How An IndyCar Driver Became America's Biggest Drug Trafficker - Past Gas #09

[Music] 300,000 fans gathered at Indianapolis Motor Speedway to witness the 1986 Indianapolis 500 drivers hurled their open-wheel race cars around the two-and-a-half mile oval at speeds well over 200 miles per hour Randy Laney er was one of them when the race was over Randy came in 10th place not bad for a guy who had started racing only three years before but there was something different about Randy's car unlike his competition his car wasn't plastered with corporate title sponsors like Budweiser or Pennzoil Randy paid for his racing another way ooh hint hint the car just said cocaine on the side welcome to passed gas by donut media we say this every time we record but like doing the podcast is like our favorite it's it's like a front we record them on Friday no it's out of the office we're in a studio we always go to lunch afterwards it's like a fun Friday vibe we got Colby in the studio today Colby are the editor of up to speed and the podcast and then we got Felipe shooting today Felipe directs bumper to bumper and we have our producer extraordinaire christina here as well so it's like a family affair can't wait to go to Hyperion public and eat some lemon pepper wings after that this is how they get me to go like James alright cool man just like go do it and then we get them lemon peppers baby I'm like yeah I might drop lemon pepper wings in this today we are talking about a really crazy story yeah this one's nuts it's a one parter on a guy named Randy lay near one of the most promising rookie drivers of the 1980s and also one of the largest drug traffickers in US history yeah all in all he smuggled a total of 600,000 pounds of marijuana into this country and he was a very prolific kingpin that is so sick race car driver slash smuggler how old was this dude I he started smuggling when he was I think 20 and we dropped that number 600,000 pounds like when you're 20 years old you're dealing drugs at a high school parking lot it's a little different yeah and this guy had a sick job on top of it yeah professional racecar driver slash pot dealer slash boat rental business owner yeah I bet this dude had the sickest pager it's like gold play like I don't even know what the I mean what's just having a pager cool in the 80s yeah I did that was I had a pager my freshman year in high school damn yeah dude but I gotta find a phone my dad just texted me 911 [Laughter] I remember in elementary school speaking of young drug dealers there is a kid who one sighs last name with Chris he claimed that he sold another kid a bag of weed but it was just like eraser shavings in a bag it was like fourth grade we didn't know all right our sources for this week are a couple articles there's Randy linear IndyCar driver and drug smuggler by L John wartime in the Sports Illustrated and weed racer the unlikely rise in epic fall of Florida's marijuana smuggling kingpin by Damon Tibor in rolling stone great all right let's get into the story of Randy lay near the weed racer yes yeah Randy lay near was born in Lynchburg Virginia on September 22nd 1954 his family moved to Broward County Florida when he was 13 there were few things a good old boys such as Randy loved more than pot he would frequently sneak out of school just to head to the beach and smoke smoke a dude by the age of 15 he was selling pot to his classmates even after he dropped out of high school he would continue to sell to his GED classes Randy would say honestly I didn't even think about it as drug dealing it was just a way for me to smoke without having to pay for it cool mentality when did when did you first smoke pot yeah I was probably 14 14 mm-hmm I think at that point I was too afraid of it because like there is on on the way to school there is a tunnel that went under a freeway that I hadn't go through and like that's where like the the stoners or the burnouts would like smoke and they all kind of frightened me a little bit rightfully so yeah they were kind of rough kids but um I I was never about that in high school I thought it like I think I'm looking back on it was pretty like do you think you're being kind of like weird I couldn't wait to smoke pot yeah yeah I would smoke pot way earlier if I would popular enough to have any friends yeah like years later I realized that tons of kids I knew were smoking weed and they were like totally cool but it was just like those tunnel kids the first time I smoked was in college on top of a parking garage that was across the street from our dorm and of course like it was out of an apple of course yeah that's like I think everybody's first whose appearance is out of an apple and of course it didn't have any effect on me and then the second time it did me and my boy Tyler went back to our dorm room and we did freestyle raps yeah that's the way to do it was pretty sick I mean when I was a kid like weed culture was just so much it was just painted in such a different way yeah you know like now you can its fly out of LAX with weed in your pocket they're like we don't care some of these stores in LA look like the freakin Apple Store yeah like med man and it's crazy and it's like it's very convenient and you don't you don't feel weird about buying patan but I feel like I definitely like missed out on like that like illicit like yeah I used to smoke crappy pot but the fact