I Got the Need, the Need for Weed: Randy Lanier

Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Zaren Elizabeth, Sarah, how are you.

I'm doing pretty well. Just been in here waiting for you, all excited to see you, and you walk in with that big smile.

It's so good to see you.

Yeah, you know, I'm hoping things are gonna look up.

Oh. Same, I'm trying to be positive to positive.

Yeah, I'm trying to be optimistic and being like I've been watching a lot of stuff about Vietnam.

Well that helps to be for me.

It provides perspective to go from like sixty like early sixties. I actually started, like you know, at the end of World War Two, at the coverage, and then by the time you get to sixty eight and everything's just mad revolution, Like okay, I can kind of see how these things, you know, break and change. So it was just giving me a little like, Okay, we've gotten through crazier.

You know that's true.

That's true. Listen aside from you binge watching Vietnam documentaries.

Yes, you know, it's ridiculous.

Oh my god, do I Elizabeth. I saw this and I had to tell you about it. There was this woman named Marsha Morgan was forty eight years old at the time, and she did what I have occasionally done when you look at your window and you see someone who's parked in front of your replace, and you're.

Like, what the hell are they doing on my parking spot right on.

The public street, on the public street, but you.

Still look at it as like your parking spaces right in front of your place. I admit it makes no sense. It's not one of my best qualities, but I have gotten upset when I'm like, what are they doing parking there?

Right?

So she did something I can totally understand. She went out and tried to do something about it. She wasn't violent, she wasn't like mad destructive. She just took a bunch of toilet paper and she like toilet papered the car that was parked in what she conceived of as her space. Now, what I've left out was that when she did this, she was dressed as a hot dog. She had gotten

When she was arrested. She was still in the hot dog costume.

This is a costume for work.

I don't know.

I'm assuming maybe I might put on something comfortable.

I put on her mobile driver costume.

Like if I had to go home in a hot dog costume, the first thing I do is take off the.

Hot dog, one would think, I think.

Can we also talk about how expensive it is to toilet paper a car?

Oh?

Yeah, you don't even egg things anymore, exactly.

Know, it's wasting that This was a couple of years ago. This was in like, well, it was twenty twenty five. It wasn't that long ago.

It was one year.

Again, the toilet paper was still expensive.

Right, and everything's expensive.

She got a five hundred and fifty dollars fine on top of her lost toilet paper. I guess the cops weren't impressed with that hot dog costume. Now, I don't think I should have to tell you this, but this did occur in Saint Petersburg, Florida.

Yeah.

Also, by the way, when I was reading other stories of the news about crime, there's a neighborhood called Madera in Florida, which is in the Saint Petersburg area. Oh, man, did that one come up a lot in the stories? Oh yeah, if you go like to read the Smoking Gun, right, which happened to be like like just cruising through, so it's a little light reading. And it was just Madera Madera Madeira. I'd never heard of it before. Now I know all about it.

Apparently it's a rough spot.

Interesting.

A lot of people like hitting each other with a slice of pizza, you know, throwing nachos at your dress. Yeah, well, one person like stole a taco.

It was a lot of foods, a lot of food based.

And then also meth and alcohol based crimes, that's all. Sometimes it's like I got drunk and I threw the pizza at my mother.

I like it. Okay, So there you go, ridiculous, right.

You know what else is ridiculous? Get them Smugglers Blues. This is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.

Oh you damn right, I am so right, always right zerin sore Rain.

You love a good tale of adventure on the high seas.

I love a good tail of adventure in you love pirates, a huge van of pirates.

If I could have a job occupation of choice, pirate.

You love vikings, basically a pirate of the ancients.

Yes, and you love tales of dirt bags with feathered hair, loading up boats with pounds of weed and running their goods to the land of apple pie, baseball in sync, garbage disposals, red solo cups, and medical bankruptcy.

Yes, I do love sixties and seventies in particular, and up to the eighties. Drug smuggling in the Florida Ky get to the USA.

Yeah, drug smugglers. Okay, so they make amazing ridiculous.

Criminals, totally, just amazing.

