Early Activities and Prison
Lehder started out as a stolen car dealer, a marijuana dealer, and a smuggler of stolen cars between the US and Canada. While serving a sentence for car theft in federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, Lehder decided that, upon his release, he would take advantage of the burgeoning market for cocaine in the United States and enlisted his bunkmate, former marijuana dealer George Jung, as a future partner. Jung had experience with flying marijuana to the US from Mexico in small aircraft, staying below radar level and landing on dry lake beds. Inspired by the idea, Lehder decided to apply the principle to cocaine transport and formed a partnership with Jung. While in prison, he set out to learn as much information as possible that could be useful to him in the cocaine business. Lehder would sometimes even spend hours questioning fellow inmates on money laundering and smuggling. George Jung allegedly said that Lehder kept countless files and constantly took notes.
Lehder's ultimate scheme was to revolutionize the cocaine trade by transporting the drug to the United States using small aircraft. Previously, drug dealers had to rely on human "mules" to smuggle the drug in suitcases on regular commercial flights. In Lehder's vision, much greater quantities could be transported directly by small private aircraft, with far less risk of interception.
Read more about this topic: Carlos Lehder
Famous quotes containing the words early, activities and/or prison:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“The prison is the state writ small.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)