Loading summary
Transcript124 lines
- [00:01]
Danny Gold
Support comes from Wise the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe. If you've gotten this far, you're no stranger to rooting around till you get to the truth. Whether you're getting the scoop on a global crime wing or finding the best way to navigate international money, you're smart. Spotting sneaky behavior is practically second nature. So when you send or spend money abroad, don't be fooled by some provider's quote, unquote no fee. Promise extra costs often hide in bloated exchange rates. Your secret weapon to outsmart these sneaky fees, the Wise Account. You can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies with one easy to use app. Plus you can count on the exchange rate that you'd usually see on Google with no surprise markups. With Wise, tapping your cart overseas or sending a sum to your family abroad is fast, easy and affordable. No more having to launch an investigation to know you're getting the real deal for your money around the globe. Be smart, get wise. Download the wise app today. Ts and Cs apply Queen Carvania stood
- [01:07]
Benjamin Boster / Damon Fairless
haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word.
- [01:12]
Danny Gold
My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. Twas a lovely suv, an inexplicable, inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast. An offer you can feast on.
- [01:30]
Sponsor / Advertisement Voice
Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees. May apply.
- [01:34]
Danny Gold
It's the morning of June 21, 2022, and sitting outside a cafe in Budapest, a 64 year old man is having breakfast in the sun. He looks like a nobody. That's kind of the whole point of him. He's tanned, gray hair, a little overweight. The kind of expensive casual you see on a thousand retired European businessmen drinking espresso at a thousand outdoor cafes. Not really fancy. He blends in and that's what he wants. If you walk past him, you clock him. For a middle aged Dutch tourist, he's carrying a Mexican passport that says his name is Guillermo Diaz Flores, born June 1962. The passport is a fake, the birth date fake, the name fake. Everything is fake and it's only one of many aliases he's used. He's like a character from a movie, the one you might call the Ghost if you were lacking creativity and trying to throw up a cheap action movie for Netflix. Maybe the bad guy in an episode of Burn Notice. Seriously though, please bring back Burn Notice. What's real is this Hungarian police have had him under watch, and they move on him right where he is, at the table, in the middle of his breakfast. And the man does not run, does not fight, does not flip a table or reach for anything. By every account, he just stops, because there's nowhere left to go. He's not a violent guy. And he's been a fugitive across at least four countries, hunted by all the authorities. He's been on paper, legally dead for almost two years. He's used something like 10 different identities, each one with its own documents. The man is Sergio Roberto de Carvalho, dubbed the Pablo Escobar of Brazil. Hungarian police say the whole thing, the whole operation, from the tip that he's in Budapest to the handcuffs on the terrace, takes about six hours. That's how fast you need to move with him, which kind of feels like record time, right? Almost too easy for a guy that has been on the run across continents. Brazil, Spain, Bolivia, Portugal, Ukraine, Dubai. And why is he on the run? Because they say he's moved enough cocaine to flood a country. For starters, he's laundered money through Covid face masks and racehorses and Chinese clothing shipments. And he's done a whole host of other scams. Interpol has put him on a red notice and called him one of the biggest cocaine traffickers on the planet. The Hungarians announcing the arrest says his organization moved at least 45 tons of cocaine into Europe in three years. Still, outside a few circles, you'd have been hard pressed to find anyone who knows his name. And that's the way he liked it. More rich than famous. A different breed from the showy, ostentatious drug lords who court the attention. All things considered, though, Escobar might not be the best comparison for him. He's got a lot more in common with Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the man who built Mexico's modern cartel system, including one pretty crazy shared background story. Much like Gallardo, Carvalho got his start as a police officer, a major in the Brazilian military police. This is the Underworld Podcast. Welcome back to the Underworld Podcast, a global shipping logistics focus show that masquerades as a program about cocaine and narcos. I am Danny Gold, and usually I am joined by one Sean Williams. But he has a. I think he has Havana Syndrome. If Havana Syndrome didn't refer to getting zapped with a brainwave gun, but instead meant getting absolutely, like, completely descending into madness on assignment in Havana because it's an insane asylum and he's just kind of losing it, like Colonel Kurtz a bit. And Cross that with, like, fear and loathing. And that's really where Sean's at right now. It's some real darkness, folks. But he is actually fine. Besides a couple things that, you know, I'm sure he'll fill everyone in on next week. But that means once again, we are joined by our editor, Handsome Dale, who won not only hearts but also minds last week.
- [05:55]
Handsome Dale
Thank you, Danny. Handsome Dale. That's legally binding. You know, Sean gets fake Havana syndrome and I inherit the mic. That's imperialism finally given back to me. Dale.
- [06:07]
Danny Gold
Sean. Yeah, Sean. Sean's got some stories to tell, and I'm sure he will tell them here next week. Anyway, we are. Yeah, we are usually two journalists who report on this stuff all over the world. Sean still does, obviously. That's why he's out of commission. And now we are bringing you this show. As always, you can support the show over at patreon.com podcast merch is@underworld pod.com. get yourself a T shirt or a mug and you can hit us with tips and corrections and your own confessions attheworld podcastmail.com we are also posting slop on every social media platform that will have us, which at this point is kind of like a character reference against us, not for us.
- [06:41]
Handsome Dale
Hang on. Don't call this slop. You're degrading my work. Okay, sorry.
- [06:45]
Danny Gold
No, you're. You're beautiful edits that you're making beautiful edits. So today it's.
- [06:50]
Handsome Dale
It's slop.
- [06:50]
Danny Gold
Yeah, that's slob, dude. But it's all slop. Today we are not doing slop. We are going to Brazil, which is a great place for a crime podcast, which we've touched on in big episodes about the major gangs there, the Red Command and the pcc. Go back and listen to those. Many people now, think they might be the PCC that is the most powerful gang in the world. I've actually never been to Brazil, which is a mark of shame. I should have gone years ago. I had a few favela, like, pitches out for a nice document. Wanted to, you know, hit the beach. It just sounds wonderful, except for the whole everyone getting robbed thing. But yeah, the story I pitched years ago about one of the favela cleanups that happened so often did not get picked up, and here I am.
