April 23, 2026 • 49 mins
Randy Lanier started as a construction site weed dealer and over the years graduated to major drug smuggler, bringing hundreds of tons of grass into the USA. To add to the risk factor, he also became a Formula One driver and team owner. So much fun! Until it wasn't.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zaren Elizabeth, Sarah, how are you.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
I'm doing pretty well. Just been in here waiting for you,
all excited to see you, and you walk in with
that big smile.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's so good to see you.
Speaker 4 (00:12):
Yeah, you know, I'm hoping things are gonna look up.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Oh. Same, I'm trying to be positive to positive.
Speaker 5 (00:18):
Yeah, I'm trying to be optimistic and being like I've
been watching a lot of stuff about Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Well that helps to be for me.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
It provides perspective to go from like sixty like early sixties.
I actually started, like you know, at the end of
World War Two, at the coverage, and then by the
time you get to sixty eight and everything's just mad revolution,
Like okay, I can kind of see how these things,
you know, break and change. So it was just giving
me a little like, Okay, we've gotten through crazier.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
You know that's true.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
That's true. Listen aside from you binge watching Vietnam documentaries.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yes, you know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
Oh my god, do I Elizabeth. I saw this and
I had to tell you about it. There was this
woman named Marsha Morgan was forty eight years old at
the time, and she did what I have occasionally done
when you look at your window and you see someone
who's parked in front of your replace, and you're.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Like, what the hell are they doing on my parking
spot right on.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
The public street, on the public street, but you.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Still look at it as like your parking spaces right
in front of your place. I admit it makes no sense.
It's not one of my best qualities, but I have
gotten upset when I'm like, what are they doing parking there?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Right?
Speaker 5 (01:24):
So she did something I can totally understand. She went
out and tried to do something about it. She wasn't violent,
she wasn't like mad destructive. She just took a bunch
of toilet paper and she like toilet papered the car
that was parked in what she conceived of as her space. Now,
what I've left out was that when she did this,
(01:45):
she was dressed as a hot dog. She had gotten
home and decided not to take off her hot dog costume. Instead,
she just had a couple of drinks, She got tossed,
and then she decided, I need to go settle up
with a car out front.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
When she was arrested. She was still in the hot
dog costume.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
This is a costume for work.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
I'm assuming maybe I might put on something comfortable.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I put on her mobile driver costume.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Like if I had to go home in a hot
dog costume, the first thing I do is take off the.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Hot dog, one would think, I think.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Can we also talk about how expensive it is to
toilet paper a car?
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Yeah, you don't even egg things anymore, exactly.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
Know, it's wasting that This was a couple of years ago.
This was in like, well, it was twenty twenty five.
It wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
It was one year.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Again, the toilet paper was still expensive.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Right, and everything's expensive.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
She got a five hundred and fifty dollars fine on
top of her lost toilet paper. I guess the cops
weren't impressed with that hot dog costume. Now, I don't
think I should have to tell you this, but this
did occur in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
Also, by the way, when I was reading other stories
of the news about crime, there's a neighborhood called Madera
in Florida, which is in the Saint Petersburg area. Oh, man,
did that one come up a lot in the stories?
Oh yeah, if you go like to read the Smoking Gun, right,
which happened to be like like just cruising through, so
it's a little light reading. And it was just Madera
Madera Madeira. I'd never heard of it before. Now I
(03:16):
know all about it.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Apparently it's a rough spot.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Interesting.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
A lot of people like hitting each other with a
slice of pizza, you know, throwing nachos at your dress. Yeah, well,
one person like stole a taco.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It was a lot of foods, a lot of food based.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
And then also meth and alcohol based crimes, that's all.
Sometimes it's like I got drunk and I threw the
pizza at my mother.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I like it. Okay, So there you go, ridiculous, right.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
You know what else is ridiculous? Get them Smugglers Blues.
(04:05):
This is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
and cons. It's always always ninety nine percent murder free
and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh you damn right, I am so right, always right
zerin sore Rain.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
You love a good tale of adventure on the high seas.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
I love a good tail of adventure in you love pirates,
a huge van of pirates.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
If I could have a job occupation of choice, pirate.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
You love vikings, basically a pirate of the ancients.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Yes, and you love tales of dirt bags with feathered hair,
loading up boats with pounds of weed and running their
goods to the land of apple pie, baseball in sync,
garbage disposals, red solo cups, and medical bankruptcy.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Yes, I do love sixties and seventies in particular, and
up to the eighties. Drug smuggling in the Florida Ky
get to the USA.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Yeah, drug smugglers. Okay, so they make amazing ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Criminals, totally, just amazing.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
And it's in part because of the way they spend
their ill gotten gains, Like they do a ridiculous job,
they buy ridiculous things.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yes, it's just a circle of ridiculous and.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Maybe because they dip into their own supply. I mean,
it's an explanation, you possibly red it. So I've got
this guy for you today. A lot of the parts
of his story sound a little familiar because we've heard
them in other stories. Okay, here, like they're the tropes,
these required elements, the basics of seventies and eighties drug smuggling.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Oh yeah, let's be real.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
It never gets old.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
No go fast boat, low flying planes exactly.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
So today Randy Lanier, Oh, he's an all timer, mister Burnette. Yes,
I fess then you've heard of him.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
My friend Derek actually recommended I look into his story.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
I'm glad you got this well, I've stole it out
from under you. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia. Nineteen
fifty four was the year his dad was a draftsman.
His mom was a caretaker at a mental hospital. It
is hard working folks. He was close to his grandparents
and he loved countrying it up at their place on
(06:20):
the James River. The Gold Country boy. Yeah. When he
was fourteen, he and his family moved to Hollywood, Florida,
which is not too far from Fort Lauderdale. The vibe
in the late sixties was mellow, like long haired beach hippies,
cool music, yeah, you know, cooltoons, drugs. So Randy he
(06:42):
started working construction.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Okay, I respect.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
He was like a typical teen for the time and
the place. He had a ponytail. He wanted to make
a little.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Cash, swing a hammer, the ponytail.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Well, the ponytail got him a reputation that basically manifested
what was to come. Because he had the ponytail shows up.
Guys on the crew thought that he'd be able to
hook him up with pot, because well that's the thing
not to even sell, but like, do you know where
you could find him? And I thought, I bet you
could relate to that because you had long dreadlocks when
(07:15):
you were working constructions.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yes, And they always expected me to have pot on me, Like, oh,
we're gonna go take a break. See you want to
come with us? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:22):
Or know where you could get it? Oh?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, I definitely hook him up.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yeah, So I think you were probably able to accommodate
the requests. Maybe so this kid though he's just a
kid with a ponytail. But you know, if people ask,
you're like, well all right, let's make this happen. So
Randy started selling pot.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
There you go.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
He was readying himself for another summer of construction site
drug deals, and then his dad was like, you gotta
cut your hair. No way, man, as Crosby steals Nash
and Young saying, almost cut my hair. It happened just
the other day. It was getting kind of long. I
could have said it was in my way, but I didn't,
(08:00):
And I wonder why I feel like letting my freak
flag fly. Yeah, so he wanted to let his freak
flag fly, and how thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So you know what he did.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
He got out of town.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Oh, He's like, forget the scissors, give me the cartones.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
So he hitchhiked to Canada.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
From Hollywood, Florida.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, with a bag of pot, four hits of acid,
and five dollars. Okay, you know, just like that sweet
heroin Cherub David Crosby saying in the same song, when
I finally get myself together, I'm going to get down
in some of that sweet summer weather. I'm going to
find a space inside to laugh, separate the wheat from
the chev Yeah. So it was a great summer. And
(08:41):
when he got backed on, he decided to ride the high.
So he dropped out of school. It became a full
time weed dealer. Okay, he did all the like late sixties,
early seventies weed dealer stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
So like.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
According to Rolling Stone Magazine, he quote at one point
packed the air vents of a Folkswagen Beetle with marijuana
and headed off to Aspen to meditate with a guru.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yes, except for the air cooled engine part.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
That's a little problem, a little problem there.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
So by the time he was nineteen, he'd earned enough
as a local dealer to buy a twenty seven foot
Magnum sport powerboat.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Damn Son.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
He was making cash, you know, and there's nothing like
a young weed dealer with a gofest like what could
go wrong?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Sarin, He've stepped up in class.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
As Randy tells it. Quote, about six months later, a
buddy asked me if I was interested to go and
go into the Bahamas and put some grass on my boat.
It seemed like an adventure, So I did it.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Oh man, I love when people used to call it cras.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I was just going to say, I that is my
favorite of all the weed terms. I think so because
it's so like, it's so time specific. M Yeah. Anyway, Uh,
they skanoodled on down to the Bahamas. They loaded seven
hundred and fifty pounds of that stickyicking into the boat.
Then they cruise back up to Fort Lauderdale super easy.
(10:03):
And it made him five grand. So five grand in
nineteen seventy three is just over thirty seven thousand dollars today.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
That's not bad for basically a day and a half
FLT work.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Yeah, exactly, so, Randy, he did some math in his head.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
B boo babu.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Beat that.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
One boat can land him five k No problem? What
about two? Well, heck, what about three? He bought two
more speed boats to go first, and he had it made.
He married his high school sweetheart. Like things are on
the uptick, it was just all so easy. You know,
you slip down to the island, you pick up the cargo,
head back to Florida.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
He doesn't want to go to Nassau.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
Slide into the canals under cover of darkness.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Them on the Florida coast.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Well, this is so many inlets, Randy said, quote it
was a smuggler's paradise. It was like the pirate days,
Like you want a time machine to.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Go back to.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Then I would be satisfied with the late seventies. I
actually literally be fine with that.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
And so like South Florida, weed dealers started hiring him
and he'd make the pickups and they'd cut him in
for thirty percent of the load. So fast forward a
couple of years and The Rolling Stone wrote quote Lanier
had three stash houses humming in the Bucolic horse country
west of Fort Lauderdale and was earning hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
So he had to have some.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Cover for all of this, Like, how do you explain this?
