George Jung

• 1. Introduction

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  In the 2001 biopic Blow, Johnny Depp played George Jacob Jung, the American smuggler nicknamed Boston George and El Americano. Jung is often described as a major figure in the United States cocaine trade of the 1970s and early 1980s. He is also remembered as the partner of Carlos Lehder, who smuggled cocaine for the Colombian Medellín Cartel. The film made his name familiar to millions, but a famous name is not the same as a documented career. How did Jung move into smuggling, and whom did he really work with? How much of his reputation survives a close look at the court and intelligence records? And what did the years in prison, and the years after, finally cost him?

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• 2. A Football Star From Weymouth

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  George Jung was born on the 6th of August 1942 in Weymouth, Massachusetts. His father, Frederick Jung, owned a small business, and his mother was Ermine, born O'Neill. At Weymouth High School he was a star football player, and classmates described him as "a natural leader". Even so, an undercover police officer charged him during those years with solicitation of prostitution.

  In 1961 Jung graduated and spent a short time at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he considered studying advertising. He dropped out. Around then he began using marijuana recreationally, and he sold a portion of everything he bought so that his own supply would break even. A meeting with a childhood friend would soon turn that small habit into a business.

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• 3. The Marijuana Years

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  In 1967, a conversation with a childhood friend showed Jung how much money lay in buying cannabis in California and carrying it back to New England. At first his girlfriend, a flight attendant, moved the drugs in her suitcases on her flights. Chasing larger profits, he began flying marijuana in from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The aircraft were stolen from private airports on Cape Cod, and professional pilots flew them. At the height of the operation, Jung and his associates were reportedly making $250,000 a month.

  The end came in 1974, when Jung was arrested in Chicago with 660 lb of marijuana. He had been staying at the Playboy Club, waiting for a connection who was supposed to pick the load up. That man had been arrested for heroin smuggling, and he informed on Jung to get a reduced sentence. In court Jung argued with the judge about the point of sending a man to prison "for crossing an imaginary line with a bunch of plants". He was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury. That sentence would matter less for the marijuana behind it than for the person he met there.

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• 4. Partnership With Lehder

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  Also serving time at Danbury in 1974 was Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian-German trafficker later associated with the Medellín Cartel. According to court records and DEA intelligence summaries, Jung taught Lehder the basics of smuggling by air, including how to obtain aircraft and coordinate drops. Lehder, in turn, talked about the emerging opportunities in Colombia's cocaine trade.

  After both men were released in 1975, they worked together on several small cocaine shipments from Colombia to the United States. They used private aircraft and refueling points in the Caribbean. Jung's part, by the records' account, was limited to this early logistical phase. Lehder then built his own transport base on Norman's Cay in the Bahamas, between 1978 and 1981, and the two ended their partnership. What the records say about Jung's place in the wider cartel world is a different matter.

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• 5. Legend Versus Record

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  Judicial records, declassified enforcement files and academic literature contain no verifiable evidence that Jung ever met or worked directly with Pablo Escobar or any other Medellín leader. Declassified DEA and Colombian intelligence assessments from the period describe him as an independent American smuggler. In their account he operated only briefly alongside Lehder, before Lehder was absorbed into Medellín's network.

  Jung's own involvement in cocaine trafficking declined after a series of arrests in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Later claims that he "worked with Escobar" or "controlled major portions of the U.S. cocaine market" are unsupported by the available evidence. They are generally attributed to mythmaking after the fact, which grew once he was out of prison and the 2001 film had made his story famous. The documented Jung is a smaller figure than the legend, though his legal troubles were real enough.

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• 6. Prison and Testimony

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  In 1994, Jung was arrested in Topeka, Kansas, with 1754 lb of cocaine. He pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy and received a 60-year sentence. That sentence was cut to about 20 years after he testified against his former partner, Carlos Lehder.

  Otisville Federal Prison, in Otisville, New York, was the first of his stops. He later moved to the Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Dix, in New Jersey, and then to the Federal Correctional Institution, La Tuna, in Anthony, Texas. It was his third time in prison. The reduced term set a release date of November 2014, though he would walk out earlier than that.

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• 7. Release and Final Years

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  On the 2nd of June 2014, Jung was released after nearly 20 years, several months ahead of the November 2014 date he had been given. His freedom was not clean. In 2016 he was jailed for a federal supervision violation, and in 2017 he was released from a halfway house.

  In September 2014, Jung contributed to a novel called Heavy, written with T. Rafael Cimino, the nephew of film director Michael Cimino. The book is fiction. It imagines Jung escaping from a Cuban prison and fleeing to Guatemala. The real ending was quieter. Suffering from liver and kidney failure and under hospice care, Jung died on the 5th of May 2021 at his home in Weymouth, Massachusetts.

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