Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie By Luca Rastello
Ah yes, the criminal underworld, the underground economy, the black market - whatever you want to call it, we all know it's there but aside from what we see in movies, we don't really know a whole lot of details. For those looking to a get a brief glimpse in to what goes on down there, this is the book for you.
Told by an anonymous insider aptly named Mr. Market, I Am the Market is told through a series of stories that starts in the early days of the cocaine trade and goes straight through to its current incarnation. The 5 Easy Steps relate to how the market has changed throughout the years and how the narcos continue to re-invent themselves, and smuggling strategies that can be totally mind blowing at times.
Many of the stories are fascinating as they teach us about territorial disputes in S. America, how the smugglers live at home and abroad, and some tragic stories of narcos that simply went too far. Real estate, prostitution, Italian shoes, murder and corruption are all common themes. Most narratives are filled with exciting visuals and witty remarks, while some lag or seem without context. My favorite parts are the detailed explanations of smuggling tons of cocaine in the modern world. Packing cocoa powder in to high end Italian marble or complex electrical wires is truly an art form that takes a high degree of skill, craftsmanship and perhaps even some genius.
The effects of the cocaine trade can seemingly be felt in every corner of the world. It keeps governments in power, plays a role in geo-politics and single-handedly fuels the luxury goods industry. While most of us will never feel the adrenaline and joy that comes with successfully shipping thousands of kilos to Amsterdam or hopping between 5-star hotels using numerous passports, in a way we can be thankful. You don't have to read the book to know how most of the stories end - in a jail cell. And in Mexico, that is never a good thing.
-JRS Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie I'm always curious about the logistics of large-scale drug trafficking, so this book caught my attention right away. It's essentially an interview/oral history from one of the upper echelon smugglers in the game, a sistemista, who contracts his services to various cartels. He remains anonymous of course.
The loads move by ship, in large amounts, typically encased in expensive granite or marble, or else liquified and pasted between sheets of glass, or else some other scheme, but always with a lot of kilos involved-- like 1200 kilos at a time, more than a ton-- enough that one or two in a year will net a handsome profit, more than enough to live on. (estimated profit on 1200 kilos for the smuggler = $3.5 million)
Mules are just diversions; they're meant to get caught. They're sacrificial lambs. The real load passes through undetected.
Most interesting is the concept of the darkness; this is the guy's masterstroke. You bribe a single Customs official or social engineer him into letting you handle the return for 'accidentally' invoiced goods going to some major well known above board corporation; like IKEA or MSG Marble or whatevs. Unbeknownst to the corporation, the goods have coke inside. You pick it up on the other end. The load is unlikely to get checked cos who checks marble going to MSG Marble? It's the unknowns who get the most suspicion. No-one's the wiser and the only person who knows anything is the official you bribed. You pick up the returned goods, extract the coke and return the containers, simple as that.
Surprisingly, transportation of cash (brinco rabioso) is a more significant problem than laundering it. You can just walk the cash up to Cayman Islands and deposit it but how you gonna transport so many bills? They go for 500 euro notes (need a contact at the bank, just a teller willing to convert cash to 500 euro notes w/ no questions asked). They vacuum pack the bundles-- apparently you can compress bills in this way to a quarter of their original volume! And then the cash gets smuggled just like the drugs.
There are less savory methods of course. Payment in lead -- a dealer get a bunch of mules to carry stuff across, then at the end 'pays' them by shooting them and ditching their bodies in the swamps for the alligators to eat. Not as common now because people wised up. But you can always exploit the poor in this way, finding mules is easy.
This book also claims to have the definitive real story behind Archbishop Posadas Ocampo getting gunned down at Guadalajara Airport in 1993... the guy claims that some cartel had a connect in the archbishop's palace, and they were using the archbishop's armor plated car to smuggle out large amounts of cash. (Cos nobody's gonna check an archbishop's car.) Some other cartel that was owed money heard about this and tried to intercept the car, and then everybody started shooting.
Who knows if that's for real.
Electric arches -- the smugglers foe -- these are like CAT scanners for cargo-- they can do sophisticated analysis of containers passing underneath, identifying different types of substances (cocaine appears as a distinctive shade of yellow). So you have to mask using something that interferes, graphite is ideal. Or if you're doing big enough loads, just play the numbers game and hope you don't go under an arch. Rotterdam alone has 9000 containers per day passing through; only a fraction of those get checked.
Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie Świetna lektura. Już nigdy nie spojrzę na przemytnika jak na jakiegoś małego szpenia, który szmugluje kilogram narkotyku. Rastello pokazuje inne oblicze narcobiznesu.
Polskie tłumaczenie niestety czasem szwankuje. Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie Bear with me while I start my review with a quick story.
So, I had this friend growing up. He was a sweet guy, very funny, and will always hold a special place in my heart because he brought me flowers when my dog died.
