re: Any of you have stories about meeting drug smugglers, cartel members, etc

Most of the family reunions on my mother’s side were full of them...my grandmother was an Acosta from Ojinaga.

No, but I've seen that movie with Tom Cruise.

Then don’t click on them?


I think there’s been some interesting stories so far.

Helped a guy I worked with in college move. I worked yard crew with him and this was part of his work release gig. He was about 30.

He asked me to help him move a bunch of bags out his apt room. I was 18 and naive. I didn’t know anything about anything.

I had to drive them across town to this other house where a guy named Paco would help me unload. He unzips one its and it’s a bunch of packaged weed in air sealed packs and some money.

I carried basically a bunch of drugs and money from Bluebonnet to Jefferson Hwy as an unknowing local drug mule apparently.

OK, second hand story but pretty funny I think. The wife of a friend of mine back in the 90s was a young partier living in SF. She is a very sweet person but hilariously gullible. (She told me this story a long time ago so I have forgotten some of the details.) One day she went to a party where some guy told her that he was from a royal family from some African country, and after a coup his family fled to Europe. He told her that we was trying to bring the "family jewels" from Europe to the US, and would she and her friend be willing to be the couriers? I know this story sounds really dumb, but if you heard her telling this story you would believe every word of it.

So she and her friend flew to Europe (I can't remember which country) and partied for a few days before picking up the packages and flying back to the US. They went through customs at JFK where my friend got randomly picked out of the line for enhanced questioning. This is the funniest part. They asked her if she was traveling with anyone, and she pointed to her friend and said "Yeah, her!" So her friend gets pulled out of the line too, and customs searched their luggage and found that the packages contained cocaine. These girls were so dumb that the prosecutor believed their story. They agreed to plead guilty to a felony in exchange for no prison time. Of course they had to stay out of trouble for many years after that, and having a felony on your record is not a good thing.

Went to Military school with Noriega’s nephew. He was my suite mate at Riverside MA back in the late 80’s. His dad was the minister of interior for Panama. Kid was cool. He had pictures of his house in Panama. Looked like a Miami mansion and had lamb is and Ferrari’s in the driveway. He always got to school by helicopter. They would fly in a private jet to the airport then helo him to school.

He tried to get me to come with him for the summer. I begged my parents but they said no fricking way.

quote:

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I believe this but be real. You shite yourself.

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I didn't let on when I saw the coke piled up like that how startled I was, but yeah, that much in one place I was ready to leave rather quickly. Made damned sure not to get within arms reach of any of it so they couldn't suspect any theft too.

Because of that experience I fully comprehend the expression "elephant in the room". We just never even mentioned it, acted like it was not even there. However they couldn't help but glance that way every few seconds.

Went there 3 times. Always at night. Always with Pat the vet that was my friends roommate in Neilson dorm. Would not have been able to find the place in the daylight or alone. Would not have tried.

This is the story I was told by the new store manager that replaced the one this story is about. I worked with a guy, Bill, while I was in school in a shop at Bon Marche. He was the store manager and a real dick, but tight with the regional manager. He looked like Tony Orlando and dressed like Don Johnson from Miami Vice.

He got a promotion to regional manager and transferred to the company's HQ in Atlanta. He was friends with another store manager in Atlanta, so he shipped all his personal items in boxes to that store.

That manager wasn't there when his boxes arrived, and an employee must have thought they were for the store. So he opened a box. The box was filled with coffee grounds and in that was 20 pounds of weed. He called the mall security, who called the cops, who shut down the store and got a warrant to check everything else. In the meantime, Bill is on a plane headed to Atlanta.

Back at that store, in more boxes, they discover two more boxes with 20 lbs of weed and in another box they find a quarter pound of cocaine and two hundred quaaludes. By this time, they have a company security rep from HQ at the store involved and know these are Bill's boxes and he's been picked up by someone at the airport and is headed to HQ. By now, because of the volume, the Feds are involved.

When Bill walked in the door thinking he was there to start his new job, the Feds and Atlanta police are there to arrest him, and Bill is fired on the spot.

In the investigation, it turns out that Bill, his friends (the store manager in Atlanta, the assistant manager in Atlanta and also the assistant manager in Bon Marche) and a manager at the store in Lakeside Mall were all originally friends from Chalmette and had developed themselves a nice little side business and were using the company's shipping service contract with a trucking company to move their shite around.

Last I heard, Bill turned out to be an Army deserter, and had used fake ID documentation (and a referral from his Regional Manager friend) to get hired by the company. He got 5 years in the pen and the Army gave him 5 years to run concurrent with his federal sentence. No idea where this guy is now.

I was drunk and went along for the ride. The Columbians had uzi's pointed at us. Houston, late 1989