- [07:28]
Handsome Dale
Most people here, everyone gets robbed. But, you know, Danny here is finally a producer credit with Danger Pay.
- [07:34]
Danny Gold
This guy would have been. Would have been a blast. So, yeah, we are going to Brazil, but also Bolivia and Spain and Portugal and Hungary and Belgium And Dubai, because this guy, he gets around. Sergio Roberto de Carvalho went from a cop to quietly becoming one of the most wanted drug traffickers in the world. He also faked his own death from COVID which out of all the COVID scams, that one's pretty, pretty well played. You know, I do appreciate someone who, you know, filed for a fake company and then bought themselves like a hellcat. But this is also, this is, I think, a step up from that. You know, a lot of this stuff, a lot of this information comes from Brazilian outfits. Insight Crime did some good work on him. The occrp, you know, the usual suspects. But the guy is fairly quiet in English language media. Maybe because besides the whole like moving cocaine thing, he's just not that exciting.
- [08:23]
Sponsor / Advertisement Voice
Right?
- [08:23]
Danny Gold
No big gang, no cartel. Kind of more like a broker. Right, but first we need to get into how Brazil has boomed on the international cocaine trafficking circuit despite not growing a single coca plant there. Kind of just like Mexico.
- [08:36]
Handsome Dale
I think brokers are scarier than kingpins. Sometimes, you know, the, the loud guys buy the tigers. The. The brokers buy some silence and municipal permits and sometimes hits, you know, they're in the background.
- [08:47]
Danny Gold
They, they really are. I mean, those are the ones who, who make it, you know, make it happen. I think the show that really captures that is. Is 000, which did a great job of showing one of the brokers. Never heard of the author. It's great. It's on Amazon. The author has some plagiarism issues to be considered, but the TV show about it is just phenomenal. It's the same guy who wrote Kamora. But the TV show about it is just. It's phenomenal. It's a great, you know, really good look at brokers and how they operate. It's also the origin story of the Zetas is in there too as like, you know, a fictionalized version.
- [09:19]
Handsome Dale
Oh, I see.
- [09:20]
Danny Gold
So coca basically only grows in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. I mean, that's it. That's where the world supply is grown and refined. Now if you look at a map of South America and look at Brazil and notice who Brazil shares a border with. It borders all three. Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. All of them right up against Brazilian territory across thousands of miles of river and rainforest that nobody can realistically police. Brazil's land borders are more than three times the length of the US Mexico border. So think about how much money and how many guns and how many walls the United States throws at its border with Mexico. And it's still pretty open like to get drugs through right now. Triple it and run it through the Amazon.
- [09:59]
Handsome Dale
Triple it and run it through the Amazon. That's Danny's approach to the sentence structure. I'll tell you this, this script here.
- [10:07]
Danny Gold
Did Sean ghost write that joke for you? That's a Sean Williams joke if I've ever heard one.
- [10:13]
Handsome Dale
He, he deserves some. He deserves a little spiritual uplift considering this. So yeah, that one's in his honor.
- [10:19]
Danny Gold
We've been there, we're supporting. Sean is fine, guys, but he does have some stories to tell. Let me tell you. I wish I could tell though, but I'm gonna let him do it when he gets home. Yes, honestly, it is. It's surprising Brazil wasn't a major player decades ago. But that has to do with the European market, which we're going to get to in a second. So Brazil doesn't grow the Coca Cola. What Brazil has is everything that comes after it sits right next door to all the supply. And on the other side is thousands of miles of Atlantic coastline pointed directly at Europe and West Africa and some of the busiest container ports in the southern hemisphere. Brazil is the bridge. Peru, Colombia and Bolivia through Brazil to Antwerp, Rotterdam, Lisbon, maybe some stopovers across the, you know, that sort of north northwest African coastline like Equatorial Guinea. You guys know this stuff. We've talked a lot about how West Africa becomes this or became this transshipment point. And a lot about all the crazy gang control and coke moving through Rotterdam and Antwerp. It's got to come from somewhere, right? And Brazil is that place. And someone's got to set up those logistics. Now the crown jewel, the place that makes the whole thing harm, is the port of Santos in Sao Paulo State. Santos is the biggest port, the busiest port in Latin America. We're talking around 150 million tons of cargo a year. Something like 7,000 containers moving every single day. Connections to 600 plus ports in over 125 countries. It is a miracle of global commerce and global shipping. And boats. Like boats too, you know? Big ass boats. And that is exactly why it's perfect. How hard could it be to hide some bricks going out? You know, you add in a little corruption, it's just easy.
- [11:55]
Handsome Dale
Big ass boats. Amazing maritime analysis from the man who once called Europe above Africa. Kind of.
- [12:01]
Danny Gold
Wait, did I, when did I do that?
- [12:03]
Handsome Dale
I don't remember.
- [12:04]
Danny Gold
I feel like, I feel like that's a made up accusation.
- [12:07]
Handsome Dale
Okay? It's true.
- [12:08]
Danny Gold
It's a, it's a factual statement. If I did say it, it is
- [12:11]
Handsome Dale
above Africa kind of yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [12:15]
Danny Gold
And then we've got the gigantic boom in the European market for, for coke. There's always the whole line of like, oh, American consumers are the ones who keep the up the narcos rich. So much cocaine. America loves cocaine. But like, have you ever met an English guy in general or on holiday or an Australian, like anywhere? Anyway, in recent years, Europe is basically even with the US for cocaine shipments.
- [12:36]
Handsome Dale
You can never underestimate the destructive purchasing power of a sunburn Englishman named Sean who says he's only doing bumps tonight. That might be a low blow considering
- [12:49]
Danny Gold
he's not here to defend himself. But yeah, the English, they love their drugs.
- [12:54]
Handsome Dale
We love him. We love him. We miss him.
- [12:56]
Sponsor / Advertisement Voice
We do.
