College essay on George
Congratulations to Rachel Worsnup who did a College essay on George which received a 100% and it was considered the best written essay out of all other college freshman classes
George J. Jung
In 1982 there were approximately 10 million cocaine users in the United States. By 1985, just three years later there were 22 million cocaine users in the US. This magnificent increase in cocaine abuse is said to be the work of George Jung, a home town boy who made millions in the drug trade and is now known as one of the most prolific drug smugglers in the history of the United States. In just years after starting his career in trafficking cocaine, George Jung became responsible for roughly 85 percent of cocaine being used in the United States. George was making about 300 million a year in the drug trafficking business. He’d been in and out of jail for most of his life but it finally seemed like he had it all; a beautiful wife, a daughter, a nice home and millions and millions of dollars but that still wasn’t enough. This is the story of a man who had everything and lost it all in the blink of an eye.
George Jung was born in Boston, Massachusetts on August 6th, 1942 to Frederick and Ermine Jung. George was given the nickname “Boston George” but he was raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts. He attended Weymouth High School and although he wasn’t academically successful, George was a star football player and most of his peers admired and respected him. After high school, he got accepted to the University of Southern Mississippi for advertising but he never graduated the program. George started using marijuana regularly and always sold a portion of what he bought to his friends to even out his money. After he had begun selling marijuana there was no going back, he had opened up a door to the drug trade that he would never even begin to imagine.
In 1967, George met up with a childhood friend who also recreationally sold marijuana. George Jung stated in an interview “Then I began to see the money aspect of it. That was the driving force. I suddenly began to realize that to become an entrepreneur in the marijuana business would make me fairly well off.” Together they came up with an idea to buy marijuana and sell it for double the money in different states. George’s girlfriend at the time was a stewardess and she would smuggle the marijuana in her suitcase from California to New England where George would meet her and distribute the drugs. Soon George progressed from his girlfriend’s suitcase to stealing small planes and flew the drugs across the border. He was now purchasing 300 to 400 kilograms of marijuana every month and selling it everywhere along the East Coast. George was making a fortune as an entrepreneur in the drug trade it almost seemed too good to be true.
George’s first drug bust occurred when he was waiting at the Playboy club for his connection to arrive to collect the load of marijuana. What he didn’t know, was that his connection had been busted for smuggling heroin and had told the authorities about George in order to get his jail sentence reduced. George was sentenced to a federal prison in Danbury where he would meet Carlos Lehder. Carlos was originally from Columbia and he also worked in the drug trade. One day in the cafeteria, Carlos turned to George and said “Do you know anything about cocaine?” After hours of talking about the cocaine smuggling world George was beyond fascinated. “Immediately bells started to go off and the cash register started ringing up in my head.” George told the interviewer. Unfortunately for George, he had to wait until both Carlos and himself were out of jail to proceed with their plans.
Once they were both out of jail, Carlos and George started working with the Medellin Cartel, an organization of drug suppliers and drug smugglers. George had picked up 50 kilograms of cocaine in Columbia and was flying it back to the States when he found out Carlos was being chased by the police. George was unable to transport the whole 50 kilograms of cocaine by himself so he called an old friend named Barile, who he used to sell marijuana with. Barile and George would return every night after a drug deal with wads of hundreds in their pockets which they started stacking up around the house. Within weeks they were surrounded by money, roughly 2.35 million. Carlos managed to escape the police chase and reconnected with George in Miami. By this time George was heavily addicted to cocaine himself, he used to carry cocaine around in a Tylenol bottle with a straw sticking out from which he snorted the drug. Before long he made the mistake of introducing Carlos to Barile. Apprehensively Barile and Carlos cut George out of the loop to save on his commission.
Aggravated and tempestuous George tried to confront Carlos but it was ineffectual. George tells the interviewer “I was told that basically I was cut out of the cocaine end of that transportation deal and that they were working together, later I find out that Richard had also cut me out and I should go work with another family,” In Miami George met a beautiful woman named Mirtha who he married a few years down the road. Mirtha was related to Pablo Escobar, who was a well-known cocaine producer in Columbia. Within months George had found business, he converged with Escobar and his men and once more the money was rolling in.