And it's in part because of the way they spend their ill gotten gains, Like they do a ridiculous job, they buy ridiculous things.

Yes, it's just a circle of ridiculous and.

Maybe because they dip into their own supply. I mean, it's an explanation, you possibly red it. So I've got this guy for you today. A lot of the parts of his story sound a little familiar because we've heard them in other stories. Okay, here, like they're the tropes, these required elements, the basics of seventies and eighties drug smuggling.

Oh yeah, let's be real.

It never gets old.

No go fast boat, low flying planes exactly.

So today Randy Lanier, Oh, he's an all timer, mister Burnette. Yes, I fess then you've heard of him.

My friend Derek actually recommended I look into his story.

I'm glad you got this well, I've stole it out from under you. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia. Nineteen fifty four was the year his dad was a draftsman. His mom was a caretaker at a mental hospital. It is hard working folks. He was close to his grandparents and he loved countrying it up at their place on the James River. The Gold Country boy. Yeah. When he was fourteen, he and his family moved to Hollywood, Florida,

Okay, I respect.

He was like a typical teen for the time and the place. He had a ponytail. He wanted to make a little.

Cash, swing a hammer, the ponytail.

Well, the ponytail got him a reputation that basically manifested what was to come. Because he had the ponytail shows up. Guys on the crew thought that he'd be able to hook him up with pot, because well that's the thing not to even sell, but like, do you know where you could find him? And I thought, I bet you could relate to that because you had long dreadlocks when you were working constructions.

Yes, And they always expected me to have pot on me, Like, oh, we're gonna go take a break. See you want to come with us? Yeah?

Or know where you could get it? Oh?

Yeah, I definitely hook him up.

Yeah, So I think you were probably able to accommodate the requests. Maybe so this kid though he's just a kid with a ponytail. But you know, if people ask, you're like, well all right, let's make this happen. So Randy started selling pot.

There you go.

He was readying himself for another summer of construction site drug deals, and then his dad was like, you gotta cut your hair. No way, man, as Crosby steals Nash and Young saying, almost cut my hair. It happened just the other day. It was getting kind of long. I could have said it was in my way, but I didn't, And I wonder why I feel like letting my freak flag fly. Yeah, so he wanted to let his freak flag fly, and how thank you.

So you know what he did.

He got out of town.

Oh, He's like, forget the scissors, give me the cartones.

So he hitchhiked to Canada.

From Hollywood, Florida.

Yeah, with a bag of pot, four hits of acid, and five dollars. Okay, you know, just like that sweet heroin Cherub David Crosby saying in the same song, when I finally get myself together, I'm going to get down in some of that sweet summer weather. I'm going to find a space inside to laugh, separate the wheat from the chev Yeah. So it was a great summer. And when he got backed on, he decided to ride the high. So he dropped out of school. It became a full

So like.

According to Rolling Stone Magazine, he quote at one point packed the air vents of a Folkswagen Beetle with marijuana and headed off to Aspen to meditate with a guru.

Yes, except for the air cooled engine part.

That's a little problem, a little problem there.

So by the time he was nineteen, he'd earned enough as a local dealer to buy a twenty seven foot Magnum sport powerboat.

Damn Son.

He was making cash, you know, and there's nothing like a young weed dealer with a gofest like what could go wrong?

Sarin, He've stepped up in class.

As Randy tells it. Quote, about six months later, a buddy asked me if I was interested to go and go into the Bahamas and put some grass on my boat. It seemed like an adventure, So I did it.

Oh man, I love when people used to call it cras.

I was just going to say, I that is my favorite of all the weed terms. I think so because it's so like, it's so time specific. M Yeah. Anyway, Uh, they skanoodled on down to the Bahamas. They loaded seven hundred and fifty pounds of that stickyicking into the boat. Then they cruise back up to Fort Lauderdale super easy. And it made him five grand. So five grand in nineteen seventy three is just over thirty seven thousand dollars today.

That's not bad for basically a day and a half FLT work.

Yeah, exactly, so, Randy, he did some math in his head.

B boo babu.

Beat that.

