List of Famous Drug Lords

Pablo Escobar

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria
First Name Pablo
Last Name Escobar
Born on December 1, 1949
Died on December 2, 1993 (aged 44)

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist who was the founder and sole leader of the Medellín Cartel. Dubbed "The King of Cocaine," Escobar is the wealthiest criminal in history, having amassed an estimated net worth of US$30 billion by the time of his death—equivalent to $59 billion as of 2019—while his drug cartel monopolized the cocaine trade into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s.

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Joaquín Guzmán Loera

First Name Joaquín
Born on April 4, 1957 (age 66)
Born in Mexico, Sinaloa
Height 168 cm | 5'6

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, commonly known as "El Chapo" because of his 168 cm stature, is a Mexican drug lord and former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate. He is considered to have been the most powerful drug trafficker in the world.

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Enedina Arellano Félix

First Name Enedina
Born on April 12, 1961 (age 62)
Born in Mexico, Sinaloa

Enedina Arellano Félix de Toledo is a Mexican drug lord who leads the criminal organization known as the Tijuana Cartel.

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Ramón Arellano Félix

First Name Ramón
Last Name Félix
Born on August 31, 1964
Died on February 10, 2002 (aged 37)
Born in Mexico, Sinaloa

Ramon Eduardo Arellano Félix was a Mexican drug lord who alongside his brothers founded and led the Tijuana Cartel. He was the leader of the enforcement wing of the organization until his assassination on February 10, 2002.

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Ismael Zambada García

First Name Ismael
Last Name García
Born on January 1, 1948 (age 75)
Born in Mexico, Sinaloa

Ismael Zambada García is a Mexican suspected drug lord and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate based in Sinaloa, Mexico. Before he assumed leadership of the entire cartel, he served as the logistical coordinator for its Zambada-García faction, which has overseen the trafficking of cocaine and heroin into Chicago and other US cities by aircraft, narcosubs, container ships, go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers, and automobiles.

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Rafael Caro Quintero

First Name Rafael
Last Name Quintero
Born on October 24, 1952 (age 70)
Born in Mexico, Sinaloa

Rafael Caro Quintero is a Mexican drug lord who co-founded the now-disintegrated Guadalajara Cartel with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and other drug traffickers in the late 1970s. He is also the founder and current suspected leader of the newly formed Caborca Cartel based in Sonora. He is also the brother of fellow drug trafficker Miguel Caro Quintero, the founder and former leader of the defunct Sonora Cartel.

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Frank Lucas

First Name Frank
Last Name Lucas
Born on September 9, 1930
Died on May 30, 2019 (aged 88)

Frank Lucas was an American drug trafficker who operated in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. Lucas boasted that he smuggled heroin using the coffins of dead American servicemen, but this claim is denied by his Southeast Asian associate, Leslie "Ike" Atkinson. Rather than hide the drugs in the coffins, they were hidden in the pallets underneath, as depicted in the feature film American Gangster (2007) in which he was played by Denzel Washington, although the film fictionalized elements of Lucas' life for dramatic effect. In 1976, Lucas was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 70 years in prison; however, after becoming an informant, his sentence was reduced to five years. He was convicted of the same offense in 1984, and sentenced to seven years in prison. He died in 2019.

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Pablo Acosta Villarreal

First Name Pablo
Last Name Villarreal
Born on January 26, 1937
Died on April 1, 1987 (aged 50)
Born in Mexico

Pablo Acosta Villarreal, commonly referred to as El Zorro de Ojinaga was a Mexican narcotics smuggler who controlled crime along a two-hundred mile stretch of U.S.-Mexico border. At the height of his power, he was smuggling 60 tons of cocaine per year for the Colombians—in addition to the incalculable amounts of marijuana and heroin that were the mainstay of his business. He was the mentor and business partner of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the so-called 'Lord of the Skies', who took over after Acosta's death.

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Griselda Blanco

Ana Griselda Blanco Restrep
First Name Griselda
Died on September 3, 2012 (aged 42)

Griselda Blanco Restrepo, known as La Madrina, the Black Widow, the Cocaine Godmother and the Queen of Narco-Trafficking, was a Colombian drug lord of the Medellín Cartel and a pioneer in the Miami-based cocaine drug trade and underworld during the 1980s through the early 2000s. It has been estimated that she was responsible for up to 2,000 murders while transporting cocaine from Colombia to New York, Miami and Southern California. She was shot and killed on September 3, 2012, at the age of 69. At her height, Blanco was one of the richest and most dangerous women in the world, and was the most powerful drug kingpin in the world. She became the first-ever billionaire female criminal, ruling her multi-million dollar drug trafficking empire with an iron fist, and becoming one of the deadliest women of all time.

