Pablo Escobar two arresting officers, and the case was later dropped. Roberto Escobar details this as the point where Pablo began his pattern of dealing with the authorities, by either bribery or murder. Roberto Escobar maintains Pablo fell into the drug business simply because other types of contraband became too dangerous to traffic. As there were no drug cartels then, and only a few drug barons, Pablo saw it as untapped territory he wished to make his own. In Peru, Pablo would buy the cocaine paste, which would then be refined in a laboratory in a two-story house in Medellín. On his
Pablo Escobar their warehouses. Ten percent (10%) of the cash had to be written off per year because of "spoilage", due to rats creeping in and nibbling on the bills they could reach. When questioned about the essence of the cocaine business, Escobar replied with "[the business is] simple: you bribe someone here, you bribe someone there, and you pay a friendly banker to help you bring the money back." In 1989, "Forbes" magazine estimated Escobar to be one of 227 billionaires in the world with a personal net worth of approaching US $3 billion while his Medellín Cartel controlled 80% of