Ep 2 - Not my day to die

Summary

Cocaine Air: Episode 2 - "Not My Day to Die"

Introduction

In Episode 2 of Cocaine Air, titled "Not My Day to Die," host Jonathan Walton delves deeper into the tumultuous life of TJ Dominguez. Having survived a stint in prison, TJ opens up about his dual existence—running the world’s largest Lamborghini dealership by day and smuggling cocaine for the notorious Pablo Escobar by night. This episode captures TJ's relentless pursuit to fulfill a promise made to his dying father, setting the stage for a high-stakes journey fraught with danger and determination.

Fulfilling a Father's Promise

The episode begins with TJ reflecting on a pivotal moment influenced by his father’s dying wish.

TJ Dominguez [02:01]: "I was just tired of being used and kicked to the curb. I really was. And that's when I decided, what's right, what's wrong. It seems what's right is whatever works for you and you can get away with. And I'm not gonna let anybody push me anymore."

Determined to honor his father's last request to "finish the project," TJ faces significant obstacles, including being scammed twice by unscrupulous bankers. This frustration propels him towards a drastic decision:

TJ Dominguez [02:33]: "As a last resort, TJ Dominguez decides to become a drug smuggler because he needs $14 million fast to keep a promise he made to his father."

Embarking on the Smuggling Venture

TJ’s transition into drug smuggling begins with acquiring a speedboat and setting his sights on the Bahamas to procure marijuana, which was scarce and unreliable at the time.

TJ Dominguez [03:13]: "I think I'm ready to go and go to the Bahamas, where I figured that's where all this pot comes from. I didn't even know where the Bahamas was at. Never been to the Bahamas. I'm gonna do this. I'm geared. I'm determined to do this. I just don't know where the Bahamas are at."

Despite his fears, TJ's resolve doesn't wane. He recalls his first encounter in the Bahamas, highlighting the tense atmosphere and the constant threat of betrayal:

TJ Dominguez [05:34]: "So he said, listen, here's what you do. Put the ascent of the boat against the sand and be pointing east right now. Hit the throttle."

Navigating the Perils of Smuggling

Once in the Bahamas, TJ’s first transaction almost turns deadly. Meeting with a local dealer, he finds himself in a precarious situation where his life hangs in the balance.

TJ Dominguez [08:43]: "So the guy throws two bales. I take my knife out and I cut a window into the bail, right? I open it up. I want to make sure it's pot."

When the dealer demands more money than TJ can provide, he makes a split-second decision that showcases his survival instincts:

TJ Dominguez [14:13]: "I take my money and I give it to him. He's. How much is there? Is it 25,000? He says, 30,000. You. $5,000 short."

Unwavering, TJ promises to return the missing amount, emphasizing his commitment despite the risks:

TJ Dominguez [16:58]: "I will bring you your 5,000 back, I promise you."

Mastering the Art of Smuggling

Over the years, TJ refines his smuggling operations, transforming from a novice reliant on luck to a strategic operator. He implements various techniques to evade law enforcement, including using spotter boats and disguising his vessels to blend in seamlessly.

TJ Dominguez [25:12]: "What I did was I put spotter boats. I hired a guy to hire a bunch of little boats, okay? That's my security system."

His meticulous planning extends to every aspect of the operation, from the appearance of his boats to the timing of his runs:

TJ Dominguez [28:43]: "A smuggler's boat is either white, black, dark blue, no graphics. Why? You want to keep it simple again. You want to blend in."

Facing the Ultimate Challenge

The episode crescendos with an intense recount of a harrowing encounter with the Bahamian American Task Force. TJ describes a life-threatening situation where helicopters armed with machine guns relentlessly pursue his speedboat.

TJ Dominguez [30:44]: "One of the ones that stands out the most in my mind, being on a speedboat doing close to 100 miles per hour side by side to my other speedboat in Bat Bahamian American Task Force. A Huey helicopter with a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on the door, shooting at us, trying to take our load."

In a critical moment of desperation, TJ orchestrates a tactical retreat that not only saves his life but also that of his crew:

TJ Dominguez [33:32]: "It saved my life and the lives of the other guys."