He started a business, So nineteen seventies Fort Lauderdale, Like,
what's a happening? Successful business for that time and place. Well, No,
if you had said jet ski rental, you would be
today's winner, I miss, I mean, come on, it's right there,
(11:43):
right there, Burnette. So you know, a man has to
have hobbies. Of course, Randy, like you liked to go
fast boats, jet skis. And it was in nineteen seventy
eight that he went to a Miami car show in
nineteen seventy eight Miami Car all the Way wild. Oh yeah,
So there he saw a car club booth and he
(12:05):
like chatted with them all, Hey, kiky, what's up, checked
out a brochure, and then signed up for a racing class.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Oh smart, like bomb Bonderette style.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Randy later said, quote, I didn't have a clue. I
just drove, yes man, and drove did Zaren So he
worked the grassroots circuit for a while just like gunning
and funning. Then came the nineteen eighty to twenty four
Hours of Daytona race.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Oh yeah, and driving on the sand real things. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
A friend of his worked for Janet Guthrie and she
was one of the first women to compete in professional racing.
And his buddy was like, hey, you want to hear
some hot gossip. Randy's like, yeah, it's like Janet sick.
He's like, really six sick, you know, she just has
like an upset stomach. Oh, And He's like that doesn't
(12:58):
qualify as hot gossip. He's like, you should spend some
time around the track. This is about as good as
I can get. So they were looking for someone to
take her place at twenty four Hours of Daytona, and
Randy was like, look, no further, I'm your guy. So,
according to Rolling Stone quote, climbing into the Ferrari five twelve,
Lanier drove several practice laps fast enough to impress the team.
(13:21):
He and two other drivers kept the car in third
place for eighteen hours before Lanier destroyed the Ferrari's gearbox.
Oh so he was shining on the track apparently, and
he was also shining back at the office, not the
jet ski rental office, but the drug smuggling office. No, yeah,
that one. And so he had expanded and he had
(13:43):
a business partner, fellow by the name of Ben Kramer
Ben Cream. They went to high school together and they
had similar interests. See Ben had just gotten out of
prison for selling weed. So they were sympathico.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yes, And with Ben, Randy.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Could really like upscale, upsize his efforts.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
Well, yeah, I mean he's graduated from the Iron Bar
University exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So faster boats, bigger boats, more boats.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
I'm talking sixty five foot wooden trawller.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
And then like big fishing boats, then.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
A whole fleet of tug boats.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
He just went nuts.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
So he's like, they're going to look past those.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yeah. So then he gets bigger contracts he got we're
talking Colombia.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
So they weren't middlemen anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
They went to the source was smuggling more.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Money for them. So Randy bought a Norwegian fishing trawler
called Ursa Major, and he took it down to Colombia
and he came back with fifteen thousand pounds of Colombian gold.
Can I tell you about this particular stream tons of Colombian.
Colombian gold is a legendary pure sativa cannabis stream yes
(14:54):
originating from the Santa Martin Mountains in Colombia. Renowned for
its energetic uplifting a and high THHC levels around eighteen
to twenty percent. It is popular for daytime, used to
combat stress and depression. Featuring a distinct skunky lime forward around.
It is relatively easy to grow tall plant.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
I bet it would drive Cheech and Chong absolutely sideways
with like desire.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
I just cracks me up. When people talk about weed,
they talk about wine.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, with a tear water with lemon.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
It makes sense.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
The es and this are fantastic. So their top note
is something of an alfalfa.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Well, you go from like wine moms to weed moms.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
That's the whole thing. So there's Randy with his boat
just like crammed with Colombian gold marijuana. He pulled off
the coast of Florida and his crew motored up in
a bunch of big zodiac rafts. They filled the zodiacs
with fifty pound bales he.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Just wrapped, okay, and then the zodiacs made.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Their way to a beach where like a strobe light
was flickering wow to signal.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Them this is like the old like rum runners approached.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yes, yes, your boy, the real McCoy right, So.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
They would like they would run the boats up onto
the beach because there's zodiacs just flat right there. And
then there was a human chain of unloaders who ran
the bales from the boats to a bunch of vans
waiting in a parking lot, and then the vans would
drive to one of Randy's stash houses. Randy sold it
all the next day. His take four point five million dollars.
(16:29):
It was like fifteen million today one night. Yes, So
Randy and his wife Pam, they're living it up, like
they got this new five bedroom house with a private lake,
got a couple of rotwilers patrolling rock whilers, patrolling the grounds.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
So she fully knows what he does for a living.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Oh yeah, a Porsche Benzo. It's not bad for the
owner of a chain of jet ski rental shops. Yeah,
you know, but hey, it's for Lauderdale. Things were big,
but they were about to get bigger.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I love bigger.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Let's take a break. When we come back, I'll tell
you about Randy's next seriously audacious plan Randy Lanier. No,
(17:28):
you're Zaron Brunette, but I want to tell you about Randy.
You today, you'll be Randy weed smuggler extraordinary. So here
we are in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
What a time, What a year.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Randy had a bunch of weed distributors, and one of
them introduced Randy and his partner Kramer, to Tip O'Neill,
who then became a tugboat captain for them.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
It's in the Miami area.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I'll just keep running with it.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
We get to and then the estate if tip O'Neil
can come after me anyway, So he introduces Ben and
Randy to this other smuggler, George Brock. Now Brock had
a vision. See he knew this other guy, Eugene Fisher.
Fisher owned a shipyard. He also owned an ocean going barge.
(18:19):
Oh he put on there like the flat decked time,
big as a football field. So Brock he did some calculations.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Beboo babo beat weed in this.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Yeah, he was like a barge could hold more than
one hundred tons of marijuana. And that's like more than
two hundred thousand pounds of weed totally. So according to
rolling Stone quote. The scheme was simple, but ingenius. Welders
sealed the bales under steel plates. The secret compartments were
then filled with seawater so that a curious customs official
(18:52):
would find only Brian. In early nineteen eighty three, the
barge sailed up New York's East River and docked at
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Damn side living low, like pulling
two hundred thousand pounds, it's like winds up being a
little bit less than that of weed up into.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Brooklyn, right into New York's harbor.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
This is insane. So they get to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Randy's guys used welding torches to cut through the ballast
tanks inside one hundred and thirty thousand pounds of Columbian gold.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
That's all, by the way, a lot of work to
cut through with welders torches. Yeah, it's like the place
you would get caught after all that work when you
get welding down there.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Yeah, So the tanks are opened, another crew comes moves
the bales of weed into tractor trailers like big rigs.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yeah totally, And so now Randy is rich, rich, oh
big time.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Doing the math from the ursa minor job. That run
had to be worth thirty nine million, which is one
hundred and twenty four million today. But you figure he's
got to cut all these other folks in a blue
blah profit.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
But that's a big time job.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So that money immediately began burning a hole in his pocket. Yeah,
he put a lot of it into putting together a
professional racing team like race car. Yeah, he bought two
race cars, bought a warehouse to uses the home base.
He hired an ex Formula one crew chief and a
team of mechanics.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
What classes he racing Formula one, Formula not NASCAR Formula one.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Yeah, he graduated go fast. He called his new racing
team blue Thunder.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Whin yeah so good.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
And that was this is like early eighties, so the
TV show and movie Blue Thunder had probably come out.
He's imitating possibly the helicopter.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Right right, So just like in most professional sports, if
you have money, you can buy success totally. And so
at the end of the nineteen eighty four season, look
at the Dodgers, right, Randy was named Camel GT Champion
as well as most Improved Driver. Really improved Driver is
like the best worst award I can think of getting
(21:05):
most improved. So the smuggling had never stopped. He had
a team to fund now and they so they did
another barge run. This one had seventy five tons of
Colombian gold in it. He was making tens of millions
of dollars. His lifestyle reflected it. He had like expensive cars,
(21:25):
vacation hull, the.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Most feathered hair you've ever seen feathered.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
I feel like he and his crew probably all walked
around in those like football jerseys that are cut off
like half short, say Hawaii eighty four.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
And then like the short short cutoff jeans shorts, Yeah,
with the fraying at the bottom, a little bit of
white pocket exactly.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Pockets longer than the than the inn scene. So the money,
all this money has to be laundered, of course, naturally,
and so Randy and Ben they had a bunch of
foreign bank accounts shell companies, and one of these companies
funded the construction of a one hundred thousand square foot
casino called the Bell Gardens Bicycle Club in Bell Garden, California.
(22:06):
It's now called Park West Bicycle Casino, and it's still
like a poker card room. The whole thing was funded
by a variety of drug smugglers. It was like a cooperative. Yeah,
it was as a means to launder money. And it's
like both during construction and in the operation. And it
was actually Ben's dad who was the guy behind the
(22:27):
whole card room plan. Anyway, the laundering operation was huge.
There were tons of fake corporations.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I wonder how much crack money went into this, because
it's the early eighties in.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Your bell Garden, I think, yeah, Bellgard.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
One of their fake companies was called g Reedy Holding Company.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
Greedy Greedy, Oh right, even better.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
They used banks in England, Panama, Hong Kong, British Vision Islands,
other places, all.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
The best money laundering spots.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
And what was Randy up to right now?
Speaker 3 (22:59):
What was now?
Speaker 5 (23:01):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Glad that I made you ask? That he was training
for the Indianapolis five hundred are you kidding? And the
number one race in America, So Randy had the money
to go full in on training. In May nineteen eighty six,
a week before the race, he learned that his distributor
in Louisiana had been arrested and was cooperating with the FBI. Oh,
(23:26):
and the FBI was surveilling Randy oh no, yeah, this
is a week before the Indy five hundred, and so
there was another shipment on its way in. As he
heard all of this, eighty three tons of weed on
its way to Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Whoa on the barge going to New Orleans?
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Basically, yeah, thereabouts, Randy got in touch with the captain
of the ship and was like, redirect, redirect, don't go
to Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
He tells him, head south, tolle.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
Go through the Panama Canal. Oh wow, then head north
in the Pacific to California.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Guys like.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
All of this is right when he's getting ready for
the Indy five hundred, Like, if this is.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Stressful, I got a focus, I got them Andretti's.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Years later, Dale Earnhardt Junior went marvel at these circumstances
on his podcast while interviewing Randy Dale Junior. U. But
Randy races and he still managed to come in just
nine cars behind.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
What that's not bad at all.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
He was actually the only rookie driver to finish that year. Really,
and he clocked the fastest speed in history during pre
qualifying lapse, breaking Michael Andretti's previous record.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
What past that crowd?
