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September 27, 2023 22 mins

Before you get started on Season 2, catch up on the story so far.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, it's fifty cent and I'm Charlie Webster. I know
so many of you loved the first season of Surviving
l Chapo, the twins who brought down a drug lord,
and have been patiently waiting for season two.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Don't worry, we got you. Season two starts next week.
We got the Real Deal. This is the story of
identical twins Jay and Peter Flores speaking to us publicly
for the first time, and their wives Foul and Bed.
The Floreest twins became the biggest drug draft beckers in
North America at twenty three, but they wanted to break

(00:40):
the cycle and give their children a better life, a
chance they never had went away from crime. The only
way out was to turn themselves into the US government
and cooperate against the biggest drug lord of all time,
a man who they saw is family the real Deal,
Joaquin Guzman laretam El Chapo.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
The consequences of their decision start to unravel more than
they ever could have imagined. Since we've been making this
production for the last two years, this has played out
in real time, as you'll soon start to find out
in season two. Back in season one, right in the
middle of recording in the safe house, the wives lawyers

(01:24):
called with some devastating news. It was the call that
changed everything once again for the Flores's family. Now Valenvieve
find themselves heading to prison, fifteen years after their husbands
first turned themselves in. In season two, we will bring
you up to date with the story of the Flora's

(01:45):
family from the moment they were brought in by US authorities,
went face to face with El Chapo in the courtroom,
all the way up to present day. Stay tuned to
discover if the Flores's family still feels the Twins did
the right thing, weather they feel it was all worth it.
Season two begins exactly where we left off, So here's

(02:07):
a short recap of everything that happened on the last
season of Surviving l Chapo. The Twin two brought down
a drug lord.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Our introduction to the drug business started at a seven
years old when dad came home from prison.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
How long was he in prison? Some news? It was
an earning experience.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
I don't even think we thought marijuana was like a
bad thing, right. It was like as soon as he
got home and he was like.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
A back ay.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Our own was raided by the Chicago Police Department my
older brother took a blame the first time. The second
time they came, they're the ones there to take the
blame for him. When my dad wasn't the run, my
other brother he would sell cocaine out the house.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
We started meeting our kinds of people.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
You know, in his business he sold like a lot
two kilos an apartment and he was arrested by that
DEA and that loft us in our situation that we
depended on him, you know, he was our provider. Not
too long after that when we first got approached by

(03:29):
his connect as drug supplier with the opportunity to to
get into business. I'm sixteen years old, some two years old,
and you know there's ten thousand dollars worth of bills
on the table. I mean, working in Walmart wasn't going
to cover that.

Speaker 4 (03:48):
Three months into.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Our drug checking career, we're making a million dollars.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
At seventeen, Jay and Pete had made a million dollars
in cash. By twenty three, the twins were the biggest
drug traffick is in North America.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
My brother that we probably easily pushed over one hundred
and thirty one hundred and forty tons since nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
February ninety two, thousand and four, and here my phone
started ringing, ringing, the ring.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
I remember answering my phone and there's my sibs and
she's like, pee.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
They're in the houses.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
They're in everyone's house, defensident.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
They're looking for you, they're looking for don't go on.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Is there everywhere?

Speaker 4 (04:28):
And I remember that panic hit. There's a word out
for our rest. There's an a pendent in Dinatman out
of Milwaukee. There's search wards. That's not good.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Remember crossing the bording and just fiting some relea to
have crossed that border.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
Get to Mexico. It's about Jay, my older brother and
his wife. They can take me up.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
We're like, it's just so happy to see tell them like, okay,
we made it out. You know.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
It's of mets.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
And little by little I was going to kind of
fade out and stop doing that, like stopped selling drugs,
and did the opposite.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
It happen. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
The brothers fled to Mexico as fugitives with their wives
Ball and Viv, and despite not being on the ground,
their drug business just continued to boom. Pete's wife, Viv
explains that things got more and more chaotic.