Expanding the Empire

With the Bahamas proving to be an unreliable source for marijuana, TJ sets his sights on Colombia, recognizing the need for a more dependable supply to meet his financial goals.

TJ Dominguez [35:48]: "The weed supply in the Bahamas is extremely unreliable."

To facilitate this expansion, TJ ventures into legitimate businesses to generate the necessary capital, including a cell phone company and a car dealership. These ventures provide the financial backbone needed to sustain and grow his smuggling operations.

TJ Dominguez [34:29]: "I owned a cell phone company... It allowed me to do business, be efficient, and be connected."

Conclusion

"Not My Day to Die" offers a gripping exploration of TJ Dominguez's relentless pursuit to fulfill a personal vow amidst the dangerous world of drug smuggling. Through strategic planning, sheer determination, and numerous close calls, TJ transforms his illicit activities into a sophisticated operation. This episode sets the stage for the challenges TJ will face as he aims to secure the $14 million needed to legitimize his ventures and honor his father's legacy.

Notable Quotes

• JT Dominguez [02:33]: "I decided, what's right is whatever works for you and you can get away with."

• TJ Dominguez [16:58]: "I will bring you your 5,000 back, I promise you."

• TJ Dominguez [30:44]: "God damn it, jump then. Jump. We're not stopping."

• TJ Dominguez [33:32]: "It saved my life and the lives of the other guys."

Final Thoughts

Episode 2 of Cocaine Air masterfully intertwines high-octane action with deep personal motivations, painting a vivid portrait of TJ Dominguez's journey through the perilous landscape of drug smuggling. For listeners who crave intense storytelling coupled with intricate character development, this episode delivers a compelling narrative that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Transcript

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[Jonathan Walton]

Previously on cocaine Air.

[TJ Dominguez]

So on his dying bed, he said, son, promise me one thing. I said, sure, dad. He said, finish the project. So I said, I promise you I'll finish the project.

[Jonathan Walton]

And TJ Dominguez tries and tries and tries to finish the project to get that sugar mill in Haiti off the ground. To no avail.

[TJ Dominguez]

I was just tired of being used and kicked to the curb. I really was. And that's when I decided, what's right, what's wrong. It seems what's right is whatever works for you and you can get away with. And I'm not gonna let anybody Push me anymore. Everything that they do, I'm gonna do better.

[Jonathan Walton]

After getting scammed twice by a couple of low life bankers, he said, look.

[TJ Dominguez]

Kid, you're green behind your ears. Welcome to the real world. This ain't Miami. You got nothing without me. You got a pipe dream without me.

[Jonathan Walton]

As a last resort, TJ Dominguez decides to become a drug smuggler because he needs $14 million fast to keep a promise he made to his father.

[TJ Dominguez]

I had a talk with my dad, my dad, my dead father. And I said to my father, you're not going to approve of what I'm going to do. I'm not asking for your permission, but I'm the sugar mill. Done. But I'm going to do it my way. I'm tired of asking people for money.

[Jonathan Walton]

So TJ Gets a boat and heads for the Bahamas looking to buy enough weed to fill Willie Nelson's tour bus.

[TJ Dominguez]

So I think I'm ready to go and, and go to the Bahamas, where I figured that's where all this pot comes from. I didn't even know where the Bahamas was at. Never been to the Bahamas. I'm gonna do this. I'm geared. I'm determined to do this. I just don't know where the Bahamas are at.

[Jonathan Walton]

I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is cocaine. Air the TJ Dominguez Story Episode 2 Not My Day to D.

[TJ Dominguez]

Let me see your identification. You don't need to see his identification. We don't need to see his identification.

[Jonathan Walton]

It's 1977 now, and Star wars is the number one movie in the country. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

[TJ Dominguez]

These aren't the droids we're looking for.

[Jonathan Walton]

TJ Dominguez is 25 years old at this point, but unlike Luke Skywalker, he doesn't have a Obi Wan Kenobi to teach him how to become a drug smuggling Jedi. His Millennium Falcon is the new speedboat he just bought, and the only Han Solo he can find is far from Harrison Ford.

