Carlos Lehder

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Lore & Background

Lehder was one of the founding members of Muerte a Secuestradores ("MAS"), a paramilitary group whose focus was to retaliate against the kidnappings of cartel members and their families by the guerrillas. His motivation to join the MAS was to retaliate against the M-19 guerrilla movement, which, in November 1981, attempted to kidnap him for a ransom; Lehder managed to escape from the kidnappers, though he was shot in the leg. Additionally, Lehder "founded a neo-Nazi political party, the National Latin Movement, whose main function, police said, appeared to be to force Colombia to abrogate its extradition treaty with the United States."

In Their Own Story

In the late 1970s, the Lehder-Jung partnership began to diverge, due to some combination of Lehder's megalomania and his secret scheming to secure a personal Bahamian island as an all-purpose headquarters for his operations. That island was Norman's Cay, which at that point consisted of a marina, a yacht club, approximately 100 private homes, and an airstrip. In 1978, Lehder began buying up property and harassing and threatening the island's residents; at one point, a yacht was found drifting off the coast with the corpse of one of its owners aboard. Lehder is estimated to have spent $4.5 million on the island in total. From 1978 through 1982, the Cay was the Caribbean's main drug-smuggling hub. Lehder expanded a runway to 3,300-foot (1,000 m), protected by radar, bodyguards, and Doberman attack dogs for the fleet of aircraft under his command. At the height of his operation, 300 kilograms of cocaine would arrive on the island daily, and Lehder's wealth mounted into the billions. He accumulated such staggering wealth that on two occasions he offered to pay the Colombian external debt. In 1981, the DEA and the Bahamas police intervened on the island dismantling the empire built by Lehder, who escaped capture and said goodbye to the island on July 10, 1982, by bombing Clifford Park in Nassau with pamphlets with the phrase DEA go home written on them. Some of those pamphlets had $100 bills attached to them.

Reader's Guide

Carlos Lehder started out selling stolen cars and smuggling them to Colombia. At the age of 24, Lehder took aviation classes, becoming an expert pilot who would know several air routes, which served as the basis for his growing criminal career, which began with small-quantity marijuana trafficking between the United States and Canada. While serving a sentence for car theft in federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, Lehder decided that, upon his release, he would take advantage of the burgeoning market for cocaine in the United States. To that goal, he enlisted his prison bunkmate, former marijuana dealer George Jung, as a future partner. After Lehder and Jung were released (both were paroled but Lehder was deported to Colombia), they built up a small revenue stream through simple, traditional drug smuggling. Using a small stolen plane and a professional pilot, the pair began to fly cocaine into the United States via the Bahamas, in the process increasing their financial resources and building connections and trust with Colombian suppliers, while spreading money around among Bahamian government officials for political and judicial protection. Lehder and his partners in the Cartel would amass enormous fortunes through cocaine trafficking, which is why they were nicknamed Los Mágicos (The Magicians), because they had become rich overnight, although Lehder was better known as the Henry Ford of cocaine.

Did You Know?

• Lehder was the first high-level drug trafficker extradited to the United States, and was released from prison after 33 years in 2020.
• He was shot in the leg during a failed kidnapping attempt by the M-19 guerrilla movement in November 1981.
• Lehder founded a neo-Nazi political party called the National Latin Movement, which police said appeared to be designed to force Colombia to abrogate its extradition treaty with the United States.
• At the height of his operation on Norman's Cay, 300 kilograms of cocaine arrived on the island daily, and Lehder's wealth mounted into the billions.
• On July 10, 1982, Lehder bombed Clifford Park in Nassau with pamphlets reading 'DEA go home,' some with $100 bills attached.