves, which became the Medellin Cartel. The Medellin Cartel’s head leader, Pablo Escobar stated to turn to violence and if an individual like a politician would not accept bribery, then Escobar would give them a choice of killing them or accept the money. Escobar would have entire families killed: mother, father, cousins, nephews, nieces, children, and grandchildren. Violence soon became a signature of the Medellin Cartel’s operations, along with the trademark their assassins with a “snub-nosed machine gun fired from the back of a motorbike” (Cran, 1997). Then the Medellin Cartel searched for a remote location which happened to be in the middle of a dense jungle where they could build laboratories that could be capable of “refining and shipping cocaine on an industrial scale,” which they called Tranquilandia (Cran, 1997). After a police raid neutralized this facility in 1984, violence surrounding the cartel and their operations increased, continued this way until the death of Pablo Escobar, which signaled the demise of the Medellin Cartel.
Participants
Drug lord Pablo Escobar was born in 1949 to a teacher and a peasant. Pablo’s criminal activity began when he was still in school; he would steal tombstones and sell them to smugglers from Panama. In the 1970s he became heavily involved in cocaine trade which evolved into a massive business making him a one of the wealthiest, powerful, and dangerous criminals ever known. He controlled more than 80% of the cocaine entering into the United States and was named by Fortune and Forbes Magazine as being one of the 10 wealthiest people on earth. With the rise of Pablo Escobar, many lost their lives, including Columbian presidential candidates, attorney general, justice minister, hundreds of judges, many journalists and more than 1,000 law enforcement officers (Pablo Escobar Biography, 2002).
George Jung became involved in El Cartel de Medellin’s cocaine smuggling business after realizing the money involved with his small scale marijuana smuggling. Jung traveled to Puerto Vallarta looking for a connection and found one on his last day there; a young “American hippie girl in a yellow Volkswagen Beetle” told Jung she lived with a man who was the son of a Mexican general and could get him the pot he wanted. Jung wanted more money and began smuggling on a massive scale alongside Carlos Lehder who later betrayed him. A movie called “Blow” was filmed about Jung’s life with Johnny Depp starring as George Jung. Jung had a great deal of money and the beautiful women who he wanted because of their love for cocaine and money; Jung received lost in the cocaine as he was a user himself. George and Carlos could not agree on the amounts that they were importing. George wanted to keep imports on a lower level with the prices staying high; Carlos wanted to import more cocaine to which George said it would reduce the price, increase their clientele, therefore, exposing them in to getting caught. Eventually George was arrested in Chicago and sent to federal prison for a trunk-load of marijuana (Frontline, 1995).
Carlos Lehder had one goal: to flood the United States with cocaine and make it affordable for everyone to use to strike a huge blow to the society. He succeeded; marriages failed, children dropped out of school, people resigned from their jobs or were fired, violence escalated and hospitals and morgues were flooded with victims of drug crime. Lehder sat atop his throne in the Colombian jungle and bragged about is attack on the cultural heart of America. Lehder idolized Adolf Hitler so much he labeled his drug packages with swastikas and killed anyone who stood in the way. In 1988, Lehder was sentenced to life plus 135 years in prison but struck a deal to testify against Manuel Noriega. The whereabouts of Lehder are only known to the government (Merkle, 1999).
Activities
El Cartel de Medellin was brutal in their strategies. In order for them to get their cocaine where they wanted and needed it to be, they used strong arm tactics as well as violence. In the late 1980s they waged war against the Columbian government after “one of their major cocaine producing factories was raided and burned by a combined force of U.S. and Columbia (The Medellin, n.d.). In 1989, Luis Carlos Galan was assassinated by the cartel and his murder led to an all out war. When 989 buildings and ranches, 367 airplanes, 73 boats, 710 vehicles, 4.7 tons of cocaine, 1279 guns and 25,000 rounds of ammunition were confiscated, the traffickers responded with a campaign of terror where they burned the farms of politicians, detonated bombs in banks, newspaper offices, political party headquarters as well as private homes. The headquarters of El Espectador was destroyed in an explosion in September 1989. In November, 101 passengers and six crew members that were on an Avianca flight to California were killed and following that in December, a truck bomb blasted the national police agency in Bogota. The explosion was so powerful, buildings that were 20 blocks away were damaged (Genis, n.d.). As a result of the war, a manhunt was culminated and a cartel leader named Gonzalo Gacha who was thought to have masterminded the terror was killed. The remaining cartel members urged the government to negotiate, but the negotiations eventually led to the surrender of Pablo Escobar, the Ochoa brothers, and their aides (Genis, n.d.). A deal was struck where the drug traffickers were required to surrender and plea guilty to one crime “in exchange for guarantees that they would not be extradited and would serve a reduced sentence in a specially built prison on the outskirts of Medellin”(Genis, n.d.).
Law Enforcement Strategies
Drug trafficking accounts for 8% of the world trade; global estimates of illicit drug trade amount to $400 billion and is supplying 200 million customers (Calvani, 2000, p 2). George Jung pointed out in his interview that there is no way to stop drug traffickers because of the large amount of border accessibility into the United States (Drug Wars, 1995). Society depends on the criminal justice system to deal with the dangerous threats drug trafficking. Law enforcement officials and judges should fully understand the drug trafficking problems to conduct successful searches to obtain evidence and ultimately prosecute the offenders. The most important weapon to fight drug traffickers is international cooperation. Anti-drug laws, investigations, and law enforcement strategies can only be as strong as the weakest link in the international chain (Calvani, 2000, p 2).

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