A self-help book like no other. From the author of the best-selling Hard Time, and seen on Locked Up Abroad, Shaun Attwood took his business degree to Phoenix, Arizona, where he became an award winning stockbroker and then a millionaire day trader during the dot-com bubble. But Shaun became greedy and lost sight of what was important. He threw raves and distributed Ecstasy grossing $25 million. Before being convicted of money laundering and drug dealing, he served 26 months in the infamous jail system run by the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Lessons from a Drug Lord is his account of the time Shaun spent submerged in a nightmarish world of drugs and gangs, insect infested cells with food unfit for animals and the lessons he learned from his choices. His teachings will force you to re-examine your life and what is truly important.
A self-help book like no other. From the author of the best-selling Hard Time, and seen on Locked Up Abroad, Shaun Attwood took his business degree to Phoenix, Arizona, where he became an award winning stockbroker and then a millionaire day trader during the dot-com bubble. But Shaun became greedy and lost sight of what was important. He threw raves and distributed Ecstacy grossing $25 million. Before being convicted of money laundering and drug dealing, he served 26 months in the infamous jail system run by the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Lessons From a Drug Lord is his account of the time Shaun spent submerged in a nightmarish world of drugs and gangs, insect infested cells with food unfit for animas and the lessons he learned from his choices. His teachings will force you to re-examine your life and what is truly important.
This was written to open the eyes and mind of the Urban Demographic. To show a community of people, who have taken unwanted risk in lifeto survive, how they can use those learned skills, to now live, in poverty stricken neighborhoods, many men choose to sell drugs, to provide for their family, and try to live out their version of the American Dream. But most never realize how those same skills used in the Drug World, can beflipped to propel them in dominating the Corporate World as well. In each chapter the author tells a relatable story, highlights the lesson from Darkness To Light. This book, hopes to also open the eyes of those who watch from the outside. To show Businesses and Corporations the techniques, skills and experience of those who lived this life. Help them to understand the value someone like this could bring to their businesses. Try to not only teach or show, but erase. Erase lines of Prejudice that lay between an Underground Enterprise and Corporate Enterprise.
"I was a walking bankroll, wearing $150,000 worth of jewelry and carrying as much as $40,000 cash in my pockets. Yet my friends asked: "how are you doing?" I'd sometimes reply, "miserable. I hate every second of my life, and I do not know why." Jorge ValdesAll his dreams for wealth and power came true. Then the nightmare began.As a young man in his twenties with an insatiable thirst for money and power, Jorge Valdes worked his way up inside Colombia's powerful Medellin drug cartel. His key position as head of U.S. Operations brought him into direct contact with presidents, generals, Hollywood celebrities, hired killers and kidnappers. This Cuban immigrant, raised in poverty, was living the high life in more ways than one. His deeds took him from the lap of luxury to the depths of prison and back again.Then an incredible thing happened: Jorge Valdes encountered a person much more powerful than the strongest drug lord, someone who offered something more satisfying than women, drugs, money, prestige and power.Reading more like a fast paced novel of intrigue than a traditional biography, coming clean: the true story of a cocaine drug lord and his unexpected encounter offers an insider's view of the drug industry and the greed that drives it. Told that he would never be anything but a twice convicted drug dealer; today, dr. Jorge l. Valdes, who holds a master degree from Wheaton college and a PhD. In new testament studies from Loyola University in Chicago, is a renowned national speaker who brings a message of hope, forgiveness and the power to change. He has been featured in numerous magazine covers and appeared in many national and international television and radio programs.
Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Tom Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them. How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the 300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola. And what can government learn to combat this scourge? By analyzing the cartels as companies, law enforcers might better understand how they work -- and stop throwing away 100 billion a year in a futile effort to win the "war" against this global, highly organized business. Your intrepid guide to the most exotic and brutal industry on earth is Tom Wainwright. Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. The cast of characters includes "Bin Laden," the Bolivian coca guide; Old Lin," the Salvadoran gang leader; "Starboy," the millionaire New Zealand pill maker; and a cozy Mexican grandmother who cooks blueberry pancakes while plotting murder. Along with presidents, cops, and teenage hitmen, they explain such matters as the business purpose for head-to-toe tattoos, how gangs decide whether to compete or collude, and why cartels care a surprising amount about corporate social responsibility. More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them.
A unique and unbelievable first-hand account of how one man fought his way to the top of the criminal underworld... and what he needed to do to stay there. As you read this, someone somewhere is buying drugs. Across the globe, millions of people are involved in the brutal, cold-blooded world of drug dealing, but only a small number make life-changing money. Only a few get to the top, make the calls, know how it all works and truly become drugs lords. And even fewer survive. I know because I am one of those drug lords. After thirty years, I've decided to retire and tell the story of how I got to the top of this tainted profession, what's involved in being a serious criminal, the tricks of the trade, the art of the deal and what it really takes to stay alive for so long. This will be my last confession. And I hope you learn something.
