I have been seeing a lot of ridiculous numbers on the internet such as 30 billion USD or even more, one of the stories even featured him offering to pay off the Colombian national debt which was said to be 20 billion, and a lot of people still think he can afford it without a problem.
I mean, what the hell? I know that when it comes to drug cartels urban legends have always been more popular amongst the general public than reality, but the whole myth surrounding Escobar`s personal wealth is just insanely ridiculous, and it`s being perpetuated even more these days due to the popularity of Narcos.

The reality is, 30 billion USD in the present day is more than the yearly revenue of all Mexican cartels combined, in the 80s it would be an even more ridiculous amount. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/24/do-mexican-drug-cartels-make-billion-year/ This article summarized different estimation of drug trafficking profit in Mexico and concluded that all cartels in combination is making around 6-29 billion each year. It`s literally impossible for any drug trafficker in human history to accumulate that amount of wealth, despite the high-profit nature of cocaine trafficking.

A lot of people also claim that Forbes put Escobar as one of the richest people in the world in 1987, however, Forbes made no such claim at all, they estimated Escobar`s entire net worth to be around 3 billion, and at the end of his career, around 1 billion. https://www.forbes.com/sites/halaht...llionaire-issue-in-1987/?sh=48eaf3b74369 Forbes is not a credible source for analyzing how wealthy a criminal was for sure, but at least this number is within the range of possibility. However if you search on google Escobar net worth, most of the articles would still tell you he had somewhat 30 billion USD in the 80s without any source of information. What do you guys think?

Also I have a feeling that cartel stuff in general is poorly researched and loosely defined by Law Enforcement, DEA always make claims that perpetuate myths, I think it`s for their own good, because only if they portray cartels as the super criminals can they get more fundings. For instance read this article, it`s about a cartel member stating that the cartel has really no operation on the US side of the border and what DEA had identified as "cartel members" are mostly gang members and their clients who are independent from the cartels. https://www.businessinsider.com/car...tel-influence-in-us-2021-4?r=US&IR=T This just tells me how loosely the word "cartel" is defined, they are literally putting anyone who`s involved in the international drug trafficking as a ‘cartel member’.