He also exaggerated everyday occurances to the point that most of my other friends couldn't stand him because they thought he was full of sh*t. My favorite exaggeration was when he told me he got a job working with the police department in a college town and helped with drug busts. Another friend lived in the town and laughed when I told him about my pal's job. Turned out he was a meter maid and literally drove a golf cart. He wrote parking tickets for lookie-loos at the drug bust.
I kind of wonder if my friend wrote this book. It would explain a lot. We lost touch for some years. Maybe he was in jail for smuggling. It's full of the exact same arrogant, over-the-top bragging about getting away with stuff us mere law-abiding fools cannot fathom.
90% of the book is bragging or convoluted tales about other less successful smugglers. 10% is actually useful. There are not five easily laid out lessons, so here's the interesting stuff in a nutshell:
- the 1980s heydays of the drug cartels in South America ended when the DEA finally figured out that maybe they should check cargo ships. The drug routes now had to go over land, thus giving birth to the idea of using Mexico as an overland route.
- smugglers you see busted at airports for sneaking cocaine in headphones or potato buds packets aren't necessarily set up so that agents will be busy with them and let more drug mules through as the press tells us. They're actually part of a bribery exchange with local law enforcement agencies. They get a few big busts with an alleged street value of millions, and presto the government official you've bribed gets promoted, the local government gets more money from the US for cooperating in the war on drugs, and all they gotta do is turn a blind eye to specific packages. HAHAHA.
- transport cocaine in high end construction materials, such as marble or glass, but don't try putting it in a crane. DEA is on to that.
- if you're a successful drug lord, stay out of politics.
- if you have to go to prison, apparently Italian ones really suck. The author actually laughs at how luxurious some countries' prisons are. It's a big joke to them. So much for you bleeding heart types that preach rehabilitation.
- bonus lesson #6: don't buy a drug sniffing dog from the Bahamas. In the most genius bit of illicit activity I read in the book, the fact that the cartels trained dogs to avoid drugs and then sold them to the DEA is freaking brilliant, in a horrible and awful way. If only they could put that creativity to use, we'd have true hoverboards and a way to spontaneously combust people who talk on their cells at the theatre.
The author would probably be fun to have a beer with, but something must be lost in translation. The book rambles all over the place like a Family Circus cartoon of Billy picking up the mail. The handful of interesting tidbits aren't enough to make me recommend the book, but since it's a quick read go for it. Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie Czyta się to trochę jak skrzyżowanie poradnika samodoskonalenia z instrukcją obsługi wiertarki udarowej.
Być może to wina tłumacza.
Poczytać trzeba, bo może coś w tym jest.
Chociaż mnie znudziły i Narcos, i Breaking Bad, i Weeds (takie seriale).
Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie
Jak zostać przemytnikiem doskonałym? Potrzebna jest ciężka praca i dobry system. Można zbić kokainę w kostki, rozpuścić ją w wodzie, ukryć w blokach marmuru lub wewnątrz przewodów elektrycznych. I wystawić „muła”, który połknie kapsułkę czy ukryje towar w podwójnym dnie walizki (zgarnie go policja, ale to część systemu). Jeśli zrobisz to dobrze, będziesz bajecznie bogaty. Jeśli się pomylisz, resztę życia spędzisz w więzieniu…
Ale kokaina to nie tylko narkotyk — to towar, dzięki któremu można zbroić żołnierzy, przejmować władzę i wpływać na międzynarodową politykę. Gdyby zlikwidować handel narkotykami, gospodarka amerykańska poniosłaby dwudziestoprocentowe straty, a meksykańska zanotowałaby spadek o ponad połowę.
Luca Rastello pozwala nam spojrzeć na świat z perspektywy grubej ryby narkobiznesu. I choć to perspektywa przerażająca, nie jest pozbawiona (czarnego) humoru. Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie
Apart from being fascinating, well-written and VERY informative, this book has an incredibly enticing title that stopped me in my tracks when I saw it in a library display. (I wonder what it would be like carrying this book around an airport, or on the dashboard of your car at a border crossing. Heheh.) Reading this book will make you feel awfully cynical, though. Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie
A fascinating subject matter, but either not written well, or translated poorly.
There's a slightly condescending tone to the whole book, for us plebs who live outside this rarified world.
It's a mix of bizarre smuggling tales interspersed with cod psychology and philosophy.
A quick read, but left me with a whole lot more questions. On second thoughts it's a drug dealers dream: give you a taste of what you want and leave you wanting more... Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie Narkotyki, a zwłaszcza kokaina, jest źródłem szybkiego i dużego zarobku w krajach Ameryki Południowej. Może nawet wpłynąć na politykę międzynarodową. Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie przechwałki dorosłego chłopczyka o tym, jakim jest złym gargamelem i ilu złych klakierów poznał w swoim życiu
Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie Reportaż, który czyta się jak książkę przygodową. Pokazuje handel narkotykami z bardzo ciekawej, logistyczno-biznesowej perspektywy! Przemytnik doskonały. Jak transportować tony kokainy i żyć szczęśliwie