Sean Kelly (2:53)

That makes sense logistically.

Ken Baer (2:55)

Yeah, logistically, it was the right place to be. Growing up as a kid, it was the wrong place to be, maybe. But as we'll see as the story goes on. Right.

Sean Kelly (3:03)

Yeah. So it was you and your brother.

Ken Baer (3:05)

Yeah, and we were just like, having fun, you know, everybody was selling dope. I mean, everybody. And it was everybody I knew. Even now, years later, I'll go back and see people that I know that I thought were straight, like, you know, like my friend who plays a guitar in a band or other guy's a service writer, and they'll tell me stories of moving kilos or working for a Colombian drug cartel. And I go, really? You too? So that's how prevalent it was. But I started building. You know what it was, was everybody figured when you turned 18, you'd stop because you'd go to college, and also you could go from juvie to real prison.

Sean Kelly (3:46)

Right. The stakes got higher.

Ken Baer (3:47)

Yeah. So. And my brother got out. You know, he went to college, everybody went to college. And a few of us, including me, just felt like building a bigger drug empire was the. Was the career path, and that's what I did.

Sean Kelly (3:59)

Got it. So he was an older brother?

Ken Baer (4:01)

Younger.

Sean Kelly (4:01)

Oh, younger.

Ken Baer (4:02)

Yeah. My older brother wasn't involved at all. He was. He's really straight laced.

Sean Kelly (4:05)

Got it. Okay. So you wanted to keep scaling and keep growing.

Ken Baer (4:08)

I did. I just, you know, I guess it was my work ethic, you know, from being a foreign boy and, you know, just, you know, elbow grease gets the. I just kept going. And a few of my friends did, too.

Sean Kelly (4:18)

Was money the main motivator?

Ken Baer (4:19)

Yeah, sure. Well, money and starting completing a task. Right. You know, if you want to. Somebody once told me when I was a kid, my mom's best friend says, it doesn't matter if you're going to be a garbage man, just be the best one you can be. And I took that to heart in drug smuggling and drug dealing.

Sean Kelly (4:36)

A lot of successful entrepreneurs have a drug dealing background.

Ken Baer (4:39)

Yes. I know guys that have made hundreds of millions smuggling drugs. There's two famous guys, Bruce Purlowin, who's a famous guy that gets you on the. Get him on the show. And another guy, Donnie Steinberg, they took companies public.

Sean Kelly (4:55)

Wow.

Ken Baer (4:56)

They made hundreds of millions after they smuggled doing stock options.

Sean Kelly (5:02)

That's crazy. I didn't know you could make hundreds of millions. Has anyone become a billionaire from smuggling drugs?

Ken Baer (5:08)

Not. Well, theoretically, if you took Pablo Escobar or Ochoa and you took their money from those days, the Ochoa brothers, and looked at it today, inflation. Yeah. I mean, you gotta look at, you know, people read my book and they go, well, he only got paid $20,000 for that gig. Yeah. I mean, but that was like 80, 60 to 80,000 in today's money for a night's work. Wow. Yeah.

Sean Kelly (5:29)

That's a lot for one day.

Ken Baer (5:31)

When I was a kid, so one of the things that happened, I was selling weed. Grams and quarter ounces of blow and pounds of weed. And two things happened that changed the trajectory, I guess, of my path. One was my partner in Florida moved back to Ohio and him and I were selling ounces and quarter pounds and pounds together in Florida. And I was introduced to somebody who I say in the book, if my dad taught me how good it was to be right, this guy taught me how right it was to be wrong. He was older than me. I was 18 or 19. He was 40. He was just an old school kind of mobster, like Wise just. They made a movie about one of the things they did called Tinman. He was an aluminum siding salesman. So, I mean, his name was Sandy Perkhoff. And Sandy was a yacht broker. And Sandy was selling boats to some of the biggest smugglers in the world. They were up and coming. One of them was Donny Steinberg and his group. His group was so big that the feds nicknamed them the Company. Wow. At one time, Bruce was telling me a story where Donnie bought a fleet of 747s to use them to smuggle weed. I mean, that's just insane. Another time he brought in four freighters in four different parts of the country at the exact same day. Like 200,000 pound freighters. Yeah. And anyway, so two things happened. One, I started working for Sandy. My bad dad, you know, doing odd jobs, helping him with the smugglers, registering boats. Turns out I had a really good talent to forge. I had no idea they go. So I'd sign titles and another thing they'd have me do, and I was like 18 or 19. They'd give me a couple million dollars in a Lear and go, here, kid, take this to the Bahamas. And I'd literally get on a Learjet, you know, fly to the Bahamas and fly home, and they'd pay me $1,000. And you might say you took, you know, suitcases full of money to the. To the Cayman Islands. I'm sorry, they say Bahamas and Cayman Islands. Because what we do is fly to the Caymans and then go to the Bahamas. Go to the Caymans, where the banking is. Sorry. And for a thousand bucks. But I was 18, it was 1970 something. That's like three, $4,000 today.

Sean Kelly (7:56)

That's a lot at that age.

Ken Baer (7:57)

Yeah. And you're getting rid in the Learjet one time I. I tell the story, the pilots handed me a bottle of Dom as like a. You know, like, here you go, kid. You know, your boss likes to drink this. And. And at that point, I've already drinking a lot of Dom Perignon. We were already sat. Believe me, by the time we were 18, 19, we were already passing through lots of cash. But I'd have been happy if they give me chocolate chip cookies and milk, you know what I mean? Like, I'm a kid. But so we do that. I did that trip a number of times until one time we landed in the Bahamas to come back commercial. And some Bahamian guys came up to me. I was with my girlfriend at the time. I brought her for cover. And they wanted to know if we wanted to smuggle some coke in with them. Like, hey, we saw you flying in a private jet. You know, are you interested in doing a load of coke? And I just said, that's it. It was probably the heat, you know, the Bahamian police, they were trying to set you up. Yeah. I felt, let's put it this way, I never went back. I told them, hey, guys, you gotta find your own guy to take the millions. I think they're onto us. And the other thing that had happened at the same time was that my friend in Ohio, Terry, called me up and he goes. He was working at the Ford plant, and he calls up. He goes, hey, I think I can sell some weed down up here in Ohio. I go, well, come down. I'll give you a couple pounds. So I was weekend off. He jumps in his car. He looks straight. Amazingly, he was like a porn. He looked kind of like Burt Reynolds. And he was driving a black Trans Am. So kind of like out of the Smokey and the Bandit movie. If you're too young for that.

