Description: This auction is for 2 different Pablo Escobar Wanted Posters 8.5x11 inches and a 4x6 inch photograph of Pablo and his son Juan Pablo standing in front of the White House (please note the 4x6 White House photo is grainy). Both of the Wanted Posters and the White House photograph are reprints however they are very nice collectibles. The Wanted Posters are printed on thick parchment paper. You will receive the same 2 Wanted Posters and the photograph that is pictured in the scan for this auction. Please note the blue “Do not copy” water seals only appear in the scans of the auction to prevent people from copying the wanted posters and the photo. If you purchase the 2 Wanted Posters and the White House 4x6 photograph the blue “Do not copy” water seals are not on the actual posters or White House photograph. BELOW IS A BIO OF THE LEGENDARY PABLO ESCOBAR: Pablo Escobar (1949-1993) was a notorious Colombian drug lord who headed the Medellin Cartel, at the height of his career, supplied an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States. Often called "The King of Cocaine", he was the wealthiest criminal in history, with an estimated known net worth of US$30 billion by the early 1990s, and approximately US$100 billion when including money that was buried in different places throughout Colombia. He was also one of the top ten richest men in the world at his prime. In The Accountant's Story, Roberto Escobar discusses the means by which Pablo rose from middle-class simplicity and obscurity to one of the world's wealthiest men. In 1975, he started developing his cocaine operation. He even flew a plane himself several times, mainly between Colombia and Panama, along smuggling routes into the United States. When he later bought fifteen new and bigger airplanes, including a Learjet and six helicopters, he decommissioned the first plane and hung it above the gate to his ranch at Hacienda Napoles. In May 1976, Escobar and several of his men were arrested and found in possession of 39 pounds (18 kg) of white paste after returning to Medellín with a heavy load from Ecuador. Initially, Pablo tried unsuccessfully to bribe the Medellín judges who were forming the case against him. Instead, after many months of legal wrangling, Pablo had the two arresting officers killed and the case was dropped. Here he began his pattern of dealing with the authorities, by either bribing them or killing them. Roberto Escobar maintains Pablo fell into the drug business simply because other types of contraband became too dangerous to traffic. There were no drug cartels then and only a few drug barons, so there was plenty of business for everyone. In Peru, they bought the cocaine paste, which they then refined in a laboratory in a two-story house in Medellín. On his first trip, Pablo bought a paltry 13.5 kilos (30 pounds) worth of paste in what was to become the first step towards the building of his empire. At first, he smuggled the cocaine in old plane tires and a pilot could earn as much as $500,000 per flight depending on how much he could smuggle. Soon, the demand for cocaine was skyrocketing in the United States and Pablo organized more smuggling shipments, routes, and distribution networks in South Florida, California and other parts of the country. He and cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder worked together to develop a new trans-shipment point in the Bahamas, an island called Norman's Cay about 220 miles (350 km) southeast of the Florida coast. (According to his brother's account, Pablo did not purchase Norman's Cay; it was, instead, a sole venture of Carlos Lehder.) Carlos and Robert Vesco purchased most of the land on the island, which included a 1 kilometre (3,300 ft) airstrip, a harbor, a hotel, houses, boats, and aircraft, and built a refrigerated warehouse to store the cocaine. From 1978 to 1982, this was used as a central smuggling route for the Medellín Cartel. With the enormous profits generated by this route, Escobar was soon able to purchase 7.7 square miles (20 km2) of land in Antioquia for several million dollars, on which he built his home, Hacienda Napoles. He created a zoo, a lake and other diversions for his family and organization. At one point, it was estimated that seventy to eighty tons of cocaine were being shipped from Colombia to the United States every month. In the mid-1980s, at the height of its power, Escobar's Medellín Cartel was shipping as much as eleven tons per flight in jetliners to the United States (the biggest load shipped by Pablo was 23,000 kilograms (51,000 lb) mixed with fish paste and shipped via boat, as confirmed by his brother in the book Escobar). In addition to using the planes, Roberto Escobar also claimed that Pablo employed two small remote-controlled submarines to transport the massive loads (these subs were, in fact, manned and this is again documented in Roberto's book). In 1982, Escobar was elected as an alternate member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia as part of the Colombian Liberal