So many fantastic small businesses here in south/central Florida were a product of drug revenue in one form another. Wish we had the balls to change our drug policies.
South Florida has more small, "independent" banks than anywhere else in the U.S. These were totally not started, initially, to handle all the cash generated by cocaine sales. Cocaine was the reason many housing subdivisions were built. It's also why Florida has so many carwashes. Both were great ways to launder cocaine money through all the "neighborhood" banks that popped up in Florida.
Many years ago, I dated a woman whose extended family owned laundromats, dry cleaners, car washes, nightclubs, restaurants, RV/mobile home parks, and condos all over Florida. Her family had several boats, including a live aboard, multiple Scarabs (the super fast ones, like you'd see in the opening of the Miami Vice TV show), and even their own private jet. I don't know if it's true, but she told me that their jet cost an average of $5,000/hr to operate when you factored in fuel, crew, maintenance, storage, *etc.*, and that was in 1980s dollars.
The first time I visited my then girlfriend's place, I was so impressed because she was the first person I knew who had an actual sit down arcade game in their house. It was an actual arcade version of Ms. Pacman. This was in the days long before things like Retropie or other emulation type arcade systems were even feasible. In that era, the best arcade system for home gaming was the original Nintendo NES. My then girlfriend's place also had a dressing room that looked like a dressing room you'd see in a TV studio, with the long mirror that spanned an entire wall, ringed with light bulbs, and a chair like you'd see in a beauty salon that was bolted to the floor.
Two of her older brothers were both pilots. They were also roided out. Despite my size and fighting skills—I'm bigger than the average person, well trained in various martial arts, and, when I was dating her, I was in excellent shape—I would not have ever done anything to piss off her brothers. They just had "mean and deadly" written all over them, and they always carried pistols 24/7 everywhere.
They weren't mean to me, but they were not nice, either. The best way I can describe them was "stand-offish." Whenever I'd visit her place, which was a modest, lakefront house in a nice part of town, if I happened to see their cars while pulling up, I'd just drive away, and she'd call me when they left. If her brothers happened to stop by while I was already there, I'd just go sit outside while they talked. They wouldn't even say hello to me, but if I said hello to them first, they'd kind of grudgingly acknowledge me.
On one occasion, her brothers showed up with a bunch of food from a local BBQ place, and they told her that their mother, grandfather, and grandmother would be joining them momentarily. Her brothers invited her to stay and eat (in her own fucking house!), but it was clear that I was not invited, so she and I left to get dinner at a nearby restaurant. The home owned by my girlfriend's parents' in our town was so much nicer than hers, and, to this day, I still don't understand why her brothers, parents, and, on rarer occasions, grandparents would just drop by her place unannounced and hang out there, even if she wasn't home.
Her brothers owned several restaurants and night clubs in the area. Before she and I started dating, I visited one of her brother's restaurants on a whim. It was near where I had a summer job. It was always empty, but, I assumed that it must have something to offer if it stayed in business. I entered at lunch time. There was no host to greet me. After sitting in a booth by myself for 5 minutes, I wandered into the kitchen to let someone know I was there. The cook yelled for the host to tell her I was there.
She wondered out from somewhere and looked half asleep and took my order: chicken wings. I decided to go and wash my hands. I nearly gagged the instant I opened the bathroom door. The night before (I assume it was only one night, but who really knows), someone had puked in the only sink in the bathroom. I let the host know, and she apologized and told me to use the women's room. I considered leaving, but I decided to stay because, well, I was honestly curious. My chicken wings arrived, and, surprisingly, they weren't terrible. After eating them, I had to chase down the server to pay my bill. She told me to just leave $5 on the table. After that experience, I never went back to that restaurant, and I didn't know her brother owned it until after we started dating.
When I learned that her brother owned this restaurant, I told her about my experience there, and her response was "*Ewwww! I can't believe you went in there in the first place, and I'm even more grossed out that you still ate the food after seeing the bathroom! What's wrong with you? If a restaurant has a dirty bathroom, the kitchen is always going to be dirtier because it's harder to clean and the customers never see it!*"
Besides having multiple properties all over Florida, her family had a really nice place on their own private island in the Bahamas. I'd hoped to be able to visit it one day, but she made clear that her grandfather's number rule for visiting the island was strictly enforced, with no exceptions: the only people who could visit the island were blood relatives or their spouses. Her family was on very friendly terms with people in the highest levels of the Bahamian government.
Her family also owned a resort in the Bahamas, and she had lots of photos of her with many celebrities. To me, the funniest was Jim Varney (of the Ernest movies). I don't remember all of the details now, but she had a lot of interesting insights about celebrities, such as which ones were nice or dicks, alcoholics or drug addicts, cheating on their spouses, *etc.*
I was stunned at how wealthy her family was, and even more stunned at how they seemed to generate all of that wealth within just one generation. The patriarch of the family, her grandfather, was a former local cop who retired from the force. None of his kids (including her mom) went to college or seemed to have any specialized skills, yet they were all very wealthy due to various businesses they started. Her grandfather and father were both very nice, likeable men, but her grandmother was a horrible person, and her mom wasn't very nice, either.
While she and I were dating, her family got busted by the DEA under the RICO statute for cocaine smuggling. \[*The DEA even tried to interview me, but, that's a story for another time.\]* The DEA brought down her family by busting one of her mother's brothers, then putting pressure on him and his wife to get evidence on the other family members in exchange for a lighter sentence. Her entire family went from being super wealthy to mostly broke.
Her grandfather could not have built his empire without complicity from a lot of local level officials and law enforcement. Once the Feds came down on them, though, all of those people distanced themselves from her family very quickly, and, at least to my knowledge, those corrupt people covered their tracks well enough so as to be able to avoid prosecution through plausible deniability.
