Martin Suarez is the only deep-undercover FBI agent in history to have infiltrated a Colombian drug cartel. In 1988, he transformed into “Manny” and became a high-level smuggler for Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel. Over the next four years, he smuggled $1 billion worth of cocaine into the United States — all of which was eventually seized by federal authorities.
In 1992, he transferred to his home country of Puerto Rico and, still working deep-undercover, became a money launderer for the North Coast Cartel. As he helped wash tens of millions of dollars for the cartel’s shadowy money-boss, El Toro Negro, he singlehandedly exposed the Black Market Peso Exchange, the most insidious money laundering apparatus in the world, which cleaned billions of dollars per year for the world’s most ruthless criminal enterprisers. In doing so, Martin implicated billionaire bankers, major American corporations, and Colombia’s political elite.
Martin’s story is also a deeply personal one, as he struggled to balance his covert life with being a devoted husband, father, and son — all while danger crept dangerously close to home.
In an exclusive excerpt of Inside the Cartel: How an Undercover FBI Agent Smuggled Cocaine, Laundered Cash, and Dismantled a Colombian Narco-Empire, written by Martin with journalist Ian Frisch, Martin is thrust into his most high-stakes mission yet: securing $500 million of the cartel’s cocaine within the Caribbean’s choppy waters and smuggling it onto the seedy streets of Miami.
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A great whooshing came from overhead, the rippled squealing of a plane. The cartel had arrived. And then I heard the sound: BANG! BANG! BANG! When a 45-kilogram tula of cocaine falls from an airplane and hits the sea, it sounds like a Mack truck crashing, a refrigerator being tossed off a building. And they were landing dangerously close to my boat.
In the eyes of Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, I was one of the most prolific drug smugglers in South Florida. I had marine and aviation skills, a reliable crew, and the guts to get their dope across the border. But the truth was even more cinematic: I was a deep-undercover FBI agent tasked with infiltrating Colombia’s most menacing narco empires.
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It was early 1990, and the cartel was even more eager to see if I really could handle a big load: 3,000 kilos of 95 percent pure Colombian cocaine — with a street value of roughly $500 million. The cartel and I settled on a stretch of sea off the coast of Cuba as our rendezvous point. They were going to drop the drugs from the sky.
It took six weeks to plan this massive shipment. My fellow FBI agents and I needed this time so we could make sure, as soon as I delivered the load to the cartel’s receivers in Miami, that the drug squad was ready to make one of the largest seizures in the bureau’s history. We also needed to ensure that the operation was completely disguised. This would protect my cover and deflect blame after the raid, but also force the cartel’s hand: We wanted them to try and offset their loss by hiring me to transport more drugs, thus creating a chain of destruction that would both prevent dope from landing on the streets and keep me integrated within the cartel’s machinery. With each load seized, the cartel would take another bite off its own tail.
This is what I told the cartel we would do: The drop would come in the dead of night. I’d park my smuggling vessel — an inconspicuous, 100-foot-long lobster boat — at specific coordinates off the coast of Cuba. I also enlisted a 36-foot Mako fishing vessel. This was our runner: I’d use the Mako to grab the bales and bring them back to the lobster boat. The two boats were outfitted with radios and satellite phones, so I could communicate with the Colombian pilot and his crew. After dropping anchor on the lobster boat and readying the Mako, I’d wait for the cartel’s pilot, coming straight from Colombia, to fly over me. From there, the plane’s crew would open the doors and drop the cocaine into the ocean, where I would pick it up. But I wouldn’t go straight to Miami just yet. I told the cartel that I wanted to hang out in the Caribbean for a week, tamp down any suspicion in case I was spotted by law enforcement, and then haul the drugs back to Miami. From there, the product would be unloaded, securely packaged, and transported to the cartel’s stateside distributors. And then I would be ready for the next shipment.
