 Not only did he have a relationship with the government, but he had a ball in the FBI In this world, you look out for number one With any people take that ball to the grave. These guys are on the street. So they're involved in hustling All right, welcome back into the original gangsters podcast We are very very fortunate to have an og from the American dope game like few others You might know him by the name Boston George. It's George young Had a movie made about his life back in the early 2000s the movie blow with Johnny Depp playing a character that was inspired Written about the life of George young who who really Was the the founder was the catalyst behind the American coke boom of the 1970s he invented the market so to speak on the west coast of the United States and then it spread like wildfire George young the Original gangster when it came to the American dope trade. Thank you so much for coming into the og podcast and sitting here and chopping it up with us Glad to be here in the motor city. Yep so I'm Scott Bernstein along with my co-host Jimmy Bucci Lato. Yo and our Producer extraordinaire Roberto Borschin. It is an honor to be here and this is you know, we have George in studio We are incredibly honored and privileged to be able to pick his brain about his you know He's lived probably a hundred movie scripts And you know, I'm sure that his life is even crazier than what we saw in the Excellent film blow that was helmed by Ted Demi our RIP Ted that was his last film and it was really a masterpiece It's the good fellas of drug movies And it's just has so much rewatch ability. So that has really kind of embedded George as an icon Not just you know in American true crime filmmaking, but in you know, American underworld lore Overall, so let's let's let's dive in George Kind of like let's let's start from the beginning They call you Boston George because you you come from way with Massachusetts We miss Massachusetts was 20 miles south of Boston in the suburbs. It was like happy days and There were no drugs no crime No guns no violence nothing. Okay, and I attempted several colleges and I'm one day a Christmas vacation some Christmas break Tuner and I decided the Howard College because If you graduated from college in the in the 60s you made ten thousand dollars a year And if you were a blue collar worker, you made five thousand and You know Bob Dylan said I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more So tuner and I Secured a little sports car and we drove we were so dumb we drove across the country In the winter after Christmas and tuna for listeners tuna was the the big Yeah, the the hulking right-hand man of the Johnny Depp character in the film He was played by the actor Ethan Supley and he was a you know a big-boned gregarious then yeah very Affable would you say that the the portrayal that you saw in the film was accurate to the way the tuna really was Yeah, it was great. So go on. You know tuna was the original John Belushi And The reason we really love college is because tuna was going to Colorado School of Mines and And he took his clothes off and walked in a girl's sorority house and so He was out of college and After a couple years of college I became bored and I Decided to mage it the University of Tennessee in a bar called a wild mouse And so I was basically out and done there was one last place to go California and We bought a little tr3 sports car and we drove out there and We ended up in Belmont shoes and Long Beach, California because I was Still wanted to go to college and I figured well, it's free here out there in California. We can you know I'll go to Long Beach State and We started looking for a little place on the beach to live. It was a beach town a college town We were driving by and it was a sign for rent and it was a duplex and these girls were up on the balcony and And They looked down at us to say you guys gonna rent down there and I said, yeah, and they said where you from and I'm like nobody knew it how Waymouth was you know Waymouth, Massachusetts and They said I said Boston and they said which man I said George And I said come on up Boston George has some wire and smoke a joint And that was how I got them and the rest is history and they were all stewardess, right? Yeah, so they say in the film Johnny Dupes as I met a thousand girls that first day and 90% of them were airline stewardess. They were 3,000 airline stewardess is a living Manhattan Beach and they would they would Prove to be very useful and you're so I changed my major from mocking to fornication With all a's right yeah 4.0 Wow You hit the books pretty hard guys Right, right. So so then how what's your first taste of? Initially you start with marijuana smuggling correct And that's where the flight attendants and George kind of am I right? You kind of define yourself more as an outlaw than a gangster. He's more of kind of like a you know a narcotics pirate Desperado the difference between a criminal Outlaws that a criminal Breaks the law for money and an outlaw Breaks a lot to define himself He's a self-centered arrogant egotistical son of a bitch and he's a show Can't make this kind