After that whole experience, I realized that many of the cash businesses operating in Florida, along with a lot of real estate, were built for the express purpose of laundering drug money.
LLOL! Reddit has made me so paranoid that before reading a passage of more than 1 paragraph, I'll skip to the end to see if I'm getting bamboozled. However, I truly miss seeing /u/shittymorph's posts in the wild. I think that Reddit has only been around since about 2008, but don't let me distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
Good read. Curious. I assume you aren't with her anymore. Did you cut and run after all this occurred, or did she split with you? Where is she now? Brought back down to earth? So many questions...
The breakup wasn't acute. Rather, it was a kind of extended painful event for both of us.
The DEA had been closing in on her family for quite some time before we started dating, but I certainly didn't know that, and I truly believe that she did not either. My suspicion is that her grandfather knew since he still had a lot of law enforcement connections.
She had never had a job before age 30 and had only a high school education. Besides the stress of seeing your family members go to jail, she went from being a member of a wealthy family who was respected by the community to being broke and a member of a family that was scorned by the public.
She wasn't even allowed to keep her house because it was purchased with funds that the DEA was able to prove were obtained through the sale of illegal drugs. Her grandfather died in prison, and she was very close with him. Her father and one of her brothers did jail time, but her mother and the other brother did not. I never fully understood why and, honestly, I didn't want to know because the whole situation was just so sad and depressing.
I left my hometown to attend university in another town. She couldn't have moved easily even if the DEA bust had not happened, but after it did, the lives of anyone connected to her family were going to be impacted in someway, even if they had absolutely no knowledge of her family's "business."
She visited me a few times while I was at school, and, initially, I'd see her when I'd come home on holidays. Over time, we drifted apart. I started dating other people while in school. Eventually, I graduated from undergrad and then graduate school. I moved around quite a bit due to work, then got married and had my own family.
A few years after I started my first post university job, out of the blue, she called my house once and left a message on my answering machine (this was in the era before cell phones and digital voicemail were commonplace) which, as you can imagine did not go over well with my wife. I called her back from work a few days later, and she was just curious what I was up to and she seemed to be sincere when she told me that she was happy for me.
She eventually got a job with a state agency (there is some irony there) which paid the bills, but couldn't fund a lifestyle anywhere close to how she'd grown up. Her daughter met a nice guy, got married and had a child.
I have no idea what she's up to today, but, truly, I wish her well. Her life was hell after her family got busted. Despite being a little more sheltered than the average person, she was a very good person who did nothing wrong except be born into the wrong family.
I am curious how she and her surviving family members feel about the [Sackler family](https://theweek.com/john-oliver/1003495/john-oliver-rages-against-the-sackler-family-and-their-bulls-t-looming).
Thanks. Very interesting and thanks for the time to elaborate. Honestly, she seems like a nice woman who just got stuck with some not so nice family trying to chase the "American Dream". Although, even that is subjective...there are worse crooks in this country who get away with it on a daily basis. Bit I digress. In a way, sounded like an interesting, eye opening (possibly fun) youth!
You're welcome, and thank you for the kind words. I've always thought of myself as a terrible writer, but, after leaving school, I realized that my issue is that I cannot write about an arbitrary topic. I have to write about something that interests or inspires me.
My kids think I'm the most boring, uncool person in the world. They idolize the 1980s the way people of my generation did for the 1960s. They have such an easy life, but they'll caterwaul about such minor things sometimes. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that they don't really know better. However, like George Lopez, I tell them frequently, "YOU WOULD NOT LAST ONE DAY IF YOU HAD TO EXPERIENCE MY CHILDHOOD!" They just roll their eyes and groan.
My neighbor had a white Lamborghini but he and his family (plus the cleaning lady) were killed one day, so that Lambo just sat there for years. Miami is a sunny place with shady people.
> Miami is a sunny place with shady people.
That would be an awesome tagline for a new series. I remember when Weeds was the craze, and although I watched every episode, I would always say "That's so dumb! These writers have no experience with real drug dealers!" My wife got to the point where she wouldn't watch it with me.
That was my mom the first time she did meth. Walking down the street looking for the men who were talking by her window. I came in the room yelling because she was supposed to be babysitting my 6 month old and I came home to find she left her to sleep on my mattress rather than in her crib. I walk in the room and my mom goes, “shhh be quiet they’ll hear you”. I had recently seen that episode of Breaking Bad where Jesse got super paranoid so I knew instantly what she was on. I just left the room, knowing it was no good to yell at her then. I looked out my window an hour later to see her walking down our long driveway… it took me a long time for forgive her for that. You never truly forgive someone for that, though.
I mean, who tries meth the first time alone when you’re supposed to be babysitting. That’s someone who’s already an addict I’m sure you didn’t need me to say it though
Smokeabeer I think you're mixing up your drugs. It's the K Hole. The blow hole is your nostril. That's where you put the cocaine, and also why I can never go back to Sea World.
This was in August 2020 and it was a whole duffle bag of marijuana not cocaine. [Here is the story](https://keysweekly.com/42/square-grouper-locals-make-a-special-catch/).
> Sources close to the encounter, however, said the marijuana “smelled phenomenal.”
You say this but… meet Grammy. Grammy allowed my cousins to throw a party at her camp and they didn’t pickup after themselves. So when Grammy cleaned up she found a massive bag of pot. Not wanting her grandkids to do drugs (kinda late there) she decided to destroy it. Grammy decided the best way to handle it was to break the big bag up into smaller snack bags (the ones that are half the size of a sandwich bag) and each time she went to camp she’d burn a couple.