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This is technically what went down but, unbeknownst to the cartel, a lot more happened behind the scenes. First of all: I obviously didn’t need to hang out in the Caribbean for a week because I thought I’d be surveilled. The FBI would secretly transport the cocaine to Miami immediately, and they needed sufficient time to catalog the drugs and plan their raid. Moreover, the lobster boat and the Mako were covert FBI assets carefully disguised as legitimate smuggling vessels. The lobster boat also acted as our command and control center, outfitted with high-tech surveillance gadgetry. Large-scale drug trafficking investigations are tricky: We had to prove that the drugs seized in the United States actually came from Colombia, were being delivered by The Medellín Cartel, and were the same drugs that fell from the plane, hit the water, and were retrieved by me and my men. We had to document the entire process, or the impending prosecution could fall apart. (It did help, however, that the kilos were stamped with the cartel’s logo.) It was the first time that the FBI had executed an operation of such immense scale. Dozens of agents and all the top-brass were involved. No one wanted to screw it up.
For complete operational security, we stashed the boats at a covert site on the Cayman Islands. A team of FBI agents and I flew from Miami to retrieve them and start the mission. We spent three days on Grand Cayman waiting for the cartel to prepare the delivery. I was the only deep undercover agent on the team, the guy who actually met with the cartel bosses and cemented their belief that I was a legit smuggler, but all of the agents involved in the mission posed as my smuggling associates and assumed undercover personas. In the cartel’s eyes, my operation was so involved that I enlisted an entire team to transport their cocaine.
After a last-minute maintenance check on both ships, we tethered the Mako to the lobster boat and set out for the rendezvous point, a three-day trek past Jamaica and through the Windward Passage that bisects Haiti and Cuba. By the end of the third day, we had arrived at our destination. As darkness settled on the Caribbean, I went into the belly of the lobster boat and ate a steaming hot cup of chicken fricassee. It was slated to be a long night. After I ate, two other agents and I transferred from the lobster boat and onto the Mako. We detached ourselves and made our way just over a mile south, to the drop location. The wind and current was such that, as the plane flew over us and dropped the bales of cocaine, the cargo would theoretically stay in the general area between where I was stationed in the Mako and where our mothership was anchored. From there, we could pick up the bales one by one on our way back to the mothership, Pac-Man-style. It sounded simple on paper, but in the pitch-black sea, anything could happen.
We settled down at the predetermined coordinates and waited. Having previously served in the Navy, I felt comfortable on the water. It had become a second home for me. A sense of adventure filled my chest, knowing that no one at the FBI had previously been able to orchestrate an airdrop from a Colombian cartel. But darkness soon settled firmly over my little boat and the sea began to roil violently. As the swells grew and the troughs sunk deeper, an ominous feeling settled upon us. Ten-foot swells rose up and sent our boat reeling. We grabbed onto anything we could to keep our balance. If one of us went overboard, the entire operation would be blown, and if the boat took on too much water, all of our lives would be at risk. Within minutes, a slick, three-inch-deep puddle of seawater coated the boat’s deck. I tried to hold my balance, but I slipped, nearly rolling my ankle before catching myself. I prayed for the cartel to show up so we could grab the drugs and get the hell out of there, but I also found solace in my discomfort. To me, it was a gift not only to witness such a brazen smuggling operation, but to be an actor in this play, and to know I was pushing myself to my limits in order to achieve a massive goal.
An hour later, we received a garbled, static-filled call over the radio: The plane was one mile away. I asked the pilot to flash his headlights, so we could see him. Two short bursts of white light shot from the horizon. They were close. I radioed the mothership and told them to flash their lights in return. And then they zoomed overhead, engines screeching, and began tossing the bales into the ocean. I went out onto the Mako’s deck, lit a bright red flare, and waved it over my head. I grabbed my radio: “Don’t throw on the flare! Don’t throw on the flare!” If one of the bales hit our boat, we’d sink; if one of us got hit, we’d be killed instantly.