One boat can land him five k No problem? What about two? Well, heck, what about three? He bought two more speed boats to go first, and he had it made. He married his high school sweetheart. Like things are on the uptick, it was just all so easy. You know, you slip down to the island, you pick up the cargo, head back to Florida.

He doesn't want to go to Nassau.

Slide into the canals under cover of darkness.

Them on the Florida coast.

Well, this is so many inlets, Randy said, quote it was a smuggler's paradise. It was like the pirate days, Like you want a time machine to.

Go back to.

Then I would be satisfied with the late seventies. I actually literally be fine with that.

And so like South Florida, weed dealers started hiring him and he'd make the pickups and they'd cut him in for thirty percent of the load. So fast forward a couple of years and The Rolling Stone wrote quote Lanier had three stash houses humming in the Bucolic horse country west of Fort Lauderdale and was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So he had to have some.

Cover for all of this, Like, how do you explain this? He started a business, So nineteen seventies Fort Lauderdale, Like, what's a happening? Successful business for that time and place. Well, No, if you had said jet ski rental, you would be today's winner, I miss, I mean, come on, it's right there, right there, Burnette. So you know, a man has to have hobbies. Of course, Randy, like you liked to go fast boats, jet skis. And it was in nineteen seventy eight that he went to a Miami car show in

Oh smart, like bomb Bonderette style.

Yeah.

Randy later said, quote, I didn't have a clue. I just drove, yes man, and drove did Zaren So he worked the grassroots circuit for a while just like gunning and funning. Then came the nineteen eighty to twenty four Hours of Daytona race.

Oh yeah, and driving on the sand real things. Yeah.

A friend of his worked for Janet Guthrie and she was one of the first women to compete in professional racing. And his buddy was like, hey, you want to hear some hot gossip. Randy's like, yeah, it's like Janet sick. He's like, really six sick, you know, she just has like an upset stomach. Oh, And He's like that doesn't qualify as hot gossip. He's like, you should spend some time around the track. This is about as good as

Yes, And with Ben, Randy.

Could really like upscale, upsize his efforts.

Well, yeah, I mean he's graduated from the Iron Bar University exactly.

So faster boats, bigger boats, more boats.

I'm talking sixty five foot wooden trawller.

Oh wow.

And then like big fishing boats, then.

A whole fleet of tug boats.

Wow. Yeah.

He just went nuts.

So he's like, they're going to look past those.

Yeah. So then he gets bigger contracts he got we're talking Colombia.

Yeah.

So they weren't middlemen anymore.

They went to the source was smuggling more.

Money for them. So Randy bought a Norwegian fishing trawler called Ursa Major, and he took it down to Colombia and he came back with fifteen thousand pounds of Colombian gold. Can I tell you about this particular stream tons of Colombian. Colombian gold is a legendary pure sativa cannabis stream yes originating from the Santa Martin Mountains in Colombia. Renowned for its energetic uplifting a and high THHC levels around eighteen to twenty percent. It is popular for daytime, used to

I bet it would drive Cheech and Chong absolutely sideways with like desire.

I just cracks me up. When people talk about weed, they talk about wine.

Yeah, with a tear water with lemon.

It makes sense.

The es and this are fantastic. So their top note is something of an alfalfa.

Well, you go from like wine moms to weed moms.

That's true.

That's the whole thing. So there's Randy with his boat just like crammed with Colombian gold marijuana. He pulled off the coast of Florida and his crew motored up in a bunch of big zodiac rafts. They filled the zodiacs with fifty pound bales he.

Just wrapped, okay, and then the zodiacs made.

Their way to a beach where like a strobe light was flickering wow to signal.

Them this is like the old like rum runners approached.

Yes, yes, your boy, the real McCoy right, So.

They would like they would run the boats up onto the beach because there's zodiacs just flat right there. And then there was a human chain of unloaders who ran the bales from the boats to a bunch of vans waiting in a parking lot, and then the vans would drive to one of Randy's stash houses. Randy sold it all the next day. His take four point five million dollars.

So she fully knows what he does for a living.

