Андрій Ковбасюк

Roger Reaves says Pablo Escobar’s cartel paid him up to $2.5 million for a single 8-hour flight. He paid for it with 33 years in prison. He hauled over 100 loads of marijuana into California, plus 20-ton loads of hashish and Thai weed. In the video below, the former drug pilot tells how he flew for the Medellín cartel and escaped prison after prison. It started with a firefighter’s day off. Reaves worked at a fire department in Redondo Beach and flew a small plane to Mexico for fun. A friend offered him $10,000 to bring back one load of marijuana. He did. He says he dumped the cash on the bed, and his baby grabbed a $100 bill and crawled away. A lawyer told him that with a clean record, the worst he’d get was probation. So he bought a bigger plane that could make him $40,000 a day. He told his mother. Her answer: “Do you need a co-pilot, son?” Then he went to Colombia and met Jorge Ochoa and Pablo Escobar. “We got all the work that you can do at $5,000 a kilo.” At 300 to 500 kilos a trip, that was $1.5 million to $2.5 million for 8 hours of flying. More than $300,000 an hour. He says he had $7 million within a few weeks. “It was so easy.” Then one night, fogged in with a load of cocaine, he landed blind at New Orleans International Airport and sat there until morning. He decided to quit. The cartel begged him to find a replacement. He recruited a pilot named Barry Seal and paid him $1 million a trip. Seal got caught. Facing three life sentences, he told the DEA everything, including Reaves’s part. Reaves refused to testify and fled to Brazil with his family. Six months later, a call came. “Barry Seal was assassinated last night.” The cocaine charges were dropped. But he says the cartel still owed him $3.5 million. In Europe, he moved 20 tons of Thai weed through Canada and paid $7 million just to unload it. Police seized more than $10 million in cash. He says his partner turned him in rather than pay him. Arrested in Spain in 1988, he kicked out a courtroom window and jumped 31 feet onto a parked car. “I’m a dead man anyway.” Recaptured, he got 8 years in Germany. He bet a lawyer $10,000 he could break out of a German penitentiary, climbed over a guard tower and won the bet. In 2001, he landed 1,000 kilos of pure cocaine on an Australian beach. Police were waiting. Newspapers called it a $400 million bust. He got 25 years. He was deported home in 2020 and spent 9 more months in solitary. “You wouldn’t do it if you knew what was going to happen to you.” $2.5 million a flight. $7 million in weeks. 33 years behind bars. The case for Reaves: when his own pilot turned informant, he refused to testify against anyone and ran instead. The case against Reaves: his escapes cost other people. The lawyer who drove him away lost his license, and his wife raised their children alone for decades. So was Roger Reaves the last loyal smuggler, or just the last one left holding the bag?