My smuggling vessel thrashed violently back and forth, swamped to the point of sinking, with the bilge pumps set to overdrive. My eyes shrunk to slits, trying to spot the glow sticks that The Medellín Cartel had affixed to their bounty, which slowly lit up the water’s surface like fluorescent fireflies. The pilot doubled back and dropped more bales, each impact more violent than the last, like bombs in a war-torn battlefield. At the bottom of a swell, total darkness surrounded me, as if I had fallen into a bottomless pit. And then the sea sent the boat shooting upward again, to the crest of a wave, the sky a blanket of stars.
After a few passes, I knew that over 2,000 kilos had likely been dropped already. I grabbed the radio again: “Acabastes? Acabastes?” Are you done? Are you done? The pilot responded: “Una más!” One more pass. He circled back for the final drop, engine screeching. The last batch of bales fell from the sky. The pilot jumped on the radio: “OK, muchachos, hasta la proxima!” OK, guys, until the next one! And then the plane sped off into the night, back to Colombia. I gazed out at the sea, the bales floating in the distance, in awe that we had made it this far.
I told one of my undercover counterparts to drive the boat while I grabbed the cocaine. Unlike retrieving large, deep-sea fish, I couldn’t use a gaff hook; it would puncture the bales, let saltwater seep in, and ruin the drugs. I had to do it by hand. I leaned awkwardly over the gunwale and hauled the 100-pound bales into the boat as fast as I could. Back then, I was strong enough to bench-press 300 pounds, but this was by far the most grueling physical exercise I ever experienced. My back seized up, my mouth caked in dried spit from dehydration, my entire body exhausted from being at sea for days. The swells rocked the boat violently, sent wave after wave over the stern, threw us sideways, and nearly tossed all of us into the ocean again and again. We took on so much water that the bales floated onboard and nearly washed back out to sea. We spent the next six hours grabbing bales and searching for stragglers brought out of line by the ever-shifting Caribbean current. The cartel was depending on me. If I wanted to infiltrate deeper, I couldn’t leave any of their drugs behind.
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We finally gathered the last of the load. It was just after sunrise, the sky brushed in a soft pink glow, the water reflecting the morning’s first light. My legs were gooey and useless, my arms burned, my lungs begged for oxygen. I fell to the floor, panting. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe, my brain toggling between consternation and anticipation. I knew that we were doing the right thing, but it took so much out of me, physically and emotionally, to get the job done. At that moment, my body heaving, the Mako pitching up and down within the aggressive Caribbean swells, I thought of my two sons asleep in their beds — and my wife Maria in ours, the empty space next to her cold and bare from my absence.
We drove the Mako to the mothership, tethered to its stern, and climbed aboard. We then linked up with a sister agency (whose collaboration with the FBI is highly classified), which was slated to take legal custody of the drugs and transport them to Miami for the next phase of our operation. I couldn’t help with transferring the cocaine onto their ship, however; I had to keep my identity a secret from everyone except for a core team of FBI agents, who were the only people on earth who knew I was undercover. If there was a leak of any kind, I could be killed. I stayed on the mothership, obscured in shadow. As I watched from a distance as ten other FBI agents transferred the $500 million worth of cocaine onto the second ship, I felt immensely proud. I had secured the cartel’s trust. I had made this happen. It was history in the making.
After they departed with the cocaine, we made our way to Grand Cayman. I checked into an inconspicuous hotel — exactly what a smuggler would do after picking up a load. Four other agents accompanied me, all also operating undercover. I posed as their boss. We acted as if we were legitimate smugglers, treating ourselves to lobster and champagne, whiskey and steaks. Other patrons saw us with cell phones — an immense luxury at the time — and steered clear of us. We had to keep up appearances. When you’re deep undercover, you’re always on. You never know who might have eyes on you.
The following day, after my land legs were back to some extent, I called Pedro, my contact at the cartel, to share the good news. “We went to the dance. The musicians were fantastic,” I told him, speaking in code. “There must have been 30 girls, and we danced with all of them.” Girls meant bales of cocaine, and the fact that we danced with all of them confirmed that we retrieved the entire load without issue. “I was so drunk,” I said. “It was such a good time.” More code: The mission was a complete success.