Oh yeah, a Porsche Benzo. It's not bad for the owner of a chain of jet ski rental shops. Yeah, you know, but hey, it's for Lauderdale. Things were big, but they were about to get bigger.

I love bigger.

Let's take a break. When we come back, I'll tell you about Randy's next seriously audacious plan Randy Lanier. No, you're Zaron Brunette, but I want to tell you about Randy. You today, you'll be Randy weed smuggler extraordinary. So here we are in nineteen eighty two.

What a time, What a year.

Randy had a bunch of weed distributors, and one of them introduced Randy and his partner Kramer, to Tip O'Neill, who then became a tugboat captain for them.

It's in the Miami area.

I'll just keep running with it.

We get to and then the estate if tip O'Neil can come after me anyway, So he introduces Ben and Randy to this other smuggler, George Brock. Now Brock had a vision. See he knew this other guy, Eugene Fisher. Fisher owned a shipyard. He also owned an ocean going barge. Oh he put on there like the flat decked time, big as a football field. So Brock he did some calculations.

Beboo babo beat weed in this.

Yeah, he was like a barge could hold more than one hundred tons of marijuana. And that's like more than two hundred thousand pounds of weed totally. So according to rolling Stone quote. The scheme was simple, but ingenius. Welders sealed the bales under steel plates. The secret compartments were then filled with seawater so that a curious customs official would find only Brian. In early nineteen eighty three, the barge sailed up New York's East River and docked at

Brooklyn, right into New York's harbor.

This is insane. So they get to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Randy's guys used welding torches to cut through the ballast tanks inside one hundred and thirty thousand pounds of Columbian gold.

That's all, by the way, a lot of work to cut through with welders torches. Yeah, it's like the place you would get caught after all that work when you get welding down there.

Yeah, So the tanks are opened, another crew comes moves the bales of weed into tractor trailers like big rigs.

Yeah totally, And so now Randy is rich, rich, oh big time.

Doing the math from the ursa minor job. That run had to be worth thirty nine million, which is one hundred and twenty four million today. But you figure he's got to cut all these other folks in a blue blah profit.

But that's a big time job.

So that money immediately began burning a hole in his pocket. Yeah, he put a lot of it into putting together a professional racing team like race car. Yeah, he bought two race cars, bought a warehouse to uses the home base. He hired an ex Formula one crew chief and a team of mechanics.

What classes he racing Formula one, Formula not NASCAR Formula one.

Yeah, he graduated go fast. He called his new racing team blue Thunder.

Whin yeah so good.

And that was this is like early eighties, so the TV show and movie Blue Thunder had probably come out. He's imitating possibly the helicopter.

Right right, So just like in most professional sports, if you have money, you can buy success totally. And so at the end of the nineteen eighty four season, look at the Dodgers, right, Randy was named Camel GT Champion as well as most Improved Driver. Really improved Driver is like the best worst award I can think of getting most improved. So the smuggling had never stopped. He had a team to fund now and they so they did another barge run. This one had seventy five tons of

Most feathered hair you've ever seen feathered.

I feel like he and his crew probably all walked around in those like football jerseys that are cut off like half short, say Hawaii eighty four.

And then like the short short cutoff jeans shorts, Yeah, with the fraying at the bottom, a little bit of white pocket exactly.

Pockets longer than the than the inn scene. So the money, all this money has to be laundered, of course, naturally, and so Randy and Ben they had a bunch of foreign bank accounts shell companies, and one of these companies funded the construction of a one hundred thousand square foot casino called the Bell Gardens Bicycle Club in Bell Garden, California. It's now called Park West Bicycle Casino, and it's still like a poker card room. The whole thing was funded

I wonder how much crack money went into this, because it's the early eighties in.

Your bell Garden, I think, yeah, Bellgard.

Yeah.

One of their fake companies was called g Reedy Holding Company.

Greedy Greedy, Oh right, even better.

They used banks in England, Panama, Hong Kong, British Vision Islands, other places, all.

The best money laundering spots.

And what was Randy up to right now?

What was now?

Oh?

