The drug trade was and continues to be controlled by Latin American cartel leaders from El Chapo Guzmán to Pablo Escobar. Drug traffickers created an underground economy through which millions of dollars passed, not annually, but on a weekly or even daily basis. Let's take a look at the ten most dangerous drug dealers of all time.
10. Khun Sa, the opium king
Also known as Myanmar drug trafficker. Khun Sa was involved in the heroin trade, with his theater of operations being in Burma. He was famous for being the world king of heroin, as he alone produced a third of the world's production of it.
During the height of his power, in the 1980s, Khun Sa controlled 70% of the opium production in Burma, and built a large-scale infrastructure of heroin refining factories to dominate the market for that drug. He may have once supplied a quarter of the world's heroin supply. Khun Sa lived a luxurious life until he died naturally in 2007.
9. Rick Ross
Ricky Donnell "Freeway Rick" Ross is an American author and former drug lord best known for the drug empire he established in Los Angeles, California, in the early to mid-1980s.
According to Ross, he was a millionaire by the age of 23, largely thanks to help from Blandón, who was not only his supplier but also his mentor. But his newfound wealth was also undoubtedly helped by the 1980s crack epidemic, which wreaked havoc on Los Angeles and beyond.
Ricky Donnell Ross was considered by many to be responsible for the cocaine epidemic that swept America in 1999. His cocaine factory produced and sold $2 million to $3 million worth of drugs on a daily basis. He was sentenced to life in prison, though the sentence was shortened on appeal and Ross was released in 2009.
And despite Ross’ checkered past, he’s also been tapped as a motivational speaker, often surprising those who heard what he had to say.
8. Manuel Noriega
Manuel Noriega is the former military dictator who ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989. He later formed ties with the CIA and became a spy for it. But while Noriega was working for the CIA, he was also the leader of drug and smuggling gangs in Panama.
Eventually his relationship with intelligence agencies in other countries came to light, and his involvement in drug trafficking was investigated further. In 1988, Noriega was indicted by federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa on charges of racketeering, drug smuggling, and money laundering.
In 1992, he was accused of drug trafficking and illegal gain, and near the end of his imprisonment in Miami, United States, it was decided to extradite him to France in 2010.
7. Carlos Lehder (Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas)
Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, Also known as 'Colombia's Rambo', Colombian-German drug smuggler, a leader in the powerful Medellín drug cartel, who was credited with revolutionizing the transportation network for delivering cocaine to the United States by vastly increasing the volume of smuggled drugs.
It was estimated that Lehder’s network supplied as much as 80 percent of the cocaine that arrived in the United States in the 1980s. In 1978 Lehder began using the Bahamian island of Norman’s Cay as a transshipment point, from which planes laden with cocaine would fly to abandoned airstrips in Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina. It was estimated that he made as much as $300 million a year, which fueled his lavish lifestyle. Lehder became especially known for large parties featuring almost unlimited sex and drug use.
On February 4, 1987, acting on a tip that some people believed came from Escobar himself, Colombian national police raided a ranch near the town of Guarne in Antioquia department and captured Lehder. Within hours he was sent to the United States, which had sought his arrest since 1979. He was later sentenced to life without parole and an additional 135 years in prison.
Beginning in 2005, Lehder made pleas to various government entities in the United States and Colombia, saying that he was now entitled to be released under the agreement he had made in 1991, but he remained in prison until 2020. He was then deported to Germany, where he held citizenship through his father
6. Amado Carrillo Fuentes
As the legend goes, Amado Carrillo Fuentes left his small village around the age of 12, telling people: “I won’t come back until I’m rich.” He kept his word. Carrillo went on to build a multibillion-dollar empire and become Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficker.
The head of the Juarez cartel, Carrillo earned the nickname “Lord of the Skies” because he used private planes to smuggle cocaine. He filled the pockets of Mexican officials to keep them looking the other way and leveraged the threat of violence to keep people in line.
On July 4, 1997, Amado Carrillo Fuentes checked into a private Mexico City clinic under the alias Antonio Flores Montes. For eight hours, he underwent surgery to drastically alter his face and remove 3.5 gallons of fat from his body.
Nurses wheeled Carrillo to Room 407 in the Santa Monica hospital that evening and left him to recover. But a doctor doing rounds early the next morning found Carrillo deceased in bed. The drug lord was 42 years old.