[TJ Dominguez]

So I go meet this old Cuban fisherman and he says, so, what do you want to do, kid? I said, I want to go to Bahamas. He says, okay, what are you gonna do in the Bahamas? I said, I'm gonna bring in some pot. You wanna go with me? He goes, what are you crazy? I'm too old to go to jail. No, I don't want to go with you. He says, but I'll tell you how to find the Bahamas. I said, okay, fine. He said, what kind of boat you got? I Said, I've got a race boat, man. I got a scarab, you know, close cabin 454, over a thousand horses. He says, Do 100 miles. He said, no, you don't need to go that fast. You go 20, 30 miles, okay. I said, so how do I find the Bahamas? He says, okay, listen, put the stern in the bow. I'm like, whoa, I don't even know what you're talking about. Stern, bow, front of the boat, back of the boat. I said, where are you going to be coming out of? I said, I'm going to probably come out of Haulover.

[Jonathan Walton]

Haulover is actually a nude beach about 20 miles south of Fort Lauderdale. It's a great spot to launch a secret mission from, because if you think about it, with hundreds of naked, oiled up bodies lying around, who's going to know us? Anything else?

[TJ Dominguez]

So he said, listen, here's what you do. Put the ascent of the boat against the sand and be pointing east right now. Hit the throttle. You don't need to go 100 miles per hour. He says, hit the throttle. Maybe 2,3000rpms, you're going east. He said, are you leaving at nighttime or daytime? He said, I'm going to leave it at nighttime. He said, okay, fine. So when you don't see any more lights from the United States, he says, now look at your watch. He says, and look forward to the left or to the right. He says, within an hour you'll see lights glowing. He says, when you see these lights glowing, head toward those lights. That's the first island in the Bahamas is called Bimini. There's two of them. There's a north island and a south island. He says, now mind you, you gotta go in between, but don't go in the middle. Because if you go in the middle of the two islands and it's low tide, you're gonna bottom out your boat, you're gonna sink it and you're gonna drown out there. He says, so? So you gotta go all the way to the south island, aim toward the beach, hang a quick left, parallel the sand, the shore, and you're gonna slide right in between both islands. I said, okay, I got that. I said, but listen, what if I don't find the islands within one hour? He says, shit. He said, turn around, you're lost. He says, go back. Don't keep going forward. There's a big ocean out there. You're not gonna find it, you're gonna run out of gas. He says, go back to the United States and go back. He said, don't be afraid. The United States. You're gonna hit Key West, Georgia. You're gonna hit some land. Just don't keep going east. Turn around and come back west. And that's how I found the Bahamas.

[Jonathan Walton]

And you weren't scared, just heading out on a boat.

[TJ Dominguez]

My heart was pounding like there's no tomorrow. Yes, I was scared. If I told you anything different, I'd be a liar.

[Jonathan Walton]

But you did it anyway.

[TJ Dominguez]

I had no choice. I became a smuggler.

[Jonathan Walton]

And keep in mind here, The Bahamas of 1977 is not the Bah Bahamas of today.

[TJ Dominguez]

The south island is like it was at the time. It was kind of like a ghost island. There's nothing happening there. People didn't even live there, so to speak. You know, just a few homes. But the north island was like Las Vegas. Glitter lights everywhere. I remember it was. I was so nervous and so adrenaline flowing through my veins that everything just glittered. And I didn't know where to dock either, right? It was like all new to me. So one sign stood out and it said, big Game. The Big Game Hotel. And I said, that's it. I'm playing the biggest game of my life. That's why I'm gonna dock. So I pulled in there.

[Jonathan Walton]

And that's where TJ meets that Bahamian guy who mistakenly thinks that he's there to buy gas. But after TJ tells him he actually wants to buy marijuana bales and bales of marijuana, the guy offers to take TJ to see his uncle, who it appears is a big time drug dealer.