Speaker 5 (05:22):
It was just so much going on, so many different
people coming in and out of the house, different cars,
Jane with his one hundred phones, few with his I mean,
it was just overwhelming.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
And then Pete was kidnapped in Mexico.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
My older brother club. He said, Bro, they just called.
They said that they have Peter Kinner and they were
them up.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
They walked me to a small room like a sun
and there's no windows in there.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
They have a bed in there. I was just happy,
still alive. So I get another con from somewhere else.
He said, we're calling. We have your brother.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
You guys a chapel temperate eat.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
My best friend Tommy, I call him right away.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
When I told Tommy that chapel has Peter, He's like,
let's go to Coli.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
We're gonna get your brother back. We arrived to this.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Like farm, but there's planes, a bunch of small assessments.

Speaker 4 (06:35):
We start walking.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
There's the pilot's this holl skinny kid wearing flipflops. He
has to be sixteen years old. And he like opens
the door and I'm like, this is not right. And
I sat there like, oh my god. And as we're
kind of.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
On the plane.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
We're going to big peaks like the plane, I feel
like something there's the tree are going to just like
rub the belly of the plane.

Speaker 4 (07:01):
And it was this big mountain.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Were king of heading towards end. And now I'm really
really scared. I'm like, what the he lands, I'm kind
of getting off. Everyone's just looking at me. We come
up the stairs and realize it's a big old it's huge.

(07:25):
There's tables. I see that there's like these picnic tables.
There's a bunch of newspapers and if someone have to
pull the face in the front of it. And I
looked and I could see his hat and coming up
so slowly. Then I see him.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
He looks at me and he.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Couldn't gives a second take, reaches out his side and
he like, kingman, I tell my name, are the real
Florestan the florest.

Speaker 4 (07:55):
He's kind of stairs.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
I mean, I'm kind of trying to give me back
my hand a little bit, and and so how could
I help you?

Speaker 4 (08:03):
And said, well, look, I'm here because they killed my brother.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
I don't owe that money, and I'm here to see
if I could work something that's for my brother. Well,
he said, I'm sorry to say, but that money's old
to me and I'm not going to forgive that then.
And he said, there's no money that's worth losing your brother.
I just lost my and I would pay whatever it

(08:28):
is to just get my brother back. And then when
you come back, we could do business. You could come
work for me. I could give you drugs. We could
keep making money together. So I started collecting money, started
making payments. The next day, I get a call early

(08:50):
no morning. So he says, hey, listen, your brother's not well.
And he said, and everything that.

Speaker 6 (08:58):
You know I had known of you, it seems like
you're you're a man of your word, and that that
says a lot. I don't give me your word that
you're going to pay me back my money and.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
I'll let your gotta like I'm let me get up
the truck and kiss. I was like, that was gonna die.
And he was like, what happened? And I was like,
I'm at chapel.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
The meeting with l Chapo to free Peete is ultimately
what led to the twins becoming part of the Cineloa
cartel family. This is what changed everything. As Jay's wife
Val describes.

Speaker 7 (10:00):
Their life, changed drastically over night, and there was just
so many new people around.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Us, and who's going to protect us better than the
biggest drug lords in the world. They welcomed us in
with open arms, and the mecca of drug lords in
present time, the drug lords that we know about it
Chapel Mile. At that time, we were important to them.

(10:29):
We had access to more drugs than anyone else because
of who we were as in our personalities, how we
carried ourselves.

Speaker 4 (10:39):
I think there was a turning point.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
We're at the table with the biggest drug lords and
they love us, and.

