Subtitles by explosiveskull
Okay, we're rolling. We're rolling.
I had a friend of mine
living in St. Petersburg,
and I said, "Misha, tell me something.
"I know it's going to be a strange question.
"Is this possible to buy a military submarine?
Used one."
And he said, "What a question!
Let me check."
He called me in two days
and he asked me,
"Do we want the submarine
with missiles, or without missiles?"
♪ I follow the Moskva ♪
♪ Down to Gorky Park ♪
♪ Listening to the wind ♪
♪ Of change ♪
♪ An August summer night ♪
♪ Soldiers passing by ♪
♪ Listening to the wind ♪
♪ Of change ♪
When I first arrive in America, I loved...
I loved everything.
America... it was the country of opportunity.
America... you know, whatever comes to your head, you can do.
Anything. You wake up in the morning
and "I want to be a...
a movie star."
It's possible.
"I want to be a gangster." It's also possible.
Basically, what we did... we were burning stores.
He used to do arsons in Brooklyn.
He called it, uh, Jewish, uh, lightning.
In the States, it's very easy to do the arson job,
because you just need to put a little fire.
The rest, the firemens do.
They don't give a shit.
They breaking everything,
they putting, you know, foam everywhere.
They putting water everywhere.
No furniture is good for that anymore.
We were a little bit rough, yeah.
We were breaking houses,
we were breaking furniture,
TVs, you know...
We were beating up people
once in a while, you know,
who didn't pay the...
Well, we were like collection agents.
Kind of
illegal collection agents.
I made very good money until...
My... I had a partner,
and they killed him.
I don't know who.
But, you know, he didn't show up to work one day,
and I went to his house
and they shot him.
When somebody like that getting killed,
and the guy is a serious guy,
to me, it was a message.
I decided to move to Miami.
Miami in the 1990s was still dealing with
the remnants of the cocaine wars.
You'd have to be the worst agent in DEA history
not to be able to make a case in Miami at that time.
During that transition from the cocaine cowboys,
when there was bloodletting and gangs rivalling each other
and... Russians started coming to town.
They love the sun. They love the ocean.
But it's also because of the access
to South America.
We have spies, we have killers,
we have dope dealers.
This is Casablanca.
Tarzan migrated to Miami at the direction of
some of his Italian organized crime buddies in New York,
and he moved up by doing
whatever, uh, needed to be done.
I don't know. Sometimes you
falling in love.
So many pretty women.
Why do you only love specially with this one?
'Cause she's close to you. You... you find something.
The air was mine.
The sun was mine.
The sand was mine.
To today, Miami is a place
that I would love to live
and where I would love to die.
I call Porky's because two reasons.
First of all, if you remember,
in that time was a very popular movie, Porky's.
I really loved those movies.
And number two, because our regional movie...
Porky's was filmed in this location.
If you're gonna take the movie Porky's,
you gonna see my club.
My buddies in New York...
the Paccione brothers...
tell me about a guy in Miami
that opened a strip club
that their friends heard of from Brooklyn.
Russian guy. Goes by the name of "Tarzan."
So they said, "Go down there and check it out.
Uh, you know, mention our name
and, uh, work with this guy.
See if you can figure out something to do with his club."
When we first got to Porky's,
Tarzan had no idea what he was doing with it.
He had really, like, dug a hole,
and was basically putting the bar in it.
So Tony came in
and took it from the bottom and brought it all the way up.
We were the first club
in South Florida
to have what they call these feature shows,
where we'd bring in a porno star
and she laid on the edge of the stage.
She opened the legs, naked, right,
and she had a little remote control car
and she had fastened a dildo on the end of it,
a big dildo, and what she'd do is
she'd give the remote control to the patrons,
they give her five dollars,
she'd lay at the end of the stage with her legs open,
and the guy would drive the car back and forth
with the dildo.
So there was... you know, people were like,
oh, what's going on over there?
And the club went from that level
to even another level.
Everybody was coming to the club.
It was packed.
He classed the place up.
It was the roughest club I was in,
for sure, by far.
Porky's was definitely a place
that you could get killed.
Very dangerous.
I always had the two guns.
I always had a Beretta 9-millimeter on me
and I had always here on my...
I had to have a Colt.
I was a cowboy.
We can put this way.
Russian money was starting to come in.
You know, from Russia, from New York,
and they found out a Russian guy owned a strip club,
so this became their little hangout.
I'm talking about hundreds of Russian guys
that had connections, Russian gangsters.
Heavy Russian gangsters.
Tarzan became sort of a go-to guy,
and people from New York to Moscow
knew that if you wanted to come to South Florida,
Tarzan could fix you up.
You wanted a load of dope moved?
He'd find a way to move it.
You wanted somebody killed? Talk to him.
