Josè Mariena Cartolos got way more than he bargained for while digging up a trench on his farm
Pablo Escobar reportedly buried quite the treat for this farmer below the surface of his land.
The drug kingpin allegedly left a few trinkets from his life of crime littered around his home country of Colombia, such as an abandoned plane, which supposedly crashed while carrying a s**tload of drugs.
Apparently, he also stashed a load of cash in various locations – including Josè Mariena Cartolos’ family ranch.
Although they say ‘crime doesn’t pay’, Escobar‘s highly illegal exploits made him a ridiculously rich man… and for a fleeting moment, so was the farmer when he stumbled across several containers brimming with money.
A few years back, reports emerged in Colombia claiming that Cartolos had found a whopping $600million in cash after a day of digging up his land.
He is said to have received a $3,000 grant from the country’s government to create a palm oil plantation on his family’s property and he was in the middle of making a trench for irrigation purposes when he made the discovery.
The story goes that, at some point, his shovel hit a large, blue container – and when he took a closer look, he found a few more.
Cartolos reportedly found several containers brimming with cash beneath the surface at his farm (Reddit)
Inside, there were endless stacks of $100 bills which allegedly totalled up to more than half a billion dollars.
And although that’s a staggering amount, it’s only a small slice of the $30 billion that Escobar is rumoured to have buried beneath the surface in numerous spots around Colombia for his rainy day fund.
Cartolos ended up alerting authorities to his unbelievable discovery, who then came and seized the lot of it, reports claim.
I’ll bet he’s kicking himself now, eh?
Escobar’s alleged endowment which was buried under the farmer’s land then ended up being spent on social and economic programs by the Colombian government, MTV Lebanon previously reported.
The extraordinary story has recently reared its head on social media again, and although a lot of people remain unconvinced about Cartolos’ alleged find, others reckon it’s more than plausible.
The main sticking point between people online has been how the farmer dealt with his unbelievable windfall – as some people didn’t think honesty was the best policy in this situation.
Escobar allegedly buried billions in various spots around Colombia (FILES/AFP via Getty Images)
One person on Reddit wrote: “Never would’ve said a word. Would’ve loaded that up and been gone.”
Another added: “Why would he report it? I’d be living the high life right now.”
A third joked: “I’d invoke the law of finders keepers.”
And a fourth laughed: “Dude won the lottery and and said ‘no thank you.'”
Others reckoned that Cartolos definitely did the right thing, especially as the Pablo Escobar is supposedly the rightful owner of the cash.
“Finding a stash that belongs to a cartel is a ‘I’m f***ed’ situation,” one person commented. “The first question is: how do I get out of that alive?”
Another chimed in saying: “Any Colombian farmer would know better than to advertise this lol.”
And a third pointed out: “I promise you that you would have no idea what to do with $600m in illegal cash.”
Featured Image Credit: Eric VANDEVILLE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Topics: Crime, Money, Pablo Escobar, World News, Drugs
The former DEA agent who helped bring down Pablo Escobar has set the record straight about what went down during the fatal shootout.
Steve Murphy and his partner Javier Peña – who’s story inspired the Netflix hit series Narcos – were an integral part of the operation that put a stop to the drug lord’s reign.
The Colombian kingpin, 44, founded the notorious Medellin cartel in 1976 before monopolising the cocaine market across the globe, creating a multibillion dollar empire.
Murphy, who was in law enforcement for a total of 38 years, explained that he and Peña were tasked with ‘bringing down’ Escobar‘s crime syndicate in 1987.
The pair were given the mammoth responsibility after working across US hotspots that were at the epicentre of the drug trade in the late 1980s, earning their stripes in cities such as Miami and Austin.
Ultimately, the DEA agents spent six years chasing Escobar, who was also being hunted down by Colombian authorities and his rivals, as well as the US government.
All of their hard work then came to a head when the drug boss was found hiding out in a house in a residential area of Medellín on 2 December, 1993.
