Ex-CIA Agents Searching for Pablo Escobar's $30 Billion Fortune Locate His Cocaine-Smuggling Submarine
Drug smuggling was at its peak in Colombia during the 1980s but the roots of the empire shook with the fall of one person. That one person was Pablo Escobar, the drug king who was earning a reported $420 million in a week, by supplying 80 percent of all the cocaine consumed in the U.S., The Sun reported. Escobar transported drugs through various means, even taking underwater routes using submarines.
The submarines were used to move drugs to Puerto Rico and then were carried to Miami in speedboats. Authorities are looking for these submarines, believing the vessels might contain some of Escobar's missing $30 billion fortune.
Authorities believe that before his death Escobar hid his fortune all across Colombia, The Sun reported. There are no clues left as Escobar reportedly killed the henchmen who hid his valuables.
Escobar was shot in December 1993, by officers as he was trying to escape across nearby roofs with his bodyguard, Alvaro de Jesus Agudelo, Daily Mail reported.
Escobar used the submarines to expand the territory of his smuggling operations. The route also helped him to evade law enforcement agencies.
One of Escobar's submarines has been found in Colombia, The Sun reported. According to experts, the submarine had been on the unknown site for decades but was located because of a storm that shifted the sand on the seabed.
Ex-CIA agents, Doug Laux and Ben Smith visited the site to explore the submarine and find out whether it housed any of Escobar's money, The Sun reported. To succeed in their objective, both of them collaborated with people who allegedly loaded the drugs into the vessels.
"My job in the agency was finding people - finding bad guys," said Laux, The Sun reported. "So, you have kind of that same scenario here, if it's anything that somebody wants to keep a secret, and they keep in the dark, that's kind of where Ben and I thrive at getting in there and shining some light on it." The duo's efforts have been featured in the Discovery TV show Finding Escobar's Millions.
Local men took the duo to the site where the sub would surface and they arranged for divers who could analyze the vessels, The Sun reported. The divers had cameras attached to them which recorded them unearthing many metal boxes, but none of them contained any treasures.
Despite not finding any treasures at the site, Laux and Smith are taking the discovery of the submarine as a positive sign for their pursuit, hoping other similar vessels will be found in due course of time.