that there are people making billions of dollars off a weed right now and still people serving life sentences for possession or selling is a huge problem that we should address it maybe in another on another episode that's good anyway by the age of 19 Randy began working for construction company where he continued to sell just like a legacy drug dealer it's like I don't know who's around man over time its clientele grew increasing the sizes orders as well as profits as Sports Illustrated put it in time joints turned into baggies baggies turned into bags bags turned into bricks bricks became bales the Hales that's like a Pusha T joints to the bag I can't do it flow anyway now it's hard and he's very good to the 19 year old Randy drug-dealing was the most promising career opportunity he had he said let's just say I was definitely making more money than I made nailing boards all day one of his last purchases on his first person yeah I just want to point out how like good this dude is at just sound clips yeah you know like yeah very romantic quotes yeah one of his first purchases with his newfound wealth was a 27-foot Magnum sport speedboat he purchased for 18 grand initially the boat was only used recreationally he would jump waves and just you know cruise around but before long an associate recommended he put that boat into quote commercial use like selling ice cream from the boat James oh but I looked up these Magnum boats this speedboat in particular is like so cool yeah just long as how low just fast they're sick this guy's cool yeah and just like that Randy Lainey removed from being a low-level drug dealer to a mid all trafficker in the timing couldn't have been better it was the early 1970s it was a Smuggler's paradise man it was like the pirate days trafficking into the u.s. specifically from Colombia was still an unknown threat that would soon become one of the biggest drug crises in US history and a new exotic strain of marijuana called Colombian gold was being grown on Colombia's Guajira Peninsula and it was beginning to flood the American black market the arrival of Colombian gold fueled a boom in America known as the bonanza meeting better the merit which loosely translates into the marijuana Bonanza as we got a marijuana Bonanza of course Florida was the best place to import such a large amount by the early 80s about three-quarters of the united states marijuana supply originated from colombia crazy in his first mission he went to the Bahamas to pick up one ton of marijuana yeah I'm gonna drive my boat to the middle of the ocean and pick up ya a ton of pot two thousand pounds of weed that's crazy Randy showed up to these specified coordinates in the middle the ocean and another bigger boat would pull up next to them and the Jackass suite him what's up guys actually and they transferred all the bales from the big boat into the whole of Randy's speedboat and then he would get the hell out of there all right thanks Phil time to go back for toots right I picture him just like wearing a cowboy hat like no shirt but jean shorts I'm imagining him as not to be conahey in this story from now on yeah I think that's a good way to imagine yeah this this technique I was super common speed boats like Randy's were fast enough to evade the long arm of the law and it wasn't difficult for smugglers to slip up the intercostal waterway and high in a labyrinth of the Florida swamps according to a CIA report one trafficker could earn a return investment of around a hundred fifteen percent so it made sense for Randy to do this with a speedboat and naturally after you know I mean it sounds like the CIA is like trying to get people to do it which they probably were you could get a return of a hundred and fifty why don't you come to this lunch at the Holiday Inn and I'll tell you all about a way that you can get up to 115 percent return on your investment with one bar I will even Lisa the boat yeah very reasonable interest rates naturally Randy was hooked he did this trip he did this kind of trip often in spite of risks linear loved tempting fate and living on the edge of disaster looks like a Kenny Loggins lyric he had multiple close calls including one time almost sinking his boat as it was weighed down so much by marijuana despite everything he frequently eluded capture by the US Coast Guard and received a 25% cut of his deliveries that's a little it seems like a lot I mean he's taking all the risk yeah to me that's I guess he was just like a runner yeah yeah so he wasn't dealing to the public anymore no is there was like a guy from the ocean he's a post mates for wheat yeah in a set in a way yeah do you use Post pants anymore I use post me it's way too much I try to be waste free mm-hmm but you know sometimes you just you just want to in 1976 at the age of 22 lay near married his high school sweetheart Pam with her help he opened a jet ski and boat rental shop near Fort Lauderdale as a front to launder the money and present an air of legitimacy under the guise of a boat rental shop he soon purchased a 65 foot trawler I looked what I looked up what these are trawlers are basically really big boats there could be like recreational trawlers or fishing trawlers like just imagine a big 65 foot boat you can look it up your you'll probably imagine the right thing it's a big big boat oh yeah you got one of those with the they got a lot of room that's