Sean Kelly (9:30)

I don't know who Burt Reynolds is.

Ken Baer (9:32)

Sorry. Anyway, he was an actor. An actor. And he was in this movie called. Anyway, he drove down, I threw him a couple pounds of weed. He drove home. It's a 19 hour drive each way. Did it in like three days. Called me up and goes, hey, I sold the weed. He goes, I could sell some more. I said, well come on back down. And this time Donnie fronted me a 50 pound bale, which is what the average the pot would come in in 50, 45 to 50 something pound bales.

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Ken Baer (10:43)

So it look like a big suitcase or like a bale of hay wrapped in burlap. And I shoved it in the trunk of his car. It didn't even fit. We had to take the spare tire cause he had a little trunk in his car. He drove it back, called me back and goes, hey, I sold it. And that started something. Cause now we ended up in the. We started like wow, we started it got to the point where I would load three to five cars at a time, wow, £300 each. I buy between £1,000 and £2,000 at a time. People would front it to me, I'd put down like 80, 90,000. And if you think about it today, so £1,000 was worth a quarter of a million dollars in the 70s. That's like a million dollars today. And here I am like a 20 something year old kid just throwing the money. Didn't it never made, you know, we didn't really realize it. You know, one time I went out drinking and I have a girlfriend who had a key to the house and I left $80,000 in a paper bag in the closet. Not like hidden in the closet, just laying in the closet. And again that's like A quarter of a million dollars today. One time somebody said to me, hey, I need. One of my buddies said, we need a light bulb. I said, oh, they're in that box right there. He pulled out 10,000 cash. I had forgotten about it. And again, that's like 30 or $40,000 today. Like, how do you forget about 30 or 40,000? But that's kind of. The money was just insane. Yeah.

Sean Kelly (12:14)

And you were so young, so it must have felt even.

Ken Baer (12:16)

Yeah. And I didn't really go out and buy anything. Crazy. I mean, I had, like, three Jet Skis, a couple boats, a couple Porsches, you know, but nothing. Because I wasn't even making money. Like, the big guys.

Sean Kelly (12:27)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (12:27)

The Donnys and the Randy Laniers. Randy Lanier's a big story. They have a Netflix special about him. He has a book out, and he did. Basically got life with no parole. Geez.

Sean Kelly (12:38)

Just for smuggling.

Ken Baer (12:39)

Yeah. But he brought in hundreds of thousands of pounds. He made like they say he made 160 million doll. Holy shit.

Sean Kelly (12:46)

And that's all cash, no tax.

Ken Baer (12:47)

Yeah, right. He had to hide it all over the world. Another guy, if you go to my podcast, I have a guy on there, Tommy Powell and his book, Reefer. Tommy was one of the first guy, the first guy to go to Columbia to bring in a big load, and he went for £20,000, and he only got 16 because they just didn't know how to put together that much. Within a year or two, they were running freighters with 200,000. Oh, my God. One of the things that I talked about, about and that people have to understand is when I started selling drugs, there was no cartel. There was no Pablo Escobar. There was no Ochoas, There was no Medellin. You know, there was no Guzman in Mexico. It was all independent people. It was hippies, like, you know, or just potheads or guys that are trying to make some money.

Sean Kelly (13:36)

It wasn't organized.

Ken Baer (13:38)

Right. And what brought in organized crime is the war on drugs. When you make something illegal that everybody wants, what did it do? It created the war on drugs we have today. We're blowing up boats in Venezuela. That's totally un. Bullshit. I mean, as a drug runner, none of that makes sense.

Sean Kelly (13:57)

Yeah. They never showed any photos of that.

Ken Baer (13:59)

No. Like, where's the floating. Where's the floating drugs? Where's the evidence? And as a DEA operative, I would tell you, why would you do that? You're killing your witnesses. The guy that we ran when I got finally charged, when I got busted the second Time in Ohio, I got charged with RICO or running an ongoing criminal enterprise. And I was looking at 25 years. We had brought in tons and tons. I don't know, maybe 50 tons, £100,000 over the 12 years. One guy with £1 turned us all in.

Sean Kelly (14:33)

No way.

Ken Baer (14:34)

Yeah. So killing the witness is not the way it works. Usually that's how you get to the main guys and the big guys.

Sean Kelly (14:41)

How did he have access to you? Because he was probably so far down.

Ken Baer (14:44)

Yeah, he was. He busted somebody who busted somebody who busted my partner, the guy that I gave the first £2 to. And then it grew into an ongoing thing. And, you know, and the cops. Here's what they did to my partner. And, you know, actually, after 32 years, he found me because of doing these shows, called me up and I'm flying up to have, you know, he says, come on up here. I'm buying dinner.

Sean Kelly (15:09)

No way.

Ken Baer (15:09)

I go, buddy, you owe me more than dinner.

Sean Kelly (15:11)

The guy that snitched on you called you up after 32 years. Wow.

Ken Baer (15:14)

And I don't care.

Sean Kelly (15:14)

Have you forgiven him at this point?

Ken Baer (15:16)

Of course. Because I know how the real ball rolls, you know, not what people see in movies. Let's put it this way. I'll tell you what they did to him. He had a house that he had built. He had a construction company that he put together with the smuggling money over the decade of doing it. Over a decade. And he had four kids. And his mother and father lived in a beautiful house that they had built originally on the same piece of land. They had a barn in the middle. He had £1,000 in the barn. They moved, and it had nothing to do with me. This is. I didn't bring that load there. That's another story. And so they raid the house, they pulled his mother and father out of the bed on their house on the other side of the property, drag him over to his living room, put him on the couch in his underwear, handcuffed his wife, chasing the four kids upstairs. You know, the local cops rummaging through the house. And the prosecutor gets in his face, he goes, here's what we're gonna do. He goes, I'm putting your mother in jail. I'm putting you. Oh. Cause the weed was in the barn and the barn was on both was on the barn. Split the property line.

Sean Kelly (16:18)

Got it.