Speaker 4 (10:47):
With that comes power and protect power.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
And protection and celebrations and a life that no one
could have dreamed of.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
But the life at the top of the drug game
isn't always cracked up to be.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
We were at the top right things are getting taken
for me, not just that I was going through hardships,
that was maturing. I was under starting to understand like
the destruction and everything that was doing to me, to
a family, and trying to understand that what we were
doing wasn't the right thing to do. And we could

(11:20):
sit there all the time and say, oh, yeah, well
I don't hurt anyone. I don't kill anyone that didn't matter.
I was watching thing this documentary came out about John
Gotti in the mo film. It just said that, you know,
Sammy the boy had received five years for nineteen murders
first corporation against John Gotty, and I remember thinking to myself, Wow,

(11:44):
you got five years recovering against John Gotty. In my head,
I was like, who the fuck is John Gotti? The
people we were dealing with. I felt like it was
living John Gotti's whole life. Each day I woke up
in the middle of the night and I do call
it in epiphany.

Speaker 4 (12:00):
It was this moment of just charity. I could cooperate.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
I think we would have to do some prison time,
but we'll have a chance to change your life. Sitting
at home and thinking about it and thinking about really
just wanting a way out, just one way, wanting a
way to just be there for my family, kill him
a different way of life.

Speaker 4 (12:27):
I wanted the life.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
The only way out was to cooperate against the man
they now saw his family Joaquin Guzman Luera El Chapo.
But first Jay had to convince his brother.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
Peter, who shows up him in vir shop.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Hey, I said, come in the wash come in the bathroom,
and at that time, we have a really huge shower.
I was like a twelve people showers and we have
all these jets and it's like, I don't know, sixteen
shower heads. But when the shower heads were going, you
couldn't hear anything. I turned on the shower. I said, listen,

(13:07):
if we know, we could give them anyone they want,
and if you know, saving a bullcot five years for
nineteen murder thro a corporate turn got whooping a good situation.
So I'm just thinking that worst case that we could
get ten years. I don't think none of us want

(13:28):
the life that's coming for us, and I think that
this will be our chance for us to change our
life into something different. But we're gonna have to sacrifice.
I said, when we need to talk to our turney
and how we're going to do that. And I was like,
me and my brother Post looked.

Speaker 4 (13:44):
About the attorney.

Speaker 7 (13:47):
When I flew into Chicago, I went to his office
to go see him, and I just sat down in
his office and I'm like, listen, this is really important.
You can't say anything to anyone, I said, Jay and Peter,
they're thinking about cooperating with the US government, and we're

(14:07):
gonna need your help.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
The first told me that he actually was able to
reach out to an agent and he said, I'm gonna
put you on the phone. His thing was Sam Chanelli,
and that's gonna be the first age we ever talked to.
He said, And I'm gonna talk to us a train's office.
I gotta talk to people higher ups and see how

(14:31):
we could do this. You guys are doing the right thing.
You're coming on to the good site. Right before we
hung up, he said, welcome to Tim, and say welcome
to Tam and say.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
That hurt.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
I was like Team USA, and I kind of made
me think like what team might have And I felt
like that was the biggest moment where I felt like
a trader, like right, they're just talking to them. And
I said, look, man, I'm looking to make a deal,
but I'm looking to make the that's still you ever made.
He said, I got three people for you, and I
told him again, I got chap of mine.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
I thought the tub he tells.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Me, the only thing I can tell you is that,
but it would be the most valuable thing you could
do is start if you can documenting some of these conversations.
So I went to radio shop and bought a bunch
of recording device.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
I'm meeting the facts.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
We kind of get into the conversations. I remember the
first thing that I talked to him about was like, look,
I have I have a lot of information for you guys,
but I need to be reassured.

Speaker 4 (15:34):
I need to know that I want.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
I wanna promise that that no harmon's gonna be come
to my family, that you're gonna promise it keep them safe,
and that then nobody in my family will be prosecuted
for any of the crimes related to my drug trafficking.
And it was like, do you think we would give
a fuck about your family? What we need is a
solid case and Chop it was my and we could
get him with a recording that leads back to a

(15:58):
drug seizure. And she got don't I promise you the
best deal? You can imagine? Like, you get the best
you know the government has ever given up?

Speaker 4 (16:06):
And I was like, that's it.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
I was so nervous now, of course, to me the recording,
but what was to come?

Speaker 4 (16:16):
What did this mean for my life?