Speaker 4 (24:45):
This is an awards banquet after the race, and Randy
was presented with the Indy five hundreds Rookie of the
Year Award.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Get it signed, Randy.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
So he's like floating on air at this point, like
what a life is racing in the Indy five hundred.
He's driving exotic cars, living in palatial homes, smuggling tons
of weeds.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
He is living the early eighties dream right now, dreams right.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
But then don't forget there's that barge that he had
to be just a few months after his turn in
the eighty five hundred, finds himself sitting in a rented
car in a parking lot near a harbor on the
San Francisco Bay there waiting on that boat that was
originally headed for Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Where do they plan on, Doc?
Speaker 4 (25:31):
And I kept they kept saying near San Francisco, and
I'm thinking, like South City, some of.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Those could have been Oakland. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
But here's the thing, though, is that the Oakland, like
all those port slips, are so union controlled you can
just roll up. That's why I think it's going to
be like Hunter's Point.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Yeah, baby, that's a little a little bit more loose. Yeah, anyway,
I would have gone to Long Beach where you can
actually bribe people.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Yeah, I guess it's also a Union stronghold.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
Yeah, but it's a little bit bigger. There's enough, there's
enough to get lost in Margache.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
Could have known a Richmond, they could have been That's
what we're with all the metal salvage. People are definitely
looking past that. And there's a lot of like you know,
Asians like travel, so like they thought it Like, I
don't know what's what the words is coming from.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
I'm just trying to think of the size of this barge.
Where would it go. This us to be fascinating for
people who have no idea about the layout of San
Francisco Bay anyway, cargo options exactly. So he's sitting in
a parking lot near harbor on the Bay waiting for
the boat. He gets a message on his radio.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
And he's still under FBI investigation, and he knows it, and.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
He knows it. There's trouble with the cargo. Water got
into the one of the sealed compartments full of weed,
and the marijuana was rotting and putting off methane.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Oh god.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
And when the crew went to use torches to cut
open the compartments. Explosion and fire, Oh because methane. Of course,
two of the guys died, so moment of silence for
one percent. So the remaining crew, they're worried that the
whole thing is going to go right. Yeah, So they
salvage what they could without opening the other compartments. How
(27:13):
they do that, I don't know, And they shipped off
what they could in trucks and then the barge was
set out into the ocean and scuttled, went to the
briny deep holding the two expired welders too. There are
many tragic tales in Davy Jones's locker.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
You're telling you?
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Yeah, so Randy, Yeah, this I feel like was like
a turning point for Randy. He went back to Florida
a changed man. The whole thing rattled him, and he
knew the Feds were sniffing around, so he started to
get super paranoid.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
One of his fans his racing career is going well,
so he's now got something to lose.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Sure, sure, but it's like he's kind of crossed a
line with this.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Yeah, no, definitely this point, he moved out.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Of his fancy house and into a condo that he
rented under a fake name.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Huh. So he's basically like low key on the run. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
He always used payphones to make calls, never landlines, and
certainly no like early cell phones. He went in and
out of the back doors of stores and restaurants and businesses.
He was like Henry Hill, Yeah, and fellas driving around
looking at the exactly that a shoe dropped. In October
of nineteen eighty six, the DEA pressed charges on eleven
(28:22):
people for engaging in a major drug and money laundering organization.
Three of those people were at the center of it all,
Randy Ben and Ben's dad, Jack Kramer. Remember Jack was
the casino one. By the way, Jack Kramer was married
to Meyer Lanski's niece.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Oh he deep yes, world.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
So the charges detailed their efforts to smuggle more than
one hundred thousand pounds of marijuana into South Florida between
September of nineteen eighty three and June of nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
And now he's in a new race, which is who's
going to flip on who first?
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Uh huh. But he's not even talking about the aren't
talking about New York California. This is just the South.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Florida stuff they know about you down there.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Now, Randy had broken his leg in a crash at
the Michigan five hundred oh and like, bad luck is
all he knew at this point, so he surrendered to
the FEDS. He posted one hundred thousand dollars bail and
was released. Okay, Now, remember when I said just moments
ago that they weren't even talking about New York or California.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
It wasn't.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
I take that back. Oh. A couple months later, FBI
comes at him for smuggling one hundred and fifty tons
of marijuana into US ports over a three year period.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
I have one question, Elizabeth, why was he still in
the country. They had gotten him out there at this point.
You got that kind of money, you need to run
something tight.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
So when you add it all up, Randy and company
were busted for bringing more than six hundred thousand pounds
of marijuana into the country six hundred thousand pounds with
a Z at the end pounds. In February of nineteen
eighty seven, Randy was doing.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
Court, so the FED basically, anybody like you know, our parents' age,
probably smoked some of the pot.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
That he brought into the country.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, exactly if you were smoking Colombia.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
You were smoking Colombian gold.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Yeah, anywhere on the.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Eastern seaboard in particular perhaps and perhaps parts of.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
California sit around the Bay.
Speaker 6 (30:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
So Randy has to go to court February nineteen eighty seven,
and the Feds were like, you have some options. You
can face a life sentence, or you can turn state's
evidence and get ten years. Randy's like, I'll take option three. Saren,
close your eyes. Yes, I want you to picture it.
(30:45):
You work at a bagel shop in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
It's the morning rush. Various professionals wait in line for
their bagels and coffee. You are working their register. People
in suits, construction workers in their gear, doctors and nurse
from the hospital down the road. They all wait patiently
for their choice of shmear. Above you, a TV shows
(31:06):
the local morning news. The volume's low. The owner has
it on so the customers can see the weather and
traffic while they wait in the morning, and any crazy
major news stories. Right now, the screen above you shows
a weather radar map. The sky is clear for the
foreseeable future. The door chimes as another customer comes in
and joins the line. You finish taking an order, ringing
(31:28):
them up, and then looking at the line to call
the next person. Everyone in line is now looking up
at the TV screen. You turn around and stare up
at it. A reporter stands across the street from Grand
Gates outside a super fancy home. Behind him, two cops
in tactical gear walk by. You see someone in a
DEA windbreaker talking to a lady in an FBI windbreaker
(31:51):
alphabet soup. One of the guys in line cracks. The
lady in front of him laughs. You look back at
the line, and the man three customers looks like he's
seen a ghost. He stares at the screen for a
little while longer, and then ducks out a line and
races to the payphone against the wall. He puts in
a quarter, pulls a folded up sheet of paper from
(32:12):
his back pocket, and dials a number. He seems to
read from the paper. He waits, and when it seems
like someone has answered, he says, Uh, yeah, yet, my wife,
Pam Lanier is a patient there. She just had a baby,
our baby a couple days ago. Uh can you connect
me to her room? The guy waits in silence, staring
out the window of the shop. It's funny. No one
(32:33):
ever uses the payphone in here. Well every now and then,
and it's almost always to call home to ask someone
what they wanted or what they would want as a substitution.
If their first request is sold out, you hear a
lot of honey, did you want onion with the locks capers?
Speaker 3 (32:48):
No?
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Okay. In fact, that's why the owner had the phone
company install the phone inside so that out on the
sidewalk more convenient for the customers. He thinks of everything.
You expect the guy to ask us wife if she
wants poppy seed or an egg bagel that maybe he
couldn't remember. Instead, you hear him.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Slow down. The babysitter said, what, Yeah, I know they're
at the house. I just saw it on the news. Yes,
I am aware. When am I coming to get you?
The man stares out the window. A customer walks by
him to leave, setting off the door time. Finally he speaks,
I'm leaving. I'm not coming to get you, he says.
(33:27):
Then he hangs up the phone and walks out of
the shop. You've been so distracted. You weren't listening to
the lady in front of you as she rattled off
her very intricate order. You ask her to repeat herself,
and she sighs. You look back up at the screen.
Everything clicking, Hot dog, you just saw a drug kingpin. Yes, Zaren,
(33:48):
let's take a break and let me return. We'll go
find Randy. Okay, all right, Zaren. Before the break, I
(34:15):
was telling you about how Randy saw his house getting
raided while he was waiting in line to pick up
bagels for his wife. Very well rendered after she gave
birth to their second child.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
So that was real.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
That was that was real?
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Yeah, So their first kid was at home with the babysitter. Randy,
not a good dad, decided to just make a break
for it, and also not a good husband.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I mean, I liked his instinct to run.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
I think he should have done it much earlier, and
he probably should have taken his wife and children with him, right,
I mean, that's why you get the money.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
So he hitched a ride in a big rig and
rode all the way up to Pennsylvania. Okay, and then
he used a phony passport.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Good move.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Yeah, he used a fake passport, got on a flight
to London, okay, and it was there that he met
up with someone, his girlfriend. Oh no, oh, Zaren, you
had to believe a guy like this would be stepping
out on his wife.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
He probably should have. You know why, I'm so innocent,
so naive.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
You know why why? Because he is a piece of Yeah.
So he met the girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
He didn't enjoy the research.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
He'd met the girlfriend, Maria de la LuSE Maggie, while
still in Florida. The two of them met up in
London and then just like flitted around Europe living it up.
Oh god, Remember he had tons of money and offshore accounts.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
He's got a pregnant wife at home.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
He just gave birth postpart.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
So Randy and Maria they're staying in five star hotels.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
When they were doing that part.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
But they're doing that, yeah, exactly, five star hotels, rolling
the dice in Monte Carlo, while Pam was back home
nursing a newborn, while the FBI pawed through her underwear
drawer like this is fun. Everybody's having fun, I tell you.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
So.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
The thing is, there were some loose ends Randy had
to tie up. He had to make a trip to
Antigua to deal with some property he owned there. Why,
he had a sixty foot Hatteras fishing boat there too,
And the ship's captain was an old smuggling buddy of his,
so when he and Maria got there, they trust. Yeah,
they stayed on the boat and they figured they just
(36:16):
like chill for a couple of weeks, like sip cocktails,
soak in the sun.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
Do you think they took a boat from Europe over
I think they probably flew and then just got.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
About and then well they had fake passports since yeah,
they just wanted island time. And then they're like, okay,
you know it'd be great is once we're done here,
we'll just take this boat and sail to Spain. How
funny is that there we go, everybody's having funds.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
There, so uh, my favorite foods.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
One early morning in late October nineteen eighty seven, the
ship pulled into a small harbor and there was a
ship behind them, a big old gray one, and Tiguan
government and the captain's like, you know, they're probably going
to check our papers, and so they they're watching this
big gray boat and then they see a small boat
(37:07):
full of guys in uniforms with guns pulled, pull away
from the big gray boat and head for Randy's vessel.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
They're going to board us.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
So Randy just like starts barking at the captain, like
put the zodiac in the water, bro jump. He jumps
in and speeds away, leaving Maria and the captain behind him.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Of course, total scumbag, Maria.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
If he did it to someone else, he'll do it
to you. It's words to live by, ladies. Probably, I
know there are a lot of gals not along right now.