Glad that I made you ask? That he was training for the Indianapolis five hundred are you kidding? And the number one race in America, So Randy had the money to go full in on training. In May nineteen eighty six, a week before the race, he learned that his distributor in Louisiana had been arrested and was cooperating with the FBI. Oh, and the FBI was surveilling Randy oh no, yeah, this is a week before the Indy five hundred, and so

Whoa on the barge going to New Orleans?

Basically, yeah, thereabouts, Randy got in touch with the captain of the ship and was like, redirect, redirect, don't go to Louisiana.

He tells him, head south, tolle.

Go through the Panama Canal. Oh wow, then head north in the Pacific to California.

Guys like.

All of this is right when he's getting ready for the Indy five hundred, Like, if this is.

Stressful, I got a focus, I got them Andretti's.

Years later, Dale Earnhardt Junior went marvel at these circumstances on his podcast while interviewing Randy Dale Junior. U. But Randy races and he still managed to come in just nine cars behind.

What that's not bad at all.

He was actually the only rookie driver to finish that year. Really, and he clocked the fastest speed in history during pre qualifying lapse, breaking Michael Andretti's previous record.

What past that crowd?

This is an awards banquet after the race, and Randy was presented with the Indy five hundreds Rookie of the Year Award.

Get it signed, Randy.

So he's like floating on air at this point, like what a life is racing in the Indy five hundred. He's driving exotic cars, living in palatial homes, smuggling tons of weeds.

He is living the early eighties dream right now, dreams right.

But then don't forget there's that barge that he had to be just a few months after his turn in the eighty five hundred, finds himself sitting in a rented car in a parking lot near a harbor on the San Francisco Bay there waiting on that boat that was originally headed for Louisiana.

Where do they plan on, Doc?

And I kept they kept saying near San Francisco, and I'm thinking, like South City, some of.

Those could have been Oakland. Yeah, you know.

But here's the thing, though, is that the Oakland, like all those port slips, are so union controlled you can just roll up. That's why I think it's going to be like Hunter's Point.

Yeah, baby, that's a little a little bit more loose. Yeah, anyway, I would have gone to Long Beach where you can actually bribe people.

Yeah, I guess it's also a Union stronghold.

Yeah, but it's a little bit bigger. There's enough, there's enough to get lost in Margache.

Yeah, that's true.

Could have known a Richmond, they could have been That's what we're with all the metal salvage. People are definitely looking past that. And there's a lot of like you know, Asians like travel, so like they thought it Like, I don't know what's what the words is coming from.

I'm just trying to think of the size of this barge. Where would it go. This us to be fascinating for people who have no idea about the layout of San Francisco Bay anyway, cargo options exactly. So he's sitting in a parking lot near harbor on the Bay waiting for the boat. He gets a message on his radio.

And he's still under FBI investigation, and he knows it, and.

He knows it. There's trouble with the cargo. Water got into the one of the sealed compartments full of weed, and the marijuana was rotting and putting off methane.

Oh god.

And when the crew went to use torches to cut open the compartments. Explosion and fire, Oh because methane. Of course, two of the guys died, so moment of silence for one percent. So the remaining crew, they're worried that the whole thing is going to go right. Yeah, So they salvage what they could without opening the other compartments. How they do that, I don't know, And they shipped off what they could in trucks and then the barge was set out into the ocean and scuttled, went to the

You're telling you?

Yeah, so Randy, Yeah, this I feel like was like a turning point for Randy. He went back to Florida a changed man. The whole thing rattled him, and he knew the Feds were sniffing around, so he started to get super paranoid.

One of his fans his racing career is going well, so he's now got something to lose.

Sure, sure, but it's like he's kind of crossed a line with this.

Yeah, no, definitely this point, he moved out.

Of his fancy house and into a condo that he rented under a fake name.

Huh. So he's basically like low key on the run. Yeah.

He always used payphones to make calls, never landlines, and certainly no like early cell phones. He went in and out of the back doors of stores and restaurants and businesses. He was like Henry Hill, Yeah, and fellas driving around looking at the exactly that a shoe dropped. In October of nineteen eighty six, the DEA pressed charges on eleven people for engaging in a major drug and money laundering organization. Three of those people were at the center of it all,

Oh he deep yes, world.