Ken Baer (16:18)

So half the barn was on his parents property line and house was on his. So they could say they dragged his parents into the case. Right. And they go, we're going to put your mother in jail. We're going to put your father in jail, we're going to put you in jail, we're going to put your wife in jail, Your four kids are going to be orphans or, you know, or, you know, whatever they're going to be. He goes, you know, he goes, you got 30 seconds. Are you going to cooperate or not? Wow. And 16 other people or 15 other people are already cooperating. So he was the last. I was the next. I was the.

Sean Kelly (16:48)

Got it.

Ken Baer (16:48)

I always want the guy from Florida, you know what I mean? I don't care who you get. Every local cop wants the guy from Florida.

Sean Kelly (16:53)

So you were the top of the total. I wasn't anyone higher than you.

Ken Baer (16:56)

No. On that operation, I was the supplier. But Terry and I were partners. He was the same level as me. I mean, but I was the guy bringing there from Florida. You know, we did it. We were partners. But so, you know, what was he going to do, you know, watch his mother and father lose their home, put his parents in jail, his wife in jail, have four kids that are wards of the state. He did whatever anybody would do or cooperate. Yeah. You know, and then he set me up and I got busted. I just brought up a load of weed and.

Sean Kelly (17:26)

Oh, so you had no idea?

Ken Baer (17:27)

No. He came to my wedding. I was just married. Wow. I got married. Listen. I had a newborn baby. I remember showing him my wedding ring and the baby, him sitting there with his wife, probably knowing that in a week or two.

Sean Kelly (17:43)

Oh, no.

Ken Baer (17:43)

Yeah. I went on my honeymoon and my ex wife, I remember I came back from my honeymoon and I just like put on a wedding, went on a honeymoon. I'd spent a lot of cash just partying for and I'd go make some more and my wife looks at me. And my ex wife at the time, she goes, don't go, don't go back and do this. We have a little baby girl. We just got married. I'll get a job. You'll get a job. I'll eat white bread and bologna sandwiches. Because before that, believe me, we were eating a lackluster. A lot of private planes, a lot of limos. And she goes, just don't go. And I was like, I gotta go back to work. I gotta pay for the wedding and the honeymoon.

Sean Kelly (18:28)

It's never enough.

Ken Baer (18:29)

Yeah, well, I mean, I burned through a lot of cash and so I grabbed a quick hundred grand and went out and bought the smallest load I'd ever bought because we were trying to buy high end flour. So instead of Colombian, that cost me 245A pound. I was buying some in like high end stuff for a thousand a pound. 800, I think it was thousand. So I brought. I was the smallest load I'd ever brought up there. I thought, well, so we take it from Texas to Ohio. And I'm going to tell you something. Everybody's got to understand. Sometimes when you're doing things and you're at a heightened level, your gut will tell you stuff. Listen to your gut. I did a podcast with Mike Ray and the Mic drop, the Navy SEAL, and he says, in the SEALs, they say that all the time. Trust your gut. I'm driving in and Terry said, don't come to the house, come to a hotel. First red flag. Why are we doing that? He said, well, the kids are getting older and smarter. And he had said that before he didn't want the weed on the property. Second one, I drive by and a car goes by and I see a bunch of big guys, football players in it. And I go, that's strange looking those bunch of football players driving around a little. I don't know. I told the driver, because I have a guy driving the truck. I'm following it in the car. I'm not going to be the guy in the truck. I go, pull over. And instead of going to the hotel, we went to park behind the Taco Bell in Lorraine, Ohio, on the Lake Erie and just watched the waves come in on the lake. Sitting there thinking to myself, what am I missing? What's wrong here? But I still went over there and of course, I went into the hotel room and he came in wearing a yellow raincoat. I'm like, why is he wearing a raincoat? It ain't raining. Well, because the wires are underneath it. And then we lit up a roach and that was the sign. They kicked the doors in. Wow. Yeah. And then the prosecutor came in and he sat me down on the bed. He goes, hey, boy. He goes, you're in big trouble. You better talk and talk now. But I had been a drug runner is for so long, I had. Never say anything, never talk, never make. Don't say a word. Because without your lawyer, you know you're never going to get the best deal, right? You're never going to, you know, once you talk, you're screwed. I just told him, you got the wrong guy, buddy. I'm not talking. But that was. And this is the second time I've been busted. I've been busted. In 88, we smuggled in. A friend of ours had 40,000 pounds stuck in Canada of all places. And he couldn't sell it. So he contracted me and another friend. And what we devised was a plan where we used a seaplane. And it can't hold a lot, and it can't land at night. Like normally when we bring a load in, we'd set up lights in a Runway at night on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. Well, this time, a seaplane, you have to do it in broad daylight. So we bring in just £1,400 because we'd only hold the seaplane, could only hold a couple hundred pounds at a time, do like six, seven trips. And we couldn't sell the weed. I moved it to Ohio, this and that. So a friend of mine, we used to say, kenny, go back and get the weed and bring it to D.C. where we had another guy that might have a market. And I remember telling the guys, man, you're not going to sell this weed anywhere. It's terrible. And anyhow, that was 1988, July 4th. In the book, it's a chapter called why I never work on a holiday. Because more cops. And I always swore, I'll never work on a holiday. Don't do it. And if you get busted, you can't get out of jail because the judge is on vacation, right? So what happens is I get pulled over, Some guy's looking state troopers looking for fireworks, stumbles on the weed in the U Haul.

Sean Kelly (22:09)

No way.

Ken Baer (22:10)

Yeah. And we end up in jail in, like, this hell hole. I mean, one of the. The prison was built in 1863. What?

Sean Kelly (22:17)

Where was this?

Ken Baer (22:18)

In Massachusetts. Holy shit. It was a hellhole. And we spent weeks there. We spent time on the side of the road because there was nobody. Then I finally went to a judge, finally bonded out. And those stories in the book are pretty compelling because it's like ending up in jail and trying to figure it all out real quick.

Sean Kelly (22:40)

So that was the first time you were busted. How'd you get out of that one?

