Inside the Cartel: The Longest Undercover FBI Operation with Martin Suarez and Ian Frisch

0:00Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

0:30And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small and medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. This message comes from Capital One. The Capital One Venture X Business Card has no preset spending limit, so the card's purchasing power can adapt to meet business needs.

1:09Plus, the card earns unlimited double miles on every purchase, so the more a business spends, the more miles earned. And when traveling, the Venture X Business Card grants access to over a thousand airport lounges. The Venture X Business Card. What's in your wallet? Terms and conditions apply. Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash VentureXBusiness. Today on the James Altucher Show. Martin's technical expertise made him the perfect employee because he could chart the ship and fly the plane and he knew all the things that made him capable of smuggling hundreds of millions, potentially over a billion dollars worth of cocaine only in a couple of years.

1:50As a matter of fact, that's what one of them told me, that, listen, money, you're doing a great job and everything. Just don't forget that I have a long arm. And I can reach a grass far away and touch you on the shoulder. And a lot of people in the criminal world thought you were this criminal drug lord because your cover was never really broken. Martin is convincing these people that his version of reality, that he is a smuggler, if you wholeheartedly believe that what you know to be true is true, it's much easier to convince other people of the same. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host.

2:36This is the James Altucher Show.

2:49This is a crazy story. I mean, Martin Suarez, he broke the record for the longest time spent continuously undercover. He was an FBI agent. He went deep undercover as basically this mafiosa drug lord. And he was smuggling billions of dollars worth of drugs from the Colombian cartels. And I mean, even how the story starts off with a gun to his head, he'd been caught and figured out. It's riveting. It's real life. It's true. It's about what really goes on, you know, under the covers, so to speak, in the world. The book is Inside the Cartel, a true crime tale of espionage, undercover operations, and a war against billionaire drug lords.

3:35It's written by Martin Suarez and also his co-author, Ian Frisch. Now, both Martin and Ian came on the podcast because Martin is suffering from ALS. I guarantee you, if you listen and pay attention, his story is worth it. But Ian sometimes chips in to kind of explain in a different way. but I urge you to pay attention to both of them. It kept me on the edge of my seat, so here they are inside the cartel.

4:09You start off the book, a gun is to your head. You think you've been exposed or somehow they figured out you were an FBI agent. The most notorious cartel in the world is trying to kill you. What's going through your head that moment? How did you escape the gun? The way I escaped the gun is that during that hour that had a gun pointed at my head, it gave me time to think of a plan to escape. Originally, at first I thought of running, but he was too close for me to do that. and not close enough for me to jump him. So I thought of him as being a professional because of that. So I had to opt for, you know, you have a plan until you don't.

5:13and I had to opt for trying to get away from him as soon as he asked me to go to the door. So then what? You're going towards the door, and all this is detailed in the book, but it sets this, it's kind of this pinnacle of your career. Like, you know, and maybe, Ian, also, if you could chip in, like, what happened? How did you survive to write this excellent book? So I've been through a lot of hairy situations compared to this, not as critical, but almost. And at that point, with the help of Ian, I was able to get this on the book. One example of the few that I went to that at the time, I didn't think it was such a big deal.

6:15Well, okay, I want to start Martin right there to say that, of course, he wouldn't think that a Sicario hired by the cartel coming to his house and trying to kill him wasn't that big of a deal. I was just wondering that, yes. You have to understand Martin's role as an undercover agent at this time in the context of this scene that we're talking about. This Sicario coming to his house, assigned to kill him, came at the tail end of a six-year-long deep undercover operation. First, based out of Miami as a smuggler, and then on the second half of the operation as a money launderer based out of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

6:55Now, in the world of cartels, drugs are important, right? But what's really important is the money. So as Martin gets deeper in the world of money laundering for some of the largest cartels in Colombia, that's where the danger really starts to creep close to his doorstep as evidenced by this. Now you may ask, how did they know? Well, at the end of this operation, the indictment was unsealed against all these high-level cartel members, over 50 in all. And the only person not listed on the indictment when it was unsealed was, quote, Manny, Martin's alter ego. So the cartel probably knew that Martin was either a member of law enforcement, whether FBI, DEA, whatever, or B, a criminal but not completely honest with them.

7:44So they don't care. The cartel wants Martin dead. Or he could be ratting on them. Or he could be ratting on them, and that's the whole thing. But you have to understand that Martin is very well trained, as he will tell you. So patience was a virtue in this situation and bravery too, when you have a gun pointed to your head. And one of the details that Martin told me when we wrote this scene was, and how he knew this wasn't random violence. It wasn't a random robbery, was because the hitman was whispering to himself, he has the same eyes, which means that he was given a picture of Martin and said, find this guy and kill him.