of stuff up. This is this is the the the oracle the sage the wisdom coming from this man is Just emanating through the studio. That's just because I gave you a hundred So kind of talk about well when you started to kind of Started your your your empire started very small started moving just you know small amounts of marijuana. I'm all right, all right my boyhood buddy who I grew up with in Waymouth and He went to the University of Massachusetts. Dolly. Is it Dooley? No, they just called him Dooley in the film No, Dooley was another guy. Okay, but Frank was majoring in restaurant management and he worked at the Mod Copkins and San Francisco for the summer as part of his his you know curriculum and he Stopped by Manhattan Beach, which is you know to the south was and okay, and just say goodbye I'll see you next year or whatever and I had a bullet fish bowl full of pot in the living room He said would you get all that pot and I said He can buy it right here on the beach Frank. I said it's cheap He saw much to buy it for I said like 30 40 oz of kilo And he said he said you know much that cost back in University of Massachusetts and he said three to four hundred dollars You know what Frank said suppose I Light bulb off in your hair and bring it back there to you It won't make a lot of money That's how it all started. He started driving it, right? Yeah and motorhomes when a bag goes How long did that last lasted a long time because I used the same con Concept would cocaine to know I'm saying how long did it go? How long did it was the period when you were driving it to when you started flying it? Well, the period lasted like two years and we were making a lot of money I mean which was to consider a lot of money in those days thousands of dollars But I became bored Conceived this idea. I said Why don't we go to Mexico and get our own pot? They said how the hell we get it out of there and I so apply it and they said you don't have a license I said, I don't care. We'll get a plane. I said we can move. We'll be getting I so will steal one And so I convinced these guys from University of Massachusetts that we're making a lot of money already to get out of the port of Iata, Mexico and I didn't speak Spanish. That's one of the best scenes in the film, too Where they all go down there and they're all looking to try to find someone that can hook them up with marijuana and they're and they're all asking different people and then The the Derrick for real character whose real name was a Richard Barillo. Is that correct? He's running around trying to like he's a hairdresser and then the film He's like instead of looking for marijuana. He's taking a guy and like saying oh, you'd have a better haircut If it was this way instead of that way. There's one of my favorite scenes in the film. Go ahead George I I guess about the second week My idea was suddenly You know a total failure to them. They would start to look at me in the in the barn We used to go to the Oceano bar and have beer and whatever and drink and overlook Vendera's Bay and put a way out there and We couldn't even find a joint and They said we'll leave in the morrow my ego suddenly Vaporized and I didn't know what that'll say Suddenly You could see out the the door of the bar at the street. It was close by and everything and old yellow Volkswagen pulled up the flowers painted on it and I'll cut this girl and she had yellow hair to match the Volkswagen like She walked right up to the table. She said hi. My name is Linda And I said sit down and she said you know what? She said I've been watching you guys for a couple weeks now You've asked everybody in this town. It's up to police chief of pot And she said you need to be saved And I said save us and she said I live With one of the biggest pot connections in this whole area and she said get in the car. I'll take you there right now And so she took me there and he was the son of a Mexican general and He had sport fisherman boats and he had the movement for all the pot on the mountains and this and that And he said how much do you want? I said all of it. He said, how are you gonna get out of here? I said I'll fly it out. He said you're a plane. I said, yeah And I lied First time And Everything went well we left when we went back to states and these guys started pressuring me again Frank and the rest of them You're crazy. Where are we gonna get a plane? I said, we'll steal it Who's gonna fly it? And I said I'll take some quick lessons and I'll fly the son of a bitch So you had never taken a flying lesson before you you like boned up on it before you started stealing Yeah, a little bit and the guy who taught me this whole man Helping Sonoma skypark in California. He's his name is George to ironically and he He said I didn't have an instrument rating and he said you're only as good as sundown, George First trip coming at the Baja Son was starting to set I Asked God to help me And he got me there. It was dry like beds and I landed and unloaded and after that It was all downhill or uphill Wow, so you landed in Long Beach and and then you were you were still trying to land along We should land out and dry like