Ken Baer (22:43)

So we fought the case. It was Massachusetts, which is the constitution state. And I hired all the lawyers I've used in other cases, and they fought it and won. Illegal search and seizure. But that empowered me. It emboldened me, like I beat the case. I was literally flying from Fort Lauderdale to Massachusetts. You stall these things when you're in a criminal case. You stall it for years, if you can, because you buy time, proof. Hey, look, he didn't get in trouble, your honor. He's been out for years. The prosecutors change. The more time, the better. So what I was Literally doing, though to fund the legal fees for the lawyers was at one point I would fly to Washington D.C. where a friend of mine had brought in a load of coke and he had two warehouses, one with the coke and one with the money drop. I would fly up there, meet my drivers and meet any customers I'd have. They'd come over, grab a couple kilos of coke, pay me, or I fronted to him, whatever, and then fly to court in the suit. In court. Your Honor will postpone whatever my court hearing was for, fly back to dc, finish up the deal and fly home. I'm literally doing a cocaine deal in the middle of being on bond for the smuggling the weed in. Wow. And I beat that case. But then in 92, I didn't have any way out. I was looking at Rico, which minimum mandatory 25 years in prison.

Sean Kelly (24:13)

How old were you?

Ken Baer (24:14)

I was 32 maybe.

Sean Kelly (24:16)

So that would have been a good chunkier.

Ken Baer (24:17)

That would have been my whole life. I had a one and a half year old daughter. I'd just been married two weeks, and I didn't have a plan. I hired my same lawyer, that Michael Gilletti, he's still in practice, one of the best in the business without a bout, one of the most talented lawyers in the world.

Sean Kelly (24:35)

And he told you, you're fucked.

Ken Baer (24:36)

He said exactly what he said. He said to me, listen, because, I mean, I'm paying this guy 80 grand in the past and he's gotten me off. And he's like, listen, you're not getting out of this. They got you so dead to rights. I had two lawyers, one in Ohio, guy named Jack Bradley, a great attorney also, and Michael from Fort Lauderdale. And he said, you're just not getting out. So Michael said to me, listen, there was a guy at the time called Alberto San Pedro. And he was called in Miami the Great Corruptor because he had bribed all the judges, all the politicians. And he says, alberto San Pedro. I go, yeah, he's famous, man. He goes, he cooperated. And what had really done it was while I was in jail in Ohio, which by the way, if the one in Massachusetts is one of the worst hell holes on earth. And it was. I mean, they burned it. It was so hot one day, I mean, they had just gotten flushing toilets when the guard, the cop that busted us was taking us there. He goes, you know where you're going, boys? He goes, you're going to a place that doesn't have toilets. Now, they had just gotten them before that they used to have a bucket and they would you know, wow. And then you'd have to carry the bucket down the hall to stump it in a big cauldron. I mean, it was like being in this place. I mean, they didn't have computers and disgusting. I mean, it was not even. Just because it was 1988, they didn't have computers, but it was just a hellhole. But I was only there for a couple weeks. But when I was in Ohio, conversely, the Midwest, you know, everybody's nice, you know, the place is clean. You know, I used to joke around the guards knock on the door, you know. You know, they don't, you know, wake up. Would you care for the fresh squeezed juice or the croissants today? Nah, they still give you the powdered donuts. But there is when I realized I was in big trouble. One day a guard comes in. Some guy comes and calls my name. I've been there like three months waiting to get a bond, get something. And he calls me up. And the guy goes, you can bear. And I'm thinking, wait a second. He just pulled me out of my cell. There's only two people in the cell. There's me and a large black guy. And John's a great guy, but it's Alvin. Ken. Yeah. Who else would I be? And he goes, here, and he hands me these papers. And the guard, I remember his name was Bill. He was a really. I connected. Bill and I got along. He was a good guy. And he goes, hey, kid, we're putting you on suicide watch tonight. And I go, what? And I open the papers and I see the RICO. He goes, you're looking at 55 years, kid. And I go, no need. I'll be all right. Wow. But I think the 55 years made it sound like almost impossible because it was 25, really. So I go back to my cell and read the indictment. And then the next day, there was a guy in this. A couple days later, there was a guy in the cell next to me who had done 15 years in Angola in New Orleans. I mean, Louisiana. One of the worst. Amnesty International called it one of the worst prisons in the world. And it's on 1800 acres of swamp land. I mean, it's. It's like the Alcatraz. They call it the Alcatraz of the South.

Sean Kelly (27:48)

Yeah. You're just sweating up a storm.

Ken Baer (27:49)

Yeah. You can't. Where are you going to go? You can't run. You're on 1800 acres of alligator infested snake, you know, land. So he did. He was pale white. He had only thing he had was like these horrible prison tattoos. And he had asked me to go to the library to get him books, and because he couldn't, they wouldn't let him move. He had gotten arrested again. After 15 years in Angola, got out, came back to Ohio and got arrested for armed robbery again. So all of a sudden, he pulls me aside. He goes, listen to me. He goes, you have a little girl. That's about one and a half, right? I go, yeah. He goes, so did I. He goes, you know how many times I saw her in the 15 years I was in prison? I go, no. He goes, once. He goes, the mores and values that you're clinging to have died a lifetime ago. He goes, you see, there's another. There's pods, like glass, like rooms. Like each has 70, 30 people. He goes, see the guy in the pod over there? That's your co defendant. I go, yeah. He goes, he's already ratted on you. You know, the guy in the other pod, your other co defendant. I go, yeah. He goes, he's gonna rat on you. He goes, look around this jail cell. He goes, it's not who hasn't ratted, it's who hasn't ratted yet. He goes, don't think all these people are keeping their mouths shut. He goes, if you get an opportunity to change your life, to go back and help your family and protect your family, and you never go back, then you do what you have to do. But if you ever go back and become a criminal again, then you're nothing more than a rat. You deserve what you get. And I went back to my cell and I looked at the picture of my daughter, and I'm thinking, yeah, you know? But I still didn't have a plan. So I bonded out. I go home, and now I'm kind of like, rat ass broke. I had my boat, had my gold Rolex. I had like my three jet skis. I sold my car before I left, I didn't even have a car. I just spent about $80,000 on a wedding and a honeymoon and lost another hundred grand in the load. And I just had to come up with cash for the lawyers. So, I mean, I just tapped out. And at that exact moment, right? That's what happens. You never have shit hit the fan when you're rolling. It's when you're kind of.