8:23But as they approached the door, as Martin was just saying, Martin was able to bring the hitman just close enough so he could turn, try to swipe his gun, and then wrestle the guy. And we won't spoil what happened next, but obviously Martin's sitting here with us now, and I was able to write this book with him. And I like how that chapter closes. There was a shot fired. There was blood everywhere. On to the next chapter. Sorry, guys. We'll tell you about that later. Well, look, how did you, you know, You also, at that time, probably still is the record of the longest undercover in the FBI, particularly with the cartels.

9:02How did it all get started? How did you decide you wanted to do this? How did everything start? So I left the Navy in 1987 to join the Bureau. And at that time, I was first out of the Navy and working with DEA and then my dress squad. And my supervisor came up to me and said, would you be able to bring a boat to the Bahamas, a fast boat, for an operation? They needed somebody just to take the boat there. And when I got to the Bahamas, I felt like I was in my place. And I was hooked from that point on. And then by the circumstances, the way it happened, I was assigned to a long, long-term operation in backstopping, where I backstopped most of the undercover operations in the nation.

10:21And by default, I ended up joining those investigations as an undercover where there had been a principal or a primary agent, undercover agent, or a cameo. So after 13 years of doing that, I just look back and I said, I worked my whole career undercover. The length, the tenure into that clinic was more because of my job rather than direct assignments. But I will say, James, to set the seating for why Martin was able to go undercover in 1988, war on drugs is in full swing. Federal government is like, hey, we're kind of losing the war on drugs. We need a new sort of way in. We need a way to best the cartels.

11:21And before Martin, there's only been one long-term deep undercover operation, and that was Donnie Brasco with the American Mafia in New York City. But just like Donnie Brasco, or Joe Pistone, his real name, Martin was the perfect agent at the perfect time with the perfect target, right? Martin is a native of Puerto Rico, native Spanish speaker, had some street smarts, high-level technical expertise coming out of the Navy. Perfect smuggler. You know, you throw a silk shirt on him, let him grow his mustache out, and, you know, he's a doper, right? And, you know, that sort of perfect timing, right place, right time, it really accelerated Martin's role as an undercover agent.

12:02But the FBI, systematically from the high level in a philosophical way, was extremely supportive of the covert technique at that time because they knew that there was no other way for them to really understand how the cartels operated. They really need someone on the inside. Now, what made Martin the perfect undercover from an FBI point of view also made him the perfect smuggler from a cartel point of view. And through the help of a source, a cooperating witness who introduced him to other cartel men, Martin's technical expertise made him the perfect employee because he could chart the ship and fly the plane.

12:37And he knew all the things that made him capable of smuggling hundreds of millions, potentially over a billion dollars worth of cocaine only in a couple of years. So these cartel guys were probably short on good help at the time because they had such high volume. So for Martin to come on the scene, it was perfect for both sides, which is kind of ironic. Who was that guy? There was people who were kind of helping the government too, right? Like who's that guy? The movie American Made was about him. Tom Cruise played the guy. So there were other guys who were sort of informing, but they weren't necessarily FBI agents.

13:12Yeah, there were civilians who were doing this type of thing. I think that was Barry Seal. He was a pilot and he was contracted by the CIA and helped move cocaine within some of those types of operations. Whereas CIA is mostly kind of doing covert intelligence work. Martin's team was very dead set on, here are the core groups of people that we are targeting. Our goal is to indict them, is to implicate them in a crime using the covert technique so we can bring them into an American courtroom, which is a little bit different than the CIA. However, the similarities were, as Martin came to understand, and as he told me, we were really going after people versus drugs.

13:52We wanted to know things about them. We wanted the intelligence to carry us through this operation, which is why they didn't do simple street busts where you roll up to someone, hey, I'll get a kilo, and then you bust them. Martin was actively smuggling for these people for months or years at a time so they could understand the inner workings and the hierarchy of the cartel itself, which then inform the next phase of the operation and the next one and the next one and the next one. Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast.

14:27Email me at alcatra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

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17:12Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

17:43And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small and medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

18:17Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates. at the end of the day, the most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

18:49And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small, medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash altature. to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Obviously, you were doing something very moral. You were getting people who were bringing these drugs into society, corrupting our youth, you know, endangering our youth and so on.

19:28And obviously the societal wreckage that happened from all these drugs. But did you ever feel like guilty because yes, you're doing a good thing, but at the same time, you're bringing all this cocaine into the US? Yes. So at that time, the drug work in the FBI was the number one violation. So we had a system in place where we seized everything we brought in so not a ground could hit the streets. If we weren't sure of that, we couldn't do the operation. But wouldn't that make you suspicious if every drug you brought into the U.S. was seized? If you didn't have any successful deliveries, wouldn't they say, oh, this guy is not so good for us?