“Bacano, Manny,” Pedro said, referring to me by my undercover alias. “The musicians are planning another dance in Miami. You must go. I will send you the details soon.” The transfer of the drugs was on.
I flew back to Miami. By the time I arrived, the cocaine had already been secretly transported into the United States. Once it landed on shore, the FBI picked it up in an array of nondescript vans and took the load to the drug vault at the Miami field office. I was still operating undercover, so I couldn’t help catalog the dope as evidence, but after the team of FBI agents took photographs of the drugs and wrote a detailed report, a team of different agents, operating undercover as my associates for this phase of our operation, took custody of the cocaine and brought it to my warehouse. Now, the fun began. I had given the agents clear instructions for what to do next: They drove a box truck to an industrial supplier and purchased a dozen fifty-five-gallon metal drums. They broke down the bales, packed the bricks of cocaine into each barrel, tack-welded the lids on top (you’d need a plasma-cutter to open them, all part of my plan), and loaded the barrels into the truck. This was overkill in terms of normal packaging procedures, but we needed it to be as difficult as possible for the dope to be taken out and broken down for the next phase of shipment. If it was truly a pain in the ass, the grunts would call their bosses and other associates for help. That way, instead of a handful of low-level criminals getting arrested during the raid, we could take down an entire trafficking cell in one shot.
After packing the dope into the box truck, our team made their way to a remote parking lot for final delivery. The cartel’s men received the truck and drove it back to their secret warehouse. I was driving around Miami in my Porsche during the hand-off. I needed to be mobile, just in case I had to meet with the cartel or my case agents as the raid progressed. Moreover, this was a safety precaution: If the operation went sideways, I wasn’t a sitting duck at my office. It’s hard to hit a moving target. I kept my cell phone close, knowing that Pedro would quickly get word that the barrels were welded shut and call me. As I careened down the highway, my phone buzzed, right on cue. Now we knew that they were in the process of unloading the drugs.
“Manny,” Pedro said, “my men told me that they are having a hard time opening the barrels.”
“That’s not my problem,” I said. “My job is to get the load to you safely. I didn’t want any of your product spilling out or getting damaged during transport.”
“Right, right,” he said. “I understand. I will let my men know.”
I hung up the phone. Although the underlings complained about my methods, the cartel leaders, like Pedro and his boss, El Viejo, a key deputy of Pablo Escobar, were on my side. I had gone above and beyond to make sure their dope was secure, after all.
It took the cartel’s men hours to unload the drugs. The FBI had set up robust surveillance around the warehouse and watched as dozens of cartel employees came and went. A few surveillance agents took down license plates, and other agents followed some of the men to their homes or other meeting places. As soon as we were sure that we had intelligence on as many members of the cell as possible, the raid began. Dozens of FBI agents in full tactical gear burst through the door, machine guns at the quick, and busted the entire operation — with nearly $500 million worth of cocaine seized. And yet, this was only one group of stateside traffickers that received dope from the Colombian cartels. By my count, there were at least a dozen more cells in Miami alone. Each was eager to receive as much drugs as Colombia would send, ready and willing to risk their freedom for a hefty payday.
After this monumental raid, I was able to sneak into the Miami field office to discuss the operation. All of the top brass attended this meeting, and everyone involved credited my partner Ricky and me as the masterminds behind the massive seizure. “You did good, Suarez,” my supervisor Pete Paris said. “You did good.” It felt great, after months of planning, the dangers at sea, and the risks we were all taking, to be given reassurance that my instincts were correct.
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We feasted on a delicious catered lunch, but no seizure of this size would be finished until we had a memento for our hard work. My fellow agents and I stacked the bales of 95 percent pure Colombian cocaine into a tower, climbed on top, and posed for a picture, shit-eating grins plastered across our faces. But the bales were soaked through with seawater; after I sat on one of them for a couple of minutes, the water-and-drugs mixture soaked through my jeans and into my skin. When I stood up, my ass was completely numb.
Excerpted from the book INSIDE THE CARTEL by Martin Suarez with Ian Frisch. Copyright © 2025 by Martin Suarez. From Dey Street, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