bigger than I thought yep 65 feet damn with a boat this thing you could smuggle directly from Colombia no longer having to stop and meet a other ship down in the Bahamas with each delivery he made with the 65 foot boat he could smuggle over 18,000 pounds of pot into the u.s. that's a lot of sweet sweet greens that's a lot of nugs and despite the massive quantities he is now smuggling he was always smart about it never visiting the same port twice in a row he would load up in the port of Santa Mata in Colombia and I he would either dock in the u.s. in New Orleans San Francisco and sometimes Bridgeport Connecticut hmm yeah I mean just looking at those three locations that's a huge spread like some of those trips could take like a week some of them could take like three weeks to get there you know that's crazy yeah smuggling much like racing and comedy is all about tiny linear loved the adrenaline rush of almost being caught of doing something so illegal but he needed more one day while visiting an auto show that was taking place within the Miami Convention Center Lanier stumbled upon a booth that was sponsored by a local driving club he immediately realized that racing would give him the high he needed and impossibly signed up and that is when the racing career of Randy lay near started in 1978 at the age of 24 - this guy is I'm 26 now yeah and you don't even own one boat I don't own a boat I've never smuggled this dudes in his third career now yeah oh he started out as like a drug dealer yeah then he's a drug trafficker now he owns a boat rental company that's three and now he's like you know what man I think I'm gonna give this racecar driver a try it's Randy bought in 1956 Porsche 356 speedster for seventy five hundred bucks and competed in the e production class races at the SCC a southeast regional championships although he had no clue what he was doing he was a natural with each race he proved drastically eventually winning the e production class in 1980 at age 26 how old I am I've never won any production class so I'm feeling a little inadequate but that's fine later that year while competing in the Seca runoffs outside of Atlanta Rainier set up in a paddock right next door to a Formula Ford team the contrast between Lane years car and the Ford was pretty obvious laner was driving a small blue 50s Porsche speedster with a Bolton roll cage and at one point is completely covered in rust it's pretty ratty looking car the small four-cylinder Porsche had nothing in terms of either power or style compared to the v8 powered open-wheel ford racer parked next to lay near had always loved the aesthetic of open wheel racing and hoped to someday drive one himself well little did he know he would okay so here's the thing about Randy Lane year he's from Florida right Florida guy I lived in Florida I know what these guys are like yeah we Jeremiah one of our right yeah Jeremiah's from Florida yeah and this is a lot like Jeremiah I'm imagining him now as Jeremiah oh yeah probably not as tall probably not here am i six five yeah he's so Randy's from Florida so he liked to do you know Florida dude stuff like to kill time before races he would do wheelies on his four-wheeler in the pit and after a few minutes of doing some loud and sick wheelies the driver of the Formula Ford and his father exited their trailer and confronted him they claimed that lay near was disturbing the peace in the pits what a Formula Ford thing to say what a nerd little did Lane you know or care for that matter was that the driver of the Ford was none other than John Paul jr. and his father you guessed it John Paul senior both of whom were absolute racing royalty at the time another thing Randy didn't know was that the Paul's had a little operation other oh no no I talked about that a little later in 1981 Randy made his EMSA GT series debut in the 1981 Daytona finale partnering up with Dale Whittington one of three Whittington brothers they finished 30th overall not not a great fit very good the following season he raced in the 24 Hours of Daytona as a member of the North American Racing team driving their Ferrari but before that race teammate Desiree Wilson said Randy was unfit to drive Wilson claimed he had seen Randy acting nervously and erratically in the pits but lanyard was still allowed to drive he probably shouldn't have though because 18 hours into the race Randy took the wheel up to this point the team had been holding the race in a solid third place position not bad but almost immediately Randy drove the car off the course into the green and totaled the suspension taking the team out of the race completely despite that the North American Racing team they were pretty forgive and forget about it and he was invited to race multiple races scoring his first in sufficeth replays victory at the Mid Ohio six hours I've been to that course it's beautiful I want to go there yeah it's good Randy's skills were improving with every race he had impressed the bosses at Ferrari and was invited to drive for Ferrari after 24 hours of the mall in 1981 that's pretty big deal yeah a year later he was invited back for the 24 Hours of Daytona and placed second lay near started racing later in life defying expected norms that to become a race car driver you had to train from the minute you get behind the wheel of a car and have to be best friends with your dad unlike traditional racers