
Narconomics
How to Run a Drug Cartel
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Narrated by:
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Brian Hutchison
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By:
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Tom Wainwright
About this listen
What drug lords learned from big business.
How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the $300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola.
And what can government learn to combat this scourge? By analyzing the cartels as companies, law enforcers might better understand how they work - and stop throwing away $100 billion a year in a futile effort to win the "war" against this global, highly organized business.
Your intrepid guide to the most exotic and brutal industry on earth is Tom Wainwright. Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers.
The cast of characters includes "Bin Laden", the Bolivian coca guide; "Old Lin", the Salvadoran gang leader; "Starboy", the millionaire New Zealand pill maker; and a cozy Mexican grandmother who cooks blueberry pancakes while plotting murder. Along with presidents, cops, and teenage hit men, they explain such matters as the business purpose for head-to-toe tattoos, how gangs decide whether to compete or collude, and why cartels care a surprising amount about corporate social responsibility.
More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them.
©2016 Tom Wainwright (P)2016 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- How America Arms Gangs and Cartels
- By: Ioan Grillo
- Narrated by: Shawn Compton
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The gun control debate is revived with every mass shooting. But far more people die from gun deaths on the street corners of inner city America and across the border as Mexico’s powerful cartels battle to control the drug trade. Guns and drugs aren’t often connected in our heated discussions of gun control - but they should be. In Ioan Grillo’s groundbreaking new work of investigative journalism, he shows us this connection by following the market for guns in the Americas and how it has made the continent the most murderous on earth.
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Another great book by Ioan Grillo.
- By Cody Bad on 03-01-21
By: Ioan Grillo
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Doctor Dealer
- The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire
- By: Mark Bowden
- Narrated by: Christopher Kipiniak
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Doctor Dealer is the story of Larry Lavin, a bright, charismatic young man who rose from his working-class upbringing to win a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school, earn Ivy League college and dental degrees, and buy his family a house in one of Philadelphia's most exclusive suburbs. But behind the facade of his success was a dark secret - at every step of the way he was building the foundation for a cocaine empire that would grow to generate over $60 million in annual sales.
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Awesome writing - horrible narrating
- By farmhouselady on 08-11-15
By: Mark Bowden
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Kilo
- Inside the Deadliest Cocaine Cartels—from the Jungles to the Streets
- By: Toby Muse
- Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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For fans of the Netflix show Narcos and readers of true crime, Kilo is a deeply reported account of life inside Colombia’s drug cartels, using unprecedented access in the cartels to trace a kilo of cocaine - from the fields where it is farmed, to the hit men who protect it, to the smuggling ships that bring it to American shores.
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From a Colombian to a reader
- By Gregorio Bueno on 10-07-22
By: Toby Muse
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Killing Pablo
- The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw
- By: Mark Bowden
- Narrated by: Mark Bowden
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
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Killing Pablo is the inside story of the brutal rise and violent fall of Colombian cocaine cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar. Also from Bowden: the best selling Black Hawk Down.
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Relevant Accessible History
- By Bob on 03-25-03
By: Mark Bowden
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Midnight in Mexico
- A Reporter's Journey through a Country's Descent into Darkness
- By: Alfredo Corchado
- Narrated by: Timothy Andres Pabon
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. One night, Corchado received a tip that he could be the next target of the Zetas, a violent paramilitary group - and that he had 24 hours to find out if the threat was true. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man's quest to report the truth of his country - as he races to save his own life.
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Fascinating & suspenseful historical non-fiction!
- By Ruth Barrie on 06-30-19
By: Alfredo Corchado
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American Desperado
- My Life - From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset
- By: Jon Roberts, Evan Wright
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Erik Davies, Mark Deakins, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2008 veteran journalist Evan Wright, acclaimed for his New York Times best-selling book Generation Kill and co-writer of the Emmy-winning HBO series it spawned, began a series of conversations with super-criminal Jon Roberts, star of the fabulously successful documentary Cocaine Cowboys. Those conversations would last three years, during which time Wright came to realize that Roberts was much more than the de-facto “transportation chief” of the Medellin Cartel during the 1980s, much more than a facilitator of a national drug epidemic.
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BEST First Person (realistic) Criminal Account
- By aaron on 12-05-11
By: Jon Roberts, and others
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North Korea Confidential
- Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors
- By: Daniel Tudor, James Pearson
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.
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Interesting portrait of North Korea marred by awful pronunciation
- By Amazon Customer on 08-03-21
By: Daniel Tudor, and others
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Moneyland
- The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World
- By: Oliver Bullough
- Narrated by: Oliver Bullough
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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An investigative journalist's deep dive into the corrupt workings of the world's kleptocrats. Learn how the institutions of Europe and the US have become money-laundering operations, attacking the foundations of many of the world's most stable countries. Meet the kleptocrats. Meet their awful children. And find out how heroic activists around the world are fighting back.
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Best book I've read (listened to) this year
- By Linda Copeland on 06-26-19
By: Oliver Bullough
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The Flow of Illicit Funds
- A Case Study Approach to Anti–Money Laundering Compliance
- By: Ola M. Tucker
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Money laundering is a serious crime that presents a heightened, yet underrated, global threat. Although often thought of as a victimless crime, money laundering significantly impacts the global financial system, which leads to further crime, corruption, human exploitation, and environmental degradation and causes tremendous human suffering, especially in the most impoverished populations.
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My favorite so far on this topic
- By Philo on 01-08-23
By: Ola M. Tucker
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Billion Dollar Whale
- By: Bradley Hope, Tom Wright
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Now a number-one international best seller, Billion Dollar Whale is "an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale" (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history. In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude—one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system.
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Couldn’t stop listening!
- By N Lane on 10-05-18
By: Bradley Hope, and others
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The Naked Civil Servant
- By: Quentin Crisp, Michael Holroyd - preface
- Narrated by: Christian Coulson
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1931, gay liberation was not a movement—it was simply unthinkable. But in that year, Quentin Crisp made the courageous decision to "come out" as a homosexual. This exhibitionist with the henna-dyed hair was harassed, ridiculed and beaten. Nevertheless, he claimed his right to be himself—whatever the consequences. The Naked Civil Servant is both a comic masterpiece and a unique testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
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The humor and honesty
- By s j garrick on 04-21-25
By: Quentin Crisp, and others
Awesome book
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I'm Sold!!
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Attention grabbing
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More than just the cost of a joint
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Amazing!
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Matching legit and narco biz, poses questions
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interesting read from an unusual perspective
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Interesting
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The reader is okay, and generally up to the task. However, you would think that in selecting a reader of a book about drug cartels and the economics of the drug trade, you would pick someone who knew how to pronounce Spanish words and names. After all, Latin America is a big part of the story.
A New Perspective on an old problem
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The fascinating side of a dark economy
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