5. Osiel Cárdenas Guillén
Osiel Cárdenas Guillén is a Mexican drug lord and the former leader of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas. Originally a mechanic in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, he entered the cartel by killing Juan García Abrego's friend and competitor Salvador Gómez, after the former's arrest in 1996.
As confrontations with rival groups heated up, Osiel Cárdenas sought and recruited over 30 deserters from the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales to form the cartel's armed wing. Los Zetas served as the hired private mercenary army of the Gulf Cartel. After a shootout with the Mexican military in 2003, Cárdenas was arrested and imprisoned. In 2007 he was extradited to the U.S. and in 2010 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for money laundering, drug trafficking, and for having threatened two U.S. federal agents in 1999. He is currently imprisoned at USP Terre Haute with a release date of 30 August 2024.
4. Griselda Blanco.
She is also known as Godmother of Cocaine, the Godmother, and Black Widow, Colombian cocaine trafficker who amassed a vast empire and was a central figure in the violent drug wars in Miami in the 1970s and ’80s.
By the late 1970s Blanco had moved to Miami, where she made her reputation as the “Godmother of Cocaine.” Seeking to eliminate her competition, she displayed a brazen ruthlessness that plunged the city into a period of violence that became known as the Cocaine Cowboy Wars.
Targeted by rivals and fearing for her life, Blanco moved to California in 1984. However, the following year she was arrested and taken to New York to face the 1975 drug charges. Found guilty in 1985, she received the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
In 1998 Blanco ultimately pled guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence, and six years later she was released and deported to Colombia. Blanco reportedly retired from a life of crime, but in 2012 she was killed by a gunman on a motorcycle as she left a butcher shop in Medellín.
3. Frank Lucas
The Harlem kingpin who inspired "American Gangster," Frank Lucas began importing and distributing "Blue Magic" heroin in the late 1960s — and made a fortune.
How Frank Lucas supposedly got his hands on this “Blue Magic” is perhaps the wildest detail of all: He allegedly smuggled the 98-percent-pure heroin into the United States by using the coffins of dead soldiers — coming home from Vietnam. He claimed to be making $1 million per day at one point, but that, too, was later discovered to be an exaggeration.
In any case, he was still determined to show off his newly acquired wealth. So in 1971, he decided to wear a $100,000 full-length chinchilla coat — at a Muhammad Ali boxing match.
Lucas likely would’ve been in prison for the rest of his life — if he didn’t become a government informant, enter the witness protection program, and ultimately help the DEA nab more than 100 drug-related convictions. One relatively minor setback aside — a seven-year sentence for an attempted drug deal in his post-informant life — he went on parole in 1991.
2. El Chapo (Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán)
Joaquin Guzman-Loera, aka El Chapo, became involved in drug trafficking in the late 1980s as a trafficker and air logistics expert for the once powerful Miguel Angel Felix-Gallardo. Guzman-Loera eventually became the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Guzman-Loera was arrested on June 9, 1993, in Mexico on charges related to murder and drug trafficking and was sentenced to a 20 year prison term. However, on January 19, 2001, Guzman-Loera escaped from the federal maximum security prison in Jalisco, Mexico. While on the run from Mexican authorities, Guzman-Loera reestablished himself as a top ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel and leader of the Mexican drug trade, becoming the world’s #1 fugitive and a Forbes-listed billionaire. He was rearrested on February 22, 2014, in a modest resort hotel in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico as a result of a sustained operation. On July 11, 2015, he again escaped from Altiplano federal maximum security prison in the State of Mexico.
1. Pablo Escobar (Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria)
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, Colombian criminal who, as head of the Medellín cartel, was arguably the world’s most powerful drug trafficker in the 1980s and early ’90s.
By the mid-1980s the Medellín cartel dominated the cocaine trade, with Escobar wielding incredible power and wealth. According to some reports, he was worth approximately $25 billion, which supported a lavish lifestyle. In addition, Escobar funded various projects to aid the poor, earning him comparisons to Robin Hood. That perception helped him win election to an alternate seat in the country’s Congress in 1982.
On December 1, 1993, Escobar celebrated his 44th birthday, allegedly enjoying cake, wine, and marijuana. The next day his hideout in Medellín was discovered. While Colombian forces stormed the building, Escobar and a bodyguard managed to get to the roof. A chase and gunfight ensued, and Escobar was fatally shot. Some, however, speculated that he took his own life. Soon after he died, the Medellín cartel collapsed.