lanier had joined on a whim as an impulsive decision and to see adrenaline rush and discovered hey man I'm pretty good at this people ask me whether I wished I'd gotten into racing ten years earlier I mean I guess but I was just happy that I found the passion this kind of gives me a little bit of hope you know it's like I love racing yeah I love driving fast on track mm-hmm but you know till I get to those higher levels it kind of does seem like you got to be best friends with your dad's friends with your dad like kind of an introverted yeah sorts in this day it seems like in order to be a racecar driver not only do you have to come from rich parents but you have to come from the rich kind of parents who will drive all over the country with you and every weekend to race a car yeah so the fact that he did so well in his late 20s okay I think it's crazy you know who else started really late Tanner Foust really didn't start driving till he was in college no way yeah there you go you could do it man sweet Lane years racing career was taking off he was being invited by teams from all over the world to drive for them but driving was not the only career of his that was flourishing in fact he was making quite a name for himself in Colombian smuggling rings I feel like that's a place you don't want to make it now for yourself you know like even if you want to be successful in a Colombian drug smuggling ring that you don't want to be calling oh you know Randy yeah oh yeah Randy will smuggle the drugs you want to be called like El Guapo you know like you want like a nickname or something will be your nickname how do you spell Felipe how do you say lemon pepper in Spanish you don't know oh yeah how do you say Cobra in Spanish yeah I would be Kentucky Cobra okay in 1982 lennier received a promotion Chinn in that Colombian drug smuggling ring he was no longer a middleman distributor or runner he could now purchase that wacky tabacky directly from the source himself drastically improving his own profits soon his outfit was expanded his trawler had been turned into two trawlers and then he bought some tugboats and then a barge for those tugboats to push his single boat operation had grown and his vehicle inventory had become an armada of drug transports he had a fleet he had a fleet naturally his proudest move was the barge he discovered that by hollowing out a barge he could package the brim with Columbian gold while customs agents would be oblivious hey why are you pushing this empty barge across the ocean oh they would cut open the ballast tanks packed them with marijuana and reweld them shut three clever the marijuana was packed in watertight packaging so they could fill the remaining space in the tank with water that way if agents did check the tanks all they would find is salty salty brownie brownie water that's pretty smart it's pretty smart as crazy dude a barge yeah of weed it's a lot of yeah with like a tugboat that pushes it and all the time like he's still like flying all over the world racing Ferraris how much do you think heat a lot now got so much let me see what he looks like Duggal how much did Randy lend you yeah he's cool looking yeah he's a yeah this dude smashed so much he's got that cool 80s Early 90s moustache yeah yeah yeah flavor saber dude look at him in this picture he's doing yoga poses yeah he's like on the yoga now I guess anyway you know I just want to remind everyone that all this was happening at the same time as Pablo Escobar's cocaine operation in America customs agents were high customs agents but the customs agents were on high alert the war on drugs had just begun everywhere you looked a new creative method was being discovered to smuggle drugs into the u.s. and Randy Layne ears operation was no exception even during interviews today lane ear is still obviously visibly proud of what he had accomplished with the barge he says shipments would routinely exceed 100,000 pounds oh my god sweet sweet dank nugs baby and while he was nowhere near as prevalent as Escobar's billion-dollar cocaine Empire he was still making money faster than he could launder it the first barge sailed up New York's East River and docked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard Lenya was present in a rental car for the big debut of his new scheme the barge arrived in the harbor hey gasps the barge arrived in the harbor with over a hundred thirty thousand pounds of Columbian gold when the ballast tanks were cut open it revealed stacks of marijuana over two stories tall worth millions he was one of the few traffickers bold and cocky enough to transport a shipment of that size into the u.s. directly under officials noses yeah he's in the Navy Yard yeah yeah how do you get it out I don't know that's a lot of baggies that need to be put in butts yeah we got keister Ollie's we'd get my rental car listen I'm the freakin criminal genius here how about you just listen to old daddy and I'll make you rich all right I guess he's got a point here now I got all these balloons all this marijuana 30,000 pounds of it little tiny balloons and you got to shove it up your little man back you gotta shove it up your back mouth I don't ever want to hear you say back mouth again to celebrate breaking a hundred thousand pounds lanyard is something that all business owners do is so cool you made personalized hats with the 100 club embroidered on