- [12:57]
Danny Gold
Missing the English, the Australians, they love. I mean, all over Europe, they love drugs. So let's not, you know, basically the market got big because they love drugs like everyone else. Now add in that a kilo wholesale goes for like 25k in the US and in Europe it can be 35, €40,000. And, and yeah, you see why Brazil has really upped its game. And Santos, that port points right at Europe. Now, who runs this whole thing? Because a bridge this valuable, somebody's controlling it. And that's where we get the primero commando de Capital, the pcc, the first command of the capital. I'm not going to do a deep dive on these guys. I did a full episode on them years ago. That's awesome. But let's have a little refresher. PCC born in prison on August 31, 1993, by a group of inmates in a brutal penitentiary in Sao Paulo state in the aftermath of the Karandiru massacre. When police storm a Sao Paulo prison in 1992 and kill 111 prisoners, the PCC starts, at least in its own mythology, as a prisoner's rights and protection outfit. Eight guys who swear an oath. And over the next two decades, it does something that almost no prison gang anywhere has ever pulled off. It goes seriously corporate. It takes over the drug trade in Sao Paulo, not mainly through spectacular violence, but through a kind of franchise model. Consignment, debt, internal courts, rules. Prison authorities try to break it up by transferring its members to prisons all over Brazil. And predictably, they just start their own franchise. And it spreads like crazy. The gang adopts the motto Peace, justice and freedom and starts selling itself as the thing the state never was for these guys, a government. And then around 2014, the PCC makes the leap that changes everything. It pivots from selling drugs on Brazilian street corners to Exporting them. And it locks down control over the port of Santos. Estimates of PCC membership right now run to something like 40,000 members and affiliates with a presence reported in nearly 30 countries. As one Brazilian prosecutor who's tracked the group for years put it to the Wall Street Journal, the PCC has become a truly transnational group. They work heavy with the entrance, who arguably are Europe's most powerful organized crime group and if not the biggest, one of the biggest cocaine importers.
- [15:02]
Handsome Dale
40,000 members is insane. Do they have benefits? That's like a mid market international concern. I mean, you said they're like a government. Like what are they doing for these guys?
- [15:11]
Danny Gold
They do have like, like certain benefits like that. You know, they got to pay lawyers on deck. I think they have some sort of like pension program for when they get locked up for the families. I don't remember it in exact detail, but I did cover it in the big PCC episode. But yeah, I mean, they are like corporate structure. And there's some more stuff you're going to hear in this next paragraph that are, that is amazing. There's a good Wall Street Journal article from April that gets into it. More members pay their dues and follow the code, which is, you know, pretty standard, I think, for gangs. But beyond that, any member with the capacity to move product to Europe can go move product to Europe. And any member who wants to launder through a gas station can do that too. It's free enterprise under gang law. And the corporate texture is unreal. New recruits sometimes get sworn in by video conference. The gang retains an army of lawyers that members call the Thai Brigade. And it even distills its own prison rum, which is named Crazy Maria.
- [15:59]
Handsome Dale
I'm sorry, but getting initiated on Zoom is spiritually disgusting. Like, yeah, imagine doing omerta or like pledging internal loyalty while someone's like, you're on mute. You're on. We can't hear you.
- [16:10]
Danny Gold
You're like, just prick your finger and hold it up, hold it up to the camera so I could see that your finger's bleeding. Yes, you know, incredible, incredible stuff. In the Amazon, the Journal finds river villages with no doctor and no police officer that just now have several resident drug dealers. Where the gang runs, a parallel justice system sponsors a soccer team to recruit teenagers and where locals talk about hearing the screams of people being punished at night. Authorities estimate the PCC moves several tons a month through the rainforest to hold that territory. It recruits renegade Colombian guerrillas fighters who sat out the 2016 peace deal for their bomb making skills and Their military grade weapons. The battles in that area of the Amazon and Brazil where the drug routes are, are insane. I mean it's just like a lawless place. Completely lawless. Meanwhile, at the port of Santos, police regularly arrest divers and welders for burning bolting as much as half a ton of cocaine at a time into recessed underwater chambers, into ships, holes, working in the dead of night. I don't know like you catch that, what that means? Like they're literally diving under probably ships that don't know any better and just attaching like, or putting cocaine into the. It's, it's like forget their own submarines. That's pretty, pretty amazing. Imagine Carnival cruise ship and you're just throwing a bunch of blow on the, like underneath it, someone else to pick. It's just ingenious, you know, Especially if
- [17:23]
Handsome Dale
the ships don't know.
- [17:25]
Danny Gold
I assume they don't know, right?
- [17:27]
Handsome Dale
I mean, I guess, yeah, I mean I guess we don't know if they don't know.
- [17:31]
Danny Gold
But anyway, that idea is for Carnival cruise ships. That's. That idea is free. The PCC is also working with gangs like the Yakuza as well as Albanian Serbian gangs working out of West Africa. Actually, I didn't know about the Albanian Serbian presence in West Africa. I knew there were a lot of Lebanese traffickers there, but that's. And I think the English had moved in there too. Sean's talked about that, but that's really interesting.
- [17:52]
Handsome Dale
The Albanians are everywhere.
- [17:53]
Danny Gold
Billions are heavy in, in Europe and the Bronx. But I did not know that they had a presence in West Africa. So that's really. But it makes sense. Obviously in May of 2026, Washington designates the PCC and the other massive Brazilian gang, the Red Command, as foreign terrorist organizations. So yeah, the PCC making big moves. And the cocaine flowing out of Brazil is on various routes. One of the big runs, one of the big ones runs from Brazil to West Africa and then up into Europe. Per the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, seizures on the Brazil to West Africa route, quote, increased dramatically from 435 kg in 2014 to more than 27 tons in 2019. That is a serious, serious amount of growth, like exponential, man. And the overall picture keeps getting bigger. Insight. Crime reports that the Brazil's Federal police seized 74.5 tons of coke in 2024 alone. And that's just the powder that they catch. The UN reports that global cocaine production hit another all time record in 2023, up about 34% in a single year. So Brazil Is flowing. Enter their own version of Pablo Escobar. Sergio Roberto de Carvalho is born on April 18, 1958 in a town called Ibipora. I'm not even going to bother. In Piranha state in southern Brazil while he's still young. The family moves to Campo Grande, the capital of Mato Grasso de Sol, which is the state that runs alongside the Bolivian and paragraph border. His parents, they run a snack bar. I mean, that's got to be a dream for a kid, right? Just especially like a working class kid. The parents running a snack bar. Dude doesn't get any better than that. His sister, who's going to come back in the story later, she works the family counter As a teenager, I actually. Dale, do you remember this? I worked the counter of a roast beef sandwich shop after graduation from journalism school.
