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’.

It's common Simon. The always inflate the numbers, and often the scope of any group be it small time local hood gangs or the biggest, Mafia included. Tony Salerno and the Genovese Family were once place on a list of the richest business in the world.
The cartels were big, no doubt, and they had more power in their countries than anyone, Mafia included, did. Look at the time El Chapo, who though in another nation than Escobar, had the power to get tunneled out of prison, with the guards looking the other way.

That is by the way a great piece you put up, very informative, and rare in a media that loves sensationalization over the truth. Thanks.

Escobar supposedly spent $2500/month on rubber bands.

That`s true, an Italian think tank claimed Ndrangheta was making 55 billion euro annually a few years ago, numbers like that is just straight bullshit. However the Escobar myth is just so prevalent that most people do still believe it, and the revenue of the mafia in both the US and Italy has been much better researched than cartels in general. I mean sure cartels are surely making a lot more money than traditional mafias but the drug mafias like Ndrangheta? not necessarily. Ndrangheta itself is a big drug cartel they buy cocaine from farmers in Colombia and ship them to Europe, they are making so much more than Colombian cartels now and perhaps on a similar level with Sinaloa. Also the power of cartels come from the corruption of the Mexican government once they step outside the country they lose that superiority.

Yeah, 2500 per month is really nothing for a guy who is worth 2 billion. He was surely making a couple of million every month.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/10-facts-that-prove-the-absurdity-of-pablo-escobars-wealth-2015-9%3famp

I know this article, but the sources he listed are mostly either other media or criminal writers who are not sensitive about numbers. A proof that this article is unreliable is that it says "In 1989, he was listed as the seventh-richest man in the world" which is absolutely nonexistent in the original source he cited from Forbes. Instead, the original source stated: In 1987, FORBES published its first international billionaires issue, now an annual list updated in real time, and estimated his wealth to be at least $3 billion. But by his final haunting mention in the mag, his net worth depreciated 67 percent, to an estimated $1 billion.


Also like I said the number vastly contradicts any sensible estimation for the profit of drug trafficking. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/24/do-mexican-drug-cartels-make-billion-year/
The results are all over the map, ranging from $6 billion to $29 billion in estimates released since 2006. But none of them pegs Mexican drug traffickers’ revenue at “half a trillion dollars,” as Perdue claimed.

In 1980s the big players in cocaine production was Escobar and Cali cartel,of course there other players in Venezuela and Perù but Escobar was more famous so the mass media covered only him and over estimated his wealth.
Anyway today there are more players in Colombia after the fall of big cartels and in Mexico with dozen of cartels but at his peak for me Escobar made from 2 to almost 10 bilion a year.

Sorry Furio I don`t think that number is possible. Forbes magazine said the Medillin cartel earned 7 billion in total from 1981 to 1986 "The cartel cleared at least $7 billion in profit (tax free!) from 1981 to 1986 alone.", so basically 1 billion per year. WSJ`s estimation is higher, "The Medellín Cartel was an empire of stunning sweep and unimaginable violence. At its height, it earned as much as $4 billion a year" But no way Escobar could earn anywhere close to that amount even at the height of his career.
You have to understand that cartels are very loosely organized criminal networks that involve tens of thousands of people, there were a lot, I mean a lot of powerful leaders in the Medellin cartel, no evidence suggests that Escobar were taking away the lion`s share of the profit. Actually, when he went into "prison" he started to tax two of the drug lords who were running the cartel on behalf of him each 250,000 per month, and it was seen as a very heavy, unfair tax, the general profit of drug traffickers are vastly overestimated, mostly because of Colombian local urban myths being written into books. The whole thing regarding cartel structure/revenue is just a mess. I would say he probably really worthed around 2-4 billion, but no more than that.