it on top of that lanyards bookkeeper dubbed the new enterprise the company who sounds so mysterious hats yeah hey boys I got you all these hats they say look on the back it says I smuggled 130,000 pounds of Columbian gold into New York Navy Harbor I'm not to keep that my closet as soon as he returned to Florida from New York he began funneling money into his newest racing operation blue thunder race and in 1984 lane Erie partnered with the trio of brothers he had met years earlier Don bill and Dale Whittington lay near and Dale had raced years earlier when he was just premiering on the scene I remember him racing is expensive like really really expensive in fact there's a term that's like if you want to turn a large fortune into a small one try auto racing yeah the investment required is absolutely insane whether it's in a pit crew racing hardware and design or even just transporting the car from the tractor track it's very very expensive it's not cheap at all but Lane years team always seemed unfazed by this I never had a budget no expense was spared just like me going to Taco Bell 1984 is when Lane years auto racing career really flourished okay James during the season he cut his drug runs to maybe four or five a year instead choosing to handle distribution just like any import business really Steph would come off the boat get loaded on trucks we'd have warehouses all over the country drug smuggling forced him to lead separate lives and he wasn't happy about that it was like leading double lives a whole bunch of betrayal and lies I tried to hide it from my guys best I could in disguise kept it all separate from their eyes oh I didn't want to be thinking about racing when I was drug running I couldn't be thinking about grass when I was racing that's hard to do it's like a Johnny Cash song I mean yes it was like leading double lives whole bunch of trail end lies try to hide it my guys best I could from their eyes kept it all separate didn't wanna think about racing when I was rug running and I couldn't me thing about grass when I was racing on the track he kept win races and more and more money was being funneled into the team one driver remarked I don't know where the hell these blue thunder guys came from but they're the only race team where everyone in the pit crew wears a Rolex why don't we have a Rolex try to keep up with the incredible that guy sounds like a real square yeah you can't wear Rolex why do you have Rolex then we don't so since racing is so expensive mm-hmm teams normally have giant sponsor logos that they have on their car but the Blue Thunder Racing team had none of those laner was beating large sponsored teams with only the logo of a local themed restaurant on his car at times the Blue Thunder team would even put fake sponsors on their car just to satisfy the curious audience and keep questions from other teams at bay that's pretty that's it like just making [ __ ] up yeah this uh yeah I've got a new title sponsor this year it's bats all the bats got together and they wanted to diversify their portfolio so they decided you know squeak-squeak-squeak let's invest in a racing team and you know many more questions nope alright later the only thing that would make this story better is that if his number was 420 yeah yeah he's got a barge yeah the whole pit crew has Rolexes we need to get a barge we need to get a barge the gun at large big party barge yeah he'd like to put like a Gymkhana course on there do you put Gymkhana course on there and then freaking smoke some tubes and then do backflips the side no all the girls will be like oh my god these dudes are so dangerous I have a barge I'd put it we could put an ice-skating rink on our barge oon again if you guys the burn barge is our idea yeah if Hannigan shows up with a burn barge then we know they listen to a podcast and then hey thanks guys leave us a five star review please 1984 was a great year for Lehner he would rin race after race six wins in total it was enough to score him a driver's championship position with one race to remain the Blue Thunder racing team won on all of the major American race tracks from Sebring to Laguna Seca to Charlotte he was unstoppable and finished his season as an imp such am peon he was given the most improved driver award that feeling of success got addictive I can quit at any time man but I could at any time but I would like two things smoking doobs and racing cars between the races in 1984 laner and his partners had smuggled in another barge load carrying over 150 pounds of marijuana that was a golden year for me racing smuggling I just made tens of millions of dollars cash was rolling in I felt on top of the world Randi began spending money in the same way he spent it on racing he bought a fleet of exotic cars he bought three vacation homes in the Rocky Mountains honestly if I was to buy three vacation homes I would diversify mm-hmm where they were instead of having them all I like to imagine his homes in the Rocky Mountains at different points in the mountain and they have water slides going to each other and escalators going back to the top one book it's like a kingdom in my head he would fly to races with Pam in private jets he hosted lavish parties and would fill their houses multiple hot tubs with Don Perignon champagne yeah man it was crazy wild times leered it's bales of weed drawers full of money I even once paid