- [19:37]
Handsome Dale
Oh, yeah.
- [19:37]
Danny Gold
And it ruled, let me tell you. Best job I ever had. Better than being a war reporter.
- [19:42]
Handsome Dale
It's like, did your guidance counselor lose a bet?
- [19:44]
Danny Gold
Like, no, but true story about a guidance counselor at my high school. When I was there, he, Mr. Mason, was a Jewish guy married to a black woman. There was a KKK rally in New York City. You can look this up. There's a New York Times article about it. He dressed up like a KKK member to get close to them. And then he punched the grand wizard in the face. Swear to God. You can look this up. Google New York Times. White Plains High School punching. Anyway, big story, it was like in the newspaper, he gets arrested. The cops are like kind of high fiving him. And then like the reporters like went to the school and we're asking people, like, what do you guys think? Everyone's like, I think it's pretty cool. And like, he just didn't get in trouble. Like, the school was like, yeah, you know, it is. They were like, yeah, you know, like, what, what are we going to do 90s?
- [20:30]
Handsome Dale
The question is, where did he. Where did he get the KKK costume? Did he have it on deck? Like little.
- [20:36]
Danny Gold
I mean, I don't. He was a Jewish guy married to a black woman. I don't think he was a secret member of the kkk, but like he. Dude, it was cr. I remember it happening. Guidance counsel in the high school just punched the KKK wizard in the face.
- [20:47]
Handsome Dale
Dude, that's amazing.
- [20:48]
Danny Gold
White Plains High School, man. Legendary place. Anyway, I think we also won New York state basketball championship that same year.
- [20:55]
Handsome Dale
So, I mean, that's less amazing to me.
- [20:57]
Danny Gold
Two for two, two for two.
- [20:58]
Handsome Dale
Guidance counselor thing.
- [20:59]
Danny Gold
Okay, so young Sergio does not go into the snack bar business. On September 25, 1980, he joins the Mato Grasso do Sol military police. And he is good at it in the sense that he rises fast. He becomes a major and ends up commanding the military police battalion in a town called Amambai, which sits right on the border with Paraguay. And yeah, I mean, you can kind of see the building blocks forming right before your eyes. It's the oldest story in the narco book. You got the police official commanding the border post. And this is not some backwater cop who, like, stumbles upward, right? He's one of six kids. His father's a merchant, mother, housewife. And he comes up through the Baro Bronco Academy in Sao Paulo, which is the elite officer school of Brazilian military police, the place that mints the command class. He graduates a second lieutenant. He's not some, like, schlub sitting there in a dirty uniform taking dollars for bribes. He's a trained, credentialed, ambitious officer, which
- [21:49]
Handsome Dale
is an important distinction, Right? He's not a dumb crooked cop. He's a diploma to crooked cop.
- [21:53]
Danny Gold
He's elite.
- [21:54]
Handsome Dale
He can. He can. He knows all the inner workings of how they'd be trying to get to him.
- [22:00]
Danny Gold
Yeah, I mean, there is a substantial difference between, like, schmuck at a border post and some guy who has this sort of training who, like, is intelligent, you know. So, yeah, he's at that border area. And this particular border area has a reputation at this point and still does. It is a smuggling super highway. And the first thing Sergio Carvalho allegedly starts moving across, it is not cocaine. It is tires and whiskey afterwards. Just contraband goods from Paraguay. The classic sort of border hustle. And once you control the route, right, once you own the cops and the crossing the back roads, doesn't really matter what you're moving along it, right? Tires, whiskey, it's all just cargo. And eventually, you want to move up from these basic goods to the real stuff that's going to make you a ton of money. And of course, the most valuable cargo that wants to use that exact route into the Brazilian interior is cocaine. Now, why does a nice snack bar kid from a good school break bad? Revista Forum, which is a Brazilian outlet, reports Carvalho gets close to a man named Fahd Jamil Georges, if you recognize the name. I didn't, but I used the power of positive visualization to research him. And this is how the Guardian described him in a 2022 article. That one was for you, Dale. Sean wouldn't appreciate It. But I know you did spiritually.
- [23:09]
Handsome Dale
The spiritual. The spiritual positivity there is fantastic for me. Thank you.
- [23:13]
Danny Gold
Quote. Fahd Jamil Georges went by many names. The Turk, the Godfather, boss of bosses, the king of the border. Over five decades, he went from running casinos to smuggling guns and drugs into Brazil from Paraguay, South America's top marijuana producer and a key transit point for Andian cocaine. Andian. Andian. Andian, right.
- [23:33]
Handsome Dale
Andian. The Andes.
- [23:34]
Danny Gold
Andian. Andes. Yeah.
- [23:36]
Handsome Dale
Yeah.
- [23:36]
Danny Gold
All right.
- [23:37]
Sponsor / Advertisement Voice
Andian.
- [23:37]
Danny Gold
His Cadillac boasted reinforced tires and bulletproof screens shielded his bed. He counted presidents and dictators on both sides of the border as close associates. Interesting side note about what happens to him 30 years later that relates to this episode. Stuff mentioned earlier. Quote. But in the end, this protection counted for little. When Jamil, 80, handed himself into Paraguayan authorities in April last year, after years on the run, he singled out the dangerous new player in town. Quote, the PCC are after me. So, yeah. So Fajmil is this legendary contraband godfather of that border. A figure whose name runs back decades. And he links up with Carvalho. In 1987, the federal police arrest three soldiers from Carvalho's own battalion moving 1400. 1400 tires in from Paraguay. Two years after that, the major himself gets caught smuggling whiskey. This, of course, kind of echoes the most famous smuggler of all time, right? The story of Pablo Escobar. And we're in the mid-90s or so when the coke market starts really booming and everyone is looking for a new route.