Sean Kelly (29:58)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (29:58)

You know, facts. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like, right? In the worst time, something happened. So I get a phone call, and this friend of mine who's a yacht broker who had gotten busted. And people understand if you're selling a boat to. If you're a yacht broker and you're selling a boat to somebody, and all the person has to say is, you know, I'm going to use this boat to commit a smuggling trip and I'm going to pay you in cash. You're a co conspirator in that case. That's like, same thing. Imagine if someone said, I'm going to rob a bank and can I borrow your car and your gun? Well, you're part of that case. You gave the guy the car and the gun. Same thing. The government uses these conspiracy laws to just crush people that really weren't in the game. But, you know, so anyhow, this guy was in that. He was looking at years, big time yacht broker. I mean, this guy had, you know, offices in five countries. He had million dollar properties. We'd go up on his Learjet every now and then. I mean, but he had been on the balls of his ass. He'd fallen on hard times, and now he's looking at going to jail. So he comes to me, he goes, I know. He calls me on the phone. Remember at this point, none of my friends are calling me. And I told him not to. I actually told one of my friends from jail, tell everybody that I'm in big trouble. I didn't even figure out what I was gonna do. I said, just tell him if. No matter what I say or what I do, don't talk to me. You know, pretend like I'm the cops. I didn't. Wasn't making a deal, but I just knew to tell all my friends, stay away from.

Sean Kelly (31:28)

Give them a heads up.

Ken Baer (31:29)

Yeah. Like, I took a poison pill and made sure I could never hurt them and. And I never would have. And so then I. I get back and Dave says to me, come meet me. I want to tell you. You want to. Oh, he calls me on the phone and he goes, how'd you like to work for the dea? And I'm like, flipped out. Like what? Like my little kid was sitting in her high chair eating breakfast, and my wife's in the kitchen cleaning. And I'm on the phone going, what are you doing? Don't say that. You know, I was like, you know, dad, dad, Daddy's not gonna work for the dea, honey. But I went over and met him and I go, what are you doing? He goes, listen to me. And I said to him, you know, he explained to me that he told them all about me, that I was a longtime player and A big time guy and I was a major mover and I could do a lot of help him out. And I, you know, typical salesman, he made me up bigger than I was, I think. But not really. But. So I said, well, he goes, you gotta meet with these guys, Kenny. I go, what's in it for you, Dave? He goes, well, I'll get credit for whatever you do. And I go, like what? Like Amway? I was like multi level marketing, you know. He goes, kinda. So the DEA in Jacksonville made a deal with the state of Ohio. Because I couldn't bust anybody in Ohio. Everybody I knew in Ohio busted me. Like, I only knew the people I was selling drugs to. I didn't have the extra. So it's all about the money in the end. And what they said was they made a deal with the, with the, with the Lorraine County Drug Task Force that every, anything that the dea, with my help confiscated boats, planes, cash, gold coins, whatever they got, Ohio would get a piece of it. And that's how they rent. So the state of Ohio basically rented me out to the DEA to be an undercover operative. And that's what I did. I never, nobody ever went to high school with nobody that I ever knew. Nothing. I only, I never set up any of my friends. There were two guys. One guy I'd never done a drug deal with in my life. I hadn't seen him in four or five years. Comes up and tells me he's got 125 pounds. I knew he was a smuggler. And I go, dude, I'm working for the dea. I just told him, he goes, oh, that's okay. And I go, what? You know, because all I, when I got busted, I cooperated too. It's all right. And now what do I do? Like, now I got to set the guy up. I mean, now, you know, I don't know if he's working for the dea, checking me out, you know. I said, buddy, I told you what's going on and you still okay. So we set him up for 125 pounds, which wasn't that big a deal. But then he set up his Jamaican smuggling connection and I flew down to Jamaica. And that didn't go so well because they made me. And in Jamaica, they don't have bullets. So what they have is what we call a machete party, where they take you out in the woods and two, three guys with machetes hack you to death. Holy shit.

Sean Kelly (34:23)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (34:23)

And so luckily, and I tell that story in the book, it's. I got out of there like it turns out that the DEA was on my back and you know, I was down there by myself. I didn't have like, wow, that's crazy.

Sean Kelly (34:38)

They say Jamaica is one of the most dangerous places.

Ken Baer (34:40)

Oh yeah, Kingston's at the time I was in. It was in Kingston, one of the most dangerous cities in the world at the time. Geez. So that's another story in the book. And but that's how I got working for the dea. And but we also. It's funny thing is like, I've told you some smuggling stories. I never even consider myself a smuggler. Like, I didn't like it because I figured I can sell my weed to Ohio, sell my kilos to different buyers and you know, not risk because smuggling has so many moving parts. So I never considered, you know, I'd be offered, hey, you want to do this, you want to do that? I turn it down. I have my own gigs. And it was really consistent money every month and it's a full time job anyway. But having said that, when I wrote the book, I added it up. I'd done like 12 smuggling trips. So for a guy that never really wanted to be a smuggler, I certainly, you know, between the bringing the loads in from Canada and then I had actually went on the run when I was like 19 from a cocaine case that I had nothing to do with. And I was living in Jamaica and then some friends came down and that was my first trip. We brought £600 out of Jamaica and a low single engine weeder. Yeah, okay, yeah, listen, When I first started doing it, there was nobody bringing in loads of coke. A kilo of cocaine was 57 to $60,000.

Sean Kelly (35:59)

Holy shit.

Ken Baer (36:00)

Right in the end, in 1985, we brought in 300 kilos of coke. And I can tell you that story, that was a smuggling trip we did. And at the time I was selling them for 10 to 11,000. Wow. That's how. Why? Because the market had gotten so flooded that the price got depreciated. Right now the price of coke in Europe kilos is so cheap that the people that are smuggling in and from Colombia can't sell it. They have to bury it underground because they're only getting like €10,12,000 for it. And it costs more than that to smuggle it there because remember, they're not going 1500 miles from Columbia to Florida. They're going to Europe, which is 5,000 miles, you know, and then they're going to Australia and New Zealand, which is like 9,000 miles. So there's some Ballsy. But, you know, these guys are like these narco subs. They're taking kids and people that they don't have anything to live for financially. They're going to put them in a narcos burium in that thing. They're going to travel for four weeks in the open ocean, going to Europe. If they get caught, they go to jail.