to truck in a circle of elephants for my little girl's birthday party that's Randy that's too much now nothing's too much for my little girl and then what I did it was the best steaks I ever ate Randy no most of the money was laundered in overseas accounts but there is still just too much to handle they began construction on their largest front yet the Bell Gardens bicycle club in California a 100,000 square foot casino we was all spending money by the millions when we built it it was the largest card casino in the US a fact but there was one thing he wanted more than anything Randy wanted to race in the Indy 500 I wanted to race the biggest race in the United States I didn't see no limits he had no experience driving Indy cars and the races average speed was much faster than anything he had ever driven up to that point he only recently began racing in the Kart series which at the time was the primary open wheel Series in the US while traveling 214 miles an hour during one kart race a tire blew and his car crashed into a wall shattering his femur with such force that the bone broke through his photo shoot he was still very inexperienced with open-wheeled cars but that did not dissuade him from wanting to run the Indy 500 dude getting a compound fracture is one thing but going through your suit yeah next level those suits are fireproof and they're thick yeah they're thick suits to seize that is lena had a similar mind sent to henry ford ii AKA hank the deuce in the Ford vers Ferrari rivalry lay near believed that money was the great equalizer he believed he could take on the best of drivers as long as he had the money to do it and soon lay near was funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into training equipment testing and track time to get red for the big race alongside preparations for the Indy 500 Randy and the company began working on plans to use the barge and smuggle in their largest shipment yet a haul of 166 thousand pounds of marijuana worth about 55 million dollars lay near was growing increasingly paranoid feeling as if the FBI and local authorities were watching him everywhere dude that's because you're smoking sativa dude yeah you need to get like you need to get in the couch dude I'm telling you it's indica it's not gonna dude bro smoke this it's in the card so I'm like you're paranoid it's not gonna make you're paranoid and then guess what it does that happened to me like last week I got a vape pen from one of those Apple store places and I got really paranoid watching Star Wars it got very intense well just watch the Star Wars very intense movie it was crazy it's literally darkness versus light I did not consider that which Star Wars were you watching it was the newest one no that's why you're stressed out yeah he claimed that the brother had been arrested and he was cooperating informing lay near that the FBI had placed him under surveillance at the time of this discovery the barge was only 10 days off the coast of New Orleans prepared to unload their largest haul yet although the risks were huge Lana and his partner continued with the operation man I tell you what we were so committed there's so much money so many people involved so much had been spent on race in and the casino and you know my homes with the water slots to each other in Colorado I had to smuggle just to keep up lennier ordered the barge to change ports from Louisiana the new plan was for the barge to cross the Panama Canal and dock at a harbor in California they had used in a previous run they hoped this to be his final load oh yeah my plan was to get out of the game and live a good life I wanted to continue racing I was probably just getting greedy a week after the decision was made roughly 300,000 fans gathered at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to watch lay near compete in 1986 Indianapolis 500 once David Hasselhoff finished singing the national anthem the race began it was a close race and a fast one two speeds were well over 200 miles per but the end of the race lane you're finished in 10th place as he stated it would only get better and everyone believed that was true Randy was given the title of Indy 500 Ricky of the year and this was only his third year racing full-time people were beginning to get suspicious of the Blue Thunder racing team rumors began to spread about how the team funded their racing he consistently outraced drivers such as Mario Andretti and Emerson Fittipaldi 1986 had proved to be a rough year for drivers remember the Paul family from earlier the ones that confronted Lane here for doing wheelies on a four wheeler in the pits well John senior had been sentenced to 20 years for attempted murder of a federal drug witness and in 1986 John Paul jr. was sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in his father's drug trafficking ring so naturally Randy was like what y'all guys doing these two oh hell yeah man we should have been hanging him out I wouldn't let you done wheelies on my four-wheeler yeah along with the Paul family the Whittington brothers whom he had started the Blue Thunder racing team with had also gotten themselves tangled up with the law just a few months before the Indy 500 race Don and Bill Whittington were brought in on trafficking and tax evasion charges a few years earlier Don and Bill had purchased the Road Atlanta racetrack in 1979 Road Atlanta has one of