- [24:34]
Handsome Dale
The comparison really works. Smuggle small, get greedy, buy a farm, ruin several countries, and then blame paperwork. It's perfect.
- [24:42]
Danny Gold
Yeah, it's exactly right. He started out just smuggling trucks over the border of like, regular goods or. I don't remember what it was. TV, who knows? So by 1997, the tires have become powder. That year, Carvalho is allegedly already moving Colombian and Brazil a Bolivian cocaine into the interior of Sao Paulo State. And 1997 is also the year it first blows up in his face.
- [25:03]
Handsome Dale
The tires have become powder is like a Pablo Neruda line. It's beautiful stuff there. It's beautiful, Beautiful.
- [25:10]
Danny Gold
Did you catch that? And then it blows up. And it's like powder blows up. I didn't even do that on purpose, but I just noticed it now.
- [25:15]
Handsome Dale
I'm sorry, I was lost in the poetics of the first part.
- [25:18]
Danny Gold
It's very Sean. Like I'm to the turn of phrases right now.
- [25:20]
Handsome Dale
Yeah, yeah.
- [25:21]
Danny Gold
We miss you, Sean.
- [25:22]
Handsome Dale
We miss you, Sean.
- [25:23]
Danny Gold
In November of 1997, a plane is on his farm strip carrying 237 kilos of cocaine in sacks literally stamped Industria Boliviana, Bolivian Industry. What nobody on the farm knows is that three federal police officers have been lying hidden in the tree line. The cops machine gunned the plane's engine so it isn't going anywhere, then come out of the woods and take the pilot and two farmhands. Carvalho himself slips the net. He lasts eight days as a fugitive before they run him down in a hotel in the Sao Paulo coast and haul him Back to the 1st Battalion in Campo Grande, which are his own military barracks. Barracks. In 1998, he's convicted and sentenced to more than 15 years for those 237 kilos, which is not a great start. Funny enough, though, he doesn't get removed from the police entirely. He just gets kicked down to police reserve. And he's actually not formally expelled from the military police until March of 2018. And he's reportedly drawing a police pension the entire time he's building his empire. And Brazilian courts spend years fighting over whether to suspend his pension, which is something like $2,000 a month.
- [26:22]
Handsome Dale
I think the crime with retirement benefits, it's. It's just beautiful to me. America could never. Our criminals have to start podcasts.
- [26:29]
Danny Gold
Exactly. Guys got a. Got a pension. It's incredible. You know, 2000amonth is not bad for passive income either.
- [26:36]
Handsome Dale
No, it's.
- [26:37]
Danny Gold
Yeah.
- [26:37]
Handsome Dale
I mean, especially if you, like, already have a house or whatever, you know.
- [26:39]
Danny Gold
Yeah, yeah. So what do those prison years actually look like for him as a military police officer? He doesn't go into the gen pop with the people he used to arrest. He gets held in the military lockup. And from that cell, he keeps working and building. At some point, authorities search it and find cell phones, a fax machine, and cash. 180,000 US dollars and another 27,000 reals and. And paper in his cell. So the man is basically running his logistics office out of a military prison with petty cash included. I mean, 230 kilos again, is no joke. The guy was quietly making power moves. There's also scandals over him getting special outings when he's in prison, trips outside the facility, and the legal fight around him is its own crime story. November 1997. A federal appeals judge named Paulo Teotono Costa grants him a habeas corpus and sets him loose. In 1998, the federal court sends him back inside. At around that same time, per Campo Grande news, a cassette tape surfaces, capturing scheming to buy decisions from the Judges and federal prosecutors handling his trafficking case. And that judge who freed him, he's removed from the bench in 2003 and convicted of corruption in 2008 in a separate case about favoring a private bank. So he fights his way, his case, all the way up the ladder. This guy you're going to see throughout the course of his life, he's incredible at legal maneuvers. In 2003, he's still sitting in the barracks prison. He gets Brazil Supreme Court to hear a habeas petition, but it actually gets denied. And then 2005, after roughly seven years inside the system, does what the Brazilian court system and jail system usually does, conditional release. So he's back on the streets, probably with a whole lot of new friends. And over the next 15 years or so, his name is going to keep popping up, not just in cases about drugs, but other hustles too. There is an illegal gambling case in 2007, another one in 2009. There's a 2010 case alleging fraud over a roughly 100 million real estate of a man who died without heirs. I mean, this is not a guy with one household, right? He's diversifying. He's not some broke boy like you got to lock it up. You got to diversify, even if you're just trafficking cocaine, get into other hustles. He actually gets rearrested in 2007 in the gambling sweep, which is called Checkmate with like XEQ U U E, which is great name, Portuguese Checkmate. Yeah, yeah, it's great. But he's out within a month, and his parole on the cocaine sentence doesn't even get revoked. He's renting out illegal slot machines and running casinos. In 2009, they grab him again in codename Las Vegas operation, this time alongside 19 other people, civilians, military involved when they come from that time. He's in Campo Grande, the city he lives in in Brazil. But he charters one of his planes to border with Bolivia and he gets caught. But he again wiggles his way out. Same thing with the Koch sentence, which, by the way, he's still quietly moving around 2014, he makes the transition similar to how the PCC does. He starts thinking about European ports. A ton of his cocaine gets seized in Portugal with seven Brazilians investigators say are working for him. He also starts acquiring everything an exporter needs. Planes, sky loves, planes, pilots, ranches, port access, and front companies. So many front companies that in 2019, a Brazilian court hands him another 15 years and charges him just for the money washing shallow network. A sentence delivered when he's already living in Europe under another man's name. By the mid-2010s. The guy who got caught with 237 kilos on one ranch is allegedly moving that much in a slow week. Then in 2016, sensing the heat, he just kind of vanishes from Campo Grande one day. The city's most famous ex convict, he's just not around anymore. That, investigators say, is when he starts building the other side of the international end. The ports, the shells, the European infrastructure. By 2018, Interpol has him listed. But a year before Inter, he had already resurfaced on the other side of the ocean with a tan and a brand new name. November of 2020, the