If he did it to someone else, he'll do it
to you.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
So Randy reached the dock at the harbor, hopped out
of the Zodi. Keep in mind he was just chilling
on the boat right island time. He's he's wearing bag
strimped swim trunks, flip flops, no shirt, and he had
noe to go but run up this hill covered in
saw palmettos, those sharp growing palm bushes.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
God, those things ripped him up to get torn up.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
His feet were bleeding.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Oh sure, luddy, you could just follow the blood trail.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
And it's not like the antigues were only coming in
him on the water.
Speaker 5 (38:16):
They were waiting on land too, so I am sure
the coast guards probably involved as well.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
A bunch of jeeps pulled up at the bottom of
the hill and they were like, Randy, stop, Randy, and
he just like kept scrabbling, and they pulled their rifles,
and you know, is like pants are sagging, and they
can see the top of his butt, his flip flops.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
He's blew out a flip flop.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Randy stop, and so then they pull out the rifles.
Randy stops scrabbling, did they No. He limped back down
the hill, topless, sunburned, bloody. So the police put them
on a plane. They're like, you're out of here, buddy.
We don't want your smuggling as types here. So they
flew him to Puerto Rico, where he was arrested by
the FEDS, because, contrary to common ignorant notions, Puerto Rico
(39:00):
was part of the United States.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yes, and the DEA has full jurisdiction.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
So a lot had been happening in the eight months
that he was on the Lamb.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
He was on the Lamb for eight months.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Yeah. The FEDS tore up his dad's yard and found
two million dollars hidden inside PVC pipes. Meanwhile, he's like,
you know, sipping champagne in Paris. They ransacked another relative's
house and found five hundred thousand dollars in the basement.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Is going down like his address book. Let's just make
a date to day.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Yeah, they tracked bank accounts, businesses. They connected the dots
to the casino in California.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Naturally, so now they're all screwed.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
They seized his houses, in his cars, Pam. Pam was
a single mother with two kids now who had to
get a job cutting fruit at the local supermarket in
order to make ends meet. That's how Pam was doing.
His trial began in July of nineteen eighty eight. Two
dozen members of his crew testified against him.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Who dozen ouch.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Right to remember that race that's talking about who going
to flip on?
Speaker 5 (40:00):
Who?
Speaker 4 (40:01):
We found computers exactly to the first heat was wild,
so prosecutors laid it all out. He and his partners
had trafficked more than three hundred tons of marijuana into
the US. They'd run a smuggling empire that covered like
almost a dozen states, employed hundreds of people, So I
mean they were job creators, and Randy had made somewhere
(40:24):
around sixty eight million dollars along the way.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
And he didn't think to put more of it overseas
his dad's backyard.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
No, he only two million was in his dad's A
lot of it was overseas.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Okay, good for him.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
So the trial lasted three months. There were sixty four witnesses.
It generated more than ten thousand pages of transcripts. Yeah.
So in the end, he and Ben and Fisher were
convicted of drug trafficking, fraud, and running a continuing criminal enterprise.
The government was ordered to seize one hundred and eighty
(40:58):
million dollars of their assets collectively, and this became the
largest federal forfeiture in US history. Randy got sentenced to
life in prison without possibility of parole. His dad got
time for burying the money in his own lawn. Randy's
brother didn't get charged, but the government seized his house
(41:18):
and auctioned it off because it was used for illegal activities.
Oh really, Oh freedom. Maria got nine years for Monday laundering.
Pam divorced Randy.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
She didn't catch any charges, you know, Pam didn't she.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Didn't catch charges. She divorced Randy. So Randy and Maria
got married while respectively behind bars.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Sure, Randy was put in medium security lockup, but he
had to be moved around a lot because he kept
trying to escape. At one prison, Randy tried to escape
by hiding inside a vending machine that was going to
be taken out to get fixed, and at another he
went on, here's when you're gonna like, according to Rolling
(42:03):
Stone quote, using a contraband phone, he conspired with a
helicopter pilot to spirit him from the exercise yard. A
prison official, alerted to the plan, summoned Laneer to his office.
If you think you're landing a helicopter in this prison,
he worn, I'm shooting you, and I'm shooting your helicopter.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Down France helicopter escapes.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
But you know his wasn't the only one, really remember
Ben Kramer. In nineteen ninety, one of Kramer's buddies tried
to put together an escape using a helicopter. They were
going to have it fly into the exercise yard of
the Dade Metropolitan Correction Center where Ben was serving time,
and like pick him up and then per the publication
(42:45):
Jelopnik quote. Not surprisingly, the plan didn't work, as Kramer
held onto the runners of the helicopter. It's rear rotor
became entangled in a fence, oh, causing the machine to
come crashing down into the yard. Creamer's offered a broken
leg in the incident. Was so the Feds had had enough.
They sent Randy to the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado,
(43:10):
where he was held Supermax where he was held in
solitary confinement. Oh lord, I don't think the escape attempts
were worth it to end up there, but Randy like
he chilled out. Eventually he took up meditation, painting, chess, yoga.
In late twenty fourteen, his lawyer and the government's attorney
(43:30):
filed a succession of motions, all sealed in federal court.
See Randy as I said, he was supposed to be
serving life.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yeah, suggesto, right, But.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
For reasons that never really became known or clear, that changed.
Randy attended a phone conference and was told by the
judge that he would be granted time served was years. No,
so was twenty fourteen bomber years. So he got out
October fifteenth. Twenty fourteen had been released back in nineteen
(44:01):
ninety nine. Yeah, yeah, but it didn't matter because they
weren't married anymore anyways, recently broke up in prison, so good.
According to Rolling Stone quote after his release, Lanier lived
in a half way house and drove for Uber, which
he pronounces Youber. And now part of the conditions of
his release is that he had to live in that
(44:22):
half way house for six months. He then had three
years of supervised release where he couldn't have guns or booze.
In twenty eighteen, he worked part time instructing non professionals
at the Homestead Miami Speedway, and he's now CEO at
a nonprofit called Freedom Grow, which helps provide quote services, comfort,
and eventually freedom to other non violent cannabis offenders.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Huh, so he's trying to help his people.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
Yeah, and he also, at least does of twenty twenty two,
is licensed to grow weed in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Really they came, apparently they did.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
And he appears on the Weirdest podcast. Like I think
he got into bodybuilding because he shows up on those
types of shows a lot. He's like, oh, ripped all
the pictures in his prison. Yeah, and then there's all
the racing stuff. Car guys love it.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
Of course I thought about that, you said earlier. Dale
or podcast podcast.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
Sizarin, what's your ridiculous takeaway here? Uh?
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I know this is foolish, and I know this is
probably wrong, but I think I would have been a
hell of a pot smuggler in the seventies and eighties,
and once I hit a certain level, I wouldn't have
been throwing my money into trying to beat Mario Andretti
on the race track. I'd be trying to beat my
way to Monaco to watch races and live up my life.
The life because they can never get enough, these guys.
(45:39):
They're always like, let me go a little bigger. Yeah,
let me get a barge and go into New York.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Harbhere. I'm like, bro, you have already crossed the line.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
But you could have enough money to live comfortably for
the rest of your life and just disappeared.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Into double digit millions.
Speaker 5 (45:53):
You can live so well around the world, know exactly,
especially you're not planning to pay taxes, and you can
actually invest in some legitimate business. Do you have the
half of the talent or your partner does. But no,
they're always like, let me go a little bigger. I
know this one smuggler he got a hundred million and
also another competing with people that they really should.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
Not be competing.
Speaker 4 (46:12):
That is also my takeaway why they don't know when
to stop right and so know how to be happy,
and then they never wind up being able to enjoy
it because they either get crazy paranoid, or they're you know,
they lose it all or whatever it is. I mean,
these are the stories that we tell. Maybe there are
those out there who really pull it off as I
enjoy it.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
I know some people who are in the high stakes
international pot smuggling business and they all have like lots
of homes around the world and managed to do it well.
And I myself managed to get in and out of
crime without having to do anytime, So like, it can
be done as long as you set your sights on
the horizon and not on some other dude.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
Yeah, good, good advice. You know what I would like
as a talk bag?
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Hell yeah, oh my god, super.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
I love g.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
Hi, Saron and Elizabeth Blake.
Speaker 5 (47:11):
Here.
Speaker 6 (47:12):
I was just listening to your dolphins on LSD episode
that I wanted to let you know because you said
you haven't heard anything lately about using AI to decode
animal language, but there is a program out there. It's
called Project SETI. That's c E t I. I guess
a take on SETI. Yes, and they are using AI
to decode sperm whale code, which is amazing, and they're
(47:35):
actually learning quite a few things. So I follow them
on LinkedIn. It's super cool.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Thank you for that. You just made me so happy.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
I'm one hundred per see if they have anywhere else
because I'm not on LinkedIn, but I will co check.
Maybe I can just find a normal website SETTI CTI.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
Yeah, he love it. Thanks for that.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
That's dope.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
That's it for today. You can find us online at
ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at ridicular Crime on
Blue Sky on Instagram. Check it out, go to YouTube
if that's where you do your podcast stuff Ridiculous Crime pod,
or email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.
Most importantly, leave us a talkback on the iHeart app.
(48:16):
It's free. Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Indy
five hundred, Grand Champion Most Improved Dave Cousten, starring Annals
Rutgers Judith. Research is by Fort Lauderdale City council member
Versa Brown and Antiguin Police Chief Jabari Davis. The theme
(48:40):
song is by barge operator Thomas Lee and jet Ski
instructor Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five
hundred guest heron makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive
producers are pit crew chief Ben Bolin and bagel chef
Noel Brown. Ridicous Crime Say It One More Time Ridiqulious Crime.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zaren Elizabeth, Sarah, how are you.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
I'm doing pretty well. Just been in here waiting for you,
all excited to see you, and you walk in with
that big smile.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's so good to see you.