beds up by Palm Springs. Oh, I see. Oh, that's okay Yeah, and then you were still transporting it to Boston by motor home motor home. Okay, so at that point where Was the word on the street in Boston that you were one of the key suppliers or was it still? you were People just didn't ask that kind of question as long as it was available We just kept it all secret. I see when you're live outside the law It's a good thing that everybody doesn't know When they do start to know who you are is when you have problems, right, that's what all the problems start right, okay Right. So at what point it's like Trust everyone in life, but don't trust the devil inside of them So what point do things start to go south with marijuana smuggling? You took a case out of Chicago. Is that correct? I? post posted bond like I jumped bail and I was gone for a couple years and Finding when the my mother turned me. Yeah, that's what the film depicted Yeah, the character that the Rachel Rachel Griffiths I think from six feet under played your mother in the movie And I thought she was just so compelling in that role. I thought she probably deserved an Oscar nomination She didn't get it, but how accurate was the portrayal of your mother? Exactly just was just like her Yeah, I mean to the point where she turned her own son into the government, right? He really ought to play your father because you have to I never held anything against my mother for that because we lived in a world where on Abigail Anna circle on William's Massachusetts Wasn't every day at the FBI came to people's houses and so well, you know, we're looking for your son In the film it seemed like she was embarrassed by it, but she she was totally humiliated And told me when I got out That I'd ruined her entire life And it's true. I did so what what federal penitentiary did you serve your time? I didn't I went to him Now medium and Danbury, Connecticut and in the film the the famous line is I went into prison with a bachelor's in marijuana And I graduated prison left prison with a graduate degree in cocaine, right, but ironically the one person out of Hundreds and hundreds of people I could have put me with as a cellmate. I put me with this Colombian kid And that was Carlos later. Yeah Wow Serendipity and so George, why don't you give a little background for for people that don't know who Carlos later was? kid from Columbia and he grew up his mother and father split up and she brought him up in New York City and But his dad had been a Nazi So he was this German Colombian hybrid And his mother was a beauty queen from from Columbia. Yeah, she was beautiful And then he spent some time the United States and took a lot of time in New York City. He went to school in New York City So he was educated in America and then articulate ed and highly intelligent And he was stealing cars and shipping in the Columbia Because the import tax is huge down there on foreign automobiles coming into the country and they paid off the police and they were selling them a Chevy Blaze of like $60,000 And it was a good business and it was a federal offense and that's how he ended up there and You know when you go in a cell with a guy, it's like, what do you do? What are you here for? Would you do your talk? and I said, well, I was flying dope. Okay out of Mexico and He said, do you have you have access to airplanes or whatever? He said, do you know anything about cocaine? And I really didn't Okay, and I said, how much does it cost? He said Five to ten thousand dollars a kilo in Colombia. I said, how much does it cost in the united states? And he said 60 thousand dollars At the top of my head, I said, let's go, baby. Let's rock and roll And in those days They didn't have the mandatory sentencing if you've got five years You did One third and you got parole if it was a nonviolent crime so we spent the next year and a half plotting and planning and I got out first And he got out. He had to go to immigration. I asked to be deported to Colombia And I was staying with my mother and she was And she said Every other day. I want you out of this house. You're at this grace. And I said, don't worry. I'm leaving I'm waiting for something. She said what? I said a phone call The phone call came from Colombia and you went down there. Yeah Uh And were you aware while you were in prison the level uh That of the of the people the associates that carlos was keeping in Colombia? Not really because I ain't problem. Let's go. I might as well have been A vacuum cleaner salesman. I mean, he was just another hispanic who was in the drug business because I've been in Mexico with a lot of other people, okay hispanics and And I wasn't new to this game with guns and all this and violence and whatever and But Pablo Escobar was the godfather of cocaine the most powerful But not dope kingpin. No, right at that right not that point but by the mid 80s Right, he became someone that was frequently on the Forbes list for richest men in the world. He was Uh, the the most powerful drug boss in the entire world. Who do you think let him become that? Boston George. No, no, no, I know where he's going with that. You know your state's