Sean Kelly (37:08)

Wow. Well, actual submarine you're talking about.

Ken Baer (37:10)

Yeah. What they do is they're submersible. Some are actual submarines, but most of them just ride on the surface and all there is like a little bubble that they can, you know, they open up and they can remember they're in there for months, four weeks. They gotta, you know, shit and piss and eat in that hole you got. I mean, if you, if you Google the narco subs or the submersibles, it's crazy.

Sean Kelly (37:30)

Sounds terrible.

Ken Baer (37:32)

It is, It's. It's unhumane. And these people are in there and. And I don't know. I mean, I don't know how they do it, except for the fact that. And they're not getting paid. Like, nobody's paying these, like the guys in the boats in Venezuela, which. That was never coming to America. There was no proof. The first one, they had 11 people on the boat. The trick to smuggling is less people you have to pay, the better. The less people, the more room for drugs and the less you have to chop up the deal.

Sean Kelly (37:59)

Yeah, 11 sounds like a lot.

Ken Baer (38:01)

That was probably people, a family smuggling themselves out of Venezuela to Colombia to go, you know, and they probably murdered the whole family.

Sean Kelly (38:10)

I'm sure with all the technology we have these days, it's way harder to smuggle over the seas now, right?

Ken Baer (38:14)

Yes. I would tell you that the technology, like when we started, a guy would just throw a couple hundred pounds of wheat on the deck of his sailboat, wrap it up in a sail bag and sail in. In the end, they had, you know, planes flying up, radar, awacs. They have a thing called Big Bertha, which was a blimp that was in the Keys that would shoot radar down, you know, but there's ways around it. I'll tell you a smuggling trip. We did a little one. So I live right by Fort Lauderdale airport at the time, literally mile and a half away. So one of the tricks was you go into the Bahamas or wherever, get yourself a load of drugs, not a big load. And then let's say this time I think we had 40 kilos of coke, 80 kilos, I don't remember, a couple duffel bags and what you do is you fly back now, you know you're coming from a, a drug Bahamas that, you know, they're watching the airplane. And just as you're getting ready to land into Fort Lauderdale. It's a single engine little plane. The pilot calls the tower and says, I want, I request a go around. What that means is he's not comfortable landing and he wants to go up and try again. The tower's always going to say yes, 99% for safety. Yeah, they want the guy to crash. No, you have to try anyway. So there was a golf course just on the other side of I95 in the airport. You know, the highway, you know, butts, the airport, whatever. The plane. Now the plane's just gonna land. So now it's 200ft off the ground. It's below the radar. He just keeps going. And just when he gets on the other side where the golf course was, he opens up the door and he kicks out the duffel bags you have in the plane. The pilot and a kicker. Sometimes we do this with a DC3 with 5,000 pounds of weed in the ocean. But it's. The kicker is going to kick the load out. So me and my friends, I had a truck. I was driving a pickup truck. My other friend was a Mercedes. Yeah, our friends are. We send our two guys in. They're. They're dressed in black. They're, you know, Rambo, big knives, you know, and on the packages they have calium sticks or glow sticks. So you throw them out of the plane. Now you got to stay when you're doing that. If anybody out there thinks this is a good idea, I'm not advocating, but you better hug a tree because there's a package coming in that weighs like 80 pounds or 50 pounds at 120 miles an hour from 200ft. So you're not going to survive that. You know, the cocaine is going to win that battle. You know, they say coke kills. It kills like that. Yeah, it's kind of hard to overdose on it, but not get hit in the head with it. So we scoop it up. I pull up in the pickup truck. Tommy comes running out, jumps in the back of the truck, and we drive it to my house. We drag the duffel bags in the house, cut open the bags, start transferring it to suitcases, cut one of the kilos open, grab a couple grams. And Nathan, who's a good friend of mine, who was the one that was doing this trip, I was just helping out. I wasn't, you know, like. And he goes hey, we gotta get out of here. I go, why? He goes, I got tickets to the Eddie Murphy concert. I go, what? He goes, yeah, I got four tickets. Let's go see the show. We literally left the kilos in the trunk of his car. Jumped in my car, and the four of us went to see the Eddie Murphy concert.

Sean Kelly (41:21)

Wow.

Ken Baer (41:21)

I mean, that's how prevalent. That's how fast it can happen.

Sean Kelly (41:25)

It's like a movie almost.

Ken Baer (41:26)

Yeah. And he looks at me like, half. About a third of the way. Eddie Murphy's, like, dancing around. I think one where he was wearing his red leather, you know, outfit or whatever and telling his great jokes, and he goes, do you think we should go? I go, and you just left kind of like millions of dollars of coke in the trunk of your car. You know, we might want to. And that was one trip we did. We did another trip where we built a road in the Everglades and Nathan came in with 300 kilos. Oh, my God. And I drove those out. We all did it together. The next trip, we were all in the Everglades, and Nathan crashed his plane in Columbia. What? Yeah, I lost. I lost a lot of friends in Colombia and plane crashes and.

Sean Kelly (42:08)

Because of the mountains there.

Ken Baer (42:09)

Yeah. Just because you don't have enough. Too much weight, not enough. You know, a lot of people. What people don't understand is the war on drugs is twofold. A lot of families have lost. You know, loved ones disappeared. Don't know what happened to them. Murdered kid. You know, it's just. I'm not advocating, but look at marijuana today. They don't smuggle marijuana. Why? Because it's legal. There's people smuggling marijuana out of America into other places. Now there's literally weed leaving the country. So the war on drugs. Although, listen, my ex wife got hooked on oxycontins and pain pills and left me to raise two kids. I get it. I've lost friends to fentanyl. I've lost friends to, you know. You know, who thought they were doing coke and it was turned out to be fentanyl.

Sean Kelly (42:58)

That happened in Vegas last month.

Ken Baer (43:00)

Yeah. Two of my friends died.

Sean Kelly (43:02)

Crazy.

Ken Baer (43:03)

And so I'm not advocating it, but what I'm saying is if we didn't have the war on drugs, if we. If we had some sort of balance. Because what you do is you take something and you make it decriminalized. Well, yeah, what if they decriminalized it? What if they took the money that they got from and went into inner cities and help people that you Know and. And taught people not, you know, that how, you know it's bad. I mean, listen, like, 30,000 people a year die from cocaine overdose because of fentanyl.

