Pablo Escobar Gaviria was born in Rio Negro in Colombia on December 1, 1949. His father was a farmer and his mother was an elementary school teacher. But Pablo had other plans. On the streets of Medellin he started his criminal career in his teens. It is said he used to steal tombstones, sandblast the names of them and sell them to smugglers in Panama.

#1 His ROI was 20,000 percent

In business, return on investment (ROI), refers to the return you see on each dollar you invest into your business. Drug kingpin Pablo Escobar saw an ROI of as much as 20,000%. Simply put, for each $1 invested into the drug trade he made about $200 in return.

#2 Rats Ate $1 Billion Of Pablo Escobar’s Profits Each Year

Pablo Escobar had such staggering amount of pure cash money that every year he’d write off 10% of the money because rats would get into the storage lockers and actually eat it (some was also lost due to water damage). According to Roberto Escobar, one among Pablo’s nearest brothers, annual profits were nearly $20 billion–most going directly to Pablo.

#3 Drug lord Pablo Escobar burned $2 million to save his daughter from the cold

The Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar, who died in 1993, made a fire with 2 million dollars in cash to stop his daughter from freezing to death. They were hiding at a farm in the mountains surrounding the town of Medellin, Colombia. He did everything humanly possible to save the lives of his family and body guard. However, his girl was freezing and they urgently needed fire for for both heat and cooking. So, what did Pablo do? He literally burned cash.

#4 Pablo Escobar bought a Learjet to move his cash

After seeing soaring profits, Escobar and his cartel needed a better way to move cash from the U.S. to Colombia. initially a tiny plane was adequate, as it held about $10 million. However, an upgrade was soon needed and Escobar bought a Learjet, that could transport 10 millions per trip.

#5 Pablo Escobar Was Suspected Of Bombing the World Trade Center

Despite the various grievous crimes Escobar was admittedly liable for; he was appalled to be a suspect in the World Trade Center bombing. So much so that he sent a personal note to the United States Ambassador to Colombia stating; “You can take me off the list because if I had done it I would be saying why I did it and what I want”.

#6 Pablo Escobar built his own barrio

During his prime years, Escobar was a popular guy in Colombia having established food programs, building parks and soccer fields. However, his masterpiece is arguably the Barrio Pablo Escobar, a neighborhood of 450 red brick homes housing a thousand of Medellin’s most indigent who lived there free of charge. The only downside was that youngsters from different areas were coming to Barrio Pablo Escobar to sell drugs.

#7 Cold blooded killer

It is estimated that Escobar was personally responsible for somewhere around 4,000 deaths. His targets were not just within the drug world, as they also included political figures. Escobar was infamously involved in the death of a Colombian presidential candidate because he supported extradition of Escobar to the United States. He also destroyed a considerable quantity of Colombia’s capital city, Bogota, when he bombed a building.

#8 As much as $2,500 every month on Rubber Bands

Pablo spent $2,500 on rubber bands monthly! The profits at the time were reported to be somewhere around $20 billion. So much loose cash was coming in that he allegedly spent $2,500 on rubber bands alone, simply to hold the money together.

#9 The richest man in the world

In 1989, Forbes magazine named the infamous Pablo Escobar the seventh richest man in the world having accumulated a fortune somewhere between $25 and $30 billion. If Escobar was included on the Forbes billionaire rankings these days, he’d be tied for seventh.

#10 A $10 Billion Dollar Bribe

Pablo’s most alarming nightmare was a little issue referred to as extradition. Had the Colombian government successfully extradited Pablo to the United States, there is not any doubt the billionaire drug kingpin would have rotted for the rest of his life in a very little solitary prison cell. In order to stop his extradition, Pablo made an absolutely insane offer to the Colombian government. In exchange for making extradition illegal and a full pardon, Pablo offered to payoff Colombia’s entire national debt, which at the time stood at slightly over $10 billion.

#11 Pablo Escobar’s paradise now houses refugees and hippos

Near the small northwestern Colombian city of Puerto Triunfo, Pablo Escobar once built himself a vacation getaway befitting a man of his stature. Today, though, that paradise is in ruins. Everything that could be gutted has been gutted by individuals searching for reported stashes of coke or money. Its only residents are families of refugees from the country’s war against guerrilla fighters and about 20 hippos which roam the area with the same kind of impunity that Pablo enjoyed decades past.

#12 Robin Hood image

The poor people of Colombia saw Escobar as a Robin Hood figure. He spent millions on parks, schools, soccer stadiums, hospitals and churches in western Colombia. He even distributed cash to the poor through housing projects and other civic activities. In 1982, Escobar was elected as a deputy/alternative representative to the House of Representatives of Colombia’s Congress.

Bonus Secret: How Pablo Escobar Died

Pablo Escobar, head of the notorious Medellin drug cartel and one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, was killed on 2 December 1993,Thursday during a shootout with Colombian security forces. Escobar, who turned 44 the day before his Death. Hundreds of troopers and police encircled Escobar’s Medellin hide-out, which they had identified through a traced telephone call, and killed the drug lord and a bodyguard during a 20-minute shootout when Escobar and his bodyguard attempt to escape through the rooftop.