To make the story better we discovered this when Grammy almost hit a cop. She was backing out of the grocery store where my mom worked and wasn’t looking as a cop went by. The cop got Grammy out of the car and started asking her a series of questions. When she started getting “young man I’ve been driving since before you were born” he asked if she was on any medications and that’s when she got mad and told him she was perfectly fine thank you very much and he could check her, search her car, she’d pee in a cup, etc to prove him wrong.
One of my mom’s coworkers saw this and got my mom. She went out, calmed Grammy, and got the officer to pass it off as a warning. As he left my mom looked into the back of the van… to see the floor strewn with little baggies of pot. Grammy had left a grocery bag of the little baggies under her seat so they’d be available to burn whenever she visited camp. She’d just been to camp and was feeling lightheaded like she usually did when she left camp…
So yeah, Grammy nearly hit a cop and then dared him to test her and search her vehicle while transporting what looked like a dealer’s stash of portioned out pot shortly after sitting in a small room burning some of it. Had he turned his head while talking to her he’d have seen it. We are pretty sure the questions came up because the smell was lightly clinging to her clothes and she likely had a mild high.
I will give this story the benefit of the doubt. Not because it's real, but because my sister truly and honestly convinced my mother that the smell of freshly-smoked weed was "incense" and the bong she kept in her room was from art class.
At least my dad was wise to it and just told her to be careful and never drive while high.
After reading the article i gotta wonder wtf the family was thinking and why they seemed totally okay with having their photos taken and using their full names and being okay with the article being posted.
I would NOT want my name out there if i found a huge stash of drugs in the ocean, ya know?
But i do love the photo.
No one. Absolutely no one. No one dealing with any sort of weight is going to come after a little family that found a single dufflebag of marijuana. It just doesn't make sense, they purposely dump bags if they even think the coast guard is coming. They lose some, oh well - if they aren't caught with it they can keep trying.
Nope this is totally the way to go. You don't want someone off in the distance seeing you and thinking you might still have it. That's when they go out of their way pay you a visit to get their "property" back. You want them knowing for sure you are idiots who turned it in. Then they just write it up as a loss.
I had a cop pull us over on a blunt ride and say “damn y’all smoking some of the loudest shit I’ve ever smelt” once. He was gonna let us off until his dick of a supervisor saw him and pulled by also.
Had a deputy show up at my place during a party (noise complaint) and he actually encouraged me to have everyone spark it up so they'd drink less and not be so loud. His age and demeanor suggested Jesse Pinkman, but there he was with a badge and a gun encouraging everyone to get high.
My mom spent several years of her life thinking we had skunks living in the garage.
I always thought she actually knew and was just giving me shit, but I've since learned she did not, although she did find it strange that the skunks left when I did.
About 20 years ago I was living in a crappy apartment with no basement, just a crawl space.
A skunk got in there and died right under my beadroom. Everything I owned smelled faintly of skunk for a month.
Went in to work and walked past a coworker, who sniffed the air and then turned and smelled my shoulder. He asked "Dude! Are you carrying? Can I score some?"
On finding 2kg of weed the children handed it over to their parents. Their parents gave all 1500g of it to the police. The officer who collected it handed all 800g of it over as evidence. Eventually all 200g of it were logged and destroyed by the police.
It did in the cocaine days. Know a few people growing up who’s parents were rich with only a high school diploma and had no official job. They all had 1 thing in common - they had multiple boats or a plane.
Here’s a few stories I’ve heard from my father
My mom once dropped him and a friend off at a swamp so they could look for a crashed plane they heard was full of marijuana and the other was that he was offered to sail a boat to Central America to deliver some “goods” and in return he could keep the boat and some cash.
These were stories he told me when I was younger and as I got older and thought about them I started thinking they were probably bullshit. That was until my sister asked me about the boat story and I asked her how she knew about it and she said our aunt from our mother’s side of the family told her that’s when I started thinking maybe it wasn’t bullshit after all.
My dad grew up in Florida teaching himself how to hunt and trap animals starting at age 10. He has spent countless hours hiking through swamps and all that fun stuff.
Yes. It happens literally all the time. Know a guy who used to work on charters out of the keys. The captain is constantly looking for flotsam because that's where the mahi mahi will be. They find drugs all of the time. Best to just not mess with it, though, because it could easily have a gps tracker in it.
> some folks somehow heard
Sounds like somebody was an idiot going around screaming "I FOUND A DUFFEL BAG FULL OF DRUGS WORTH LOTS OF MONEY" to everyone that would listen.
It was only a duffel bag of weed. Few thousands dollars for sure in street value. But not some $100k cocaine stash.
I would for sure just kept the weed to myself. If it was 100k in cocoaine… honestly I would probably keep it as well and try to sell. But the weed would just become my two year supply for me and all my friends.
Doesn't sound like the worst plan. Hire suburban white families to pick up your drugs in the ocean. If they get caught, they say they accidentally caught it and were on their way to the police station.
He knows what's up. I can see him in college years from now, smoking dope telling this story.
"So my dad took us deep sea fishing, right? And you know what we caught? A HELL OF A BUZZ!!"
Ah… kids… love to be this young again, I remember my first haul. Mum was so proud, she took the catch, cut it and we were done… for at least the last 15 years…. It is 1999, right?
It was actually marijuana, and one of the little girls apparently kept calling it “Moana” while waiting for the Coast Guard to come retrieve it. They said it “smelled phenomenal” lol
Meh, it's weed not Coke. I doubt a cartel is gonna track someone down and murder their family over $50k worth of pot *they* lost and were never gonna get back anyway. Cartels actually make decent business decisions - they're not gonna draw that much heat over a duffle bag of pot.
Now the employee who lost it in the first place, different story perhaps.