Sean Kelly (43:33)

Right?

Ken Baer (43:34)

No, fentanyl adds another 40. Right. It's actually 70 with fentanyl. Oh, wow. But the government says between 20 and 30, 300,000 die from obesity. Should we be blowing getting rid of sugar? I mean, more people eat than do coke, but, you know, 3 to 400,000 die from tobacco and alcohol poisoning. So is it. Look, I don't have an answer. Cocaine's very addictive. And, you know, fentanyl, if they made. If they. You know, I don't know what to say about it all, but I know fentanyl makes no sense. Who wants to kill off your customers? Yeah. It's just horrible. But there's going to be another drug after Fentanyl. Nobody saw fentanyl coming when everybody was doing crack and coke. So what I'm saying is maybe we should change the way we do it and come up with a different plan, because all we're doing is building criminals. Remember, Vegas wouldn't be here if it wasn't for prohibition. All this was built on the bones of the mobsters. This Bugsy Seagulls and all that. This was nothing, a place in the desert. Until the mob, the government, started prohibition. And the mob came out here and took the money they made from selling illegal booze and doing, you know, illegal speakeasies and built this town.

Sean Kelly (44:50)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (44:51)

So if it wasn't for cocaine being illegal, Pablo Escobar wouldn't exist. You know, the Medellin cartel wouldn't exist. The Ochoa brothers, Guzman in Mexico wouldn't exist if it wasn't for. There's a market in America. The president, the ex president, the prior president of Mexico said it best. He goes, we don't have a drug problem. America does. It's just passing through us. Yeah. And I don't have. Look, I wish I could say the answers to this. You know, I've lost friends, but most people. Nobody I know has ever died from cocaine. You know, maybe from partying too much and having a bad heart and killing themselves shooting it. You can definitely die from it, but not advocating anybody doing it. I don't do it. You know?

Sean Kelly (45:35)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (45:35)

Not anymore. You know, my current wife said you could smoke all the weed you want, hence the marijuana mercenary hat. She goes, but if you ever do a line of coke, I'm leaving you.

Sean Kelly (45:45)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (45:45)

I said, honey, if I ever do a line, I'm probably leaving too. You know, I don't know if it's on a stretcher or what, but.

Sean Kelly (45:50)

Yeah, Weeds never killed anyone.

Ken Baer (45:51)

No, it's good for me. It works for me. I'm not. Everybody has to have their own.

Sean Kelly (45:55)

Yeah. Did the DEA prioritize certain substances? Like, did they take the coke ones? Way more.

Ken Baer (45:59)

No. What they did was money. They wanted to make sure we could bust people with more boats, more planes. It was all about the Benjamins. But we did do the final bust I was involved in, they took seriously. It wasn't about assets. And we busted a guy with a sailboat one time because several agencies were involved. I asked my handler. I go, what are they going to do with the sailboat? Cut it in three pieces. Because they want to. They want the money.

Sean Kelly (46:24)

Auction it off.

Ken Baer (46:25)

Yeah, they auction off and chop up the money. But we did this one deal, and I, at this point, had nothing to do with this other than my handler trying to get me one more data blight before I went to court. You know, he was trying to put me into more positions so he could show the state of Ohio that I was involved. It was more of a gift to me. But we had this group in Canada that wanted to buy 10,000 kilos of coke. It's a lot.

Sean Kelly (46:50)

Yeah, that sounds like a lot.

Ken Baer (46:51)

It's a lot. It's, like, unheard of. And what they wanted to do there was the. It was the Italian mob, the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang. There's another motorcycle gang in Canada called the Rock something, and the Irish mob, and somehow they were all involved.

Sean Kelly (47:07)

Wow.

Ken Baer (47:08)

The mobs were bringing in the big loads of hash and coke into Canada. And then the motorcycle gangs were the distribution part of it. And somehow the guy that I worked for had been enlisted by the Canadian police, because back then, the Canadians didn't have conspiracy laws. They didn't have the same laws as America, where just talking about it made you as guilty as the guy doing it. So they. The. The Canadians couldn't get to the people they knew. They wanted the big guys. But you can't buy a couple grams or a kilo and get to the guy that's going to be doing the 10,000 kilos. So I was involved in that one. And the guy's name was. There was. I think it was Billy McAllister. And he was a bad guy. I mean, he already killed, like, 14 people.

Sean Kelly (47:53)

Was he part of the mob or.

Ken Baer (47:54)

Yeah, Irish mob. They busted him one time with a suitcase, a briefcase with a hand grenade in it, and then it had a Mac 10 machine gun.

Sean Kelly (48:02)

Holy crap.

Ken Baer (48:02)

And it had a trigger like James Bond had a suitcase with a gun. And it didn't have a trigger. He had a batter, you know, he

Sean Kelly (48:08)

could shoot out of the suitcase.

Ken Baer (48:09)

Yeah. You could pull the trigger on that and.

Sean Kelly (48:11)

No way.

Ken Baer (48:11)

Yeah. So.

Sean Kelly (48:13)

Wow.

Ken Baer (48:13)

Yeah. And so that one, it was kind of personal. They wanted him. And we.

Sean Kelly (48:17)

Did you have a face to face with him?

Ken Baer (48:18)

Not me. I did with his partner as LaRue. LaRue flew down to Fort Lauderdale. And what we did was we sent up a dog and pony show at Dave's house. The yacht broker. He had this big mansion on the water. So I had my wife at the time come down. I remember we're in our 30s. She's blonde, beautiful. Not as pretty as my current wife. Not as.

Sean Kelly (48:40)

Don't get in trouble now.

Ken Baer (48:41)

No, no, no, no. But she played the part. She had on the bikini and was sitting at the pool. And LaRue came down as partner. And we put on this, you know, this is the de agent. Wasn't his line was. He was an ex Vietnam veteran. He was a boat captain and a big smuggler. I was his right hand man or one of them. And then this other guy, David, who I call Sabo in the book, he was a Jamaican huge smuggler that was working with us. He was his other right hand man. And my wife at the time was the mob. Every mob story has to have some hot women in it.