Brazilian police launched an operation called Operation Enterprise. Because the guy runs things like an enterprise. Although isn't like all big scale cocaine business run like an enterprise, Right? Isn't that always what they say? He had the mind of a CEO. He ran it like a business. So who knows? Either way, the name is a deliberate nod to the scale of what they find. An organization that functions in their own words, like a genuine international business in money laundering and cocaine exports. This operation really exposes the scope of Carvalho's network and reportedly seizes something like 80 to $100 million in assets in one go. And it traces back to a thread the police start pulling in 2017, when they intercept a 776 kilo cocaine shipment at the Paranagua container terminal and follow it upstream. And then there's a whole bunch of follow up operations targeting different limbs of the octopus. The aviation wing, the money laundering wing, the. And once they understand they aren't looking at a smuggler, but an integrated logistics company, they go after it department by department. And this is how the machine works, according to the Federal police. It moves the product by land, by water and by air. And the air part is where it gets cinematic. The organization buys cocaine in Bolivia and Peru. It uses the state of Mato Grasso, the big agricultural interior, as a warehouse and a staging ground. And to move the product around inside Brazil, it flies it on small planes, like the twin engine Senecas and Cessnas, and in and out of clandestine airstrips cut into farmland. And to keep the planes from getting flagged, they allegedly cloned the tail numbers so a plane on a radar screen matches the registration of some totally innocent aircraft parked legally somewhere else. Many of the veteran narco pilots allegedly flying for Carvalho have previously flown for the infamous Luis Fernando da Costa, who was better known as Fernandejo.
- [32:03]
Benjamin Boster / Damon Fairless
Welcome to The I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster.
- [32:53]
Handsome Dale
If you sold somebody a loaded gun who you knew was in a vulnerable state and they shot themselves, I think it is murder. Just because you're using the Internet doesn't mean you get away with murder.
- [33:06]
Benjamin Boster / Damon Fairless
I'm Damon Fairless, host of Hunting Warhead. This season I take you inside the business of suicide and the places desperate people go when they can't find what they need in the real world. Hunting the Suicide Salesman. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [33:26]
Danny Gold
One of the most famous Brazilian traffickers of the previous generation. So he's kind of hiring the guys who flew for the last legend. He's buying experience. In March 2022, the Brazilian Air Force scrambles two fighter jets and a radar plane on an unidentified twin engine Seneca and forces it down at the airport in Campo Grande, his Hometown. On board, 465 kilos of cocaine, basically half a ton. The pilot later tells police he thinks he's he's hauling agricultural machinery parts for a client he knows only as junior, which is a very obvious lie. I mean these are like serious shipments and he's moving a lot of them. So he's raking in serious money. And next comes laundering. And Carvalho's alleged laundering operation is one of the most creative parts of the story. I mean it's classic stuff. Shell companies frontman the police the Brazilians call these people laranjas oranges. They're the names that you borrow to hold borrow to hold your assets. So he imports Chinese clothing to launder money through textile retail. He puts money into racehorses, real estate, luxury cars, private jets. But much like every two bit hustler who posted their ill gotten gains to Instagram, it's the 2020 pandemic where he really shines. He gets in on the COVID schemes and allegedly tries to broker a deal to sell 36 million Chinese face masks and reportedly thermometers to to the Sao Paulo state government for $20 million. But the deal apparently collapses over late delivery. His finances allegedly run partly out of Dubai, which of course he's got a right hand man there named Marcelo Maganzani. Who keeps an office until he's arrested in May of 2021. His sister, the one from the counter at the snack bar, also runs a custom brokerage business, which is used for a lot of the importing, exporting, and money washing. So it's not a small business, right? Across all the operations against him, Brazilian European authorities have reportedly seized 163 properties, something like 37 aircraft, 70 cars and millions in cash. 37 planes. I mean, the guy has his own air force practically, though I assume they're mostly like the. The twin engine, small Cessnas and whatnot. The Interpol Red notice requested by Brazil in 2020 accuses him of involvement in distributing 45 tons of cocaine from Brazil to Europe between 2017, 2019. Hungarian police announcing his arrest say the organization smuggled at least 45 tons in those years. Europol, I think, says the same thing. At least 45 tons into European seaports annually, with profits of more than 100 million euros in six months. So to put those numbers in perspective, it makes him one of the largest cocaine traffickers in Brazil ever. And he doesn't appear to have been a major member of any of the gangs. Like, he's not in the PCC or otherwise. The way the Portuguese magazine Visal describes. Carvalho is essentially an independent operator, quote, the biggest cocaine trafficker on the Iberian Peninsula, who is also a client of the pcc. He's a freelance logistics contractor that even the big factions do business with. He's the guy with, like, you know, the planes, the pilots, the corrupt contacts, the European real estate and the routes. Anyway, back to 2017. The Brazilians are putting some serious heat on him, and he decides to switch it up. He relocates to Marbella on the southern coast of Spain, the Costa del Sol, which we've talked about a lot. The place where, you know, before Dubai, all the narcos and gangsters and guys with warrants from England and money in Europe, they all relocated there. So his new alias is a Dutch businessman from Suriname by the name of Paul Vouter. New name, new nationality, new backstory, new documents. He lives in a big manchain. He keeps working the hustle. Spanish authorities eventually tie him to financing a massive cocaine shipment, something like 1700 kilos, moving through northwestern Spain, which is a historic cocaine gateway of Europe, which is the smuggling coast that's been bringing product into the continent since the 1980s, which is something I actually did not know, but it makes a lot of sense. I would assume it would have been southern Spain, right? Costa del Sol or close to Gibraltar and all that, but, yeah, I guess the northwest, it doesn't last long.