10. Khun Sa, the opium king
Also known as Myanmar drug trafficker. Khun Sa was involved in the heroin trade, with his theater of operations being in Burma. He was famous for being the world king of heroin, as he alone produced a third of the world's production of it.
During the height of his power, in the 1980s, Khun Sa controlled 70% of the opium production in Burma, and built a large-scale infrastructure of heroin refining factories to dominate the market for that drug. He may have once supplied a quarter of the world's heroin supply. Khun Sa lived a luxurious life until he died naturally in 2007.
9. Rick Ross
Ricky Donnell "Freeway Rick" Ross is an American author and former drug lord best known for the drug empire he established in Los Angeles, California, in the early to mid-1980s.
According to Ross, he was a millionaire by the age of 23, largely thanks to help from Blandón, who was not only his supplier but also his mentor. But his newfound wealth was also undoubtedly helped by the 1980s crack epidemic, which wreaked havoc on Los Angeles and beyond.
Ricky Donnell Ross was considered by many to be responsible for the cocaine epidemic that swept America in 1999. His cocaine factory produced and sold $2 million to $3 million worth of drugs on a daily basis. He was sentenced to life in prison, though the sentence was shortened on appeal and Ross was released in 2009.
And despite Ross’ checkered past, he’s also been tapped as a motivational speaker, often surprising those who heard what he had to say.
8. Manuel Noriega
Manuel Noriega is the former military dictator who ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989. He later formed ties with the CIA and became a spy for it. But while Noriega was working for the CIA, he was also the leader of drug and smuggling gangs in Panama.
Eventually his relationship with intelligence agencies in other countries came to light, and his involvement in drug trafficking was investigated further. In 1988, Noriega was indicted by federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa on charges of racketeering, drug smuggling, and money laundering.
In 1992, he was accused of drug trafficking and illegal gain, and near the end of his imprisonment in Miami, United States, it was decided to extradite him to France in 2010.
7. Carlos Lehder (Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas)
Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, Also known as 'Colombia's Rambo', Colombian-German drug smuggler, a leader in the powerful Medellín drug cartel, who was credited with revolutionizing the transportation network for delivering cocaine to the United States by vastly increasing the volume of smuggled drugs.
It was estimated that Lehder’s network supplied as much as 80 percent of the cocaine that arrived in the United States in the 1980s. In 1978 Lehder began using the Bahamian island of Norman’s Cay as a transshipment point, from which planes laden with cocaine would fly to abandoned airstrips in Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina. It was estimated that he made as much as $300 million a year, which fueled his lavish lifestyle. Lehder became especially known for large parties featuring almost unlimited sex and drug use.
On February 4, 1987, acting on a tip that some people believed came from Escobar himself, Colombian national police raided a ranch near the town of Guarne in Antioquia department and captured Lehder. Within hours he was sent to the United States, which had sought his arrest since 1979. He was later sentenced to life without parole and an additional 135 years in prison.
Beginning in 2005, Lehder made pleas to various government entities in the United States and Colombia, saying that he was now entitled to be released under the agreement he had made in 1991, but he remained in prison until 2020. He was then deported to Germany, where he held citizenship through his father
6. Amado Carrillo Fuentes
As the legend goes, Amado Carrillo Fuentes left his small village around the age of 12, telling people: “I won’t come back until I’m rich.” He kept his word. Carrillo went on to build a multibillion-dollar empire and become Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficker.
The head of the Juarez cartel, Carrillo earned the nickname “Lord of the Skies” because he used private planes to smuggle cocaine. He filled the pockets of Mexican officials to keep them looking the other way and leveraged the threat of violence to keep people in line.
On July 4, 1997, Amado Carrillo Fuentes checked into a private Mexico City clinic under the alias Antonio Flores Montes. For eight hours, he underwent surgery to drastically alter his face and remove 3.5 gallons of fat from his body.
Nurses wheeled Carrillo to Room 407 in the Santa Monica hospital that evening and left him to recover. But a doctor doing rounds early the next morning found Carrillo deceased in bed. The drug lord was 42 years old.