government. Yeah, I answer that question. Yeah It's just like let's bring younger generation up to date It was a guy named chappo. I was going to tell people that's the that's the parallel right now He was one of the most wanted men in the world And why was he in the cover or every entertainment magazine in the country and all over the world In nightclubs walking around totally free would whip it all over the place or whatever. Why? Because the government wasn't coming after wasn't coming after him at that point because In order to be a good guy You have to have bad guys and vice versa Someone's got to be painted as the villain Right if there's no villain they can't be any any any good guys to catch the villain But for yeah for the millennials You know in this day and age The icon of the drug world is el chappo But before there was el chappo there was Pablo And as the johnny character johnny depth character in the movie blow says Uh, you know in case you've been living under a rock for the last 20 years This was the guy meaning Pablo Escobar And did you actually get to meet him on that first trip to columbia? Of course, that's why I went there So kind of talk about that the introduction and and and you know getting with within the proximity that you got From someone that was that powerful, but as you said wasn't that powerful yet He wanted to know What I could do for him And I wanted to know what he could do for me and I told him that I Had the expertise to move cocaine out of columbia in airplanes To be honest, there wasn't a drug enforcement agency. A lot of people don't even know this until 1974 in this country And crossing international borders in airplanes Was easy, but I didn't tell anybody that Okay And we would just simply two guys we went into business So how long were you in uh meddying for that that first trip? And then about five days and what was what were you guys doing that kind of outside of business? Were you guys socializing you guys going to the clubs? Were you guys just you know every day kind of pound in a way at what you were trying to do business wise or was there some Uh, you know And I don't how I would do it and what have you and everything and And then of course young men like sex drugs and rock and roll So at what point do you uh in in this endeavor? Do you meet your your your own wife the beauty queen from oh that came from columbia came years later years later So what year was it when you first met pablo? What year specifically are we talking about? Oh, that was like About 1972 or three. Okay, so right when the cocaine industry was Hitting hollywood and hitting some some real rich circles, but had not come anywhere near the middle class Um, oh it didn't come into the middle class for a long time Because it was 60 dollars a gram. That was a lot of money in and 60,000 a kilo a thousand it was only very very elite elitist type people that were doing cocaine Had the greatest advertising agency In the world I had the record industry And I had hollywood and I had they made it cool Yeah People people in the suburbs saw people in hollywood doing it and they they wanted to mimic that behavior and it filtered down That's all and that was the magic So talk about the growth from you know scene Getting into the cocaine industry really at the ground floor 1972 73 and then by the end of the decade we're in we're in a full-fledged coke boom And the united states is you know being there's a deluge of powder It wasn't really a deluge of powder until until we got more into the eight Until we got more into the 80s. You mean what happened is that Only people that had money did cocaine even up until the 80s and then they Created a monster called crack Devastated and destroyed a lot of people's lives cheaper version of cocaine that you smoke and Filtered down to the to the to the inner cities and cocaine you can start cocaine for two or three four five days Okay, and then you can stop High is only a shot high. It's not really super addictive unless You have addictive genes But they marketed it to To the blacks in this country and pump the ghettos full of it and You know which is And then they changed them the sentencing laws in the united states america the federal sentencing laws I know jimmy can speak to that from a more kind of a socio-academic Uh perspective it was done, you know for a reason It's done for a reason a sick reason I was in jail with 19-year-old kids that had a handful of rocks They didn't have enough to eat in it at their own house, okay And and they were going solar rocks and like They'll give them 25 years in prison 19-year-old boy Sometimes you got life And there so there was a huge disparity between those sentencing The discrepancy between powder right, you know, right, yeah And rock and it's evil Yeah, that's been a big issue For a long time and I mean even now powder cocaine is primarily used by affluent people right now. It's an expense It always has been right commodity. It's been around forever. Right. I mean, yeah thousands and thousands of years Right, you know the best things in life go to the richest people in life Yeah, and they and they get away with