- [37:07]
Handsome Dale
Again, you're the guy who said Europe is above Africa kind of, so it
- [37:12]
Danny Gold
is above Africa kind of. And I don't know if I said that, but even if I did say it, it's. It's accurate.
- [37:17]
Handsome Dale
All right, all right, all right.
- [37:19]
Danny Gold
It doesn't last long because in 2018, Spanish police arrest Paul reportedly in a suite at a weight loss clinic in Marbella. He should have just ordered some black market rada, but I don't know if I was in the market back then. At this point, the Spanish don't fully know what they have. They have this Dutch. Suriname. Surinamese businessman named Paul who's mixed up in this one cocaine case. But he posts bail, reportedly around 200, €000, and he just leaves. Which in the era of digital footprints and fingerprints and eye scans, I mean, I'm gonna speculate with zero factual evidence that he bribed his way out a little, because this is like, it's not 1957, right? It's. It's 2018. If you catch a guy moving serious blow, you're gonna run some info and some, like, scans on him.
- [37:56]
Handsome Dale
No, I mean, I guess I'm more interested that he was arrested at a weight loss clinic. It's hilarious. Like, wonder what his macros were like. And also, was he overweight, or was he just, like, hiding at a weight loss clinic? It's kind of a.
- [38:10]
Danny Gold
Kind of an amazing place to hide. If you look at photos of him, he's, you know, a little heavy. Look, I'm not judging. You know, we've all. We all get older, pack on a little bit of pounds. Except for you look great. You look great.
- [38:20]
Handsome Dale
Thank you. The priorities are out of whack, though. It should be doing better to. Or maybe that's what he was trying to lose weight to disguise himself.
- [38:27]
Sponsor / Advertisement Voice
Dude.
- [38:28]
Danny Gold
Priorities are his health, Dale. You know what's more important than health?
- [38:31]
Handsome Dale
Your health is your wealth, is your. Your network, is your net worth.
- [38:35]
Danny Gold
Staying out of prison, I assume would probably be. Be. Be more important than. Than health, now that I. Now that I think about it. So, yeah, you're right. Big mistake. In 2020, while out on bail, he fakes his own death. His defense presents the Spanish court with a death certificate saying he died of COVID and the body was cremated. And they just. They just buy it and the case goes away. Which is honestly, like I said, a much more solid Covid scamming effort than getting a fake PPP loan to buy a Hellcat. It's all very like kind of Shawshank, right? Because Paul Water doesn't even exist. He's just a paper trail, really. And so you can fake your alias's death in a, like, in a smart, smart way, and then just. Just gone. Eventually it gets figured out because the Brazilian police figure out the true identity of the supposed dead guy. They call up the Spanish police and they piece together the fact that there was never a body. But by then, ghost, right? He surfaces in Portugal. He's apparently hidden in Lisbon for two years. And while he's there, he's not exactly lying low either, because in November 2020, Portuguese police find a van in a Lisbon garage with somewhere between 11 and 12 million euros in cash just sitting in it. And it's supposed to be his van, allegedly. He's also constantly trying to buy, like, aviation companies, including charter jet companies, but they always fall through. Portuguese and Brazilian police also tie his network to a private jet bus in Brazil with around 578 kilos of cocaine on board. Bound, of course, or like hidden as tires, I think hidden under tires or in tires. From Portugal, the trail jumps to Ukraine, where he reportedly flies in on his own private jet to Kiev, then to Dubai. And then in June 2022, we get the cold open, which asking on a tip, Hungarian police, working with the Portuguese judicial police, Interpol, close in on him in Budapest. From the time they get the tip, which I really wonder who they got that from, to the handcuffs, it's only about six hours, which is incredible for European police to move on, though, I guess the Hungarians don't mess around. They take him at that outdoor cafe mid breakfast. The fake Mexican passport. Hungarian police say he's used at least 10 different aliases, each with its own fake documents. And after that, there's a fight over who gets him. Because like a proper villain, he's wanted everywhere. Brazil wants him. Obviously, it's his home country, and he's got convictions and charges stacked up there. The US actually issues an international arrest warrant. Spain, because the northwestern Spain cocaine case, Belgium wants him. Belgium's home to the port of Antwerp, where he moved all his stuff. And Carvalho's network, it's allegedly been pumping cocaine straight into Antwerp. A lot of it, honestly, if I was him, you gotta want to go to Europe, right? Like, no chance. Brazilian prison is where you want to be. But I guess the corruption possible to someone with millions of door dollars opens up doors. European prisons, I feel like, are a lot nicer, right? They give you like an N64 and a life coach, and you just kind of hang out. So I would go with Europe because the U.S. you do not want to be in the U.S. i guess I'd want to be in the U. S. Over Brazil, but it's tricky, right, Because Brazil, with money, you can kind of, you know, make things happen. It's a tough call, but I feel like Europe is the easy number one for where you want to serve a prison sentence.
- [41:32]
Handsome Dale
Well, you're the United States. You're like in a labor camp in Brazil. You're in more like a more destitute situation. I don't know if they make you work in Brazil, do they? Europe, obviously you want to be in Europe.
- [41:42]
Danny Gold
You want the place. It's not, dude. Federal facilities are not like chain gangs, dude. You know, I don't mean chain gang,
- [41:48]
Handsome Dale
but you're making license plates or whatever.
