Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on December 1, 1949 in the wealthy city of Rionego, Columbia. He started his illegal activities by stealing tombstones and sanding them down for resale, however this claim was denied by his brother, Roberto Escobar, who said that the tombstones were given to them because the clients had stopped paying for site care. Through this Escobar studied at the University of Antioquia. The criminal activity began to escalate from there, Escobar began selling fake lottery tickets and illegally imported cigarettes, and even steal cars later in his teens. A “Highlight” of his criminal career was when he kidnaped and ransomed a Medellin executive, he did this for one hundred thousand dollars. Escobar became a millionaire working for the contraband smuggler Alvaro Prieto.
At this point Escobar had fully entered the drug trade and at his height of power was responsible for smuggling 15 tons of cocaine into the United States per day the equivalent to over 1 Billion dollars. As the smuggling increased so did Escobar’s net worth, at his height of power it totaled roughly 3 billion dollars, it was also estimated that he controlled 80% of the global cocaine market with ties in Asia, Europe, and all through America. Escobar was finally found after a 15 month man hunt. Nobody knows whose bullet killed Escobar in 1993, but it is believed to be his own.
