dopeheadlogic
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2010
- Messages
- 6
I have always been fascinated with high level drug dealers. These guys need to produce and sell/smuggle billions of dollars of illegal products while running organizations that rival most large corporations in terms of complexity and profitability. Due to my interest I have decided to write up bios of famous figures in the history of drug prohibition. I will post these as I complete them- if you guys have anybody you want to know more about please let me know.
Brian O’Dea
Brian O’Dea is known as one of the fathers of the Canadian drug trade. He was born to a fairly prominent family in Newfoundland, Canada in 1948. Brian was involved in the drug trade from a young age, as a teenager he got into the game by realizing that if he bought bigger quantities of drugs, and then sold them to his friends he would be able to get high for free. This came to him easy enough, and was his first taste of drug money. O’dea got deeper into the drug trade and petty crime, he did stints in and out of jail for the next couple of years and while in prison Brian met a man named”Benny” who claimed to know some serious people in Colombia, people with cocaine and cannabis connections. Think Carlos Lederer and Boston George.
Eventually Brian found himself on a plane to Bogota, Colombia with 500 dollars cash and a dream. The men he had been connected with thought that this gringo with a plan was amusing, and gave him 50 grams of cocaine and an invitation to come back and grab some more if he could move it. O’Dea came back again and again, and began to move some serious weight. Eventually O’Dea’s organization got so big that he needed to purchase a surplus DC-6 cargo plane to transport his product from Colombia back to the United States. Rather than ya know, hiring a pilot like a reasonable person, Brian decided to fly the plane himself. This would be fine if he was an aviation expert, or at least familiar with the plane, but Brian decided that reading the planes manual was all he needed to do. Suffice to say on one trip to the US from Colombia his engines conked out somewhere over the Pacific Ocean- the plane went down along with the 27 tons of ganja on it. After this O’Dea shifted focus to boats, specifically commercial fishing vessels. He reasoned that if he smuggled the narcotics to international waters- either by vessel or airdrop, the fishermen could pick them up and go home without drawing any suspicion. O’Dea targeted certain ports around the Pacific Northwest that were not known to be big drug smuggling areas and always disguised his operation with mundane and daily port activities, even going so far as to pretend to drop boxes and having fish fall out if people were watching.
By 1987 Brian O’Dea and his organization employed more than 100 people nationwide, had a fleet of trucks and boats and gross revenues of over 200 million dollars- just for 1986/1987. Brian O’Dea ranks among the most prolific drug smugglers in the history of drug prohibition. All good things come to an end however- O’Dea was eventually ratted out- In 1990 he ended up sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. After spending one year in US prison, he was transferred to Canada and paroled in 1995. After his release from prison O’Dea put this now famous ad in the National Post: "Having successfully completed a 10-year sentence, incident free, for importing seventy-five tons of marijuana into the United States, I am now seeking a legal and legitimate means to support myself and my family. Business experience: Owned and operated a successful fishing business -- multi-vessel, one airplane, one island and processing facility. Simultaneously owned and operated a fleet of tractor-trailer trucks conducting business in the western United States.... I also participated in the executive level management of 120 people worldwide in a successful pot-smuggling venture with revenues in excess of $100-million US annually." Brian O’Dea still resides in his native Canada where he is a television producer and the author of a book about his exploits.
Also there is a badass episode of “Masterminds” on Tru TV about O’dea
Brian O’Dea
Brian O’Dea is known as one of the fathers of the Canadian drug trade. He was born to a fairly prominent family in Newfoundland, Canada in 1948. Brian was involved in the drug trade from a young age, as a teenager he got into the game by realizing that if he bought bigger quantities of drugs, and then sold them to his friends he would be able to get high for free. This came to him easy enough, and was his first taste of drug money. O’dea got deeper into the drug trade and petty crime, he did stints in and out of jail for the next couple of years and while in prison Brian met a man named”Benny” who claimed to know some serious people in Colombia, people with cocaine and cannabis connections. Think Carlos Lederer and Boston George.
Eventually Brian found himself on a plane to Bogota, Colombia with 500 dollars cash and a dream. The men he had been connected with thought that this gringo with a plan was amusing, and gave him 50 grams of cocaine and an invitation to come back and grab some more if he could move it. O’Dea came back again and again, and began to move some serious weight. Eventually O’Dea’s organization got so big that he needed to purchase a surplus DC-6 cargo plane to transport his product from Colombia back to the United States. Rather than ya know, hiring a pilot like a reasonable person, Brian decided to fly the plane himself. This would be fine if he was an aviation expert, or at least familiar with the plane, but Brian decided that reading the planes manual was all he needed to do. Suffice to say on one trip to the US from Colombia his engines conked out somewhere over the Pacific Ocean- the plane went down along with the 27 tons of ganja on it. After this O’Dea shifted focus to boats, specifically commercial fishing vessels. He reasoned that if he smuggled the narcotics to international waters- either by vessel or airdrop, the fishermen could pick them up and go home without drawing any suspicion. O’Dea targeted certain ports around the Pacific Northwest that were not known to be big drug smuggling areas and always disguised his operation with mundane and daily port activities, even going so far as to pretend to drop boxes and having fish fall out if people were watching.
By 1987 Brian O’Dea and his organization employed more than 100 people nationwide, had a fleet of trucks and boats and gross revenues of over 200 million dollars- just for 1986/1987. Brian O’Dea ranks among the most prolific drug smugglers in the history of drug prohibition. All good things come to an end however- O’Dea was eventually ratted out- In 1990 he ended up sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. After spending one year in US prison, he was transferred to Canada and paroled in 1995. After his release from prison O’Dea put this now famous ad in the National Post: "Having successfully completed a 10-year sentence, incident free, for importing seventy-five tons of marijuana into the United States, I am now seeking a legal and legitimate means to support myself and my family. Business experience: Owned and operated a successful fishing business -- multi-vessel, one airplane, one island and processing facility. Simultaneously owned and operated a fleet of tractor-trailer trucks conducting business in the western United States.... I also participated in the executive level management of 120 people worldwide in a successful pot-smuggling venture with revenues in excess of $100-million US annually." Brian O’Dea still resides in his native Canada where he is a television producer and the author of a book about his exploits.
Also there is a badass episode of “Masterminds” on Tru TV about O’dea
My buddy rang me yesterday to say she had a smoke with him the other night.