[TJ Dominguez]

It was about 11 o' clock, it was nighttime, and he said, I get off in an hour, check into the hotel and I'll take you to see my uncle. So I didn't want to check into no hotel or anything like that. I didn't have that much money left. I had like $25,000. And the rooms here were expensive. And I didn't go there for as a tourist. I just wanted to buy weed. So I waited and I didn't know what to do because I had the hundreds in a bag. I didn't want to take them with me and I didn't want to leave it on the boat. So I got a beer and just sit on the boat and waited for this guy to get off work. When he got off work, we went down the ways a little bit. The island's only seven miles long, half a mile wide, so you don't really go far there. And we walked over to where his uncle was at and he introduced me to the uncle and told him that I wanted to buy weight bales at the time. Again, all kinds of things are going through my head because I have to tell you, the only industry at the time in the Bahamas other than tourism, and it really wasn't all that is piracy. You know, the islands were built on piracy. So it does exist even to today. You got to be careful out there. I mean, don't pull up to your boat to ask him for help and they rob you. So all these things are going through my head, you know, and the guy goes, how much weight you want to buy? How much money you got? I said, I'll buy all the pot you got. And yeah, she was like, well, I don't even know. Prize. They don't even ask him for a prize, right? $25,000, all I got, you know. So the guy goes, all right, all right, we're going to do the exchange in the middle of the ocean. I said, why the middle of the ocean? Because that's where I feel comfortable. He said, I said, all right. So I'm thinking I'm going to get robbed. They're going to steal my boat, steal my money, throw me in the water, get eaten up by shark. But I have to go. I have no choice, not my day to die.

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[TJ Dominguez]

So, sure enough, I see the light. I pull up to it with my. My speedboat by myself. We tie up next to each other, and there's two guys on their boat, right? And one guy's, an older guy's got his arms crossed. He's leaning against the cabin. And then the other guy is up, up against the rail. As we tie up the boat, the guy says, let me see the money. I said to him, let me see the pot. And he says, let me see the money. How much money you got? I said, how much weight you got? So he got a couple hundred pounds. As I want to. I wanted to make sure that it was potting out of RA that I was buying because the Bahamas is notorious for that. So I got a dive knife strapped to my leg. I didn't have a gun with me and. But I could throw a knife pretty good. I'm pretty good about back in my karate days, pretty much all kinds of weapon.

[Jonathan Walton]

So at this point, TJ doesn't know if he's going to be robbed and killed and fed to the sharks. Meanwhile, all he's got to defend himself is a knife to throw like he's John Wick or something. If it was me, I'd be on my knees saying my Hail Marys. But TJ doesn't back down. And all of a sudden, the drug dealers show TJ what they have.

[TJ Dominguez]

The guy throws two bales. I take my knife out and I cut a window into the bail, right? I open it up. I want to make sure it's pot. I stick the knife deep inside. This thing was hard packed, 100 pounds each, couple hundred pounds apart. And they're. We're floating in the middle of the Ocean out there. 2 o' clock in the morning. 1 o' clock in the morning. No lights back and forth. And the guy says, okay, you satisfied? Said, all right. So I take some duct tape, I tape up the pot again. I throw it on the. On the floor of the boat. So the guy says, let me see the money. So I take my money and I give it to him. He's. How much is there? Is it 25,000? He says, 30,000. You. $5,000 short. I said, well, that's what I got. Guy says to me, hey, man, there's no credit here. I said, well, I'm not asking you for a credit line. I'm just asking for a little bit of trust. I'm gonna give you 25,000. I don't have any more money. He goes, there's no credit here. Don't you hear me? Starts getting a little boisterous with me. And I see. I hear you, man. I said, what we're gonna do? Argue here about $5,000? I said, I just don't have it. He said, hey, man, there ain't no credit in this business. And the other guy in the back starts, you know, making a little bit of noise. Next thing I know, he says, give the kid the pot. I think he'll come back. And I say to him, listen, man, if I don't come back, I'm either dead or I'm in jail, but I'll come back. And the guy repeated, you know, in this business, there's no credit. I said, I will bring you your 5,000 back, I promise you. So I take off that same night, I bring it back to the United States. And, you know, it's funny because in the middle of the ocean is okay, you're out there, you're hearing all kinds of different noises. You're looking at stars. You think their airplane blinking and coming after you. You start hallucinating. Really. It's really amazing to be out there in the middle of the ocean on a small speedboat, you know, and that part is not really scary at all because you're just out there with the elements. The scary part comes when you can see the shore. When you come to the shore, and now I throttle back and you take a deep breath, and now it's all hell is going to break loose. Balls to the wall, you know, this is it. You swim so far to die on the shore. The scariest part is the last mile. That's what it's all going to cave in. Or you're going to be, you know, you're going to come out of winter.