So the charges detailed their efforts to smuggle more than one hundred thousand pounds of marijuana into South Florida between September of nineteen eighty three and June of nineteen eighty six.

And now he's in a new race, which is who's going to flip on who first?

Uh huh. But he's not even talking about the aren't talking about New York California. This is just the South.

Florida stuff they know about you down there.

Now, Randy had broken his leg in a crash at the Michigan five hundred oh and like, bad luck is all he knew at this point, so he surrendered to the FEDS. He posted one hundred thousand dollars bail and was released. Okay, Now, remember when I said just moments ago that they weren't even talking about New York or California.

It wasn't.

I take that back. Oh. A couple months later, FBI comes at him for smuggling one hundred and fifty tons of marijuana into US ports over a three year period.

I have one question, Elizabeth, why was he still in the country. They had gotten him out there at this point. You got that kind of money, you need to run something tight.

So when you add it all up, Randy and company were busted for bringing more than six hundred thousand pounds of marijuana into the country six hundred thousand pounds with a Z at the end pounds. In February of nineteen eighty seven, Randy was doing.

Court, so the FED basically, anybody like you know, our parents' age, probably smoked some of the pot.

That he brought into the country.

Yeah, exactly if you were smoking Colombia.

You were smoking Colombian gold.

Yeah.

Yeah, anywhere on the.

Eastern seaboard in particular perhaps and perhaps parts of.

California sit around the Bay.

Yeah.

So Randy has to go to court February nineteen eighty seven, and the Feds were like, you have some options. You can face a life sentence, or you can turn state's evidence and get ten years. Randy's like, I'll take option three. Saren, close your eyes. Yes, I want you to picture it. You work at a bagel shop in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It's the morning rush. Various professionals wait in line for

No?

Okay. In fact, that's why the owner had the phone company install the phone inside so that out on the sidewalk more convenient for the customers. He thinks of everything. You expect the guy to ask us wife if she wants poppy seed or an egg bagel that maybe he couldn't remember. Instead, you hear him.

Say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Slow down. The babysitter said, what, Yeah, I know they're at the house. I just saw it on the news. Yes, I am aware. When am I coming to get you? The man stares out the window. A customer walks by him to leave, setting off the door time. Finally he speaks, I'm leaving. I'm not coming to get you, he says. Then he hangs up the phone and walks out of the shop. You've been so distracted. You weren't listening to the lady in front of you as she rattled off

So that was real.

That was that was real?

Yeah.

Yeah, So their first kid was at home with the babysitter. Randy, not a good dad, decided to just make a break for it, and also not a good husband.

I mean, I liked his instinct to run.

I think he should have done it much earlier, and he probably should have taken his wife and children with him, right, I mean, that's why you get the money.

Right, exactly.

So he hitched a ride in a big rig and rode all the way up to Pennsylvania. Okay, and then he used a phony passport.

Good move.

Yeah, he used a fake passport, got on a flight to London, okay, and it was there that he met up with someone, his girlfriend. Oh no, oh, Zaren, you had to believe a guy like this would be stepping out on his wife.

He probably should have. You know why, I'm so innocent, so naive.

You know why why? Because he is a piece of Yeah. So he met the girlfriend.

He didn't enjoy the research.

He'd met the girlfriend, Maria de la LuSE Maggie, while still in Florida. The two of them met up in London and then just like flitted around Europe living it up. Oh god, Remember he had tons of money and offshore accounts.

He's got a pregnant wife at home.

He just gave birth postpart.

So Randy and Maria they're staying in five star hotels.

When they were doing that part.

But they're doing that, yeah, exactly, five star hotels, rolling the dice in Monte Carlo, while Pam was back home nursing a newborn, while the FBI pawed through her underwear drawer like this is fun. Everybody's having fun, I tell you.

So.

