'Queen of Meth': New film to chart highs and lows of FBI's most wanted drug trafficker (and Tom Arnold's sister)



The female version of Scarface, she is America’s most notorious drug baroness.

Lori Arnold-Woten, has been released from prison after serving 16 years, and now a controversial film is being planned about her life.

For Arnold-Woten became infamous after being convicted of running a massive criminal enterprise, drug trafficking, multiple counts of money laundering, and possession and manufacture of methamphetamine- the drug she introduced to America in the 1990s.

Former drug baroness Lori Arnold and sister to actor Tom Arnold, was known as Scarface in a Skirt in prison. Now clean, and happily married to John Woten

‘I admit I was a meth millionaire,’ says Arnold, whose brother is Hollywood actor Tom Arnold.

‘In less than five years after I tried my first line of meth, I had sold enough of the drug to buy a bar, a range of sports cars, several planes, a 170-acre horse ranch, 14 houses, a car lot, and I owned $73,000 in jewellery alone.’

By the time the FBI caught up with her, cops were able to confiscate $10m of her assets, making Arnold-Woten one of the most successful drug barons of our time- not bad for a woman who dropped out of school with no qualifications.

Lori Arnold with her brother Tom Arnold and his then-wife Julie Champnella at the height of Lori's drug dealing infamy

‘I was born one of seven step and half-siblings in Ottumwa, a farming town in rural Iowa, USA. I was just a normal kid who studied hard, but I dropped out of High School when I decided I’d just had enough,’ she says.

Still looking glamorous despite decades of drug abuse, and years in some of America’s toughest prisons, she added: ‘One day, my brother-in-law came round, and he bought with him some powder that he said was called “biker dope”.

‘I remember he emptied a small paper wrap of the white powder onto my kitchen table. Using a rolled up, dirty one dollar note, we snorted it. And the effect was instant. Life would never be the same again, for I had discovered meth.’

Pictured with then-husband Floyd and their son Josh, she was caught at a time when she was earning $300,000 a week

Methamphetamine is a central nervous system stimulant drug that is similar in structure to amphetamine.

Most meth is made in small, illegal laboratories, where its production endangers those who try and ‘cook’ it.

Yet that was all to change in the 1990s, when Lori Arnold started meth production on an industrial scale, an operation that would cause an epidemic of the drug to sweep the world.

Lori's brother is actor Tom Arnold. He has had his own battles with drugs and alcohol

Today, the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Det. Sgt Andy Waite, has said that police had noticed ‘a gradual rise in the reporting of the use and manufacturing of the drug’ in the UK in the last two to three years.

He said the increased use and production of the drug in the UK was ‘something we are alarmed about’ and is being monitored by police, who are concerned that the drug is ‘incredibly addictive.’

‘I was snorting it day and night,’ admits Arnold-Woten, ‘and I would stay up for days and weeks at a time, completely unable to sleep.

‘One night I remember driving down the road, but I was so spaced out from staying up three nights in a row that I nearly drove straight towards an oncoming truck. Thankfully the driver started honking just in time.’

And as her habit increased, so did business. ‘By 1986 I was running a fleet of cars to and from California to buy huge, ten pound loads of meth, with $100,000 in cash. On any given day I would be carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in my purse.’

‘I had so much money I didn’t know what to do with it, so I had to stuff it in the walls of my house,’ she says.

The 50-year-old was America's first major female drug baron and made millions of dollars during the 80's and 90's after introducing Methamphetamine to the US

‘But people kept saying to me, “I need some more of this stuff!” and I quickly moved up the food chain, buying meth in bulk from Kansas, cutting out the middleman.

‘I remember the dealer handed me a quarter pound, worth $6,000 and casually told me, “pay me when you get it.”’

But in January of 1991, Lori Arnold-Woten’s 177-acre horse ranch in Ottumwa, Iowa, was raided by the FBI, the DEA, ATF and OPD.

‘I suspected the raid was coming,’ remembers Arnold-Woten. ‘A stable boy had phoned me as I whizzed through town in my red jaguar, to tell me things were getting weird at the farm.

Cars had been parked nearby full of men with binoculars trained on the farm and with good reason.

She ran her super-lab - producing ten pounds of Meth every fortnight

Since 1991 the ranch had been turned by Arnold into her own super-lab, a self-contained, state-of-the-art computerized meth lab.

There, in an underground trailer buried in the hills, a skilled chemist would produce ten pound batches of the deadly drug every forty-eight hours.

‘I hid it in my freezer with a dehumidifier to dry-it out, and it was almost too heavy to carry,’ remembers Lori Arnold-Woten, who says she would prefer Angelina Jolie to play her in the film of her life.

‘The operation had got too big to go unnoticed, and undercover surveillance had secretly watched me trading in 350 pounds of meth, with a value of $11m.’

Even Arnold-Woten’s celebrity connections couldn’t keep the drug baron out of prison.

By this time, Arnold’s actor brother Tom had become a national celebrity.

The successful actor was about to marry Roseanne Barr, America’s most famous actress of the time.

Scarface: A film of Lori's life - similar to Al Pacino's 1983 cocaine-fuelled movie - is set to be made. She said she would like Angelina Jolie to play her character

‘The FBI dug up photos of me standing in front of Tom and Roseanne’s private jet with their Cuban pilots, which looked bad. But I swear to this day they weren’t involved in the drugs.

‘Roseanne and Tom arrived at court in their limo with $400,000 in cash, to try and bail me out. But that just didn’t happen.’

Instead, Arnold-Woten pleaded guilty and served eight years, leaving behind her young son who was just ten years old. She was released from Alderson federal penitentiary, West Virginia, in 1999.

There she was known in jail as ‘Scarface in a skirt,’ but even after being released, Arnold-Woten couldn’t resist being lured back into the meth game.

‘I tried to go straight, working at a meat packing plant, but I hated it. $300 a week feels bad when you remember earning $300,000 a week,’ she admits.

Tom Arnold and then-wife Roseanne Barr, tried to bail Lori out of prison when she was arrested in the 1990s. They had no involvement with her drug dealing

‘When someone offered me the chance to sell an ‘eight-ball’ [three and a half grams] of meth, I jumped at the chance. As long as I could keep it under control, I wouldn’t get caught. Would I?’

Within weeks she had bought another bar with her profits. Business was up and running again.

Predictably, Lori had hit the meth harder than ever before; sleeping no more than one night a week, and going on massive binges.

She paid a friend five dollars apiece for a cup of her daughter’s urine to pass drug tests, and bought another Jaguar.

Then on October 25th 2005, she sold a quarter pound of meth to an undercover narcotics cop in a supermarket car park.

‘I suddenly saw a lot of cops running towards my car, and I tried to lock the doors, but then the guns came out.

‘I just stared out of the windscreen. They asked, “what’s the matter with you?” And I just said, “I’m going back to prison.” I’d hit a wall. I was tired of drugs, tired of looking over my shoulder.’

‘In prison I knew I had to get clean, to get my son back. So I became addicted to exercise, instead of drugs. I slept and ate a lot, and it was very hard.’

Arnold-Woten was released three years ago, and says, ‘I am still on probation, yet I am proud to say I am clean and sober. But they still watch my bank account for anything “exciting”.’

Today, Arnold-Woten works in a call centre in Phoenix, Arizona, where she says cold-calling customers is frustrating when they swear at her or put the phone down.

‘But I just laugh,’ she says, with a rueful smile. ‘They don’t know who they’re dealing with.’