Speaker 4 (00:12):
Yeah, you know, I'm hoping things are gonna look up.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Oh. Same, I'm trying to be positive to positive.
Speaker 5 (00:18):
Yeah, I'm trying to be optimistic and being like I've
been watching a lot of stuff about Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Well that helps to be for me.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
It provides perspective to go from like sixty like early sixties.
I actually started, like you know, at the end of
World War Two, at the coverage, and then by the
time you get to sixty eight and everything's just mad revolution,
Like okay, I can kind of see how these things,
you know, break and change. So it was just giving
me a little like, Okay, we've gotten through crazier.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
You know that's true.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
That's true. Listen aside from you binge watching Vietnam documentaries.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yes, you know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
Oh my god, do I Elizabeth. I saw this and
I had to tell you about it. There was this
woman named Marsha Morgan was forty eight years old at
the time, and she did what I have occasionally done
when you look at your window and you see someone
who's parked in front of your replace, and you're.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Like, what the hell are they doing on my parking
spot right on.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
The public street, on the public street, but you.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Still look at it as like your parking spaces right
in front of your place. I admit it makes no sense.
It's not one of my best qualities, but I have
gotten upset when I'm like, what are they doing parking there?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Right?
Speaker 5 (01:24):
So she did something I can totally understand. She went
out and tried to do something about it. She wasn't violent,
she wasn't like mad destructive. She just took a bunch
of toilet paper and she like toilet papered the car
that was parked in what she conceived of as her space. Now,
what I've left out was that when she did this,
(01:45):
she was dressed as a hot dog. She had gotten
home and decided not to take off her hot dog costume. Instead,
she just had a couple of drinks, She got tossed,
and then she decided, I need to go settle up
with a car out front.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
When she was arrested. She was still in the hot
dog costume.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
This is a costume for work.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
I'm assuming maybe I might put on something comfortable.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I put on her mobile driver costume.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Like if I had to go home in a hot
dog costume, the first thing I do is take off the.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Hot dog, one would think, I think.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Can we also talk about how expensive it is to
toilet paper a car?
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Yeah, you don't even egg things anymore, exactly.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
Know, it's wasting that This was a couple of years ago.
This was in like, well, it was twenty twenty five.
It wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
It was one year.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Again, the toilet paper was still expensive.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Right, and everything's expensive.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
She got a five hundred and fifty dollars fine on
top of her lost toilet paper. I guess the cops
weren't impressed with that hot dog costume. Now, I don't
think I should have to tell you this, but this
did occur in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
Also, by the way, when I was reading other stories
of the news about crime, there's a neighborhood called Madera
in Florida, which is in the Saint Petersburg area. Oh, man,
did that one come up a lot in the stories?
Oh yeah, if you go like to read the Smoking Gun, right,
which happened to be like like just cruising through, so
it's a little light reading. And it was just Madera
Madera Madeira. I'd never heard of it before. Now I
(03:16):
know all about it.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Apparently it's a rough spot.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Interesting.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
A lot of people like hitting each other with a
slice of pizza, you know, throwing nachos at your dress. Yeah, well,
one person like stole a taco.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It was a lot of foods, a lot of food based.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
And then also meth and alcohol based crimes, that's all.
Sometimes it's like I got drunk and I threw the
pizza at my mother.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I like it. Okay, So there you go, ridiculous, right.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
You know what else is ridiculous? Get them Smugglers Blues.
(04:05):
This is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
and cons. It's always always ninety nine percent murder free
and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh you damn right, I am so right, always right
zerin sore Rain.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
You love a good tale of adventure on the high seas.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
I love a good tail of adventure in you love pirates,
a huge van of pirates.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
If I could have a job occupation of choice, pirate.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
You love vikings, basically a pirate of the ancients.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Yes, and you love tales of dirt bags with feathered hair,
loading up boats with pounds of weed and running their
goods to the land of apple pie, baseball in sync,
garbage disposals, red solo cups, and medical bankruptcy.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Yes, I do love sixties and seventies in particular, and
up to the eighties. Drug smuggling in the Florida Ky
get to the USA.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Yeah, drug smugglers. Okay, so they make amazing ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Criminals, totally, just amazing.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
And it's in part because of the way they spend
their ill gotten gains, Like they do a ridiculous job,
they buy ridiculous things.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yes, it's just a circle of ridiculous and.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Maybe because they dip into their own supply. I mean,
it's an explanation, you possibly red it. So I've got
this guy for you today. A lot of the parts
of his story sound a little familiar because we've heard
them in other stories. Okay, here, like they're the tropes,
these required elements, the basics of seventies and eighties drug smuggling.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Oh yeah, let's be real.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
It never gets old.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
No go fast boat, low flying planes exactly.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
So today Randy Lanier, Oh, he's an all timer, mister Burnette. Yes,
I fess then you've heard of him.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
My friend Derek actually recommended I look into his story.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
I'm glad you got this well, I've stole it out
from under you. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia. Nineteen
fifty four was the year his dad was a draftsman.
His mom was a caretaker at a mental hospital. It
is hard working folks. He was close to his grandparents
and he loved countrying it up at their place on
(06:20):
the James River. The Gold Country boy. Yeah. When he
was fourteen, he and his family moved to Hollywood, Florida,
which is not too far from Fort Lauderdale. The vibe
in the late sixties was mellow, like long haired beach hippies,
cool music, yeah, you know, cooltoons, drugs. So Randy he
(06:42):
started working construction.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Okay, I respect.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
He was like a typical teen for the time and
the place. He had a ponytail. He wanted to make
a little.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Cash, swing a hammer, the ponytail.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Well, the ponytail got him a reputation that basically manifested
what was to come. Because he had the ponytail shows up.
Guys on the crew thought that he'd be able to
hook him up with pot, because well that's the thing
not to even sell, but like, do you know where
you could find him? And I thought, I bet you
could relate to that because you had long dreadlocks when
(07:15):
you were working constructions.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yes, And they always expected me to have pot on me, Like, oh,
we're gonna go take a break. See you want to
come with us? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:22):
Or know where you could get it? Oh?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, I definitely hook him up.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yeah, So I think you were probably able to accommodate
the requests. Maybe so this kid though he's just a
kid with a ponytail. But you know, if people ask,
you're like, well all right, let's make this happen. So
Randy started selling pot.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
There you go.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
He was readying himself for another summer of construction site
drug deals, and then his dad was like, you gotta
cut your hair. No way, man, as Crosby steals Nash
and Young saying, almost cut my hair. It happened just
the other day. It was getting kind of long. I
could have said it was in my way, but I didn't,
(08:00):
And I wonder why I feel like letting my freak
flag fly. Yeah, so he wanted to let his freak
flag fly, and how thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So you know what he did.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
He got out of town.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Oh, He's like, forget the scissors, give me the cartones.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
So he hitchhiked to Canada.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
From Hollywood, Florida.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, with a bag of pot, four hits of acid,
and five dollars. Okay, you know, just like that sweet
heroin Cherub David Crosby saying in the same song, when
I finally get myself together, I'm going to get down
in some of that sweet summer weather. I'm going to
find a space inside to laugh, separate the wheat from
the chev Yeah. So it was a great summer. And
(08:41):
when he got backed on, he decided to ride the high.
So he dropped out of school. It became a full
time weed dealer. Okay, he did all the like late sixties,
early seventies weed dealer stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
So like.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
According to Rolling Stone Magazine, he quote at one point
packed the air vents of a Folkswagen Beetle with marijuana
and headed off to Aspen to meditate with a guru.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yes, except for the air cooled engine part.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
That's a little problem, a little problem there.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
So by the time he was nineteen, he'd earned enough
as a local dealer to buy a twenty seven foot
Magnum sport powerboat.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Damn Son.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
He was making cash, you know, and there's nothing like
a young weed dealer with a gofest like what could
go wrong?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Sarin, He've stepped up in class.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
As Randy tells it. Quote, about six months later, a
buddy asked me if I was interested to go and
go into the Bahamas and put some grass on my boat.
It seemed like an adventure, So I did it.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Oh man, I love when people used to call it cras.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I was just going to say, I that is my
favorite of all the weed terms. I think so because
it's so like, it's so time specific. M Yeah. Anyway, Uh,
they skanoodled on down to the Bahamas. They loaded seven
hundred and fifty pounds of that stickyicking into the boat.
Then they cruise back up to Fort Lauderdale super easy.
(10:03):
And it made him five grand. So five grand in
nineteen seventy three is just over thirty seven thousand dollars today.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
That's not bad for basically a day and a half
FLT work.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Yeah, exactly, so, Randy, he did some math in his head.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
B boo babu.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Beat that.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
One boat can land him five k No problem? What
about two? Well, heck, what about three? He bought two
more speed boats to go first, and he had it made.
He married his high school sweetheart. Like things are on
the uptick, it was just all so easy. You know,
you slip down to the island, you pick up the cargo,
head back to Florida.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
He doesn't want to go to Nassau.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
Slide into the canals under cover of darkness.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Them on the Florida coast.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Well, this is so many inlets, Randy said, quote it
was a smuggler's paradise. It was like the pirate days,
Like you want a time machine to.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Go back to.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Then I would be satisfied with the late seventies. I
actually literally be fine with that.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
And so like South Florida, weed dealers started hiring him
and he'd make the pickups and they'd cut him in
for thirty percent of the load. So fast forward a
couple of years and The Rolling Stone wrote quote Lanier
had three stash houses humming in the Bucolic horse country
west of Fort Lauderdale and was earning hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
So he had to have some.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Cover for all of this, Like, how do you explain this?
