
The Mastermind
Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.
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Narrated by:
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Evan Ratliff
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By:
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Evan Ratliff
About this listen
The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux - the creator of a frighteningly powerful internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
"A tour de force of shoe-leather reporting - undertaken, amid threats and menacing, at considerable personal risk." (Los Angeles Times)
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Evening Standard • Kirkus Reviews
It all started as an online prescription drug network, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of painkillers to American customers. It would not stop there. Before long, the business had turned into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. Yachts carrying $100 million in cocaine. Safe houses in Hong Kong filled with gold bars. Shipments of methamphetamine from North Korea. Weapons deals with Iran. Mercenary armies in Somalia. Teams of hit men in the Philippines. Encryption programs so advanced that the government could not break them. The man behind it all, pulling the strings from a laptop in Manila, was Paul Calder Le Roux - a reclusive programmer turned criminal genius who could only exist in the networked world of the 21st century, and the kind of self-made crime boss that American law enforcement had never imagined. For half a decade, DEA agents played a global game of cat-and-mouse with Le Roux as he left terror and chaos in his wake. Each time they came close, he would slip away. It would take relentless investigative work, and a shocking betrayal from within his organization, to catch him. And when he was finally caught, the story turned again, as Le Roux struck a deal to bring down his own organization and the people he had once employed.
Award-winning investigative journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate puzzle, chasing Le Roux's empire and his shadowy henchmen around the world, conducting hundreds of interviews and uncovering thousands of documents. The result is a riveting, unprecedented account of a crime boss built by and for the digital age.
Praise for The Mastermind
"The Mastermind is true crime at its most stark and vivid depiction. Evan Ratliff's work is well done from beginning to end, paralleling his investigative work with the work of the many federal agents developing the case against LeRoux." (San Francisco Book Review, five stars)
"A wholly engrossing story that joins the worlds of El Chapo and Edward Snowden; both disturbing and memorable." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
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Critic reviews
“The Mastermind is a tour de force of shoe-leather reporting - undertaken, amid threats and menacing, at considerable personal risk. Ratliff’s reportage unfolds in crisp, atmospheric prose, and he brings a dispassionate eye to a milieu lousy with unreliable narrators, triangulating where possible to separate fact from legend.” (Los Angeles Times)
“If truth is stranger than fiction, then The Mastermind is the truest book you’ll read this year. The only thing predictable about it is how quickly you’ll turn the pages.” (Noah Hawley, author of Before the Fall and creator of the TV series Fargo)
“As directors, we spend countless hours imagining heightened plots and memorable characters that will leave a lasting impression on audiences. The true tale of obsession, genius, intrigue, and vengeance detailed in The Mastermind is as gripping and cinematic as anything we could endeavor to conjure up.” (Joe and Anthony Russo, directors, Captain America and Avengers: Infinity War)
“This is a mesmerizing, absolutely bonkers story about a man as brilliant as he is villainous. You’ll find yourself sucked in, freaked out, and ultimately blown away by Ratliff's storytelling and tireless reporting. The Mastermind is a masterpiece.” (Nick Thompson, editor-in-chief, Wired)
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Story
This is the story of the most successful cocaine dealers in the world: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, Carlos Lehder Rivas, and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. In the 1980s, they controlled more than 50 percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States. The cocaine trade is capitalism on overdrive - supply meeting demand on exponential levels. Here you'll find the story of how the modern cocaine business started and how it turned a ragtag group of hippies and sociopaths into regal kings.
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Almost Perfect.
- By Nick on 10-31-18
By: Guy Gugliotta, and others
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Kingpin
- How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground
- By: Kevin Poulsen
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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The word spread through the hacking underground like some unstoppable new virus: Someone - some brilliant, audacious crook - had just staged a hostile takeover of an online criminal network that siphoned billions of dollars from the U.S. economy. The FBI rushed to launch an ambitious undercover operation aimed at tracking down this new kingpin. Other agencies around the world deployed dozens of moles and double agents.
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This should be a movie
- By Hijenks on 05-19-15
By: Kevin Poulsen
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The Smartest Guys in the Room
- The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
- By: Bethany McLean
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 22 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The definitive volume on Enron's amazing rise and scandalous fall, from an award-winning team of Fortune investigative reporters.
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An excellent book, but with a missing chapter
- By Augustus T. White on 03-07-12
By: Bethany McLean
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The Spider Network
- The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History
- By: David Enrich
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the world's largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor - the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide - was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated functionaries, and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it to suit their trading portfolios.
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Does anyone "proofread" the audio book?
- By Gracie on 07-04-18
By: David Enrich
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Smuggler's Blues
- A True Story of the Hippie Mafia
- By: Richard Stratton
- Narrated by: Richard Stratton
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish.
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Voice actor please apply
- By micheal on 06-30-16
By: Richard Stratton
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Narconomics
- How to Run a Drug Cartel
- By: Tom Wainwright
- Narrated by: Brian Hutchison
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Worthy book in the "economics explains X" genre
- By A reader on 04-11-16
By: Tom Wainwright
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The Wizard of Lies
- Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust
- By: Diana B. Henriques
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history? These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion. Many have speculated about what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story - until now. Diana B. Henriques of the New York Times has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme.