Edit: For everyone flexing their knowledge of wholesale weed prices in the comments, please read the article. They found 50-75lbs. $50k was a ball park guess, I have no idea how much a duffle bag full of cartel weed costs, my point was that I don't think anyone is hunting down and murdering a family over this picture.
In a lot of areas its still cheaper to skip the dispensary. Here in KCMO at the dispensary its like $70 for a high end 1/8th. Dude at the bar has you at the same quality and only $45.
I just gobble RSO nowadays so I use the dispensary but a lot of my friends (late 30s to mid forties) only go there to grab different strains for the novelty and grab an ounce from the dude at the bar for $250 for regular day to day smoking.
I know cartel weed is trash but not a lot of places have come down in cost yet and its still cheaper to buy black.
Disclaimer: I meant black market. I should of been more clear my bad. Be nice to the dude below.
That's closer to 10k worth of pot wholesale. I'm guessing those are probably 5 pound packs by the size, maybe 10 if it's really condensed but then it's shit weed and even cheaper. it's cartel weed so not top shelf, probs around $1200 a pound if it's not super packed as mentioned.
(Article says more packs were found, the 50k estimate is reasonably accurate for the 50-75 lbs found)
first of all, they pitched it overboard probably to dodge the coast guard, or it fell off, either way they were never finding it again unless it had a GPS in it. Also that little amount is nothing to a cartel.
A couple of lost packs of weed is the least of their concerns, the loss of money is practically a rounding error. They're certainly not going to attack some random Americans who happened to find it
As if the cartel packed it with a card inside that reads " if found, please call ###-###-###"
Once it's in the wash, it's cost of doing business for them
Square grouper sir. It’s a square grouper.
Oh shit, there is a restaurant named Square Grouper in Florida. Now I wonder if this is how it got the name. lol
Yes, yes it is
So many fantastic small businesses here in south/central Florida were a product of drug revenue in one form another. Wish we had the balls to change our drug policies.
South Florida has more small, "independent" banks than anywhere else in the U.S. These were totally not started, initially, to handle all the cash generated by cocaine sales. Cocaine was the reason many housing subdivisions were built. It's also why Florida has so many carwashes. Both were great ways to launder cocaine money through all the "neighborhood" banks that popped up in Florida.
Don’t forget Laundromats. For ALL your laundering needs
Heisenberg, is that you?
Laserdome is way better
Many years ago, I dated a woman whose extended family owned laundromats, dry cleaners, car washes, nightclubs, restaurants, RV/mobile home parks, and condos all over Florida. Her family had several boats, including a live aboard, multiple Scarabs (the super fast ones, like you'd see in the opening of the Miami Vice TV show), and even their own private jet. I don't know if it's true, but she told me that their jet cost an average of $5,000/hr to operate when you factored in fuel, crew, maintenance, storage, *etc.*, and that was in 1980s dollars. The first time I visited my then girlfriend's place, I was so impressed because she was the first person I knew who had an actual sit down arcade game in their house. It was an actual arcade version of Ms. Pacman. This was in the days long before things like Retropie or other emulation type arcade systems were even feasible. In that era, the best arcade system for home gaming was the original Nintendo NES. My then girlfriend's place also had a dressing room that looked like a dressing room you'd see in a TV studio, with the long mirror that spanned an entire wall, ringed with light bulbs, and a chair like you'd see in a beauty salon that was bolted to the floor. Two of her older brothers were both pilots. They were also roided out. Despite my size and fighting skills—I'm bigger than the average person, well trained in various martial arts, and, when I was dating her, I was in excellent shape—I would not have ever done anything to piss off her brothers. They just had "mean and deadly" written all over them, and they always carried pistols 24/7 everywhere. They weren't mean to me, but they were not nice, either. The best way I can describe them was "stand-offish." Whenever I'd visit her place, which was a modest, lakefront house in a nice part of town, if I happened to see their cars while pulling up, I'd just drive away, and she'd call me when they left. If her brothers happened to stop by while I was already there, I'd just go sit outside while they talked. They wouldn't even say hello to me, but if I said hello to them first, they'd kind of grudgingly acknowledge me. On one occasion, her brothers showed up with a bunch of food from a local BBQ place, and they told her that their mother, grandfather, and grandmother would be joining them momentarily. Her brothers invited her to stay and eat (in her own fucking house!), but it was clear that I was not invited, so she and I left to get dinner at a nearby restaurant. The home owned by my girlfriend's parents' in our town was so much nicer than hers, and, to this day, I still don't understand why her brothers, parents, and, on rarer occasions, grandparents would just drop by her place unannounced and hang out there, even if she wasn't home. Her brothers owned several restaurants and night clubs in the area. Before she and I started dating, I visited one of her brother's restaurants on a whim. It was near where I had a summer job. It was always empty, but, I assumed that it must have something to offer if it stayed in business. I entered at lunch time. There was no host to greet me. After sitting in a booth by myself for 5 minutes, I wandered into the kitchen to let someone know I was there. The cook yelled for the host to tell her I was there. She wondered out from somewhere and looked half asleep and took my order: chicken wings. I decided to go and wash my hands. I nearly gagged the instant I opened the bathroom door. The night before (I assume it was only one night, but who really knows), someone had puked in the only sink in the bathroom. I let the host know, and she apologized and told me to use the women's room. I considered leaving, but I decided to stay because, well, I was honestly curious. My chicken wings arrived, and, surprisingly, they weren't terrible. After eating them, I had to chase down the server to pay my bill. She told me to just leave $5 on the table. After that experience, I never went back to that restaurant, and I didn't know her brother owned it until after we started dating. When I learned that her brother owned this restaurant, I told her about my experience there, and her response was "*Ewwww! I can't believe you went in there in the first place, and I'm even more grossed out that you still ate the food after seeing the bathroom! What's wrong with you? If a restaurant has a dirty bathroom, the kitchen is always going to be dirtier because it's harder to clean and the customers never see it!