[Jonathan Walton]

What can happen in the last mile?

[TJ Dominguez]

Get popped.

[Jonathan Walton]

Which means what?

[TJ Dominguez]

Guns, Jail, Embarrassment for your family. Had no knowledge what I was doing. I don't like lying or deceiving anybody. I just. Against everything that I was raised to be. But I had no choice but to forcefully lie to the people that I loved and the people that I cared for. Because if I. First of all, they would have never tolerated, never would have agreed to what I was doing. That's the first thing from jump Street. Second, I would have involved them indirectly in my world, which means that if. If Things ever blew up, the feds, they round up everybody, including the dog and the cat. They don't leave anybody standing. And then we'll sort them out later. So. Which meant that I would have put my mom, my, my wife, my family at risk. Everything that's negative, just lose everything. Lose the money, lose the boat, devastation, lose it all. You swim so far to die on the shore.

[Jonathan Walton]

And which branch of law enforcement were you scared of?

[TJ Dominguez]

Like for example, Indian Creek. Indian Creek has, is a very high end neighborhood here. Probably some of the most expensive real estate in the United States. Small little island. They have a Indian Creek police boat that patrols around the little island. I happen to have to go buy them. People don't realize coming into the States is not like just open season everywhere. They're government cuts. There may be 100 foot wide, 200 foot wide. And these little openings are like highways cut into slivers. And right in the front is where all of them sit. You have their local police, you have marine patrol, you have coast guard, you have customs, you have dea. There's five of them off the top of my head. They're in front of that little opening, that porthole opening. And that's where you have to thread that needle. You have to hope that you can go through all of those guys without getting popped.

[Jonathan Walton]

And you did.

[TJ Dominguez]

Oh, yeah. Many, many, many, many, many, many.

[Jonathan Walton]

And what's the secret to that?

[TJ Dominguez]

Well, the secret to that is you're really rolling the dice at that point. It's in the hands of God.

[Jonathan Walton]

TJ's first trip is a success, and he soon proves extremely adept at the craps game of marijuana smuggling. In no time, TJ's bringing in hundreds of pounds of marijuana from the Bahamas regularly and making hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. It's not the 14 million he needs to get the sugar mill off the ground and keep that promise he made to his dad. But it's definitely a good start. And TJ always seems to have lady luck on his side.

[TJ Dominguez]

But later on, I'm taking the element of luck out of it. I'm becoming a professional. And where a lot of people, they made their money and they go, you know, open up bottles of champagne. I thought things out and how can I improve on this situation? Let me give you one scenario. I'm driving a, a car with 2, 300 pounds of marijuana in the back of the car. It was stop and go traffic on 95. I get hit by a lady. Some nice old lady hits me in the back, right? Well, she pulls over, stop and go traffic. I have to pull over, right? So when I pull over, I get out of the car. Oh, my God, I hit you. I said, ma' am, nothing happened here. Look, there's not even a scratch on the, on the car. Oh, no, no. My husband says, we got to call the police. I got 200 pounds of weed in the trunk. I don't want to call the police. Ma' am, I don't care if you caved in my car without calling the cops, right? Well, this woman is doing what her husband told her to do. Call the police. So I'm arguing with her. Ma' am, not even a scratch. It's on my car. I'm not gonna file a police report. Why go through all the trouble? Nothing happened here. Why don't you go your way and I'll go my way? No, because my husband said, well, you know, 20 minutes later, I convinced this lady not to call the cops. I jump in my car as I'm driving away, I said, how the hell can I prevent that from happening again? Then I came up with the idea of having a chase car. I put another car behind me, the other car behind me. We would be tethered fm. So we're talking on the radio, right? And here's what I did. The car behind me is more of a high end looking type of car. Corvette, Ferrari. Wherever I go, he goes. If I go left, he goes left. If I go right, he goes right. Here's what happens if a policeman tries to pull me over. His job is to hit the policeman on the right rear of the car. You spin him around, you throw your door open, you throw a bottle of boost on the ground. Gonna maybe have your ass kicked, maybe by the cop. You're gonna be a little pissed off, and you hit his car. You got boost on the ground, he's gonna make you blow. Walk a straight line. You want to keep him there as long as possible while I get away. Now, here's what happens. I got great lawyers that I pay a lot of money to. And then when he says to you blow, you refuse. You refuse to refuse. When I'm gone, give me that damn thing, I'll blow. There's no alcohol. Worst case scenario, your foot slipped off the, the brake, it hit the gas, lost control, you know, take it, and we're gonna pay somebody for that thing to go away. You want to blend in, you know, I mean traffic, for example, when I move my, my, my drugs, I moved them from nine to five in heavy traffic because now you're Increasing your odds of arrival. If you're the only car at nighttime out there, you're more apt to be pulled over.

