Ian Frisch

And I mean, you know, to that point, it's like when you were growing up in Colombia and you see the culture down there and the economic opportunities, and then you have cocaine just available to you and all you have to do is just get it to Miami.

You know, that resourcefulness really kicks in and it's almost, you know, second nature to these types of guys who grew up in that culture.

But also back then it was kind of

People like Pablo Escobar were idolized by the common citizenry.

And some of the people who began working for the cartels were just chasing an element of stability, I think, in a very unstable world.

And it kind of tapped into what you're saying, this sort of baseline resourcefulness that made them really good at what they did.

Pretty good.

Pretty good one there.

And I think there's an element of gamesmanship between the feds and the cartels, at least back then.

You really wanted to catch them, but you kind of had to tip your hat at some of the things that they did to deceive you or trick you or to get around the safeguards that federal law enforcement had at that time.

And again, like you said, it just goes to show the resourcefulness of people who have a big payday waiting for them just over the other side of the border.

Well, there was a route through Mexico called the Mexican trampoline where drugs would go from, excuse me, Columbia up to Mexico.

They would change hands and then independent smugglers would get them over the border.

That was very popular at the time.

But you ran into problems as the Mexican cartels got more popular because they would steal your drugs or kill your crew and sometimes even steal your airplanes.

But Martin actually created an airstrip in Puerto Rico.

where he was able to take a sugar cane field and flatten it and create a landing strip for the Colombian cartels airplanes.

So they use that as well.

And I mean, again, like he was just mimicking their own resourcefulness.

He's like, how can I be a mirror to what they would do if they had these opportunities, you know?