Party. He was the official representative of the Colombian government for the swearing-in of Felipe González in Spain. Escobar quickly became known internationally as his drug network gained notoriety; the Medellín Cartel controlled a large portion of the drugs that entered the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Spain. The cocaine was produced with coca from Peru and Bolivia through other drug dealers such as Roberto Suárez Goméz, since Colombian coca was initially of substandard quality and demand for more and better cocaine increased. Escobar's cocaine reached many other countries in the Americas, and Europe through Spain; it was even rumored his network reached as far as Asia. Corruption and intimidation characterized Escobar's dealings with the Colombian system. He had an effective, inescapable policy in dealing with law enforcement and the government, referred to as "plata o plomo" (literally "silver or lead", colloquially "[accept] money or [face] bullets"). This resulted in the deaths of hundreds of individuals, including civilians, policemen and state officials. At the same time, Escobar bribed countless government officials, judges and other politicians. Escobar was allegedly responsible for the 1989 murder of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, one of three assassinated candidates who were all competing in the same election, as well as the bombing of Avianca Flight 203 and the DAS Building bombing in Bogotá in 1989. The Medellín Cartel was also involved in a deadly drug war with its primary rival, the Cali Cartel, for most of its existence. It is sometimes alleged that Escobar backed the 1985 storming of the Colombian Supreme Court by left-wing guerrillas from the 19th of April Movement, also known as M-19, which resulted in the murder of half the judges on the court. Some of these claims were included in a late 2006 report by a Truth Commission of three judges of the current Supreme Court. One of those who discusses the attack is Jhon Jairo Velásquez, aka "Popeye" a former Escobar hitman. At the time of the siege, the Supreme Court was studying the constitutionality of Colombia's extradition treaty with the U.S. Roberto Escobar stated in his book that indeed the M-19 were paid to break into the Palace of Justice and burn all papers and files on Los Extraditables — the group of cocaine smugglers who were under threat of being extradited to the US by their Colombian government. But the plan backfired and hostages were taken for negotiation of their release, so Los Extraditables were not directly responsible for the actions of the M-19. During the height of its operations, the cartel brought in more than $60 million per day (making roughly $22 billion in a year). Smuggling fifteen tons of cocaine per day, worth more than half a billion dollars, into the United States, the operation spent $1000 per week purchasing rubber bands to wrap the stacks of cash, storing most of it in their warehouses. Ten percent had to be written off per year because of "spoilage" by rats that crept in at night and nibbled on the hundred dollar bills. Pablo Escobar said that the essence of the cocaine business was "Simple: you bribe someone here, you bribe someone there, and you pay a friendly banker to help you bring the money back."In 1989, Forbes magazine estimated Escobar to be one of 227 billionaires in the world with a personal net worth of close to US$3 billion while his Medellín Cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market. It is commonly believed that Escobar was the principal financier behind Medellín's Atlético Nacional who won South America's most prestigious football tournament, the Copa Libertadores, in 1989. While seen as an enemy of the United States and Colombian governments, Escobar was a hero to many in Medellín (especially the poor people); he was a natural at public relations and he worked to create goodwill among the poor people of Colombia. A lifelong sports fan, he was credited with building football fields and multi-sports courts, as well as sponsoring children's football teams. Escobar was responsible for the construction of many hospitals, schools and churches in western Colombia, which gained him popularity inside the local Roman Catholic Church. He worked hard to cultivate his Robin Hood image, and frequently distributed money through housing projects and other civic activities, which gained him notable popularity among the poor. The population of Medellín often helped Escobar by serving as lookouts, hiding information from the authorities, or doing whatever else they could to protect him. At the height of his power, drug traffickers from Medellín and other areas were handing over between 20% and 35% of their Colombian cocaine-related profits to Escobar, because he was the one who shipped the cocaine successfully to the US. The Colombian cartels' continuing struggles to maintain supremacy resulted in Colombia quickly becoming the world’s murder capital with 25,100 violent deaths in 1991 and 27,100 in 1992. This