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Pablo Escobar died with an estimated $5 billion fortune. None of it was ever found in Colombia. His widow and son resettled in Buenos Aires under new identities. She got close to a local accountant. Friendship turned into a relationship, and their apartment reportedly became the base for smuggling his money back from Colombia in suitcases, allegedly up to $400,000 a trip. Over four years, estimates range from $2 million moved to over $10 million. Then the accountant realized what he actually had: leverage. He spent the next five years blackmailing her. In 1999 the whole family was arrested. They walked free days later. Prosecutors could never prove the money came from drugs. Years after, Escobar's son was asked about it directly. His answer: "If that's true, we must be the worst money launderers in history. A million dollars is nothing. Pocket change for a burger." Five billion dollars. Nobody has ever found the rest.

While Pablo Escobar was preparing to surrender to the Colombian government, his teenage son was in Las Vegas spending more than $500,000 in under two months. On June 19, 1991, Escobar turned himself in, to a prison he had built for himself, to avoid the one thing he feared more than any cell: extradition to the United States. While that was happening back home, his son Juan Pablo was in Las Vegas. Gambling in casinos. Drinking. Watching Mike Tyson fight Donovan Ruddock ringside. According to Juan Pablo's own account, hotels and limousine rentals alone ran past $500,000, in under two months. The US government let his family in without a problem, the same country that wanted his father dead or extradited. That's not really a contradiction. That's just what money with no consequences looks like. Who actually understood what was coming, the father walking into his own prison, or the son spending half a million dollars like none of it would ever end?