It wasn’t long before Mirtha and George had a child, they called her Kristina Sunshine Jung. After Kristina was born, Mirtha’s cocaine habit increased. One night she fell asleep while she had candles lit and the curtains caught on fire. George woke up surrounded by flames and smoke, to realize that all the family’s possessions were burning along with the box where he kept receipts for his bank accounts. Shortly after that, George was busted for cocaine possession in Cape Cod. He jumped bail and he hightailed it back to Miami.
One night Mirtha and George were driving home from an event when they had a dispute. “Mirtha thought I was trying to get it on with this guy’s girlfriend, and she was probably right but anyway, she flips out and grabs my hair and starts yanking on it and screaming at me. The only thing I could do was let her have it with my right hand, and I broke her nose” George admits. The car behind them contained two police officers who pulled them over. Mirtha was enraged and started screaming “ He’s a cocaine smuggler!! Take him to jail!” George’s house had been ransacked and was found full of cocaine and money. The worst part for George was watching his daughter being taken away, he tells the interviewer “The last I saw of my daughter who was only a year old was when she was being taken away by a police officer.”
The cocaine George was caught with somehow disappeared from the custody of the police and George’s lawyer was able to set up an agreement with the court. He got sent to a minimum security facility in Plymouth where he escaped from on February 13th, 1985 and fled back to Florida. In Florida he planned to do one more drug run to acquire enough money to be able to disappear forever. He arranged the deal with an old friend who he used to smuggle marijuana with and two of his acquaintances. The four men vigorously planned the drug trade and pulled it off in a matter of days. What George didn’t know was that the two men his friend had introduced him to were actually undercover detectives waiting for the right moment to seize and arrest him. When asked about this event George said “I woke up, and I see all these guys pointing at me with guns, there were about twenty of them coming from all sides of the house.” He faced a charge of 60 years in a federal institution but his defense lawyer was able to get him a deal which quartered his sentence. In the meantime Carlos, his old partner had gained access to George’s bank accounts and drained the millions of dollars he had. When George found out that Carlos had stolen his millions, he decided to testify against Carlos, sending him to a federal penitentiary in Illinois for life. In return for his testimony, George’s sentence was reduced even more and in 1989 he walked out of prison stone-broke.
George was clean for a few years until he met up with one of his old marijuana smuggling partners and fell back into the drug trafficking business. In 1994, he was arrested in Kansas with 1,754 pounds of marijuana. He faced a 15 year mandatory sentence and plead guilty to three counts of conspiracy. He was incarcerated in New Jersey but later transferred to La Tuna federal Institution in Texas where he still remains incarcerated today. When asked to reflect on life in the drug business and the war on drugs he tells us “The war on drugs was an ideology the government came up with, and there never really was a war on drugs. I mean, to stop the importation of drugs into the United States is an impossibility. There’s 2,000 miles of border along the Mexican border and the coastal areas, thousands of miles, and there is no possible way to stop the importation of drugs into this country.”
The story of George Jung became so popular that in 2001 a movie was produced reflecting his life story called “Blow”. The movie does a fantastic job of portraying George Jung for the criminal that he is. Not only was he heavily addicted to cocaine, the real problem was his addiction to the money and the lifestyle that trafficking drugs brought him. It is uncertain how many years in total he’s spent in prison due to the fact that he escaped more than once. George is still incarcerated at La Tuna Federal Institution which is a minimum security, male only facility. He was due to be released December 18, 2011 but an incident in the prison caused his release date to be extended, it is uncertain what this incident was. George’s projected release date is now November 27, 2014 he will be 72 years old. His daughter, Kristina Jung refused to visit her father; he hasn’t seen her since the early 1990s. George ended up losing everything that was important to him and it still didn’t stop him from living a life of crime.
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