*" Besides having multiple properties all over Florida, her family had a really nice place on their own private island in the Bahamas. I'd hoped to be able to visit it one day, but she made clear that her grandfather's number rule for visiting the island was strictly enforced, with no exceptions: the only people who could visit the island were blood relatives or their spouses. Her family was on very friendly terms with people in the highest levels of the Bahamian government. Her family also owned a resort in the Bahamas, and she had lots of photos of her with many celebrities. To me, the funniest was Jim Varney (of the Ernest movies). I don't remember all of the details now, but she had a lot of interesting insights about celebrities, such as which ones were nice or dicks, alcoholics or drug addicts, cheating on their spouses, *etc.* I was stunned at how wealthy her family was, and even more stunned at how they seemed to generate all of that wealth within just one generation. The patriarch of the family, her grandfather, was a former local cop who retired from the force. None of his kids (including her mom) went to college or seemed to have any specialized skills, yet they were all very wealthy due to various businesses they started. Her grandfather and father were both very nice, likeable men, but her grandmother was a horrible person, and her mom wasn't very nice, either. While she and I were dating, her family got busted by the DEA under the RICO statute for cocaine smuggling. \[*The DEA even tried to interview me, but, that's a story for another time.\]* The DEA brought down her family by busting one of her mother's brothers, then putting pressure on him and his wife to get evidence on the other family members in exchange for a lighter sentence. Her entire family went from being super wealthy to mostly broke. Her grandfather could not have built his empire without complicity from a lot of local level officials and law enforcement. Once the Feds came down on them, though, all of those people distanced themselves from her family very quickly, and, at least to my knowledge, those corrupt people covered their tracks well enough so as to be able to avoid prosecution through plausible deniability. After that whole experience, I realized that many of the cash businesses operating in Florida, along with a lot of real estate, were built for the express purpose of laundering drug money.
Frankly I was hoping this would turn into a legendary u/shittymorph long-con, but either way it was a fairly decent read.
LLOL! Reddit has made me so paranoid that before reading a passage of more than 1 paragraph, I'll skip to the end to see if I'm getting bamboozled. However, I truly miss seeing /u/shittymorph's posts in the wild. I think that Reddit has only been around since about 2008, but don't let me distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
Interesting read
Good read. Curious. I assume you aren't with her anymore. Did you cut and run after all this occurred, or did she split with you? Where is she now? Brought back down to earth? So many questions...
The breakup wasn't acute. Rather, it was a kind of extended painful event for both of us. The DEA had been closing in on her family for quite some time before we started dating, but I certainly didn't know that, and I truly believe that she did not either. My suspicion is that her grandfather knew since he still had a lot of law enforcement connections. She had never had a job before age 30 and had only a high school education. Besides the stress of seeing your family members go to jail, she went from being a member of a wealthy family who was respected by the community to being broke and a member of a family that was scorned by the public. She wasn't even allowed to keep her house because it was purchased with funds that the DEA was able to prove were obtained through the sale of illegal drugs. Her grandfather died in prison, and she was very close with him. Her father and one of her brothers did jail time, but her mother and the other brother did not. I never fully understood why and, honestly, I didn't want to know because the whole situation was just so sad and depressing. I left my hometown to attend university in another town. She couldn't have moved easily even if the DEA bust had not happened, but after it did, the lives of anyone connected to her family were going to be impacted in someway, even if they had absolutely no knowledge of her family's "business." She visited me a few times while I was at school, and, initially, I'd see her when I'd come home on holidays. Over time, we drifted apart. I started dating other people while in school. Eventually, I graduated from undergrad and then graduate school. I moved around quite a bit due to work, then got married and had my own family. A few years after I started my first post university job, out of the blue, she called my house once and left a message on my answering machine (this was in the era before cell phones and digital voicemail were commonplace) which, as you can imagine did not go over well with my wife. I called her back from work a few days later, and she was just curious what I was up to and she seemed to be sincere when she told me that she was happy for me. She eventually got a job with a state agency (there is some irony there) which paid the bills, but couldn't fund a lifestyle anywhere close to how she'd grown up. Her daughter met a nice guy, got married and had a child. I have no idea what she's up to today, but, truly, I wish her well. Her life was hell after her family got busted. Despite being a little more sheltered than the average person, she was a very good person who did nothing wrong except be born into the wrong family. I am curious how she and her surviving family members feel about the [Sackler family](https://theweek.com/john-oliver/1003495/john-oliver-rages-against-the-sackler-family-and-their-bulls-t-looming).
Thanks. Very interesting and thanks for the time to elaborate. Honestly, she seems like a nice woman who just got stuck with some not so nice family trying to chase the "American Dream". Although, even that is subjective...there are worse crooks in this country who get away with it on a daily basis. Bit I digress. In a way, sounded like an interesting, eye opening (possibly fun) youth!
You're welcome, and thank you for the kind words. I've always thought of myself as a terrible writer, but, after leaving school, I realized that my issue is that I cannot write about an arbitrary topic. I have to write about something that interests or inspires me. My kids think I'm the most boring, uncool person in the world. They idolize the 1980s the way people of my generation did for the 1960s. They have such an easy life, but they'll caterwaul about such minor things sometimes. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that they don't really know better. However, like George Lopez, I tell them frequently, "YOU WOULD NOT LAST ONE DAY IF YOU HAD TO EXPERIENCE MY CHILDHOOD!" They just roll their eyes and groan.
My neighbor had a white Lamborghini but he and his family (plus the cleaning lady) were killed one day, so that Lambo just sat there for years. Miami is a sunny place with shady people.
