MARTIN SUAREZ & IAN FRISCH | Inside the Cartel (Ep. 815)

In this episode, we welcome Martin Suarez and Ian Frisch to the show. Martin worked as an FBI Special Agent for 23 years. He holds the record for the most time spent continuously undercover, and has infiltrated criminal organizations across the United States, Europe, Asia, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. He is a six-time recipient of the FBI’s Special Achievement Award, a four-time recipient of the Department of Justice’s Outstanding Law Enforcement Officer of the Year Award, and received the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Lifetime Achievement Award. He retired from the FBI in 2011. Ian has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, New York magazine, and Esquire, among many other publications. They combined to write the new book “Inside the Cartel: How an Undercover FBI Agent Smuggled Cocaine, Laundered Cash, and Dismantled a Colombian Narco-Empire”. In this interview, we discuss why he was chosen to work undercover for the FBI, how he got into smuggling drugs, how he began to infiltrate Colombian drug cartels, the time when the cartel asked him to smuggle $500,000,000 worth of cocaine into the US, what it was like switching back and forth between his true identity and his altar ego, the time when he was out to dinner with his wife and he ran into a cartel member, the difference between drug smuggling and money laundering, how he determined when to wear a wire, when he thought he had been made by the cartel, when a sicario came to his house to kill him after the investigation had closed, and much more. Let’s get into it… Episode notes and links HERE. Donate to support our mission of equipping men to push back darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices