When Pietro La Greca Jr. was 13 years old, his father bought him a solid gold Piaget Polo watch. Not because it was his birthday or because it was Christmas. Just because he could. When Pietro Jr. learned to drive, his father gave him an all-white Mercedes-Benz 500 S Class with white rims that could do 170 miles per hour on the highway between San Diego and Tijuana. Such was the life for the son of the greatest money man along the U.S.-Mexico border, and someone once dubbed “Mexico’s real life Don Corleone.”

During the prime of his criminal career, Pietro La Greca raked in millions of dollars for his family, appeased a powerful Las Vegas casino, dodged Mexican and American authorities, and avoided the wrath of a violent Tijuana cartel. On this episode of Paternal, Pietro La Greca Jr. recounts what life was like growing up in a family that made all the money in the world and then lost it all, and what it was like to receive a death threat from his own father.

Pietro La Greca Jr.’s memoir, Pesos: The Rise and Fall of a Border Family, is available everywhere in paperback.

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