Now, Murphy and Peña have sat down with Harry Robinson and Carl Reigler to clarify exactly what happened that day on the Mad That podcast, which aims to ‘interview the most exclusive guests and uncover the maddest stories’.
The two pals gave their guests quite the introduction too, saying: “Steve held Pablo Escobar’s dead body when he’d just been murdered. These guys are the real deal.”
According to Murphy, the Colombian police got ‘visual confirmation’ that Escobar was holed up inside a home after tracing his location when he made a phone call to his family.
He explained that the Colonel leading the mission, General Hugo Martínez, had told his men: “Whatever you do, don’t let him get away.”
“This has been excruciating, that we’re still going through this after 18 months,” Murphy said. “It was somewhat of an embarrassment to the Colombian government that we hadn’t been able to capture him yet.”
Eric VANDEVILLE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
The former DEA agent, who had a £260,000 bounty put on his head, said that police officers then ‘initiated the operation’ and tried to arrest Escobar, but both sides quickly began exchanging gunfire.
“Pablo took on the wrong people that day and it cost him his life for doing so,” Murphy said, explaining that he and Colonel Martínez later drove out to the scene where Escobar was shot dead on the roof of the property.
Murphy ‘just so happened’ to have the only camera that worked that day, hence why there is a ton of photographs of Escobar’s corpse – and why there’s a snap of him holding the dead drug lord.
He recalled how the Colombian cops became ‘excited’ by their triumph and asked him to take a picture of them, before inviting him to join them in the image – something he’s ‘not overly proud of’.
Steve Murphy and his partner Javier Peña’s efforts to bring the drug lord down inspired the Netflix hit series, Narcos (Supplied)
“When that picture hit Washington, I caught a little grief over that, because they weren’t happy that DEA agent was there,” Murphy said.
“And it probably wasn’t the smartest thing, because [Peña] and I, we wanted the Colombian national police to have the credit for this investigation. They took their country back from that guy.”
However, some of the other images taken that day also help Murphy prove that a certain conspiracy theory about Escobar’s death is a ‘bald-faced lie’.
During the Mad That interview, he explained that the notorious criminal‘s son Juan Pablo, now known as Sebastián Marroquín, had tried to pedal a rumour that ‘his dad was not killed by the Colombian national police’.
Instead, Escobar’s only son claimed that his father had taken his own life – previously telling the New York Post: “My father always told me that he had 15 bullets in his pistol; 14 were for his enemies and the last one for him.”
But Murphy insists there is ‘absolutely no truth in that statement’ and says that the evidence is already out there to disprove it.
Explaining he had worked numerous murder and suicide cases during his time as a uniformed police officer, the ex-cop said knows a lot about the typical circumstances in both scenarios.
Colombian forces seen storming the rooftop where Escobar was shot dead (Photo credit should read JESUS(JESUS ABAD-EL COLOMBIANO/AFP via Getty Images)
“When you fire a weapon, when the bullet comes out the end of the barrel, there are little bits of gunpowder that will follow the bullet out and they’ll they’ll travel a certain distance till they lose their velocity,” he explained.
“They’ll fall to the ground. Well, Pablo was shot three times. Once in the back of the leg, once in the butt and the kill shot was in his ear, right through his right ear.
“If you could hold a pistol – and Pablo had two 9mm Pistols that day – even at arms length, it’s almost impossible to get that gun turned around and be able to shoot yourself precisely in the ear to commit suicide.
“But even if you could, the gunpowder that follows the bullet out will travel that far, and it leaves what we call gunpowder residue,” Murphy said. “It leaves little burn marks in the skin, so there would be little black dots around his right ear.
“Anybody can go look at the pictures online, there’s an up close shot of his right ear where the bullet entered his head. Look and see if you see any marks on there, because I’m telling you they’re not.
“That’s how we know he did not commit suicide,” the former DEA agent added. “Now, why would his son say that?
“Well you know what, if my dad was Pablo Escobar, I might want to change that legacy a little bit myself. But it’s nothing more than a lie.”
Murphy and Peña have been travelling the globe over the last decade ‘telling the true story about Pablo Escobar’.
