George Jung
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George Jacob Jung (born August 6, 1942) was a major player in cocaine importation in the United States in the 1970s and early 80s. Jung was a part of the Medellín Cartel. His life story was portrayed in the 2001 movie Blow, starring Johnny Depp.
[edit] Biography
George Jung, more commonly known as Boston George, was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Weymouth. He started out as a marijuana smuggler in the 1960s with his friend Moe Petracco, importing hundreds of pounds from Mexico, stealing airplanes, and flying from Puerto Vallarta to California. After quite a while his business grew to the point where he was making over $100,000 a month and had started using professional pilots; he was eventually arrested in Chicago with 660 pounds of marijuana at the Playboy Club. His "buyer" had been busted and set him up.
He was sentenced to 26 months in a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, where his cellmate was Carlos Lehder, a young German-Colombian man, convicted of grand theft auto. Lehder introduced Jung to the Colombian Cartel and Jung taught Lehder how to smuggle. He also told George that cocaine was soon to be a sensation.
The day that Jung was released he was to contact Lehder in Florida, in order to begin preparation. Their plan was to fly hundreds of kilos of cocaine from Pablo Escobar's Colombian ranch to the U.S., where Jung's California connection, Richard Barile, took it from there. George never had a problem with exchanging the smuggled cocaine for his transportation fee. Initially, it was $10,000 per kilo but later it went down to $5,000 per kilo as supply grew. He had a security man that would accompany him to the exchanges where George would give the keys to a car and half the cocaine to his connection and leave. A day or two later they would meet up again and exchange keys to cars. George would get the payment for the transportation of the coke and give the rest to his connection. He said he never saw/used any guns in the marijuana business. Jung was hesitant to allow Lehder, or any other cartel member to know Barile's identity, as his "California connection" was what gave Jung his edge in the smuggling game and kept others from simply cutting him out. However, in what turned out to be an error in judgment, Jung introduced Lehder to Barile. By the late 1970s, Lehder took his plans to the next level. As Jung had initially feared, by going straight through Richard Barile, Lehder no longer needed Jung in his operation. However, Jung recovered from the betrayal and found other schemes that made him more than $100 million.
Jung was later arrested in Massachusetts in 1987 at his mansion on Nauset Beach,[citation needed] near Chatham. With his family, he skipped bail, but very quickly became involved in another deal, where he was betrayed by a pilot of his acquaintance. During this time, Carlos Lehder began cooperating with the government against Noriega. With Escobar's approval, Jung agreed to testify against Carlos Lehder and was set free. Lehder received life plus 135 years but after making a deal with the federal government, he went into the Bureau of Prisons' version of the federal Witness Protection Program.
After working some "clean" jobs, Jung began to work in the marijuana business again. In 1994 he was arrested with 660 pounds of Mexican marijuana, he reconnected with his old Mexican marijuana smuggling partner, and faced a 15 year mandatory sentence. He pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy. He is incarcerated at Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institute in New Jersey. He is scheduled to be released on November 27, 2014, at age 72. After his release, he will still have eight years of parole.
His daughter, Kristina Sunshine Jung, was portrayed in the movie Blow by Emma Roberts (and briefly by Jaime King) and now lives in California with her spouse and children. In the spring of 2002, a year after the film was made, she eventually visited him and said "[she] was sorry for not coming sooner". Kristina Jung was filmed for another role in Blow, but the scenes were not in the final film.
[edit] External links
Categories: Wikipedia articles needing factual verification | Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | 1942 births | Living people | American criminals | Medellín Cartel traffickers | People from Boston | People from Norfolk County, Massachusetts