increased murder rate was fueled by Escobar's giving money to his hitmen as a reward for killing police officers, over 600 of whom died in this way. After the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán, the administration of César Gaviria moved against Escobar and the drug cartels. Eventually, the government negotiated with Escobar, convincing him to surrender and cease all criminal activity in exchange for a reduced sentence and preferential treatment during his captivity. Declaring an end to a series of previous violent acts meant to pressure authorities and public opinion, Escobar surrendered to Colombian authorities in 1991. Before he gave himself up, the extradition of Colombian citizens had been prohibited by the newly approved Colombian Constitution of 1991; this was controversial, as it was suspected that Escobar and other drug lords had influenced members of the Constituent Assembly. Escobar was confined in what became his own luxurious private prison, La Catedral. Accounts of Escobar's continued criminal activities while in prison began to surface in the media. When the government found out that Escobar was still operating his drug business from within La Catedral, it attempted to move him to a more conventional jail on July 22, 1992. Escobar's influence allowed him to discover the plan in advance and make a well-timed escape. He was still worried that he could be extradited to the United States. In 1992, the United States Joint Special Operations Command (consisting of members of USN DEVGRU and Delta Force) and Centra Spike joined the manhunt for Escobar. They trained and advised a special Colombian police task force known as the Search Bloc, which had been created to locate Escobar. Later, as the conflict between Escobar and the United States and Colombian governments dragged on and the numbers of his enemies grew, a vigilante group known as Los Pepes (Los Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar, "People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar") was financed by his rivals and former associates, including the Cali Cartel and right-wing paramilitaries led by Carlos Castaño, who would later fund the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá. Los Pepes carried out a bloody campaign fueled by vengeance in which more than 300 of Escobar's associates and relatives were slain and large amounts of his cartel's property were destroyed. Members of the Search Bloc, and also of Colombian and United States intelligence agencies, in their efforts to find and punish Escobar, either colluded with Los Pepes or moonlighted as both Search Bloc and Los Pepes simultaneously. This coordination was allegedly conducted mainly through the sharing of intelligence in order to allow Los Pepes to bring down Escobar and his few remaining allies, but there are reports that some individual Search Bloc members directly participated in missions of the Los Pepes death squads. One of the leaders of Los Pepes was Diego Murillo Bejarano (also known as "Don Berna"), a former Medellín Cartel associate who became a drug kingpin and eventually emerged as a leader of one of the most powerful factions within the AUC. The war against Pablo Escobar ended on December 2, 1993, amid another of Escobar's attempts to elude the Search Bloc. Using radio triangulation technology, a Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by Brigadier Hugo Martínez found him hiding in a middle-class barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Alvaro de Jesús Agudelo (a.k.a. "El Limón"), ensued. The two fugitives attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police. Escobar suffered gunshots to the leg and torso, and a fatal gunshot through the ear. It has never been proven who actually fired the final shot into his head, or determined whether this shot was made during the gunfight or as part of a possible execution, and there is wide speculation about the subject. Some of Escobar's family members believe that he could have committed suicide. His two brothers, Roberto Escobar and Fernando Sánchez Arellano, believe that he shot himself through the ears: "He committed suicide, he did not get killed. During all the years they went after him, he would say to me every day that if he was really cornered without a way out, he would shoot himself through the ears." After Escobar's death and the fragmentation of the Medellín Cartel, the cocaine market soon became dominated by the rival Cali Cartel, until the mid-1990s when its leaders, too, were either killed or captured by the Colombian government. The Robin Hood image that Escobar had cultivated continued to have lasting influence in Medellín. Many there, especially many of the city's poor who had been aided by him while he was alive, mourned his death. About 25,000 were present for his burial. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE
Price: 26.24 USD
Location: MLB Collection
End Time: 2024-11-25T17:08:54.000Z
Shipping Cost: 6.5 USD
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