20:20I had to, all my deliveries were successful. I would hand it over, and then we'll have a robust surveillance team investigations on them, and we were taken down away from me, removed at least by one person. I see. So the cartels would make their money. They would get the money from, but then, and maybe those, the first layer of dealers would sell the drugs, but then on the street level, maybe you would catch people or, I don't know, it still seems like if the cartels had investigated, they would see that none of their drugs were getting the customers. Well, here's the thing. This is what blew my mind about Martin's story.

21:06When I first started working with him, I asked the same thing. Well, if all the drugs get seized, why are they still hiring you? And Martin explained that the deception of working undercover isn't just character transformation. You are basically creating an alternate reality for the cartel in that Martin brings their drugs in, he packages them, he makes sure that the stateside distributors receive the drugs, but the entire federal law enforcement apparatus, like Martin said, allows the drugs to make it one step further. And as the drugs get one step further to another distributor, Martin is able to deflect blame from himself.

21:44He can say, I did my job. You still have to pay me for my role in this. It's that guy's fault. And this did work for many years. The cartel did get wise and they called everyone back to Columbia for a meeting with El Jefe, but Martin was able to not go to that meeting, which would have been pretty dangerous. But it's almost like, and I describe it in the book as this, it's like undercover work is like doing a magic trick for a spectator who doesn't know they're on a stage. And that is the entire sort of basis of Martin's undercover operations as a smuggler. He always made sure to deflect blame.

22:25And Martin can tell you how he did that on an interpersonal level. But for me, it was just having balls and going up to a cartel guy and say, I don't care. Not my fault. I did my job. Where's my money? And I don't know if I'd be able to do that. I'd be too scared. Like if I was going to be called to a meeting with El Jefe, I would basically go to the FBI and say, I'm not doing this anymore. Protect my identity. Protect my children and my wife. And I'm done. But you didn't do that. Yeah, because I felt that my legend or my alter ego created by a team of agents, and the Bureau was so solid that I didn't think I was in any danger whatsoever.

23:13And remember, I was dealing with the highest level of the cartels. So the Medellin Cartel, with the guy that I was working at, he was not the kind of violent guy at that level. There's a lot of movies, narcos and whatnot, that showed violence at the highest level, but most of the time it wasn't like that. They were violent and that they could find you and reach across the ocean and touch you on the shoulder. As a matter of fact, that's what one of them told me, that, listen, money, you're doing a great job and everything. Just don't forget that I have a long arm and I can reach across far away and touch you on the shoulder.

24:18Like saying, you have to answer for all this, whatever. We were able to deflect the blame because these operations are so complex, even for the cartels, that many, and they do so many laws, they're always in trouble, losing merchandise and losing money. so where you can deflect and say, hey, that guy you sent me is all heated up. And I do that months before the operation. So we heat up somebody else, and then at the day of the delivery of the drugs, they get stopped by a trooper. and they run away, never to be seen again in most cases. So they're not there at the meeting to defend themselves, so by default they did it.

25:32If you don't go to the meeting, you did it. So I had a representative. If I had not been for my source, who was a Colombian pilot and way past, it wouldn't have been very difficult to penetrate the way I did. He always vouched for me. Anytime there was a problem, he and his wife, who was also embedded with the cartel for a long time, they always backed me up, and they were such good negotiators. They kept me in the game. And how did you know to trust them? Well, we highly vetted them, And it's a process. And at some point at that level, based on that vetting, you have to have a certain level of trust.

26:43And not, it won't work. And that's what the cartels do. They trust but verify. But they're never sure. and they have to take a risk initially with you unless they won't get their loads across the ocean. And so, you know, these cartels were kind of obviously popular in Colombia, for instance. They were involved in charities. They put politicians in place. Like, did they control Colombia at the time? Oh, yeah. And I really believe they still do. So the money laundering, they buy everything and anything, mostly influence. But yes, they control every life of a Colombian citizen at the time. and it was pretty overwhelming, the power that they had.

27:58And now, a lot of this in the 80s was during the time of Iran-Contra. Like, how much do you think, and I interviewed a guy who was a crack dealer from Compton, Rick Ross. I interviewed him almost 10 years ago and his claim was that he was put in jail for being a crack dealer, but ultimately all the crack he was dealing, the U.S. was indirectly paying for. So how much was the U.S. really involved on the other side of things as well? Like unsavory acts or something like that? So remember, at our level, the FBI, we have to indict these people. And if we conduct any unsavory acts while working undercover, we're rendered useless as a witness.

28:58So we have to, and they can impeach us just by saying that I brought this guy some girls during a meeting and he acted upon it. So I had a way to deal with that also. How did you deal with that? Did you say, oh, I don't want any girls? Did you say you were gay? How did you deal with that? Yeah, I could have used any of that, but I opted for bringing my own girl, bringing my own girl who were also FBI agents. That's smart. Yeah. And they served the second pair of eyes and ears. And so many times they worked as advertising that they warned me about certain things. Cameras back then, it was unusual in the rooms.