He started a business, So nineteen seventies Fort Lauderdale, Like,
what's a happening? Successful business for that time and place. Well, No,
if you had said jet ski rental, you would be
today's winner, I miss, I mean, come on, it's right there,
(11:43):
right there, Burnette. So you know, a man has to
have hobbies. Of course, Randy, like you liked to go
fast boats, jet skis. And it was in nineteen seventy
eight that he went to a Miami car show in
nineteen seventy eight Miami Car all the Way wild. Oh yeah,
So there he saw a car club booth and he
(12:05):
like chatted with them all, Hey, kiky, what's up, checked
out a brochure, and then signed up for a racing class.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Oh smart, like bomb Bonderette style.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Randy later said, quote, I didn't have a clue. I
just drove, yes man, and drove did Zaren So he
worked the grassroots circuit for a while just like gunning
and funning. Then came the nineteen eighty to twenty four
Hours of Daytona race.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Oh yeah, and driving on the sand real things. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
A friend of his worked for Janet Guthrie and she
was one of the first women to compete in professional racing.
And his buddy was like, hey, you want to hear
some hot gossip. Randy's like, yeah, it's like Janet sick.
He's like, really six sick, you know, she just has
like an upset stomach. Oh, And He's like that doesn't
(12:58):
qualify as hot gossip. He's like, you should spend some
time around the track. This is about as good as
I can get. So they were looking for someone to
take her place at twenty four Hours of Daytona, and
Randy was like, look, no further, I'm your guy. So,
according to Rolling Stone quote, climbing into the Ferrari five twelve,
Lanier drove several practice laps fast enough to impress the team.
(13:21):
He and two other drivers kept the car in third
place for eighteen hours before Lanier destroyed the Ferrari's gearbox.
Oh so he was shining on the track apparently, and
he was also shining back at the office, not the
jet ski rental office, but the drug smuggling office. No, yeah,
that one. And so he had expanded and he had
(13:43):
a business partner, fellow by the name of Ben Kramer
Ben Cream. They went to high school together and they
had similar interests. See Ben had just gotten out of
prison for selling weed. So they were sympathico.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yes, And with Ben, Randy.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Could really like upscale, upsize his efforts.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
Well, yeah, I mean he's graduated from the Iron Bar
University exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So faster boats, bigger boats, more boats.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
I'm talking sixty five foot wooden trawller.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
And then like big fishing boats, then.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
A whole fleet of tug boats.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
He just went nuts.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
So he's like, they're going to look past those.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yeah. So then he gets bigger contracts he got we're
talking Colombia.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
So they weren't middlemen anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
They went to the source was smuggling more.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Money for them. So Randy bought a Norwegian fishing trawler
called Ursa Major, and he took it down to Colombia
and he came back with fifteen thousand pounds of Colombian gold.
Can I tell you about this particular stream tons of Colombian.
Colombian gold is a legendary pure sativa cannabis stream yes
(14:54):
originating from the Santa Martin Mountains in Colombia. Renowned for
its energetic uplifting a and high THHC levels around eighteen
to twenty percent. It is popular for daytime, used to
combat stress and depression. Featuring a distinct skunky lime forward around.
It is relatively easy to grow tall plant.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
I bet it would drive Cheech and Chong absolutely sideways
with like desire.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
I just cracks me up. When people talk about weed,
they talk about wine.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, with a tear water with lemon.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
It makes sense.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
The es and this are fantastic. So their top note
is something of an alfalfa.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Well, you go from like wine moms to weed moms.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
That's the whole thing. So there's Randy with his boat
just like crammed with Colombian gold marijuana. He pulled off
the coast of Florida and his crew motored up in
a bunch of big zodiac rafts. They filled the zodiacs
with fifty pound bales he.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Just wrapped, okay, and then the zodiacs made.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Their way to a beach where like a strobe light
was flickering wow to signal.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Them this is like the old like rum runners approached.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yes, yes, your boy, the real McCoy right, So.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
They would like they would run the boats up onto
the beach because there's zodiacs just flat right there. And
then there was a human chain of unloaders who ran
the bales from the boats to a bunch of vans
waiting in a parking lot, and then the vans would
drive to one of Randy's stash houses. Randy sold it
all the next day. His take four point five million dollars.
(16:29):
It was like fifteen million today one night. Yes, So
Randy and his wife Pam, they're living it up, like
they got this new five bedroom house with a private lake,
got a couple of rotwilers patrolling rock whilers, patrolling the grounds.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
So she fully knows what he does for a living.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Oh yeah, a Porsche Benzo. It's not bad for the
owner of a chain of jet ski rental shops. Yeah,
you know, but hey, it's for Lauderdale. Things were big,
but they were about to get bigger.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I love bigger.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Let's take a break. When we come back, I'll tell
you about Randy's next seriously audacious plan Randy Lanier. No,
(17:28):
you're Zaron Brunette, but I want to tell you about Randy.
You today, you'll be Randy weed smuggler extraordinary. So here
we are in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
What a time, What a year.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Randy had a bunch of weed distributors, and one of
them introduced Randy and his partner Kramer, to Tip O'Neill,
who then became a tugboat captain for them.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
It's in the Miami area.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I'll just keep running with it.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
We get to and then the estate if tip O'Neil
can come after me anyway, So he introduces Ben and
Randy to this other smuggler, George Brock. Now Brock had
a vision. See he knew this other guy, Eugene Fisher.
Fisher owned a shipyard. He also owned an ocean going barge.
(18:19):
Oh he put on there like the flat decked time,
big as a football field. So Brock he did some calculations.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Beboo babo beat weed in this.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Yeah, he was like a barge could hold more than
one hundred tons of marijuana. And that's like more than
two hundred thousand pounds of weed totally. So according to
rolling Stone quote. The scheme was simple, but ingenius. Welders
sealed the bales under steel plates. The secret compartments were
then filled with seawater so that a curious customs official
(18:52):
would find only Brian. In early nineteen eighty three, the
barge sailed up New York's East River and docked at
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Damn side living low, like pulling
two hundred thousand pounds, it's like winds up being a
little bit less than that of weed up into.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Brooklyn, right into New York's harbor.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
This is insane. So they get to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Randy's guys used welding torches to cut through the ballast
tanks inside one hundred and thirty thousand pounds of Columbian gold.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
That's all, by the way, a lot of work to
cut through with welders torches. Yeah, it's like the place
you would get caught after all that work when you
get welding down there.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Yeah, So the tanks are opened, another crew comes moves
the bales of weed into tractor trailers like big rigs.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yeah totally, And so now Randy is rich, rich, oh
big time.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Doing the math from the ursa minor job. That run
had to be worth thirty nine million, which is one
hundred and twenty four million today. But you figure he's
got to cut all these other folks in a blue
blah profit.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
But that's a big time job.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So that money immediately began burning a hole in his pocket. Yeah,
he put a lot of it into putting together a
professional racing team like race car. Yeah, he bought two
race cars, bought a warehouse to uses the home base.
He hired an ex Formula one crew chief and a
team of mechanics.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
What classes he racing Formula one, Formula not NASCAR Formula one.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Yeah, he graduated go fast. He called his new racing
team blue Thunder.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Whin yeah so good.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
And that was this is like early eighties, so the
TV show and movie Blue Thunder had probably come out.
He's imitating possibly the helicopter.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Right right, So just like in most professional sports, if
you have money, you can buy success totally. And so
at the end of the nineteen eighty four season, look
at the Dodgers, right, Randy was named Camel GT Champion
as well as most Improved Driver. Really improved Driver is
like the best worst award I can think of getting
(21:05):
most improved. So the smuggling had never stopped. He had
a team to fund now and they so they did
another barge run. This one had seventy five tons of
Colombian gold in it. He was making tens of millions
of dollars. His lifestyle reflected it. He had like expensive cars,
(21:25):
vacation hull, the.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Most feathered hair you've ever seen feathered.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
I feel like he and his crew probably all walked
around in those like football jerseys that are cut off
like half short, say Hawaii eighty four.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
And then like the short short cutoff jeans shorts, Yeah,
with the fraying at the bottom, a little bit of
white pocket exactly.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Pockets longer than the than the inn scene. So the money,
all this money has to be laundered, of course, naturally,
and so Randy and Ben they had a bunch of
foreign bank accounts shell companies, and one of these companies
funded the construction of a one hundred thousand square foot
casino called the Bell Gardens Bicycle Club in Bell Garden, California.
(22:06):
It's now called Park West Bicycle Casino, and it's still
like a poker card room. The whole thing was funded
by a variety of drug smugglers. It was like a cooperative. Yeah,
it was as a means to launder money. And it's
like both during construction and in the operation. And it
was actually Ben's dad who was the guy behind the
(22:27):
whole card room plan. Anyway, the laundering operation was huge.
There were tons of fake corporations.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I wonder how much crack money went into this, because
it's the early eighties in.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Your bell Garden, I think, yeah, Bellgard.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
One of their fake companies was called g Reedy Holding Company.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
Greedy Greedy, Oh right, even better.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
They used banks in England, Panama, Hong Kong, British Vision Islands,
other places, all.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
The best money laundering spots.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
And what was Randy up to right now?
Speaker 3 (22:59):
What was now?
Speaker 5 (23:01):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Glad that I made you ask? That he was training
for the Indianapolis five hundred are you kidding? And the
number one race in America, So Randy had the money
to go full in on training. In May nineteen eighty six,
a week before the race, he learned that his distributor
in Louisiana had been arrested and was cooperating with the FBI. Oh,
(23:26):
and the FBI was surveilling Randy oh no, yeah, this
is a week before the Indy five hundred, and so
there was another shipment on its way in. As he
heard all of this, eighty three tons of weed on
its way to Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Whoa on the barge going to New Orleans?
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Basically, yeah, thereabouts, Randy got in touch with the captain
of the ship and was like, redirect, redirect, don't go
to Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
He tells him, head south, tolle.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
Go through the Panama Canal. Oh wow, then head north
in the Pacific to California.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Guys like.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
All of this is right when he's getting ready for
the Indy five hundred, Like, if this is.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Stressful, I got a focus, I got them Andretti's.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Years later, Dale Earnhardt Junior went marvel at these circumstances
on his podcast while interviewing Randy Dale Junior. U. But
Randy races and he still managed to come in just
nine cars behind.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
What that's not bad at all.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
He was actually the only rookie driver to finish that year. Really,
and he clocked the fastest speed in history during pre
qualifying lapse, breaking Michael Andretti's previous record.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
What past that crowd?