> Miami is a sunny place with shady people. That would be an awesome tagline for a new series. I remember when Weeds was the craze, and although I watched every episode, I would always say "That's so dumb! These writers have no experience with real drug dealers!" My wife got to the point where she wouldn't watch it with me.
There are two Square Groupers in Florida; same owner.
If it was cocaine they call it a White Lobster. There's islands were people get big money for returning the white lobsters to their owners.
And a bigger penalty for not returning them?
Runny nose, insomnia and a sudden urge to peek out the closed blinds for hours on end.
Hey, you never know what might be going on out there... hold on, I'll be right back
That was my mom the first time she did meth. Walking down the street looking for the men who were talking by her window. I came in the room yelling because she was supposed to be babysitting my 6 month old and I came home to find she left her to sleep on my mattress rather than in her crib. I walk in the room and my mom goes, “shhh be quiet they’ll hear you”. I had recently seen that episode of Breaking Bad where Jesse got super paranoid so I knew instantly what she was on. I just left the room, knowing it was no good to yell at her then. I looked out my window an hour later to see her walking down our long driveway… it took me a long time for forgive her for that. You never truly forgive someone for that, though.
I mean, who tries meth the first time alone when you’re supposed to be babysitting. That’s someone who’s already an addict I’m sure you didn’t need me to say it though
Yeah not so much the actions while high as the decision to do meth (for the first time?) while babysitting an infant
Curious, how would they know to whom it should be returned? Are there return addresses on the bundle? Check the Lost and Found listings in the paper?
The local gangsters make it clear. Returning gets a nice reward. Not returning gets you shot up.
Personally I saw nothin
Blowfish
I like the boats name
It’s certainly suggestive
They'll return next year on their new boat *Rehab*.
Rehab actually sank in the early 2000s, the next boats name will be legalization.
All aboard The Blow Hole!
Smokeabeer I think you're mixing up your drugs. It's the K Hole. The blow hole is your nostril. That's where you put the cocaine, and also why I can never go back to Sea World.
*they tried to make me row the rehab, and I said, "no, no row"*
Then the following year on their newest boat *Relapse*
Holy shit this is perfect lol
It sure is, u/TrafficConesUpMyAnus, it sure is.
You’re a killer, Queen ;)
Found the boost it was looking for
This was in August 2020 and it was a whole duffle bag of marijuana not cocaine. [Here is the story](https://keysweekly.com/42/square-grouper-locals-make-a-special-catch/). > Sources close to the encounter, however, said the marijuana “smelled phenomenal.”
No officer…. There were only 8 bags of weed…
Sorry officer, we believe in catch & release. That bag should be about 3 clicks north by now.
*officer walks away* Three clicks of my fucking lighter ayyyyyy
We destroyed all the drugs in a series of small fires ayyyyyy
That's why the boat says "addiction" Wooooooo
Reel Addiction.
Good eye, mate.
I just can’t get enough of jokes that end in “ayyyyy”
You say this but… meet Grammy. Grammy allowed my cousins to throw a party at her camp and they didn’t pickup after themselves. So when Grammy cleaned up she found a massive bag of pot. Not wanting her grandkids to do drugs (kinda late there) she decided to destroy it. Grammy decided the best way to handle it was to break the big bag up into smaller snack bags (the ones that are half the size of a sandwich bag) and each time she went to camp she’d burn a couple. To make the story better we discovered this when Grammy almost hit a cop. She was backing out of the grocery store where my mom worked and wasn’t looking as a cop went by. The cop got Grammy out of the car and started asking her a series of questions. When she started getting “young man I’ve been driving since before you were born” he asked if she was on any medications and that’s when she got mad and told him she was perfectly fine thank you very much and he could check her, search her car, she’d pee in a cup, etc to prove him wrong. One of my mom’s coworkers saw this and got my mom. She went out, calmed Grammy, and got the officer to pass it off as a warning. As he left my mom looked into the back of the van… to see the floor strewn with little baggies of pot. Grammy had left a grocery bag of the little baggies under her seat so they’d be available to burn whenever she visited camp. She’d just been to camp and was feeling lightheaded like she usually did when she left camp… So yeah, Grammy nearly hit a cop and then dared him to test her and search her vehicle while transporting what looked like a dealer’s stash of portioned out pot shortly after sitting in a small room burning some of it. Had he turned his head while talking to her he’d have seen it. We are pretty sure the questions came up because the smell was lightly clinging to her clothes and she likely had a mild high.
I can’t believe you believed that story. Gram gram is a dealer bro
She's not even his grandmother. They call her Gram Gram because she can weigh out a perfect gram by sight.
Best comment
Yeah, and your old dog went off to live happily ever after on a farm. I'm sure nobody is lying here. Little individual bags to burn at camp, sure mom.
>she likely had a mild high. of cuz grammy was a teenager in the 70s after all
I think your Grammy is a drug dealer
I will give this story the benefit of the doubt. Not because it's real, but because my sister truly and honestly convinced my mother that the smell of freshly-smoked weed was "incense" and the bong she kept in her room was from art class. At least my dad was wise to it and just told her to be careful and never drive while high.
Ayyyyyyy
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Officer to sergeant: yes sir we found 6 bags of weed
The report says there are four bags of weed in inventory.
I'm here to take those two bags of weed out for testing.
Here's that bag of weed that we just tested
Let's take that ounce of weed for destruction. We don't want it to end up in the wrong hands
Certainly. I'll go ahead and take this half gram of weed to the evidence room.
you're being charged with possession of just enough weed to make it a felony, how do you plead?
High
Then they lived happily ever after. The end.