[Jonathan Walton]

So you like the traffic?

[TJ Dominguez]

I like the traffic. I do it between business hours. Otherwise I'm that beacon standing out there. So I did the same thing with boats.

[Jonathan Walton]

And TJ starts studying and strategizing and learning from other smugglers mistakes. Like an NFL quarterback watching old game footage of a competing team, TJ starts perfecting the art of smuggling.

[TJ Dominguez]

I read the newspapers to see so and so got popped. How did he get popped? Well, he did this and this and this wrong. For example, when you're going out there and you're coming back, now you're coming back not in a speedboat, but you're coming back in a sports fishing vessel, which is, you know, 3, 4, 5 million dollar boat with a fighting chair in the back. You're not really going fishing, but you got to have fish in the boat if you say you're going fishing. So I know these guys that bought frozen fish. Okay, well, they're coming back, the fish didn't thaw out. And you're telling the coast guard that you were fishing in. The guy says, well, where'd you catch these frozen fish at? And the ice are all glossy. So, you know, you're like, now I'm gonna drill your boat and I'm gonna check to see what you got. So everything has to match. A story has to blend in. You know, that's why I stress to my guys when they're in that type of vessel, I made them wear uniforms. I made them wear white uniform, white shoes, gold bars. You gotta fit the part. Otherwise you've got a guy with scruffy outfit, blue jeans with holes, and a 5 million dollar bo. It doesn't look right. It's all about the details. And then on the speedboats.

[Jonathan Walton]

What I.

[TJ Dominguez]

Did later on to, you know, increase my odds of coming in, what I did was I put spotter boats. I hired a guy to hire a bunch of little boats, okay? That's my security system. What the purpose of these little boats were, they would go up and down the coast. As I'm coming in.

[Jonathan Walton]

TJ's got all these boats dancing together, choreographed like an aquatic ballet. And he's actually bought a house now on the water to unload the hundreds of pounds of marijuana he's smuggling.

[TJ Dominguez]

So if I'm coming in with my speedboat, with my shadow boat behind me, or side by side, we tie up right now we're maybe five miles out, three miles out, we're tied up. We had no lights. Running lights on. The boat was shut down. Now I get on my radio, and I radio my top security guy, you know, I say, how does the driveway look? And then he'll answer back, Mother lost in the driveway. What that means is that the little spotter boats are going up and down. Let's say you're on a boat, right? So, hey, man, I dropped my lighter in the water. Can I get a light? And they're gonna come up to you and see if you're fishing. There's no fishing gear. And there's two, three guys in blue jeans. This is. Chances are, this is the heat. This is the police. This is dea. This is custom. So that's a problem. And that's what their job was, to just go and interview people on their boats, talk to them. Hey, are they biting? Oh, I don't know. You're not fishing. That kind of stuff. And then they report to my main head guy, and then my head guy reports to me. Mother lost in the driveway. Sit tight. How far out are you? I'm five minutes out. Okay, she's moving. Hit it. So now I send the lead boat. The shadow boat goes up first. And I stand back and look at the shadow boat. There's no movement. Nobody's following the. The shadow boat. I go behind him because he opened up. He blazed the trail. And then we pull up behind the house where I have a crew in the house of maybe three, four guys. And they come out and then pick up the duffel bags. I jump off the boat. And you never keep these high speed boats in the back of the house because you bring heat to the house. So what happens is I come off the boat, my crew comes off the boat, another crew gets on the boat. Guys pick up the duffel bags, bring it inside that house, which is on the ocean. Another captain jumps on that boat, takes that boat to a marina which is owned by a friend of mine. The boat sits in the marina. The next day, that boat's gonna come out of the water, go on a trailer, and go into a warehouse. We're gonna clean the boat out, clean it, wax it, get it ready again to go next week. So that boat is there.