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Like it was an ugly feeling, you know, getting the
recorder and the only thing offense had killed me like
a ear piece with a microphone on. You know, when
you put the phone into your ear, you can hear
it and then they can record.

Speaker 4 (16:31):
I remember putting into my.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Ear and like the secretary answered, I'm like, oh, it's
the twin and I'm like, I don't even know what
to say. I remember I'm saying Amigo, like carrying his
voice again, kid casthology and did by to get over that.

(17:08):
That was like a big moment, and I remember thinking
that this is my ticket home. On two weeks after
the trup of recording and we get a car to Sunday.
Our attorney wants to talk to us. It's early, right,
and he said you although us attorney.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
Wants to talk to you. He said, he wants you
guys to turn yourselves in today. Really just hit us,
huh what?

Speaker 3 (17:40):
I then it wanted to say goodbye to It was
scary to think that, and I didn't like losing my family.
And every day we tumped in the truck two agents.
Did you guys mean the recorders?

Speaker 8 (17:55):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (17:56):
And we were emotion it's okay, guys, you they're doing
the right thing. And they started driving towards the airport.
Didn't he come for a flat.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
The twins were put on a private plane and escorted
out of the country by the FEDS. The rest of
the family were left to fend for themselves. Vall had
to step up to get the family out of Mexico alive.

Speaker 8 (18:22):
When jamp left, he knew that there was just no
plan for us. It looked like this whole lake entourage,
and we had to drive two hours get to the border.
You got to pass through all these towels. You look
so fucking crazy, and it's the night, and we drove

(18:42):
through the whole night when it stopped, and we drive
up to the border and we get there and they
asked us for our papers, and I'm giving them my passport,
I'm giving them kids papers. I was like, the first
one ticket there and they're like, hold on, hold on,

(19:05):
everyone gotta wait.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
I was like, no, we can't wait. We gotta go in.

Speaker 8 (19:08):
And I'm like they're gonna kill us. They're gonna fucking
kill us.

Speaker 9 (19:12):
I said, we have to get out of the country.

Speaker 4 (19:14):
We have to get.

Speaker 9 (19:15):
Back to the US or US citizens. And at that
point I knew, I just knew this was our life.
It didn't matter whatever. Champeded and co operated. I knew
at that point that they were gonna always look at
us like criminals.

Speaker 8 (19:33):
I knew it, and I just I felt like he
needs such a huge mistake.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
They're right, took the last step and I just like
stretching out my legs a little bit and my brother
gets it's behind me and he's like okay, and they're like,
all right, Turnron, it's excuse me, he said, Turnron put
trying to wreck and it hit.

Speaker 10 (19:55):
Me and get put the heckus. That was where like
my brother and I looked at us like this is
this is our life? Ban no and cussed the shackles.
Just keep telling ourselves that we're doing the right thing.
We end up flying into small airport right out north

(20:17):
of Chicago. I remember when the plane landed, we looking
out the window and I just saw nothing but police
slights and.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
Lots of.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
The taxi and when the door opens, it's cold. I
remember stepping a foot outside of the airplane and standing there, I.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
Just see the sea of like blue jackets like the e.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
A US Marshalls, And when I saw the cards and
like all the agents in marshals, just like staring at us.

Speaker 4 (20:54):
I think cause the first time I ever felt like
Holy shit.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Deep Vanierra. Season two starts once did a fourth.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Or backtop, surviving El Chapo, The Twins Who Brought Down
a Drug Lord. Season two is hosted by Curtis fifty
cent Jackson and me Charlie Webster. Produced by myself and
Jackson McLennan, Assistant producer and research support by Casey Hurtz,
Edit and sound design by Nico Polella. Theme music and

(21:38):
original score by Ryan Sorenson. It's executive produced by Curtis
fifty cent Jackson and Me Charlie Webster. Curtis fifty cent
Jackson presents a Lionsgate Sound and G Unit audio production
exclusively for iHeart Podcasts.
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Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson

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Charlie Webster

Charlie Webster

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