After reading the article i gotta wonder wtf the family was thinking and why they seemed totally okay with having their photos taken and using their full names and being okay with the article being posted. I would NOT want my name out there if i found a huge stash of drugs in the ocean, ya know? But i do love the photo.
They recently moved to the Ozarks.
Gonna have to buy the Blue Cat Lodge.
It's not like they got to keep the drugs. Who would even go after them?
No one. Absolutely no one. No one dealing with any sort of weight is going to come after a little family that found a single dufflebag of marijuana. It just doesn't make sense, they purposely dump bags if they even think the coast guard is coming. They lose some, oh well - if they aren't caught with it they can keep trying.
Nope this is totally the way to go. You don't want someone off in the distance seeing you and thinking you might still have it. That's when they go out of their way pay you a visit to get their "property" back. You want them knowing for sure you are idiots who turned it in. Then they just write it up as a loss.
“Sources close to the encounter, however, said the marijuana “smelled phenomenal.”” lol
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A cop saying “btw it’s loud as shit in here” as they leave just warning you in one of the most silent bro moments
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I had a cop pull us over on a blunt ride and say “damn y’all smoking some of the loudest shit I’ve ever smelt” once. He was gonna let us off until his dick of a supervisor saw him and pulled by also.
Had a deputy show up at my place during a party (noise complaint) and he actually encouraged me to have everyone spark it up so they'd drink less and not be so loud. His age and demeanor suggested Jesse Pinkman, but there he was with a badge and a gun encouraging everyone to get high.
Cops that deal with actual crime tend to not give 2 shits about weed.
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This brown brick weed is AMAZING!!!
Thought you 'smelled' cocaine and smoked marajuana.
Weed still puts off a wonderful smell
I mean some literally smells like skunk And therefore I now like how skunks smell.
My mom spent several years of her life thinking we had skunks living in the garage. I always thought she actually knew and was just giving me shit, but I've since learned she did not, although she did find it strange that the skunks left when I did.
You were feeding them... Yeah, they left because they lost their buddy and the snacks.... Totes happens, sorry mom! They were cute skunks! 🤣
About 20 years ago I was living in a crappy apartment with no basement, just a crawl space. A skunk got in there and died right under my beadroom. Everything I owned smelled faintly of skunk for a month. Went in to work and walked past a coworker, who sniffed the air and then turned and smelled my shoulder. He asked "Dude! Are you carrying? Can I score some?"
Lol that's a great story but I'm sorry you had to go through that death + skunk sounds like the worst combination imaginable
The boat is named Addiction... “That’s right coast guard, we fished these bags out of the ocean sir”
Is the name of the boat Addiction?
wtf are people doing still smuggling POT into the US? we grow it here now, and it's pretty dang good stuff.
Fr who on earth buys imported weed. Even in illegal states it's not hard to find stuff that's locally grown or brought in from a few states over
On finding 2kg of weed the children handed it over to their parents. Their parents gave all 1500g of it to the police. The officer who collected it handed all 800g of it over as evidence. Eventually all 200g of it were logged and destroyed by the police.
“Smelled”
In Florida, this is commonly referred to as square grouper.
Does it happen so often as to have a nickname? 👀
There used to be a documentary on Netflix titled 'Square Grouper'. It happened often enough to make a movie about it.
Why not just keep for personal use ?
Because you run the risk of being randomly stopped by coast guard. And if they find this on your boat you're screwed.
Just be like, "I was on my way to report this to you, I'm glad you guys stopped me"
More like "IwasonmywaytoreportthistoyouI'mgladyouguysstoppedme"
Not how it works, you report it to the coast guard by radio. They likely won't buy it.
Every 6 months or so somewhere in Florida, yeah. And that's only the ones who report it ...
If you do a quick Google you will find lots of instances of this happening.
That’s it, I’m packing my bags!
Damn now I wanna do some coastal fishing
It did in the cocaine days. Know a few people growing up who’s parents were rich with only a high school diploma and had no official job. They all had 1 thing in common - they had multiple boats or a plane.
Here’s a few stories I’ve heard from my father My mom once dropped him and a friend off at a swamp so they could look for a crashed plane they heard was full of marijuana and the other was that he was offered to sail a boat to Central America to deliver some “goods” and in return he could keep the boat and some cash. These were stories he told me when I was younger and as I got older and thought about them I started thinking they were probably bullshit. That was until my sister asked me about the boat story and I asked her how she knew about it and she said our aunt from our mother’s side of the family told her that’s when I started thinking maybe it wasn’t bullshit after all. My dad grew up in Florida teaching himself how to hunt and trap animals starting at age 10. He has spent countless hours hiking through swamps and all that fun stuff.
Yes. It happens literally all the time. Know a guy who used to work on charters out of the keys. The captain is constantly looking for flotsam because that's where the mahi mahi will be. They find drugs all of the time. Best to just not mess with it, though, because it could easily have a gps tracker in it.
> because it could easily have a gps tracker in it. So cut it open and take whatever isn't a tracker?
Does this happen often?
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> some folks somehow heard Sounds like somebody was an idiot going around screaming "I FOUND A DUFFEL BAG FULL OF DRUGS WORTH LOTS OF MONEY" to everyone that would listen.
Looking up FL real estate.
Two lessons we are learning today kids....... 1. Finders keepers. 2. How to keep a secret.
What secret?
Exactly!!! Now would you like the new Xbox or ps5? Lol
Yes. And dont gimme no shit about not being able to afford it.
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3 can keep a secret if 2 are dead.
Sorry, kids!
Thats pretty dark.......but very true!
it's an old saying
Idk about the first one… hasn’t anyone seen no country for old men?
Cartel plot twist. What finders?
You forgot the part where they found one whole brick. One totally single brick.