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The best of 3 madoff books
- By Angela willis on 03-18-13
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Lifted
- By: Evan Ratliff
- Narrated by: Evan Ratliff
- Length: 1 hr and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The robbers had a crew of two dozen specialists, a stolen helicopter, perfectly-designed explosives, and inside information on a $150 million cash repository in Stockholm. The police were on to them - or so they thought. What happened next would make headlines around the world, but the robbery was just part of the story. Evan Ratliff presents the inside tale of one of history's most elaborate heists, and the race to unravel it.
By: Evan Ratliff
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Den of Thieves
- By: James B. Stewart
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street - Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine - created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions - until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice.
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Awesome book
- By Lars Tackmann on 10-23-17
By: James B. Stewart
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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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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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Tracers in the Dark
- The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
- By: Andy Greenberg
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the last decade, a single innovation has massively fueled digital black markets: cryptocurrency. Crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely—whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking—than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers, these black marketeers have sought to rob law enforcement of their chief method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money.
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Could not put this down
- By Mike Reaves on 01-28-23
By: Andy Greenberg
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The Snakehead
- An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream
- By: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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A mesmerizing narrative about the rise and fall of an unlikely international crime boss. Based on hundreds of interviews, Patrick Radden Keefe's sweeping narrative tells the story not only of Sister Ping, but of the gangland gunslingers who worked for her, the immigration and law enforcement officials who pursued her, and the generation of penniless immigrants who risked death and braved a 17,000 mile odyssey so that they could realize their own version of the American dream.
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But Is It a Crime?
- By Roy on 08-23-09
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Hunting LeRoux
- The Inside Story of the DEA Takedown of a Criminal Genius and His Empire
- By: Elaine Shannon
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Paul LeRoux, the twisted genius entrepreneur and cold-blooded killer who brought revolutionary innovation to international crime, and the exclusive inside story of how the DEA’s elite, secretive 960 Group brought him down.
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Seismic Story
- By Jaddie Dodd on 02-24-19
By: Elaine Shannon
What listeners say about The Mastermind
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- Shaw
- 02-23-19
Fascinating!
Had it not been mentioned early on that this actually happened, I would have thought it was the basis for a Hollywood blockbuster. Well done Evan!
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- Anonymous User
- 06-17-20
Gripping...a must-listen if you like 'Org-crime'
Evan Ratliff did a fantastic job both in narration and in the reporting that led to this book. The story is captivating and really hard to stop listening to. It has all of the gripping, page turning, 'what happens next' elements. The cast of characters is wild...and getting this close to them without having to endanger oneself is awesome.
I think the book is a must read for anyone who likes true crime, international conspiracy, organized crime, cyber crime and the like. It's just a fantastic book. Well done Evan.
If I were to mention a single foible, it would be the speed at which Evan narrates. Too fast for me...but thankfully there are a bunch of controls in an audio book to make it perfect. (.9 was my huckleberry)
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- Carolyn Foster
- 07-08-19
Movie?
So when is the movie coming out? This story deserves one. It's a great story. WOW!
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- M.R.
- 07-04-19
Spellbinding
Amazing true crime story written by an excellent writer with a impressive command of his craft.
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- Bradleyb9
- 07-21-20
Truth is Stranger Than Fiction
Wild story about a character with whom I was not familiar. Narration is matter of fact without any inflection. Fine for me. Held my attention through. Meticulously researched and reported. Phenomenal job by Evan Ratliff.
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- thomas sartwell
- 01-03-25
Enthralling start, slow finish
In short, this book was about an hour and 20 minutes too long. It also seemed to have lacked a cohesive thesis or narrative at the end of the story.
This incredible character central to the story isn’t given enough airtime and continually one is left to ask “why”?
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Brilliant. Evan Ratliff has no peers.
Not for people with a limited attention span. This guy had to cover so many people across so many nations under so many different conditions over so many years you have to have mathematical abilities to keep up with his meticulous mathematics. That he was even able to document this crime spree and deliver it qualifies him as a peer to Noah Webster writing a dictionary. Brilliant. You could never know this story without these amazing abilities of communication combined with mathematics. He can think with every red flag, moral, legal, economic, cultural, and policial. And lay it all out for you to understand. I mean, wow is this guy qualified to raise awareness! Internet crime is a whole new venue. : Evan Ratliff is one of the first "true crime" writers to get it. Brace yourself. His panoramic views may stretch your thinking abilities. He really takes your heart into humanity with all of it if you just surrender in trust, you will understand this labor of love in teaching you about real and current social dichotomies. You will never forget this story. Listen.Evan Ratliff went the distance to get to what is real.
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- CCinBK
- 03-04-19
Phenomenal
This story is wild and the author did an insane amount of research to tell it right. This is so much more than the telling of a criminal kingpin that you most likely never heard of. It explains why you never heard about it, detailing the bizarre approach that the southern district of NY and federal government took, and the reasoning behind not wanting it to get out. Fascinating listen, highly recommend.
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- S K
- 02-10-21
one of the bedr
as good as it gets. mesmerizing. great plot and. performance . don't start if you need to get anything else done
GREAT
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- Nayan
- 04-14-19
fantastic audio book
This is an incredible story about a monster who took everyone for a ride and the crazy shit he did.
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