Real Narcos

Everyone assumed Matta Ballesteros was just a low-level pusher. But it turns out he’s the shady mastermind funnelling eye-watering quantities of cocaine into the United States. After a long and gruelling pursuit across multiple borders, US agents hatch a plan to snatch Matta off the street. Finally, Mike Vigil of the DEA comes face to face with the man he’s chased halfway across Latin America.

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The drug lords in this series tend to be larger than life. This guy is a little different. The man they call ‘El Negro’ – ‘The Black One’ – is an elusive, faceless phantom. Hunting him is like trying to catch smoke. But in September 1981, the DEA make a huge cocaine bust in Los Angeles, California. The raid throws up clues that point the agents towards a Honduran cocaine chemist. The hunt for Matta Ballesteros begins...

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Griselda Blanco outhustled and outwitted the men in her orbit to rise from desperate poverty on the streets of Colombia to remarkable wealth on Miami Beach. In Bogotá, a domestic dispute between Griselda and her husband snowballs into a shootout in a nightclub parking lot. In Miami, a rookie cop is called to a homicide bearing all the hallmarks of a Godmother hit. An informant is planted at the heart of Griselda’s family network. And DEA agents come face to face with the Godmother herself.

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In the early 1980s, the US Coast Guard are inundated with speedboats, propeller planes and helicopters loaded with ton upon ton of high-grade cocaine. Sleepy towns find themselves on the front line of the war on drugs. Miami goes from quiet southern resort to international front-page news. Behind this tidal wave of white powder? The world’s first female narco-terrorist - a fearsome woman they call The Godmother.

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Barry Seal has gone from smuggler to informant, and now penetrates further into the heart of the Medellin Cartel than any American before or since. But this daredevil pilot flies too close to the sun. As Seal’s identity is exposed, the tables are turned. Can he disappear into the ether before the Cartel track him down?

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Tom Cruise played him in a Hollywood blockbuster movie. Barry Seal’s name has passed into legend. In this episode of Real Narcos, Barry Seal flips. The world’s most illusive smuggler becomes the DEA’s most highly prized informant. With a mission brief from his handlers, Seal embarks on a death-defying mission into the mountains of Colombia.

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Pablo Escobar couldn’t have reached the heights he did without smugglers willing to traffic cocaine by land, sea… and air. The story of Barry Seal starts in a bar in Baton Rouge in 1981. It will take us flying over the Gulf of Mexico all the way to South America, then back again to the South Louisiana swamps. This is the tale of the over-sized American airline pilot who gave up the dream of the white-picket fence to become the biggest home-grown narco-trafficker the United States had ever seen.

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The DEA agents finally discover Escobar’s whereabouts. Pablo’s empire comes crashing down. Shot dead on a Medellin rooftop, the most powerful cocaine smuggler of all time meets a grisly end. The agents reflect on their journey, and where the death of their number one target leaves the war on drugs.

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Pablo escapes from his luxury prison and vanishes into the Colombian countryside. Agent Ken Magee finds himself on a plane bound for Frankfurt, Germany… with Pablo Escobar’s wife. And Escobar’s teenage son makes a surprise appearance at the office of DEA Agent in Charge, Joe Toft.

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Pablo Escobar launches all-out war on the Colombian government, firing RPG rockets at the man about to become President. A new DEA chief arrives in town with a maverick plan. And at a lavish party at Pablo’s mansion, a murder in the night threatens to turn the Medellin kingpin’s empire upside down…

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