The thing is, there were some loose ends Randy had to tie up. He had to make a trip to Antigua to deal with some property he owned there. Why, he had a sixty foot Hatteras fishing boat there too, And the ship's captain was an old smuggling buddy of his, so when he and Maria got there, they trust. Yeah, they stayed on the boat and they figured they just like chill for a couple of weeks, like sip cocktails, soak in the sun.

Do you think they took a boat from Europe over I think they probably flew and then just got.

About and then well they had fake passports since yeah, they just wanted island time. And then they're like, okay, you know it'd be great is once we're done here, we'll just take this boat and sail to Spain. How funny is that there we go, everybody's having funds.

There, so uh, my favorite foods.

One early morning in late October nineteen eighty seven, the ship pulled into a small harbor and there was a ship behind them, a big old gray one, and Tiguan government and the captain's like, you know, they're probably going to check our papers, and so they they're watching this big gray boat and then they see a small boat full of guys in uniforms with guns pulled, pull away from the big gray boat and head for Randy's vessel.

They're going to board us.

So Randy just like starts barking at the captain, like put the zodiac in the water, bro jump. He jumps in and speeds away, leaving Maria and the captain behind him.

Of course, total scumbag, Maria.

If he did it to someone else, he'll do it to you. It's words to live by, ladies. Probably, I know there are a lot of gals not along right now. If he did it to someone else, he'll do it to you.

Oh yeah.

So Randy reached the dock at the harbor, hopped out of the Zodi. Keep in mind he was just chilling on the boat right island time. He's he's wearing bag strimped swim trunks, flip flops, no shirt, and he had noe to go but run up this hill covered in saw palmettos, those sharp growing palm bushes.

God, those things ripped him up to get torn up.

His feet were bleeding.

Oh sure, luddy, you could just follow the blood trail.

And it's not like the antigues were only coming in him on the water.

They were waiting on land too, so I am sure the coast guards probably involved as well.

A bunch of jeeps pulled up at the bottom of the hill and they were like, Randy, stop, Randy, and he just like kept scrabbling, and they pulled their rifles, and you know, is like pants are sagging, and they can see the top of his butt, his flip flops.

He's blew out a flip flop.

Randy stop, and so then they pull out the rifles. Randy stops scrabbling, did they No. He limped back down the hill, topless, sunburned, bloody. So the police put them on a plane. They're like, you're out of here, buddy. We don't want your smuggling as types here. So they flew him to Puerto Rico, where he was arrested by the FEDS, because, contrary to common ignorant notions, Puerto Rico was part of the United States.

Yes, and the DEA has full jurisdiction.

So a lot had been happening in the eight months that he was on the Lamb.

He was on the Lamb for eight months.

Yeah. The FEDS tore up his dad's yard and found two million dollars hidden inside PVC pipes. Meanwhile, he's like, you know, sipping champagne in Paris. They ransacked another relative's house and found five hundred thousand dollars in the basement.

Is going down like his address book. Let's just make a date to day.

Yeah, they tracked bank accounts, businesses. They connected the dots to the casino in California.

Naturally, so now they're all screwed.

They seized his houses, in his cars, Pam. Pam was a single mother with two kids now who had to get a job cutting fruit at the local supermarket in order to make ends meet. That's how Pam was doing. His trial began in July of nineteen eighty eight. Two dozen members of his crew testified against him.

Who dozen ouch.

Right to remember that race that's talking about who going to flip on?

Who?

We found computers exactly to the first heat was wild, so prosecutors laid it all out. He and his partners had trafficked more than three hundred tons of marijuana into the US. They'd run a smuggling empire that covered like almost a dozen states, employed hundreds of people, So I mean they were job creators, and Randy had made somewhere around sixty eight million dollars along the way.

And he didn't think to put more of it overseas his dad's backyard.

No, he only two million was in his dad's A lot of it was overseas.

Okay, good for him.

So the trial lasted three months. There were sixty four witnesses. It generated more than ten thousand pages of transcripts. Yeah. So in the end, he and Ben and Fisher were convicted of drug trafficking, fraud, and running a continuing criminal enterprise. The government was ordered to seize one hundred and eighty million dollars of their assets collectively, and this became the largest federal forfeiture in US history. Randy got sentenced to

She didn't catch any charges, you know, Pam didn't she.