- [41:51]
Danny Gold
I don't think you're making license plates anymore like that. I mean, they're not, they're not pleasant. I mean, federal persons in the US suck, but. But I don't think it's like. It's not, it's not. You're not. I guess in the South, I feel like the state persons have. Have chain gang still. I actually don't. Don't know. But yeah, I imagine Brazil. Brazil without money is a freaking nightmare. You know, there's always like massacres in those prisons. I assume, though, if you have a ton of money, you can make your life relatively comfortable. But who knows? Anyway, he does get sent to Belgium, and in June 2023, they move him in a transfer. That sounds like the end of a heist movie, right? There's police helicopters, Belgian military police, the whole production. To make sure that the most slippery man in Europe, organized crime, does not escape. Which seems a little ridiculous because he's not like. See a picture of him. He's not, he's not scaling any walls or making a break for it, you know, I don't think he's the kind of guy who's been busting out of jail, climbing a rope into a helicopter. He's just like a guy who moves around as a little slick. He lands in Belgium, they put him in. In the sort of like high security prison complex in Brussels. And according to Belgium reporting, Brazil is still paying Carvalho his former police pension, which is like give or take €2,500, they say, while he sits in a Belgian prison awaiting trial for international cocaine trafficking, which is just amazing. Goes to trial in a case known as CREVA Rochem, named after an Antwerp water treatment company that is allegedly used as a front to import his drugs Brazil and Portugal. You'll see the related investigation called Samba. The Belgian case centers on the importation of at least 16 tons of cocaine through the point of Antwerp with hundreds of millions in laundering. And it puts him alongside of roster of more than 30 co defendants. His co star, the alleged co kingpin in the same trial is a Belgian named Flor Bressors who who is a serious piece of work in his own right. He's a man Belgian police describe as a violent and dangerous with a nickname tied to cutting off fingers. Pressers is arrested in Switzerland in early 2022 and shipped to Belgium. So you've got these two alleged megatraffickers, the Brazilian Escobar and the Belgian finger cutter in one enormous courtroom in Harran, which is that crazy prison with 30 odd codefendants and what should be a slam dunk pile of evidence, about 16 tons of cocaine.
- [43:55]
Handsome Dale
I like this. The Brazilian Escobar and the Belgian finger cutter. It's finally a buddy comedy for me and our audience, really. I think our whole audience would enjoy that. That one.
- [44:05]
Danny Gold
Streamers just haven't done us justice, man. But if there's one thing you guys are going to pick up, pick up that story anyway, my friends, this is European justice. So what happens? The trial completely falls apart. It's just chaos. The thing is supposed to start back in October 24th and keep slipping. When it finally gets going in September 2025, it descends almost immediately into proced. On September 18th, 2025, the presiding judge has defense lawyers physically removed from the courtroom by police after a confrontation. And then the defense unleashes a barrage of recrusal or Jesus is a hard sentence. Recrusal, recusal request motions to throw the judges off the case for bias. I could almost not get that out, man.
- [44:43]
Handsome Dale
Remember what I said earlier about the Amazon? Anyway, European justice is when the trial needs its own trial, that's all.
- [44:51]
Danny Gold
Yeah, it's basically. That is exactly what happens usually. Remember the. I guess Tagi got sentenced, right? But his trial was insane. He was just picking off people left and right. Then on January 5, 2026, the judges do something that even veteran Belgian court reporters call unprecedented. They abruptly close the debates, take the case under deliberation without letting the prosecution finish presenting its sentencing demand and without letting the defense make its closing arguments.
- [45:15]
Handsome Dale
I think this is. This illustrates what's wrong with today's society. Rage, quitting, ghosting, no accountability. They Just. No, we're done. I'm out of here.
- [45:24]
Danny Gold
You know, Belgian. Belgian zoomer courts, man. Just nothing getting done. You.
- [45:28]
Handsome Dale
You hear me?
- [45:29]
Danny Gold
This triggers a fresh wave of recusal demands, and this time, they land. On February 5, 2026, Court of Appeal removes the three judges from the case, finding that the way they shut down the trial creates, quote, the impression of partiality and reflects, quote, a high degree of hostility. The Federal Prosecutor's Office decides on February 9 not to take it up to Belgium's highest court, and that decision seals it. The entire trial has to be done over from scratch with new judges. On March 18, 2026, the case comes before three new judges under heavy security, and the defense immediately starts contesting their appointment, too. As of this recording, there is no verdict. At least from my research. There is no new trial date. The biggest cocaine trial in recent Belgian history, and it's just slowed down. I may have missed it, but I don't think it's resumed just yet.
- [46:13]
Handsome Dale
I love that this episode is basically about paperwork.
- [46:16]
Danny Gold
People think it's like. Like you said, like tigers and aks, but most of anything is just paperwork, dude. It's all just paperwork and logistics. That's what it all comes down to.
- [46:24]
Handsome Dale
That's why he went to the elite level, to understand the paperwork.
- [46:29]
Danny Gold
It's a gift. You can just plug it all now into Claude and get your paperwork done for you to really open up the game for a lot of traffickers. So, look, the guy's not really Escobar, to be honest. Like, Escobar is loud. Escobar is insanely violent. I haven't heard any stories of Carvalho being tied to, like, to. To. Although I'm sure he has. But, like, tied to hits, really. Like, there's no mention of it in any of the charges. From what I've seen, it's the. He's the exact opposite, right? He's entire genius. If you want to call it that. Is like disappearing. Low key. Doesn't want a throne, wants a fake passport, quiet table on a terrace. More rich than famous. Like, he's less a kingpin than a contractor. Who. Like, the ultimate middleman. Like I said, more rich than famous. Logistics guy through and through.
- [47:13]
Handsome Dale
Logistics man. His most powerful weapon is paperwork. His second most powerful breakfast.
- [47:19]
Danny Gold
I mean, he's living. Living the dream. Anyway, thank you guys for tuning in. Thank Dale, as always, for. For, you know, double timing it. You were a joy. We got a lot of comments about how much people loved you. I think they're going to love you even more after this episode. Sean, we hope things are doing, doing better for you right now.
- [47:38]
Handsome Dale
Sean, please come home.
- [47:40]
Danny Gold
Sean, please come home. We're actually in contact with Sean all the time. All the time. He's fine.
- [47:43]
Handsome Dale
No, but we're overstating it.
- [47:45]
Danny Gold
But there is. It is there. We'll talk about it next episode. Patreon.com podcast Anyway, maybe we should do a Patreon episode about what happened. Like, we'll talk about a little bit on the episode. Maybe we should do a Patreon episode about what actually happened to him. That's like a longer version of it. You hear that idea, right? Not a bad idea. Yeah. All right, take care, guys. Thank you for tuning in. Sam sa.
- [49:18]
Sponsor / Advertisement Voice
When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click range granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.