A founding member of the infamous Medellin Cartel America Lehder and his colleagues created a river of cocaine where only a trickle had gone before.He commanded an armed garrison on a Bahamian island replete with hangars and a jet-capable runway. Twenty-four hours a day, his pilots injected cocaine by the ton into the United States. The cartel invested its immense profits in American goods and services or shipped them by Learjet to safe banking havens throughout Latin America and Europe.Lehder re-entered Colombia , Lehder was captured in the jungle, and lost his fight against extradition. In 1987 (by which point his net worth was in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion), he was sent to the United States, where he was tried and sentenced to life without parole, plus an additional 135 years.