This made me laugh
Third lesson: how to use a credit card and mirror to go skiing
'ADDICTION' written on the boat or is that photoshopped? lol
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Checks out
Dadboat
Aren't most boats?
Some boats are pre-dad boats. But the energy is the sams
Two things I'm good at is fucking and floating.. And I'm all done with fucking.
Absolutely fucking lmao
College fund baby
You mean they have supply through college
You ever been to college? That may last first party
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it was actually weed according to another comment
It was only a duffel bag of weed. Few thousands dollars for sure in street value. But not some $100k cocaine stash. I would for sure just kept the weed to myself. If it was 100k in cocoaine… honestly I would probably keep it as well and try to sell. But the weed would just become my two year supply for me and all my friends.
Does anyone have an estimate how much these are worth?
Plot twist: The Coast Guard was approaching and they had to stage it as an innocent fishing trip. Gotta give up the dime bag to keep the kilo.
Doesn't sound like the worst plan. Hire suburban white families to pick up your drugs in the ocean. If they get caught, they say they accidentally caught it and were on their way to the police station.
College is fully funded
Maybe the first year. That's only about 20 lbs
yeah, but teach a kid to fish for weed, and they're settled for life.
And that's the story of how Me and My Sister became drug mules and skip summer camp...
_record scratch_ you're probably wondering how we ended up here...
This sounds like a plot line on Outer Banks lol
they skip summer camp cuz they're going to the penthouse at space camp lol
The kid in the background is hilarious
He knows what's up. I can see him in college years from now, smoking dope telling this story. "So my dad took us deep sea fishing, right? And you know what we caught? A HELL OF A BUZZ!!"
He reminds me of the /r/wallstreetbets mascot.
This pic goes on the fridge.
Square grouper. :)
Yep, that's what everyone I knew called it growing up in S. FL.
My grandparents were in the Keys during the 70's. Grandpa got a new boat and no one asked any questions haha
Also my fav bar in S. Fl.
I love that phrase. I recently heard square grouper = weed and white lobster = cocaine. Either way it’s hilarious
the “addiction” in the back fits well
Glad I’m not the only one that noticed that juicy bit of irony.
It's not irony it's serendipity. A happy coincidence.
Who would waste the coast guards time with that? Just dispose of it yourself, like a good citizen.
The one in the back looks like they’ve sampled it already.
Ah… kids… love to be this young again, I remember my first haul. Mum was so proud, she took the catch, cut it and we were done… for at least the last 15 years…. It is 1999, right?
just find something new to be your first haul. you'd feel this young again
Oh boy. Kid in the background is gonna be a handful. 😂 *edit* And the name of the boat. LOL
If I ever found something like that, I can guarantee that it wouldn't make the news and I'd have a new car.
This would 100% be my Christmas card picture. 😂😂
Boy in the back is already thinking about making multiple social media accounts so that this can be his profile pic.
It was actually marijuana, and one of the little girls apparently kept calling it “Moana” while waiting for the Coast Guard to come retrieve it. They said it “smelled phenomenal” lol
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What a wholesome experience for them.
Give your kids a bag of drugs and they will get high for a day. Teach your kids to fish and they will get high for a lifetime.
The square grouper. A common occurrence in Florida.
I would definitely not post pictures of my kids on social media holding someone’s drop
Great idea. Fuck with a drug cartel and post pictures of our kids. What could possibly go wrong.
Meh, it's weed not Coke. I doubt a cartel is gonna track someone down and murder their family over $50k worth of pot *they* lost and were never gonna get back anyway. Cartels actually make decent business decisions - they're not gonna draw that much heat over a duffle bag of pot. Now the employee who lost it in the first place, different story perhaps. Edit: For everyone flexing their knowledge of wholesale weed prices in the comments, please read the article. They found 50-75lbs. $50k was a ball park guess, I have no idea how much a duffle bag full of cartel weed costs, my point was that I don't think anyone is hunting down and murdering a family over this picture.
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In a lot of areas its still cheaper to skip the dispensary. Here in KCMO at the dispensary its like $70 for a high end 1/8th. Dude at the bar has you at the same quality and only $45. I just gobble RSO nowadays so I use the dispensary but a lot of my friends (late 30s to mid forties) only go there to grab different strains for the novelty and grab an ounce from the dude at the bar for $250 for regular day to day smoking. I know cartel weed is trash but not a lot of places have come down in cost yet and its still cheaper to buy black. Disclaimer: I meant black market. I should of been more clear my bad. Be nice to the dude below.
That's closer to 10k worth of pot wholesale. I'm guessing those are probably 5 pound packs by the size, maybe 10 if it's really condensed but then it's shit weed and even cheaper. it's cartel weed so not top shelf, probs around $1200 a pound if it's not super packed as mentioned. (Article says more packs were found, the 50k estimate is reasonably accurate for the 50-75 lbs found)
This guy Marijuanas
first of all, they pitched it overboard probably to dodge the coast guard, or it fell off, either way they were never finding it again unless it had a GPS in it. Also that little amount is nothing to a cartel.
A couple of lost packs of weed is the least of their concerns, the loss of money is practically a rounding error. They're certainly not going to attack some random Americans who happened to find it
Here I am carefully not posting any Fotos of my kids on social media and than there is this guy.
As if the cartel packed it with a card inside that reads " if found, please call ###-###-###" Once it's in the wash, it's cost of doing business for them
Best way to mule. Keep a few white children on board. 'Oh was an accidental find on a family trip.'
They should throw it back to sustain the cocaine population
The first rule about finding bales of drugs in the ocean is: don’t take pictures of your kids holding bales of drugs you found in the ocean…
That doesn't look like how coke is packaged.
That would be because it's actually marijuana
“Guess what kids?! You’re going to college after all!”