Speaker 4 (24:45):
This is an awards banquet after the race, and Randy
was presented with the Indy five hundreds Rookie of the
Year Award.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Get it signed, Randy.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
So he's like floating on air at this point, like
what a life is racing in the Indy five hundred.
He's driving exotic cars, living in palatial homes, smuggling tons
of weeds.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
He is living the early eighties dream right now, dreams right.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
But then don't forget there's that barge that he had
to be just a few months after his turn in
the eighty five hundred, finds himself sitting in a rented
car in a parking lot near a harbor on the
San Francisco Bay there waiting on that boat that was
originally headed for Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Where do they plan on, Doc?
Speaker 4 (25:31):
And I kept they kept saying near San Francisco, and
I'm thinking, like South City, some of.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Those could have been Oakland. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
But here's the thing, though, is that the Oakland, like
all those port slips, are so union controlled you can
just roll up. That's why I think it's going to
be like Hunter's Point.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Yeah, baby, that's a little a little bit more loose. Yeah, anyway,
I would have gone to Long Beach where you can
actually bribe people.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Yeah, I guess it's also a Union stronghold.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
Yeah, but it's a little bit bigger. There's enough, there's
enough to get lost in Margache.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
Could have known a Richmond, they could have been That's
what we're with all the metal salvage. People are definitely
looking past that. And there's a lot of like you know,
Asians like travel, so like they thought it Like, I
don't know what's what the words is coming from.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
I'm just trying to think of the size of this barge.
Where would it go. This us to be fascinating for
people who have no idea about the layout of San
Francisco Bay anyway, cargo options exactly. So he's sitting in
a parking lot near harbor on the Bay waiting for
the boat. He gets a message on his radio.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
And he's still under FBI investigation, and he knows it, and.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
He knows it. There's trouble with the cargo. Water got
into the one of the sealed compartments full of weed,
and the marijuana was rotting and putting off methane.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Oh god.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
And when the crew went to use torches to cut
open the compartments. Explosion and fire, Oh because methane. Of course,
two of the guys died, so moment of silence for
one percent. So the remaining crew, they're worried that the
whole thing is going to go right. Yeah, So they
salvage what they could without opening the other compartments. How
(27:13):
they do that, I don't know, And they shipped off
what they could in trucks and then the barge was
set out into the ocean and scuttled, went to the
briny deep holding the two expired welders too. There are
many tragic tales in Davy Jones's locker.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
You're telling you?
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Yeah, so Randy, Yeah, this I feel like was like
a turning point for Randy. He went back to Florida
a changed man. The whole thing rattled him, and he
knew the Feds were sniffing around, so he started to
get super paranoid.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
One of his fans his racing career is going well,
so he's now got something to lose.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Sure, sure, but it's like he's kind of crossed a
line with this.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Yeah, no, definitely this point, he moved out.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Of his fancy house and into a condo that he
rented under a fake name.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Huh. So he's basically like low key on the run. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
He always used payphones to make calls, never landlines, and
certainly no like early cell phones. He went in and
out of the back doors of stores and restaurants and businesses.
He was like Henry Hill, Yeah, and fellas driving around
looking at the exactly that a shoe dropped. In October
of nineteen eighty six, the DEA pressed charges on eleven
(28:22):
people for engaging in a major drug and money laundering organization.
Three of those people were at the center of it all,
Randy Ben and Ben's dad, Jack Kramer. Remember Jack was
the casino one. By the way, Jack Kramer was married
to Meyer Lanski's niece.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Oh he deep yes, world.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
So the charges detailed their efforts to smuggle more than
one hundred thousand pounds of marijuana into South Florida between
September of nineteen eighty three and June of nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
And now he's in a new race, which is who's
going to flip on who first?
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Uh huh. But he's not even talking about the aren't
talking about New York California. This is just the South.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Florida stuff they know about you down there.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Now, Randy had broken his leg in a crash at
the Michigan five hundred oh and like, bad luck is
all he knew at this point, so he surrendered to
the FEDS. He posted one hundred thousand dollars bail and
was released. Okay, Now, remember when I said just moments
ago that they weren't even talking about New York or California.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
It wasn't.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
I take that back. Oh. A couple months later, FBI
comes at him for smuggling one hundred and fifty tons
of marijuana into US ports over a three year period.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
I have one question, Elizabeth, why was he still in
the country. They had gotten him out there at this point.
You got that kind of money, you need to run
something tight.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
So when you add it all up, Randy and company
were busted for bringing more than six hundred thousand pounds
of marijuana into the country six hundred thousand pounds with
a Z at the end pounds. In February of nineteen
eighty seven, Randy was doing.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
Court, so the FED basically, anybody like you know, our parents' age,
probably smoked some of the pot.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
That he brought into the country.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, exactly if you were smoking Colombia.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
You were smoking Colombian gold.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Yeah, anywhere on the.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Eastern seaboard in particular perhaps and perhaps parts of.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
California sit around the Bay.
Speaker 6 (30:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
So Randy has to go to court February nineteen eighty seven,
and the Feds were like, you have some options. You
can face a life sentence, or you can turn state's
evidence and get ten years. Randy's like, I'll take option three. Saren,
close your eyes. Yes, I want you to picture it.
(30:45):
You work at a bagel shop in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
It's the morning rush. Various professionals wait in line for
their bagels and coffee. You are working their register. People
in suits, construction workers in their gear, doctors and nurse
from the hospital down the road. They all wait patiently
for their choice of shmear. Above you, a TV shows
(31:06):
the local morning news. The volume's low. The owner has
it on so the customers can see the weather and
traffic while they wait in the morning, and any crazy
major news stories. Right now, the screen above you shows
a weather radar map. The sky is clear for the
foreseeable future. The door chimes as another customer comes in
and joins the line. You finish taking an order, ringing
(31:28):
them up, and then looking at the line to call
the next person. Everyone in line is now looking up
at the TV screen. You turn around and stare up
at it. A reporter stands across the street from Grand
Gates outside a super fancy home. Behind him, two cops
in tactical gear walk by. You see someone in a
DEA windbreaker talking to a lady in an FBI windbreaker
(31:51):
alphabet soup. One of the guys in line cracks. The
lady in front of him laughs. You look back at
the line, and the man three customers looks like he's
seen a ghost. He stares at the screen for a
little while longer, and then ducks out a line and
races to the payphone against the wall. He puts in
a quarter, pulls a folded up sheet of paper from
(32:12):
his back pocket, and dials a number. He seems to
read from the paper. He waits, and when it seems
like someone has answered, he says, Uh, yeah, yet, my wife,
Pam Lanier is a patient there. She just had a baby,
our baby a couple days ago. Uh can you connect
me to her room? The guy waits in silence, staring
out the window of the shop. It's funny. No one
(32:33):
ever uses the payphone in here. Well every now and then,
and it's almost always to call home to ask someone
what they wanted or what they would want as a substitution.
If their first request is sold out, you hear a
lot of honey, did you want onion with the locks capers?
Speaker 3 (32:48):
No?
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Okay. In fact, that's why the owner had the phone
company install the phone inside so that out on the
sidewalk more convenient for the customers. He thinks of everything.
You expect the guy to ask us wife if she
wants poppy seed or an egg bagel that maybe he
couldn't remember. Instead, you hear him.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Slow down. The babysitter said, what, Yeah, I know they're
at the house. I just saw it on the news. Yes,
I am aware. When am I coming to get you?
The man stares out the window. A customer walks by
him to leave, setting off the door time. Finally he speaks,
I'm leaving. I'm not coming to get you, he says.
(33:27):
Then he hangs up the phone and walks out of
the shop. You've been so distracted. You weren't listening to
the lady in front of you as she rattled off
her very intricate order. You ask her to repeat herself,
and she sighs. You look back up at the screen.
Everything clicking, Hot dog, you just saw a drug kingpin. Yes, Zaren,
(33:48):
let's take a break and let me return. We'll go
find Randy. Okay, all right, Zaren. Before the break, I
(34:15):
was telling you about how Randy saw his house getting
raided while he was waiting in line to pick up
bagels for his wife. Very well rendered after she gave
birth to their second child.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
So that was real.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
That was that was real?
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Yeah, So their first kid was at home with the babysitter. Randy,
not a good dad, decided to just make a break
for it, and also not a good husband.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I mean, I liked his instinct to run.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
I think he should have done it much earlier, and
he probably should have taken his wife and children with him, right,
I mean, that's why you get the money.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
So he hitched a ride in a big rig and
rode all the way up to Pennsylvania. Okay, and then
he used a phony passport.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Good move.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Yeah, he used a fake passport, got on a flight
to London, okay, and it was there that he met
up with someone, his girlfriend. Oh no, oh, Zaren, you
had to believe a guy like this would be stepping
out on his wife.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
He probably should have. You know why, I'm so innocent,
so naive.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
You know why why? Because he is a piece of Yeah.
So he met the girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
He didn't enjoy the research.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
He'd met the girlfriend, Maria de la LuSE Maggie, while
still in Florida. The two of them met up in
London and then just like flitted around Europe living it up.
Oh god, Remember he had tons of money and offshore accounts.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
He's got a pregnant wife at home.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
He just gave birth postpart.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
So Randy and Maria they're staying in five star hotels.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
When they were doing that part.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
But they're doing that, yeah, exactly, five star hotels, rolling
the dice in Monte Carlo, while Pam was back home
nursing a newborn, while the FBI pawed through her underwear
drawer like this is fun. Everybody's having fun, I tell you.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
So.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
The thing is, there were some loose ends Randy had
to tie up. He had to make a trip to
Antigua to deal with some property he owned there. Why,
he had a sixty foot Hatteras fishing boat there too,
And the ship's captain was an old smuggling buddy of his,
so when he and Maria got there, they trust. Yeah,
they stayed on the boat and they figured they just
(36:16):
like chill for a couple of weeks, like sip cocktails,
soak in the sun.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
Do you think they took a boat from Europe over
I think they probably flew and then just got.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
About and then well they had fake passports since yeah,
they just wanted island time. And then they're like, okay,
you know it'd be great is once we're done here,
we'll just take this boat and sail to Spain. How
funny is that there we go, everybody's having funds.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
There, so uh, my favorite foods.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
One early morning in late October nineteen eighty seven, the
ship pulled into a small harbor and there was a
ship behind them, a big old gray one, and Tiguan
government and the captain's like, you know, they're probably going
to check our papers, and so they they're watching this
big gray boat and then they see a small boat
(37:07):
full of guys in uniforms with guns pulled, pull away
from the big gray boat and head for Randy's vessel.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
They're going to board us.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
So Randy just like starts barking at the captain, like
put the zodiac in the water, bro jump. He jumps
in and speeds away, leaving Maria and the captain behind him.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Of course, total scumbag, Maria.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
If he did it to someone else, he'll do it
to you. It's words to live by, ladies. Probably, I
know there are a lot of gals not along right now.