Didn't catch charges. She divorced Randy. So Randy and Maria got married while respectively behind bars.

Huh.

Sure, Randy was put in medium security lockup, but he had to be moved around a lot because he kept trying to escape. At one prison, Randy tried to escape by hiding inside a vending machine that was going to be taken out to get fixed, and at another he went on, here's when you're gonna like, according to Rolling Stone quote, using a contraband phone, he conspired with a helicopter pilot to spirit him from the exercise yard. A prison official, alerted to the plan, summoned Laneer to his office.

Down France helicopter escapes.

But you know his wasn't the only one, really remember Ben Kramer. In nineteen ninety, one of Kramer's buddies tried to put together an escape using a helicopter. They were going to have it fly into the exercise yard of the Dade Metropolitan Correction Center where Ben was serving time, and like pick him up and then per the publication Jelopnik quote. Not surprisingly, the plan didn't work, as Kramer

Yeah, suggesto, right, But.

For reasons that never really became known or clear, that changed. Randy attended a phone conference and was told by the judge that he would be granted time served was years. No, so was twenty fourteen bomber years. So he got out October fifteenth. Twenty fourteen had been released back in nineteen ninety nine. Yeah, yeah, but it didn't matter because they weren't married anymore anyways, recently broke up in prison, so good.

Huh, so he's trying to help his people.

Yeah, and he also, at least does of twenty twenty two, is licensed to grow weed in New Jersey.

Really they came, apparently they did.

And he appears on the Weirdest podcast. Like I think he got into bodybuilding because he shows up on those types of shows a lot. He's like, oh, ripped all the pictures in his prison. Yeah, and then there's all the racing stuff. Car guys love it.

Of course I thought about that, you said earlier. Dale or podcast podcast.

Sizarin, what's your ridiculous takeaway here? Uh?

I know this is foolish, and I know this is probably wrong, but I think I would have been a hell of a pot smuggler in the seventies and eighties, and once I hit a certain level, I wouldn't have been throwing my money into trying to beat Mario Andretti on the race track. I'd be trying to beat my way to Monaco to watch races and live up my life. The life because they can never get enough, these guys. They're always like, let me go a little bigger. Yeah, let me get a barge and go into New York.

Harbhere. I'm like, bro, you have already crossed the line.

But you could have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life and just disappeared.

Into double digit millions.

You can live so well around the world, know exactly, especially you're not planning to pay taxes, and you can actually invest in some legitimate business. Do you have the half of the talent or your partner does. But no, they're always like, let me go a little bigger. I know this one smuggler he got a hundred million and also another competing with people that they really should.

Not be competing.

That is also my takeaway why they don't know when to stop right and so know how to be happy, and then they never wind up being able to enjoy it because they either get crazy paranoid, or they're you know, they lose it all or whatever it is. I mean, these are the stories that we tell. Maybe there are those out there who really pull it off as I enjoy it.

I know some people who are in the high stakes international pot smuggling business and they all have like lots of homes around the world and managed to do it well. And I myself managed to get in and out of crime without having to do anytime, So like, it can be done as long as you set your sights on the horizon and not on some other dude.

Yeah, good, good advice. You know what I would like as a talk bag?

Hell yeah, oh my god, super.

I love g.

Hi, Saron and Elizabeth Blake.

Here.

I was just listening to your dolphins on LSD episode that I wanted to let you know because you said you haven't heard anything lately about using AI to decode animal language, but there is a program out there. It's called Project SETI. That's c E t I. I guess a take on SETI. Yes, and they are using AI to decode sperm whale code, which is amazing, and they're actually learning quite a few things. So I follow them on LinkedIn. It's super cool.

That's awesome.

Thank you for that. You just made me so happy.

I'm one hundred per see if they have anywhere else because I'm not on LinkedIn, but I will co check. Maybe I can just find a normal website SETTI CTI.

Yeah, he love it. Thanks for that.

That's dope.

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