the longest straightaways of any racetrack in America and they would use the secluded backstretch to land aircraft and smuggle in marijuana it was obviously that the sport had a drug problem if you consider a marijuana a drug which I do not and that forced all eyes on linear to this dose okay hold on how sick is that though that they were using that straightaway dude can you imagine like landing any plane is kind of scary can you definitely think like with high walls yeah on walls and then I think on the on the left hand side there's like a huge row of trees as well mmm you gotta be a ballsy pilot to do yeah that's pretty nuts I bet those guys would party oh yeah like a ballsy ass pilot and then some racecar drivers all smuggling drugs they partied hard they probably each other I mean maybe probably they definitely near each other yeah to this day lay near firmly denies any involvement with the Whittington's smuggling Enterprise which I believe yet is something going on it's too focused on that maybe I was just a consultant yeah while both sides knew their sources of income they had a Don't Ask Don't Tell policy when it came to extra racing affairs and income streams so they knew it was going on but they didn't don't yeah don't I don't I don't want to know man yeah I don't want to know things began unfolding all around lanyard and his luck was running out several months after the Indy 500 the barge finally arrived in San Francisco though there were complications it turned out that the salt water had leaked into the barges compartments causing some of the marijuana bales to decompose and emit methane when cutting open the tanks to extract the marijuana an acetylene torch ignited the methane and started a fire that killed two welders almost 22,000 pounds of marijuana was forced to be abandoned lay near and the company had to scuttle the barge and it sank to the bottom of the ocean on that barge where the bodies of the two dead men wrapped up in tarps dragged to the sea floor by the sunken barge dang this just took a turn it took a turn i that wasn't very cool laney returned to florida filled with paranoia now he was not only a smuggler but a murderer yeah I think the law would see it that way yeah he just gone from Walter White to Heisenberg immediately can you imagine the call to just be like let's sink it yeah that's some cold-hearted [ __ ] yeah I want to go visit the real dive in this reef he would always take the back exit in stores and never frequent in the same place more than a few times in January of 1978 Lanier's wife Pam went to the hospital and gave birth to the couple's second child Lanier snuck in to hold his newborn son and slipped back out with the intention of picking them up once she had recovered well in a deli near the condo Lanier saw a familiar face on the news his Indy racecar driver Randy Lanier has been indicted on federal drug trafficking charges I paid for my bagel pack my [ __ ] and got the [ __ ] out of town it turned out that a low-level dealer in central Illinois had been busted with a few pounds of cannabis and his broken-down truck the Reagan administration had been pushing for investigators to pursue all drug crimes in their war on drugs and investigators worked their way up the supply chain until they finally found Lanier it was a game of dominoes I know I should have never trusted to Kashi 6 man I mean that dude didn't Ellen broken-down truck I mean that's that's why this this the smuggling game I'm gonna call it the game now this is why the game is so dangerous because like some cheese balls yeah that you know he didn't like he didn't change the oil in his you know Dodge d50 and broke down somewhere and then some cop came to like help him probably I smell marijuana no but that's like going back to here's why you don't want to make a name for yourself make up a cool alias like itll Kentucky Cobra what would your drug trafficker name be hmm Barack Obama yeah Randy slipped out of Florida in the sleeper cab of a semi-truck and hid out in rural Pennsylvania after a few weeks he flew to London and met up with a woman he had previously been involved with romantically you know it's too deep in the game it's too deep in the game he's cheating on his wife cheating on his wife skips out after that his second kid's been born and now he's with some chick yeah his kids like my age with the millions he had hidden in overseas accounts he believed he could build a new life with the drug money he had stashed away he considered either starting over in Spain or even racing again in New Zealand under an alias hey man what's her and Elin argh Brandi Brandi linear' Brandi linear' dammit while he was hiding out in Europe an unrelated break in a case in London had further dismantled laners organization an accountant involved in laundering money for Lehner and other high-profile drug operations had been found guilty of laundering money for a 40 million-dollar gold heist that took place four years earlier in exchange for a reduced sentence he provided information about some of his clients like Randy leaving Europe lay near flew to Antigua where he had a 60-foot fishing boat waiting for a horse he did go back to the boats man the plan was to relax her a few weeks and sailed back to Spain but he and his mistress were surrounded by authorities on their boat soon after he arrived he hurried to shore and tried to escape on foot