Pablo Escobar’s Hidden Cash and Where it Might Be

Pablo Escobar’s hidden cash continues to be the subject of speculation and fascination. More than 30 years after his death, the Medellin Cartel drug lord still makes headlines, mostly about his immense fortune. During his nearly two decades as the world’s top cocaine trafficker, Escobar reportedly amassed nearly $500 billion. What happened to this treasure? It has either disappeared or is difficult to find. It is believed to be scattered across Colombia.

Pablo Escobar’s fortune is hard to estimate

After entering the drug trade in 1975, Escobar quickly allied with other rising Colombian traffickers. Alongside his cousin Gustavo Gaviria, the Ochoa brothers, José Rodriguez Gacha, and Carlos Lehder, he founded the Medellin Cartel in 1976. This became the largest criminal organization of its time and the biggest drug cartel in history.

The fortune amassed by Escobar and his cartel remains unknown and extremely difficult to estimate. At his peak, Escobar was estimated to earn $420 million weekly through drug trafficking, nearly $22 billion a year. Other more ambitious estimates claim he could have generated as much as $200 million a day, or $73 billion a year. For comparison, Colombia’s GDP in the 1980s was around $35 billion, and Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest company at the time, had revenues of around $90 billion. This made the Medellin Cartel one of the biggest companies in the world at that time.

Regarding Escobar in particular, he was believed to receive around 40 percent of the cartel’s profits. He was on Forbes’ billionaire list from 1987 to 1993. In 1989, he was listed as the seventh wealthiest person globally, with an estimated fortune of at least $30 billion, a figure contradicting the cartel’s estimated revenues.

Hidden cash and investments

To manage his immense fortune, Escobar heavily relied on money laundering, using three main methods. The first was real estate investment. In 1989, Escobar was believed to own 19 residences in Medellin alone. Outside Medellin, he owned the notorious Hacienda Napoles, a giant property valued at around $63 million. He even owned a mansion in Miami, the Pastel Pink Mansion, valued at $765,000.

Along with real estate, art trade was an important means to launder drug money. Escobar was believed to have owned and sold works by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. But the main method for laundering money was hiding his cash. It is estimated that he laundered $420 million a week. In total, more than $500 billion was hidden across Colombia.

Related: Colombia Confiscates Assets of Pablo Escobar’s Brother, Medellin Cartel Hitmen Leader.

Where is Pablo Escobar’s hidden cash?

There is no map or witness that can tell where the cash is. Those who participated in hiding the cash in Colombia have either been killed or have probably already dug up their loot. In the 2017 series “Finding Escobar’s Millions,” two former CIA agents traveled to Colombia to locate Escobar’s hidden cash. They used metal detectors and ground-penetrating radar to try to find the drug lord’s fortune and understand his methods. Escobar used large plastic sheets to wrap the cash and sealed containers to protect it from dirt and rot. Despite this, it seems that wherever Escobar’s hidden cash is, it is now worthless.

Over the past 30 years, caches belonging to Escobar have been found repeatedly. In November 1989, $5 million was found buried in Medellin, followed a few months later by $25 million and 150 kg of gold. In 2009, $10 million was found in Hacienda Napoles. More recently, in 2020, Nicolas Escobar, the late drug lord’s nephew, claimed to have found $18 million in one of his uncle’s houses.

It is impossible to know how many other caches are scattered across the country. The quest for Escobar’s hidden cash has also given rise to many fake news stories. The most famous is a 2015 report by a Spanish news agency claiming a Colombian peasant had found $600 million in cash, a fact never verified.

While the location of this hidden cash is impossible to define, it is most probably located near Medellin and in the Antioquia department, former strongholds of Pablo Escobar.

Related: The Lost Treasure of Pablo Esscobar