it. Well, everybody else is worried about You know what they're gonna eat The next day are how they're gonna pay the electric bill You know Some guy in a penthouse suite in manhattan is Snowning up their whole goddamn life savings, which don't ever make they'll never see in their whole life anyway Yeah in one night Well, that's why I mean not to digress too much But something scott and I talk about is um one of the reasons why I have a difficult time watching wolf of wall street even though I appreciate that it's a it's a good movie Is I I fucking hate those people I hate the walls for the hypocrisy And so even though I recognize it's a great film I just don't I don't like the hypocrisy of Someone from a lower lower social economic group getting caught with let's say rock cocaine and and they get a you know 20 to life And and the hypocrisy of the big shots on wall street with the I hate to say this If I didn't find Colson pablo I might have been the wolf of wall street Were you aware that there was a political climate emerging in Washington, DC with From starting with nixon and then ronald reagan this war on crime and that's just war on crime But specifically a war on drugs, right? Let's create dea. Let's beef it up and let's go after guys like george young Were you aware that there was this political? I mean because They were the enemy And when the enemy puts it on the news every night what they're gonna do next. Yeah That was like, thank you It's got fair warning Right, so you had to come up with innovative ways to Disvolved yeah, well to avoid Surveillance and and things like that Because you had a heads up That they were coming out guys like, you know So was was pablo coming? I know there was there was a part of uh There was a a point in time where pablo was actually coming with his family to the united states of vacation He went anywhere he wanted. Yeah, it was outside the white house Right as I said, there's that famous picture of him and his kids outside of the white house So did you did you socialize with pablo in the united states? Yeah numerous times. What did you guys do in america when when he was there? I heard he I heard he was more of a guy that liked to smoke pot than actually do uh cocaine That he was more of a pothead than a cokehead No, he was He wasn't a super in the drugs When you do when you sell drugs and you move them and like You know, it's like you can't own a casino in gamble because you don't own it very long So somewhat pablo's personality. What what what made pablo pablo? Pablo Was an indian Okay Like our american indians only was colombian indian 90% of all the irritable land in colombia Is owned by 10% of the population And they were all white custodians Didn't matter how much money he had because He would never accept him and them and the more You know rejected if he came he became by this way and become a state a senator. Yeah, let's say He was so powerful that he actually personally infiltrated the government. It was powerful when he wasn't he was feared And I told him I said take your money and get the hell out of here Fuck these people Just go forget it forget that That genetic ideology freak show you're on I said because I'll never never accept you and I drove him I drove him crazy. It just happens I mean he started to the point where he was putting hits out on politicians and judges and There are a lot of other people who were yeah making decisions for him too. Okay I mean he was he was a an enemy of the state. I mean it wasn't you can become a king Not knowing that you're a pawn Yeah, yeah expand that what what do you mean that other people making decisions for him? Who what do you have in mind for that? Weisman make the rules Okay For the poets and the fools Okay, so we know he's has been right. Mm-hmm. That's the way it always will be. I mean look at this country 1% of the population Controls right the end all the wealth. Mm-hmm 1% Mm-hmm. So do you think that? Pablo and Carlos had connections to us counterintelligence before Pablo got too big and they and they decided to take them out I don't think they didn't access the counterintelligence. They were and formed by You know, it's always Why is every agency Dictative dictatorial son of bitches why are they always began with three letters? CIA DA FBI CIA EPA INF right We we know that during the cold war that the united states government cozyed up to drug lords Because the drug lords were useful in neutralizing left-wing opposition groups peasant groups unions things like that So there was a full-fledged cocaine coup in bolivia. That's right. Do you know that barbie, right? But at one time The economy of the whole british empire. Oh, right. Yeah. It was based On t and all p.m. Right. Yeah, right. Yeah, the whole economy and opium whores, right? Yeah Yeah, no, and I it's been going on for ever and I you know the two most honorable professions in the world are an oldest Prostitution smuggling. Yeah, that's right. Yeah smuggling. Yeah, let's first talk about the romance you had With with the columbian beauty queen that we see in the film No, I don't want to go you want to go on to that the hell with that So