[Jonathan Walton]

And all these boats that TJ starts acquiring for his smuggling operation are very understated, very plain. On a crowded dock or marina with hundreds of other boats around competing for attention with flashy paint jobs and clever names like Fin and Tonic. The Codfather or Cirrhosis of the river. TJ's boats are lying low, not getting noticed at all. And that's just how he wants it.

[TJ Dominguez]

A smuggler's boat is either white, black, dark blue, no graphics. Why? You want to keep it simple again. You want to blend in. Here's what happened. The government would fly their airplane with a strobe camera and take pictures of you. Be a thousand pictures in a minute. Well, they can't arrest you, obviously, but here's what they do. If you've got one of a kind boat with graphics that are easily identified, what do they do? They print this out, they post this out. They start looking for that boat. Here is the boat that we saw with drugs. Now you just heated up your boat. Now that you're going to put a transponder on your boat to track your bug, or they're going to keep a profile on your boat. So these are all these little detailed things that make towards success or failure. It's like a game of chess in the water. You have to try to out think that God is trying to outthink you. So it's really all mental. Before it all happens, you have to put pieces in front of you and be ahead of the curve before you turn that corner. So you know what's on the other side of that fence. And how do I do that? By putting players, putting pieces, putting pawns and these pawns and these pieces. They don't know me, so I'm buffered by one guy. They never meet me. They know there's a guy out there that's doing something, but they don't know who that guy is. In the event that they get in trouble, it doesn't ripple back to me.

[Jonathan Walton]

And for the more than three years TJ Smuggling pot from the Bahamas, his chess pieces are doing their job. And authorities are never quite able to checkmate King TJ You've heard that expression, fortune favors the bold. Well, they got it wrong. Fortune actually seems to favor TJ Dominguez. That's not to say he isn't almost killed a thousand different times. How many times have you cheated death?

[TJ Dominguez]

I couldn't count them. One of the ones that stands out the most in my mind, being on a speedboat doing close to 100 miles per hour side by side to my other speedboat in Bat Bahamian American Task Force. A Huey helicopter with a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on the door, shooting at us, trying to take our load. These guys who are serious about bringing us down, we have tracer bullets. They rode us for what appeared to be an eternity. And you're Looking at the bullets coming at you as the boat jumping up in the. In the wave. So you're now aiming at the. At the helicopter. The helicopter is not one of these fancy American helicopters. This is from like, you know, Vietnam War, a relic. And you got the guy sitting in the door and you seeing these bullets coming off the. The cannon, and they're going right over the boat. The boat's jumping up on the way. Wave coming back down. The water's splashing. Everybody's screaming. I got gas tanks that run on the rail of the boat that are carrying 400 gallons of fuel. All it takes is for one of those bullets to hit the side of the boat, and we're. We're gone. We're like. We're like a fuel bomb. And I hear my guys screaming, we're gonna blow up. We're gonna die. We're gonna die. I'm screaming back on the FMT transmitter. God damn it, jump then. Jump. We're not stopping. These goddamn boats. We're not stopping. We're not stopping. You know, we're screaming back and forth, and it's chaos as it breaking all out. And that went on for a long bit of time until I finally said, well, you know, we're just gonna die here, you know. And at that point, we slowed the boats down. I said, slow it down, Slow it down. Had three guys on one boat, three guys on the shadow boat. And. And it was part at the time, and there was no hiding it. It was right in the open, so they knew where the drugs were at. There were bales. And one guy jumped to the shadow boat. The other guy jumped to the. To the shadow boat. I jumped to the shadow boat. I left the boat going maybe 3, 4 miles per hour. So what they did was they peeled off and then they went after the boat that was now going 3, 4 miles per hour.

[Jonathan Walton]

God, I feel like I need a cigarette or something after that.