Who are the most innovative and creative business leaders of all time? Names such as Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Nikola Tesla and Bill Gates usually come to mind, but Kingpin proposes an alternative. What if the most innovative and creative entrepreneurs operate on the fringe of business culture, outside the generally accepted confines of corporate organisation and governance? Despite the immoral, destructive and violent culture of the illicit drug trade, drug Kingpins are - first and foremost - entrepreneurs and risk managers. As pioneers of the underworld, they face unique challenges arising from the illegal nature of their trade. Their unpredictable and inherently risky world provides a wealth of diverse business challenges rarely encountered by mainstream business leaders. Thus they provide us with lessons that we can learn from no one else. The most successful Kingpins are visionary leaders who survive by implementing effective business strategies and policies. By suspending our judgement of the drug dealer and focusing on the Kingpin, we open our minds to their pioneering spirit. Their skills, flaws, triumphs and downfalls are magnified by the volatile environment that shapes their enterprises. By bravely exploring where others fear to tread, Sarah Bartholomeusz reveals unique insights that have eluded the minds of the world's most respected business experts and provides us with innovative approaches to managing risk during times of rapid change. The seven people examined in this book have been chosen because they are all high achievers in their field. The shock of their real-world impact, though often reprehensible, has reverberated across the globe. While the Kingpins as leaders operate within a similar rule set to executives, they come from widely differing backgrounds and they build their businesses in an environment of extreme volatility. This makes them ideal subjects of study for business experts at the cutting edge of industry. Their responses to compliance situations are not curtailed by the law, best practice or, at times, even logic. This makes them some of the most innovative and creative business leaders in the world, and they therefore provide us with lessons that are simply unavailable through the study of mainstream leaders.
A page-turning account of the international cocaine trade, presented as five lessons in how to move tons of the drug across borders Forget about cocaine concealed in false-bottomed suitcases or swallowed in ovules resistant to gastric juices. When entire national economies are kept afloat by the money from cocaine smuggling, the quantities these tactics represent are meaningless. When a commodity like cocaine becomes a mainstay of the international economy, grams and kilos are irrelevant. Because what is needed to sustain the market is cocaine by the ton. Tons of cocaine means ships, cargo planes, and containers: large, cumbersome, extremely tangible, and visible amounts of white powder. So how is all that merchandise moved through harbors and airports? How are customs offices deceived, fiscal checks eluded, police networks infiltrated, and documents prepared to disguise mountains of cocaine? It's done with coca made into cubes, dissolved in liquid, hidden in marble blocks or inside electric cables. With friends in the right places. With cocaine smuggled in cranes. With sniffer dogs supplied to the police, free of charge. With money in cash, always. And yes, with willing mules swallowing drugs. But they will be arrested, and that's part of the plan. Drawing from years of research and conversations with criminal sources and convicted drug smugglers, with new information on the techniques, methods, and strategies used, Luca Rastello brings us a devastating portrait of the international cocaine trade. Told from the perspective of the formidable entrepreneurs whose tactics evolve and adapt to keep pace with shifts in the global economy, I Am the Market is a masterful exposé of a world we thought we understood—until now.
Goodfellas meets Savages meets Catch Me If You Can in this true tale of high-stakes smuggling from pot’s outlaw years. Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish. With cameos by Whitey Bulger and Norman Mailer, Smuggler’s Blues tells Stratton’s adventure while centering on his last years as he travels from New York to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to source and smuggle high-grade hash in the midst of civil war, from the Caribbean to the backwoods of Maine, and from the Chelsea Hotel to the Plaza as his fortunes rise and fall. All the while he is being pursued by his nemesis, a philosophical DEA agent who respects him for his good business practices. A true-crime story that reads like fiction, Smuggler’s Blues is a psychedelic road trip through international drug smuggling, the hippie underground, and the war on weed. As Big Marijuana emerges, it brings to vivid life an important chapter in pot’s cultural history.
The Cali drug cartel changed the face of organised crime. For over twenty years it pumped thousands of tons of cocaine across the world, laundered billions of pounds in illegal profits and was responsible for untold murders and assassinations. Based in the city of Cali, the three founders brought an unprecedented degree of organisation and planning to the drugs trade and through violence, terrorism, intimidation and bribery they became a major threat to society. For the first time the gang's founders are scrutinised and the efforts that brought them to justice are recreated.
