I am at a conference in Miami on raising capital. Its my second one this year. I was invited to attend a special VIP dinner last night and found myself sitting next to an impecably dressed 70 year old Cuban man. He said is name was Jorge.
I could overhear everyone else’s conversations at our table. They were entirely centered around getting real estate projects funded - which is the point of the conference. The stories Jorge had to share eith me were, well, very different.
You see, Jorge Valdez has lived man lives. He and his family immigrated from Cuba to Miami to flee the Castro regime with nothing but the clothes on their back. His first passion as a kid was baseball. He excelled as a catcher and was drafted by the Phillies. Unfortunately, he had bad knees, and that drove him from the game.
Out of college, he got a job with the FED and was recruited by a couple that owned a small retail store in Miami. Well, it turned out this retail store was doing more than just selling retail goods. Jorge became the financial architect of their true product - cocaine from Columbia.
By the age of 23, he was moving 600 kilos of cocaine per month and making over $3 million. And this was in the 70s far before Pablo Escobar came on the scene. He shared that his group funded the construction of most of South Beach. He more or less invented modern day money laundering for cartels.
As the largest dealer of cocaine in the 1970’s in America, his crimes caught up to him and he was incarcerated for five years in his 20’s. Sentences were still pretty light back then because violence hadn't’t really entered the game yet in a major way. After serving his time, he came out and got arrested again, but was able to buy his sentence down from life to five years by forfeiting all $66 million of his wealth and totally giving up his life of crime. 
After his second five-year stint in prison, he become a reformed man, getting his PHD in religious studies. He now helps incarcerated people change their lives. He is a New York Times best selling author and a motivational speaker.
He can’t completely shake his past. Netflix is actually in Production on a movie called the “The Shadow of the Wolf” telling his story.
He happens to be today’s keynote speaker, but last night he just happened to be the elderly man sitting next to me with a few very interesting & unusual stories to share.  I look forward to his talk.
What a night! You never know who you’re going to meet.