Sean Kelly (49:17)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (49:17)

And LaRue sitting there getting this picture taken with my. He didn't know it was my wife. He just thought that was a girl hanging around the pool. And. Yeah. So we sent him back to Canada where he can go back and say, yeah, these guys have, you know, you know, badass blondes. No. Have a badass house and the boats and everything. And we brought 300 kilos up to Canada, up to Vermont. And let me tell you about this dog and pony show. So they had three cars put in a C1, like an air cargo, like a C111 cargo plane. And each car had a secret compartment in it that if you turn the key on, hit the cigarette lighter and, you know, like, maybe turn on the radio, whatever the three moves were, a thing would pop up in the back and there was the coke.

Sean Kelly (49:59)

Wow.

Ken Baer (50:00)

So they had the three cars, they had another C111. This is all Air National Guard stuff flying over when the drug deal's supposed to be happening. Using surveillance equipment like, you know, like they use in Afghanistan to surveil everybody and everything. So the good People of Burlington, Vermont, walking around with their maple syrup, and they're, you know, all being watched by a plane above. And then they had a Learjet show show up with the brass that came in for the big bust. Like, we were there already a day or two, setting everything up. And then I'll never forget it, we were sitting on an American military base, and it was like 28 below with the wind chill factor. And when this little room with me, I'm from Florida, man, and, you know, and this other guy, David Sabo from Jamaica, and the plane lands and the military goes, all right, you know, and Captain Bobby the deh and goes, all right, let's go out there. And I look down and go, I ain't going out there. He goes, hey, let's go out there. Remember, respect the brass. So we walk out and the guy gets off the plane. I swear to God, he's like. Like some conquering, you know, all the DEA heads and everybody for the big bust. And it didn't go down that day. We just didn't. They didn't bring the money. So now this whole dog and pony show, the Learjet, the awacs or whatever planes, they were using the coke. Remember, the thing about the cops is they never run out of drugs. They just put it back in the warehouse, right? And they'll play that cat and mouse day game all day long. It's just like you and I trying to sell a product. If you have a customer, we'll wait for the customer, Right? Keep moving and see if you can, you know.

Sean Kelly (51:40)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (51:40)

So anyway, a couple of months later, they. They had some guy fly down with a half a million dollars, and they busted him. And then they. At the same time, the Canadian police raided, you know, and they busted everybody. It's an interesting case. It's. You can Google, I mean, everything I'm talking about, most of it's, you know, you can Google it. This is Billy McAllister and LaRue. And it became a constitutional case because they tried to argue that the didn't have jurisdiction going to Canada. And they lost the case. But interesting. And they also did a documentary in Canada on it. There's a whole. I don't know how you'd find it. I actually have it somewhere. But they did a whole documentary.

Sean Kelly (52:18)

Wow. I didn't know the Italian mob was up there.

Ken Baer (52:20)

Yeah, I need. Hey, the Canadians that we see in Lauderdale, in Florida, they're kind of like the back bacon beer ones. Like, they come around, they're wearing little bathing suits, drinking, you know, you know, I never saw any Canadians that, like, you know, they. When LaRue got busted, he had on a, like one hundred and something thousand dollars. He had a. A fur coat. You know, like a 50,000 gold Rolex. I mean, who goes to a drug deal? Just like, you know, I wouldn't wear

Sean Kelly (52:48)

any jewelry if I go to a truck deal.

Ken Baer (52:49)

No. If I'm doing a drug deal in Vermont, I'm gonna wear, like, you know, flannel shirt and, you know, try to.

Sean Kelly (52:54)

Yeah, I'm not trying to get robbed.

Ken Baer (52:55)

Right. I certainly don't. I want to fit in. I don't want to stand out here. You're in a Denny's with a, you know, fur coat and, you know, dressed like, you know, so, you know. Anyway. But I tell the stories in the book, and it's very interesting because they used the way, you know, I go into the way that covert operations work.

Sean Kelly (53:13)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (53:13)

You know how. You know, how the tape. You know, they give me a tape recorder, and I do interviews and stuff like that. You know, just the tricks of the trade.

Sean Kelly (53:22)

Yeah. Well, Ken, that was amazing storytelling, dude. You got a podcast now, right?

Ken Baer (53:26)

I do. I do. It's. It's my Ken Baer, the Marijuana Mercenary. And the name of the podcast is One Step over the Line. But to find me easiest on the Internet is just put in Marijuana Mercenary, and boy, I pop up. Yeah.

Sean Kelly (53:40)

Check them out, guys. Is this book on audible?

Ken Baer (53:43)

Yeah. So I actually. So here's the funny. I am profoundly dyslexic. I failed first grade. I never graduated high school. By the way, 20% of the population is dyslexic. 50% of the prison population. Again, when kids are young and they fall off the. They don't fit. Right. They find other things. Education, early intervention education is key to keeping people out of prison. So I did write the book myself. I edited it myself, and I did the audio myself.

Sean Kelly (54:11)

Wow.

Ken Baer (54:12)

And I think the audio version. I'll tell you what, if everybody that listens to this show goes to my website, you'll see on a blue tab on the top, it says book. If you go in with your permission that they click on book, they can get a free audio or digital copy by just putting in Sean Kelly.

Sean Kelly (54:30)

Oh, respect.

Ken Baer (54:31)

There's. There's a promo code put in Sean Kelly and you'll get a free. Not the paperback, because I have no way shipping cost.

Sean Kelly (54:38)

Yeah.

Ken Baer (54:38)

I don't know how to shove it in. Yeah. But you'll get either the digital or mp3. Cool. So they can get it for free if you're on audible. Audible. That's what I listen to. My books on same. Yeah, man.

Sean Kelly (54:47)

Yeah, I'll check it out, man. Thanks for coming on.

Ken Baer (54:49)

Oh, man, it's been my pleasure.

Sean Kelly (54:50)

Check out the book, guys, and we'll do a part two next year.

Ken Baer (54:53)

Yeah, man. I'll come back.

Sean Kelly (54:54)

Cool. Check them out, guys. Peace. Thanks for watching all the way to the end, guys. It means a lot. Please click here if you want to watch the next episode and please subscribe to the show. It helps us get more guests and helps grow the brand.