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Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela

First Name Gilberto
Last Name Orejuela
Born on January 30, 1939
Died on May 31, 2022 (aged 83)

Gilberto José Rodríguez Orejuela is a Colombian former drug lord, who once was one of the leaders of the Cali Cartel, based in the city of Cali.

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Eduardo Arellano Félix

First Name Eduardo
Last Name Félix
Born on October 11, 1956 (age 66)

Eduardo Arellano Félix is a Mexican drug trafficker, brother of Benjamín, Ramón, Javier and sister Enedina, all drug traffickers. The Arellano-Félix Organization, also known as the Tijuana Cartel, has been responsible for numerous murders and the smuggling of thousands of tons of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine for more than a decade. The DEA believes that the Arellano-Félix brothers were responsible for the numerous smuggling tunnels that were found in January 2006.

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Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix

First Name Francisco
Last Name Félix
Born on October 24, 1949
Died on October 18, 2013 (aged 63)
Born in Mexico, Sinaloa

Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix was a Mexican drug lord and former leader of the Tijuana Cartel, a drug trafficking organization. He was the oldest of seven brothers and headed the criminal organization early in the 1990s alongside them. Through his brother Benjamín, Francisco Rafael joined the Tijuana Cartel in 1989 following the arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, one of the most prominent drug czars in Mexico during the 1980s. When the Arellano Félix took control of the organization in the early 1990s, tensions with the rival Sinaloa Cartel prompted violent attacks and slayings from both fronts.

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Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela

First Name Miguel
Last Name Orejuela
Born on August 15, 1943 (age 79)

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Orejuela is a Colombian drug lord, formerly one of the leaders of the Cali Cartel, based in the city of Cali. He is the younger brother of Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela. He married Miss Colombia 1974, Marta Lucía Echeverry.

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Arturo Beltrán Leyva

First Name Arturo
Last Name Leyva
Born on September 27, 1961
Died on December 16, 2009 (aged 48)
Born in Mexico, Nuevo León

Marcos Arturo Beltrán Leyva was an organized crime figure and the leader of the Mexican drug trafficking organization known as the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, which he and his brothers Carlos, Alfredo and Héctor founded. His cartel was responsible for cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine production, transportation and wholesaling. It controlled numerous drug trafficking corridors into the United States and was responsible for human smuggling, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, murder, contract killing, torture, gun-running and other acts of violence against men, women, and children in Mexico. The organization was connected with the assassinations of numerous Mexican law enforcement officials.

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José Santacruz Londoños

First Name José
Last Name Londoños
Born on October 1, 1943
Died on March 5, 1996 (aged 52)

José Santacruz Londoño, also known as Chepe Santacruz, was a Colombian drug lord. Along with Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, Santacruz was a leader of the Cali Cartel.

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Pedro Avilés Pérez

First Name Pedro
Last Name Pérez
Born on April 11, 1943
Died on September 15, 1978 (aged 35)
Born in Mexico, Sinaloa

Pedro Avilés Pérez, also known as "El León de la Sierra", was a Mexican drug lord in the state of Sinaloa beginning in the late 1960s.

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Manuel Noriega

Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno
First Name Manuel
Last Name Noriega
Born on February 11, 1934
Died on May 29, 2017 (aged 83)

Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was a Panamanian politician and military officer who was the de facto ruler of Panama from 1983 to 1989. An authoritarian ruler who amassed a personal fortune through drug trafficking operations, he had longstanding ties to United States intelligence agencies before the U.S. invasion of Panama removed him from power.

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William Leonard Pickard

First Name William
Last Name Pickard
Born on October 21, 1945 (age 77)

William Leonard Pickard is one of two people convicted in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) manufacturing case in history. In 2000, while moving their LSD laboratory across Kansas, Pickard and Clyde Apperson were pulled over while driving a Ryder rental truck and a follow car. The laboratory had been stored near a renovated Atlas-E missile silo near Wamego, Kansas. Gordon Todd Skinner, one of the men intimately involved in the case but not charged due to his cooperation, owned the property where the laboratory equipment was stored.

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Khun Sa

First Name Khun
Born on February 22, 1934
Died on October 26, 2007 (aged 73)
Born in Myanmar, Shan State

Khun Sa was a Shan drug lord. Before he assumed the name "Khun Sa" in 1976, he was known primarily by his Chinese name, Zhang Qifu (張奇夫). He was born in Hpa Hpeung village, in the Loi Maw ward of Mongyai, Northern Shan State, Burma.

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Edgar Valdez Villarreal

First Name Edgar
Last Name Villarreal

Edgar Valdez Villarreal, also known as La Barbie, is a Mexican-American former drug lord and formerly a high-ranking lieutenant of the now disbanded Beltrán Leyva Cartel. Valdez is currently serving a 49 year prison sentence at USP Coleman II in Florida.

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