but was eventually captured and brought to Puerto Rico where he was immediately arrested for drug trafficking two dozen members of the company testified against Lena at the trial their testimonies detailed Linear's rise from a mid-level distributor to an absolute kingpin officials estimated that lay near alone had earned 68 million dollars from the operation hundred and eighty million dollars of the company's assets were seized by the government in the largest federal forfeiture in US history Lanier and two other associates were sentenced to life in prison as the amounts he had smuggled labeled him as a major kingpin day life in prison life it's a lot of weed oh and then those two guys yeah those two guys died I could see that but I mean I bet the the the deaths of those two guys probably sealed that yeah - prison just Layton's lay near sealed them in that barge dropped him to the bottom of the earth that's super [ __ ] up dude Laney was kept at many medium security prisons until he was eventually moved to Leavenworth federal penitentiary he had a plot to escape each of those prisons by helicopter he'd contracted a helicopter pilot to land and spirit him out one day during the exercise yard it wasn't long until the prison official caught wind of this plan and told him if you think you're landing a helicopter in this prison I'm shooting you and I'm shooting that helicopter down in another facility he had planned to escape inside a bin he'd been given life without parole also known as the natural death penalty so he had nothing to lose by trying to escape after the multiple escape attempts he was labeled an extreme escape risk and was transferred to a supermax prison in Florence Colorado where he was held in solitary confinement good I liked Colorado he was allowed out of a cell one hour per day and only allowed to pace around in a small cage his empire was in ruin the government had seized everything from the web of offshore accounts to the Bell Gardens bicycle club casino which the US marshals continued to operate after seizing her yeah I'm just gonna stay here in 2005 Lehner was moved to a low security prison to keep his mind active and off his crimes he took up chess and painting he even gave meditation a try which now explains that yoga pose picture then found earlier he slowly came to the conclusion I am abound with hatred I have to forgive there is no time I just am he's so Matthew McConaughey yeah alright alright in 2014 linear was released from prison the actual reasons behind his released are still unknown and are held under tight lock and key according to lennier I can't say enough about the Obama administration in the Justice Department having a grasp on reality when you see it from the inside you realize that the majority of the war on drugs offenders with major time are nonviolent except for me because I sealed those two guys bodies in a big barge and scuttled it to the bottom of the ocean forever damming them to a watery grave for all eternity but that's just me if you asked Lane here about his empire today he's surprisingly casual about the whole thing he basically just says hey man it was the eighties as Sports Illustrated puts it it was a decade of excess and South Florida was the gravitational center it was the time of Miami Vice in the gold chains and pastel clothes and speedboats of Crockett and Tubbs this was Linear's reality at age 60 he had served 27 years according to the people around him every day is like a new adventure in technology to Randy one thing that surprised him the most the most James the most was that folks no longer used Roadmaster I would love to like like he just like what it's a what pad where's the buttons I know that would be pre insane actually yeah like that's what they had to say about yeah grandpa doesn't know how computers work lanyard now works as a weekend driving instructor at homestead-miami Speedway and he says I have no regrets but I do have remorse I left Pam with a 7 day old baby I left my seven-year-old daughter I have more remorse for getting my father tangled up I have great remorse for going down the path I did I lived and learn from my mistakes and only want to do this for people by shaving seconds off of their lap times and that's what a crazy story yeah did someone on the rights to that movie I don't know but we should regions that's really good perfect one part job cast how is super fun if you like this podcast we have a few other episodes up already and then we will be releasing new episodes every Monday everywhere that podcasts are streamed again it really really helps us out when you guys leave reviews this is the most fun and I'm so follow James on Instagram and Twitter at James Humphrey and follow me on those same platforms at nolan J Sykes and of course check out our videos on YouTube we are called donut media I love you be nice and 1/2 mile oval at speeds well over 200 miles per hour hey man I can do it again

Channel: Donut Podcasts

Views: 146,508

Keywords: randy lanier, drug trafficker, indycar, indy car, indycar smuggler, drug smuggler, drug smuggling, racing, past gas, donut podcast, donut podcasts, donut media, james pumphrey, nolan sykes, up to speed, wheelhouse, past gas podcast, podcast, drugs, kingpin, drug kingpin, marijuana, marijuana smuggler

Id: vtC8Wh04EiQ

Length: 52min 3sec (3123 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 19 2020