If he did it to someone else, he'll do it
to you.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
So Randy reached the dock at the harbor, hopped out
of the Zodi. Keep in mind he was just chilling
on the boat right island time. He's he's wearing bag
strimped swim trunks, flip flops, no shirt, and he had
noe to go but run up this hill covered in
saw palmettos, those sharp growing palm bushes.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
God, those things ripped him up to get torn up.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
His feet were bleeding.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Oh sure, luddy, you could just follow the blood trail.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
And it's not like the antigues were only coming in
him on the water.
Speaker 5 (38:16):
They were waiting on land too, so I am sure
the coast guards probably involved as well.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
A bunch of jeeps pulled up at the bottom of
the hill and they were like, Randy, stop, Randy, and
he just like kept scrabbling, and they pulled their rifles,
and you know, is like pants are sagging, and they
can see the top of his butt, his flip flops.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
He's blew out a flip flop.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Randy stop, and so then they pull out the rifles.
Randy stops scrabbling, did they No. He limped back down
the hill, topless, sunburned, bloody. So the police put them
on a plane. They're like, you're out of here, buddy.
We don't want your smuggling as types here. So they
flew him to Puerto Rico, where he was arrested by
the FEDS, because, contrary to common ignorant notions, Puerto Rico
(39:00):
was part of the United States.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yes, and the DEA has full jurisdiction.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
So a lot had been happening in the eight months
that he was on the Lamb.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
He was on the Lamb for eight months.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Yeah. The FEDS tore up his dad's yard and found
two million dollars hidden inside PVC pipes. Meanwhile, he's like,
you know, sipping champagne in Paris. They ransacked another relative's
house and found five hundred thousand dollars in the basement.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Is going down like his address book. Let's just make
a date to day.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Yeah, they tracked bank accounts, businesses. They connected the dots
to the casino in California.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Naturally, so now they're all screwed.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
They seized his houses, in his cars, Pam. Pam was
a single mother with two kids now who had to
get a job cutting fruit at the local supermarket in
order to make ends meet. That's how Pam was doing.
His trial began in July of nineteen eighty eight. Two
dozen members of his crew testified against him.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Who dozen ouch.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Right to remember that race that's talking about who going
to flip on?
Speaker 5 (40:00):
Who?
Speaker 4 (40:01):
We found computers exactly to the first heat was wild,
so prosecutors laid it all out. He and his partners
had trafficked more than three hundred tons of marijuana into
the US. They'd run a smuggling empire that covered like
almost a dozen states, employed hundreds of people, So I
mean they were job creators, and Randy had made somewhere
(40:24):
around sixty eight million dollars along the way.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
And he didn't think to put more of it overseas
his dad's backyard.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
No, he only two million was in his dad's A
lot of it was overseas.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Okay, good for him.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
So the trial lasted three months. There were sixty four witnesses.
It generated more than ten thousand pages of transcripts. Yeah.
So in the end, he and Ben and Fisher were
convicted of drug trafficking, fraud, and running a continuing criminal enterprise.
The government was ordered to seize one hundred and eighty
(40:58):
million dollars of their assets collectively, and this became the
largest federal forfeiture in US history. Randy got sentenced to
life in prison without possibility of parole. His dad got
time for burying the money in his own lawn. Randy's
brother didn't get charged, but the government seized his house
(41:18):
and auctioned it off because it was used for illegal activities.
Oh really, Oh freedom. Maria got nine years for Monday laundering.
Pam divorced Randy.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
She didn't catch any charges, you know, Pam didn't she.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Didn't catch charges. She divorced Randy. So Randy and Maria
got married while respectively behind bars.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Sure, Randy was put in medium security lockup, but he
had to be moved around a lot because he kept
trying to escape. At one prison, Randy tried to escape
by hiding inside a vending machine that was going to
be taken out to get fixed, and at another he
went on, here's when you're gonna like, according to Rolling
(42:03):
Stone quote, using a contraband phone, he conspired with a
helicopter pilot to spirit him from the exercise yard. A
prison official, alerted to the plan, summoned Laneer to his office.
If you think you're landing a helicopter in this prison,
he worn, I'm shooting you, and I'm shooting your helicopter.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Down France helicopter escapes.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
But you know his wasn't the only one, really remember
Ben Kramer. In nineteen ninety, one of Kramer's buddies tried
to put together an escape using a helicopter. They were
going to have it fly into the exercise yard of
the Dade Metropolitan Correction Center where Ben was serving time,
and like pick him up and then per the publication
(42:45):
Jelopnik quote. Not surprisingly, the plan didn't work, as Kramer
held onto the runners of the helicopter. It's rear rotor
became entangled in a fence, oh, causing the machine to
come crashing down into the yard. Creamer's offered a broken
leg in the incident. Was so the Feds had had enough.
They sent Randy to the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado,
(43:10):
where he was held Supermax where he was held in
solitary confinement. Oh lord, I don't think the escape attempts
were worth it to end up there, but Randy like
he chilled out. Eventually he took up meditation, painting, chess, yoga.
In late twenty fourteen, his lawyer and the government's attorney
(43:30):
filed a succession of motions, all sealed in federal court.
See Randy as I said, he was supposed to be
serving life.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yeah, suggesto, right, But.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
For reasons that never really became known or clear, that changed.
Randy attended a phone conference and was told by the
judge that he would be granted time served was years. No,
so was twenty fourteen bomber years. So he got out
October fifteenth. Twenty fourteen had been released back in nineteen
(44:01):
ninety nine. Yeah, yeah, but it didn't matter because they
weren't married anymore anyways, recently broke up in prison, so good.
According to Rolling Stone quote after his release, Lanier lived
in a half way house and drove for Uber, which
he pronounces Youber. And now part of the conditions of
his release is that he had to live in that
(44:22):
half way house for six months. He then had three
years of supervised release where he couldn't have guns or booze.
In twenty eighteen, he worked part time instructing non professionals
at the Homestead Miami Speedway, and he's now CEO at
a nonprofit called Freedom Grow, which helps provide quote services, comfort,
and eventually freedom to other non violent cannabis offenders.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Huh, so he's trying to help his people.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
Yeah, and he also, at least does of twenty twenty two,
is licensed to grow weed in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Really they came, apparently they did.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
And he appears on the Weirdest podcast. Like I think
he got into bodybuilding because he shows up on those
types of shows a lot. He's like, oh, ripped all
the pictures in his prison. Yeah, and then there's all
the racing stuff. Car guys love it.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
Of course I thought about that, you said earlier. Dale
or podcast podcast.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
Sizarin, what's your ridiculous takeaway here? Uh?
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I know this is foolish, and I know this is
probably wrong, but I think I would have been a
hell of a pot smuggler in the seventies and eighties,
and once I hit a certain level, I wouldn't have
been throwing my money into trying to beat Mario Andretti
on the race track. I'd be trying to beat my
way to Monaco to watch races and live up my life.
The life because they can never get enough, these guys.
(45:39):
They're always like, let me go a little bigger. Yeah,
let me get a barge and go into New York.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Harbhere. I'm like, bro, you have already crossed the line.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
But you could have enough money to live comfortably for
the rest of your life and just disappeared.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Into double digit millions.
Speaker 5 (45:53):
You can live so well around the world, know exactly,
especially you're not planning to pay taxes, and you can
actually invest in some legitimate business. Do you have the
half of the talent or your partner does. But no,
they're always like, let me go a little bigger. I
know this one smuggler he got a hundred million and
also another competing with people that they really should.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
Not be competing.
Speaker 4 (46:12):
That is also my takeaway why they don't know when
to stop right and so know how to be happy,
and then they never wind up being able to enjoy
it because they either get crazy paranoid, or they're you know,
they lose it all or whatever it is. I mean,
these are the stories that we tell. Maybe there are
those out there who really pull it off as I
enjoy it.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
I know some people who are in the high stakes
international pot smuggling business and they all have like lots
of homes around the world and managed to do it well.
And I myself managed to get in and out of
crime without having to do anytime, So like, it can
be done as long as you set your sights on
the horizon and not on some other dude.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
Yeah, good, good advice. You know what I would like
as a talk bag?
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Hell yeah, oh my god, super.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
I love g.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
Hi, Saron and Elizabeth Blake.
Speaker 5 (47:11):
Here.
Speaker 6 (47:12):
I was just listening to your dolphins on LSD episode
that I wanted to let you know because you said
you haven't heard anything lately about using AI to decode
animal language, but there is a program out there. It's
called Project SETI. That's c E t I. I guess
a take on SETI. Yes, and they are using AI
to decode sperm whale code, which is amazing, and they're
(47:35):
actually learning quite a few things. So I follow them
on LinkedIn. It's super cool.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Thank you for that. You just made me so happy.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
I'm one hundred per see if they have anywhere else
because I'm not on LinkedIn, but I will co check.
Maybe I can just find a normal website SETTI CTI.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
Yeah, he love it. Thanks for that.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
That's dope.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
That's it for today. You can find us online at
ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at ridicular Crime on
Blue Sky on Instagram. Check it out, go to YouTube
if that's where you do your podcast stuff Ridiculous Crime pod,
or email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.
Most importantly, leave us a talkback on the iHeart app.
(48:16):
It's free. Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Indy
five hundred, Grand Champion Most Improved Dave Cousten, starring Annals
Rutgers Judith. Research is by Fort Lauderdale City council member
Versa Brown and Antiguin Police Chief Jabari Davis. The theme
(48:40):
song is by barge operator Thomas Lee and jet Ski
instructor Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five
hundred guest heron makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive
producers are pit crew chief Ben Bolin and bagel chef
Noel Brown. Ridicous Crime Say It One More Time Ridiqulious Crime.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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