5. Osiel Cárdenas Guillén
Osiel Cárdenas Guillén is a Mexican drug lord and the former leader of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas. Originally a mechanic in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, he entered the cartel by killing Juan García Abrego's friend and competitor Salvador Gómez, after the former's arrest in 1996.
As confrontations with rival groups heated up, Osiel Cárdenas sought and recruited over 30 deserters from the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales to form the cartel's armed wing. Los Zetas served as the hired private mercenary army of the Gulf Cartel. After a shootout with the Mexican military in 2003, Cárdenas was arrested and imprisoned. In 2007 he was extradited to the U.S. and in 2010 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for money laundering, drug trafficking, and for having threatened two U.S. federal agents in 1999. He is currently imprisoned at USP Terre Haute with a release date of 30 August 2024.
4. Griselda Blanco.
She is also known as Godmother of Cocaine, the Godmother, and Black Widow, Colombian cocaine trafficker who amassed a vast empire and was a central figure in the violent drug wars in Miami in the 1970s and ’80s.
By the late 1970s Blanco had moved to Miami, where she made her reputation as the “Godmother of Cocaine.” Seeking to eliminate her competition, she displayed a brazen ruthlessness that plunged the city into a period of violence that became known as the Cocaine Cowboy Wars.
Targeted by rivals and fearing for her life, Blanco moved to California in 1984. However, the following year she was arrested and taken to New York to face the 1975 drug charges. Found guilty in 1985, she received the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
In 1998 Blanco ultimately pled guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence, and six years later she was released and deported to Colombia. Blanco reportedly retired from a life of crime, but in 2012 she was killed by a gunman on a motorcycle as she left a butcher shop in Medellín.
3. Frank Lucas
The Harlem kingpin who inspired "American Gangster," Frank Lucas began importing and distributing "Blue Magic" heroin in the late 1960s — and made a fortune.
How Frank Lucas supposedly got his hands on this “Blue Magic” is perhaps the wildest detail of all: He allegedly smuggled the 98-percent-pure heroin into the United States by using the coffins of dead soldiers — coming home from Vietnam. He claimed to be making $1 million per day at one point, but that, too, was later discovered to be an exaggeration.
In any case, he was still determined to show off his newly acquired wealth. So in 1971, he decided to wear a $100,000 full-length chinchilla coat — at a Muhammad Ali boxing match.
Lucas likely would’ve been in prison for the rest of his life — if he didn’t become a government informant, enter the witness protection program, and ultimately help the DEA nab more than 100 drug-related convictions. One relatively minor setback aside — a seven-year sentence for an attempted drug deal in his post-informant life — he went on parole in 1991.
2. El Chapo (Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán)
Joaquin Guzman-Loera, aka El Chapo, became involved in drug trafficking in the late 1980s as a trafficker and air logistics expert for the once powerful Miguel Angel Felix-Gallardo. Guzman-Loera eventually became the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Guzman-Loera was arrested on June 9, 1993, in Mexico on charges related to murder and drug trafficking and was sentenced to a 20 year prison term. However, on January 19, 2001, Guzman-Loera escaped from the federal maximum security prison in Jalisco, Mexico. While on the run from Mexican authorities, Guzman-Loera reestablished himself as a top ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel and leader of the Mexican drug trade, becoming the world’s #1 fugitive and a Forbes-listed billionaire. He was rearrested on February 22, 2014, in a modest resort hotel in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico as a result of a sustained operation. On July 11, 2015, he again escaped from Altiplano federal maximum security prison in the State of Mexico.
1. Pablo Escobar (Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria)
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, Colombian criminal who, as head of the Medellín cartel, was arguably the world’s most powerful drug trafficker in the 1980s and early ’90s.
By the mid-1980s the Medellín cartel dominated the cocaine trade, with Escobar wielding incredible power and wealth. According to some reports, he was worth approximately $25 billion, which supported a lavish lifestyle. In addition, Escobar funded various projects to aid the poor, earning him comparisons to Robin Hood. That perception helped him win election to an alternate seat in the country’s Congress in 1982.
On December 1, 1993, Escobar celebrated his 44th birthday, allegedly enjoying cake, wine, and marijuana. The next day his hideout in Medellín was discovered. While Colombian forces stormed the building, Escobar and a bodyguard managed to get to the roof. A chase and gunfight ensued, and Escobar was fatally shot. Some, however, speculated that he took his own life. Soon after he died, the Medellín cartel collapsed.
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