that was a bad day at black rock Okay Could you talk a little bit about the richard barillo? Um In the movie he's called derrick for eos played by peewee herman Was a was a kind of a flamboyant Uh businessman in la that that you guys hooked up with the headdress. I'm right. I mean he was in he was a smart drug dealer too You know, he was in doing a line before I got there So what was his role in your business the girl I was living with? She said come on. I want to take you to meet somebody I'm she was an airline stewardess. Okay, and Richard owned the beauty shop tonsill hair power and he had nice cars and nice condos and this and that or whatever He was he was fluent And I said what point she said Because I'm gonna jump start your life Going around on the beach buying this and that She said Richard has everything So he became Partners, so it was like taking your business to another level. Let's hook him up with Richard And then after I went to jail for the pot and then I got out Called him and I said I've got something for you Richard. I haven't talked to him for a while a couple years And he said what I said I said just pick me up at the airport in LA tomorrow morning. I said I'll be taking the You know the red eye. I said I'll be in there Yeah, I said Don't bring you a Porsche. I said bring your your suburban. So I said I've got some luggage and We got to his house and I he said but it began I said open up the goddamn suitcases He did and then he got a chemist there We watched it on the thermometer Another great scene in the film with bobcat gold wave playing the chemist. Oh, yeah, right Well, and it burned 187 pure Then they went crazy He took the suitcases and he said I'll be back And I said, okay, I hope so and he came back with the suitcase full of money and then It was on from there. It was it and he knew everybody in hollywood And it was like a like a locomotive Hurling down the track a meteor Streaking through the sky Let's kind of move to where you have a falling out with carlis later who was your partner the Guy you hook up with in prison that that ties you into Escobar's crew the meddling cartel you guys are pumping hundreds and hundreds of kilos I would say a week in thousands of kilos thousands of kilos into the uh American economy and at some point carlis later kind of goes off the rails He buys an island out in the Bahamas I didn't want to buy the island Norman's key. Yeah, because my philosophy was keep changing your roads and don't Settle into one place where they can lock into you and watch you Man on the move does not get busted. I don't know fell apart So he had told you this is what his plan was to kind of take over this island Yeah, and you were like that's not a smart idea. It's like some kind of Che Guevara mentality and he got kind of strung out on on the cocaine as well So he was I don't know if he was Thinking as clear as he had been in the past the cocaine made a lot of people crazy Isn't that and at one point Pablo no longer liked what carlis was doing with the island? Isn't that correct? You maybe generating too much. Um, I mean the whole goddamn government noise, right? Yeah, right Everybody was watching right and they just watched and watched what got calls busted I told him not to hire pilots unless he knew who the fuck they were or where they came from in the background or whatever And he hired some guy who was an appliance salesman at sales and roboc Okay, lived in Jacksonville, Florida And the guy bought him a million dollar house and they started looking at him Okay, and spending money He used to want to turn call us in an appliance salesman Wow The downfall of carlis later from uh, rigid air someone who's uh, yeah a selling uh, uh washer dryers Was there a really a uh an encounter like you see in the film where you go down there and you have a face-to-face with later and he Physically assaults you and tells you you're out of the business He didn't physically assault me his little body his body covered bodyguards did okay So that really happened that seemed yeah, but I didn't care. I just wanted to go there because I knew call us I knew his whole family. It was mother everybody. Okay, and like I knew him and president and he wasn't He was cut let's put it this way call us would have been A one-punch guy behind the schoolyard. We'll wrap it up. But let's just Quickly talk. You're not a wrap it up Yeah, you tell that to my my producer and my editors. They all will agree with you anything real quick anything you want to I'll let people know about uh about you know where they can find you anything you're doing that you want people to know about well I'm not too big on the internet or whatever But maybe if ronda wants to step over here for a minute And the beautiful lovely talented ronda will let everyone know where we can find me can find george young my On facebook it's um, there's a couple boston george official sites And then the there's a docu series coming out too And you can go on youtube and look up boston george famous without the fortune and see part of the docu series the trailer Thank you so much george and we will see you next time on the og podcast