When you're making so much money that storage becomes a logistical nightmare, you know you've entered absurd territory. Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel spent $2,500 every month on rubber bands—not for office supplies, but solely to bundle the overwhelming tsunami of cash flowing through their operation.

This detail comes straight from Roberto Escobar, Pablo's brother and the cartel's chief accountant, who managed the mind-boggling finances of what was essentially a criminal Fortune 500 company. During the 1980s, the cartel was pulling in an estimated $420 million per week—nearly $22 billion annually—by controlling roughly 80% of the global cocaine market.

The Cash Management Crisis

The rubber bands weren't about neatness. They were a critical accounting tool. By creating standardized "bricks" of cash, the cartel could more easily count, store, and transport the physical currency. When you're dealing with that volume of bills, you can't exactly use a bank's counting machines.

But the problems didn't stop at rubber bands. The cartel faced storage challenges that would be comical if they weren't so disturbing:

They wrote off 10% of their annual income to "spoilage"—up to $500 million per year lost to rats eating the bills or moisture causing rot
Cash was buried in plastic drums, metal boxes, and milk cans across Colombian fields, farmhouses, and jungle locations
Properties were built with secret compartments in walls, floors, and ceilings specifically to hide money
Despite wrapping cash in plastic sheets and sealing containers, decay was inevitable

A Fortune That Couldn't Be Spent

At his peak in 1989, Escobar ranked as the seventh wealthiest person on Earth with at least $30 billion to his name. He appeared on Forbes' billionaire list from 1987 to 1993. Yet much of this wealth sat literally rotting in hiding spots because there was simply no way to launder or spend it fast enough.

After his death in 1993, treasure hunters and family members have occasionally struck gold. In 2020, his nephew Nicolas found $18 million in a Medellín house—though the bills had decayed beyond use. Earlier discoveries in 1989-1990 turned up $30 million in buried cash and 150 kg of gold.

The rubber band expense perfectly captures the surreal economics of the drug trade at its most extreme: when your biggest overhead costs aren't production or distribution, but literally just holding your money together.

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