[TJ Dominguez]

Back in those days, I don't want to say that there's corruption, because I don't want to. You know, it's not a government thing. Individual things. People make choices, People make good choices, people make bad choices.

[Jonathan Walton]

But that was a calculated move to, like, let me. Let me abandon the drug boat and send it in a different direction.

[TJ Dominguez]

Yes. Thinking they might fall, thinking there is a million dollars in that boat that you make maybe show an interest.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah. And that saved your life.

[TJ Dominguez]

It saved my life and the lives of the other guys.

[Jonathan Walton]

By the early 1980s, TJ's marijuana business is humming along. He's Captaining a bunch of boats and smuggling bales and bales of weed into South Florida. And he's making a lot of money doing it, but he's also losing a lot of money, too. I mean, abandoning all that marijuana and the boat it was on when authorities were shooting at him may have saved TJ's life, but it cost him a million dollars at least. TJ's trying to clear 14 million to get that sugar mill in Haiti off the ground so he can quit drug smuggling altogether and earn his living legitimately. To further that end, he starts multiple other businesses, real businesses.

[TJ Dominguez]

I owned a cell phone company, and at the time, the phones people didn't even know how to spell. They didn't know what the hell a cell phone was. You know, no sense explaining it. The phones were $5,000 out of most people's reach. But it gave me an edge because it allowed me to do business, be efficient, and be connected.

[Jonathan Walton]

TJ also opens a car dealership. More on that later. He breaks ground on a housing development, and now he needs an infusion of cash to keep everything running and to circle back and get the sugar mill in Haiti going.

[TJ Dominguez]

I started doing the math on that. I said, by the time I get done with this thing, it's going to be five years. It's going to go by. I need to bring in at least a ton of marijuana, something, you know, sustained, you know, that would actually speed this whole process up. Because, again, I didn't know how long I was going to last because every time I left the house, the odds were always stacked against me. So I knew one day would come that would bring the house down.

[Jonathan Walton]

At this point, it's 1981, and the weed supply in the Bahamas is extremely unreliable.

[TJ Dominguez]

I'm doing the marijuana trips back and forth from the Bahamas, right? And I'm buying marijuana from the government that they're seized trips that they cease. They're supposed to burn the weed, but they're not really burning it. Like I told one of the officers over there, yeah, we'll burn it. I got people that are burning in Miami when they roll it into a joint, so it's going to get burnt sooner or later. In the meantime, I could take in cash everything you've got here. Now, what happens is they're not busting enough of these loads because there's no pot growing in the Bahamas. So it's just a place that hit or miss. And I. I don't have contacts in South America. I'm not in the drug business. I'm Not a pot going guy. So I'm depending on these people that I knew to provide me with marijuana. How was that working out? 200 pounds, 400 pounds, 500 pounds, maybe 800 pounds, back to 200 pounds and you know, doing 200 pounds a week at a time, I wasn't really setting the world on fire. But what's happening is I need $14 million to complete the sugar mill project. This is going to take forever. So I'm doing the math on this thing and I'm like, got my arms crossed now and I see that I've got, let's say 3, $400,000 and I got 2 or $300,000 of pod. And I'm sitting around waiting for more pod. I got more money than I can buy with pod. So how do you solve that situation? You gotta go where the pot grows. Where's the pot grow? Colombia. I can't take a speedboat out to Colombia. So how do I get to Colombia? I need an airplane.

[Jonathan Walton]

To see some incredible photographs documenting TJ's life, go to cocainair.com and if you're enjoying Cocaine Air, please hit that share button and text it to your friends and family right now. And if you feel comfortable, leave us. A five star review. Reviews really help other listeners find us. Cocaine Air was created, written and executive produced by me, Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Media executive producers Evan Goldstein and the inimitable TJ Dominguez. Audio engineering by me, Jonathan Walton. All sound design and editing was done by the super talented Puneeth Chinoy from Podcast Pundits and the Cocaine Air cover art is by Bobby Animation. We've got a lot of fascinating untold stories like Cocaine Air coming down the pike at Jonathan Walton Media. So subscribe and keep an ear out.

[TJ Dominguez]

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[Beautiful Anonymous]

And hammocks for less.

[TJ Dominguez]

Expedia. Made to travel.

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