You wanted prostitutes, he'd find 'em for you.
All you needed to do was talk to Tarzan.
They were once part of what we call the Red Scare.
Now these Russians are
threatening to turn our streets red.
The Russian mob, targeting South Florida.
They are here in South Florida
getting away with their crime spree
because they are crafty...
crafty and brutal.
One of our initial concerns
was that the Colombian traffickers
would come together with the Russian organized criminals
and put the dope money together with the,
uh, military hardware that the Russians had
and create a great threat
to South Florida and the United States.
So we formed a task force
to investigate Russian and Eastern European
criminal activity.
The FBI provided a squad
and then there was a multi-agency side,
which was, uh, the Marshals Service, DEA,
U.S. Customs, U. S. Immigration,
U.S. Coast Guard,
and then several
local law enforcement agencies,
which became Operation Odessa.
We had weekly meetings of multiple agencies
who had an interest or who had information about
uh, Russian criminal activity
in South Florida.
Juan Almeida.
How do you describe a guy?
He has so many angles.
Juan Almeida have a lot of angles.
I was first introduced to Juan Almeida
through Tarzan at Porky's.
I still love the guy.
If he...
you know, no matter what.
Tall guy, well-spoken, well-dressed.
This guy had all the toys.
I would consider him very shrewd,
very intelligent.
A good businessman.
He was good at taking assets from traffickers
before they went to prison and hiding them,
mostly boats,
and in many cases, though, it turned out
the people would get out of jail or prison,
they'd find out that he'd sold their boats.
And then he was so good
at grifting people
that before they ended their conversation,
he had just sold them another boat.
Okay, so
it's no secret
that cocaine
is...
Cool.
Tarzan was introduced to me by
Vanilla Ice.
I became friendly with some other people,
uh, you know, famous basketball players,
because they were coming to my club,
Sting were coming to my club.
Uh, Vanilla Ice.
♪ Ice, ice, baby ♪
One day, Vanilla...
he introduced me to Juan.
He asked me to take a boat.
He had a 42 Tempest
speedboat to repair,
and I told him, "Where I gonna take it,"
and he said he has friend of his
owns a marina.
When I went to there, I met Juan.
Lovable person.
Great talker.
Good-looking guy.
I loved that guy from the beginning
from the... for the first minute
and... and we hit off.
First time I saw Tarzan,
he struck me as a, uh... an oddball.
He said, "My name is Tarzan," and I said, like, "Who?
What are you? Tarzan?
Where's Jane?"
He was selling cars.
Um, he was wheeling and dealing.
Fort Apache marina was an executive playpen
for the rich and famous.
Julio Iglesias was a permanent customer there.
The whole Miami Vice crew.
Gloria Estefan was a customer there.
It was a good hangout spot.
It was also a place where drug runners
often hung out, because
it was a marina, after all,
and, uh, they could
pull their boats out of the water
once they did their dirty business, if you will.
The way it works was
I don't really care what you do
with the car, the boat, or the plane that I sell you.
That's your business.
If you want to load it up and transport...
whatever you want to do, that's fine.
Just don't tell me that,
because I'm not a cop.
He would come together with almost any criminal
and... and, uh,
you know, he would sell his services
to, uh, whoever, uh,
who would ever pay him for it.
One time, when the SL500 first came out,
the Cali Cartel
asked me to bring them half a dozen of them.
They ordered them like they would order donuts.
I flew to Switzerland
and I bought them at a Mercedes dealership
and I loaded them on a cargo aircraft
and flew them to Cali, Colombia.
These guys had the SL 500 before anybody else did.
And I did things like that.
He was at the marina.
He had the... all the boats, and he
you know, Juan came in, he came in
not with a stack of five-dollar bills,
but he came in with a stack of hundreds.
Juan had money on him.
He looked the part. He acted the part,
and people viewed him as a drug dealer.
Now, come on. This is pretty ridiculous.
You spend $1/2 million on a boat
and you're not even racing it or using it professionally.
Nah, just pleasure.
It's just a fun boat. That's all it is.
Yeah? And does that...
do people give you a hard time
that you spend that kind of money
on, uh... on a pleasure boat?
There'll be a buyer. There'll be a buyer.
- He's around the corner. - Oh, so I see.
You're gonna use it
and break it in for him.
Naturally, naturally. We're gonna give him
a nice, good boat.
He was using his involvement
with the cocaine business,
as I understood it, uh, to keep
his exotic car business going.
Juan Almeida comes off as a much more serious guy,
and even to this day,
I don't know how this guy
wound up in bed with Tarzan.
The anchorwoman announced the Soviet Union,
as a subject of international
and geopolitical reality,
no longer exists.
Repeating, once again, our top story.
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev
has been removed from power.
There was a point in time where
law and order was lost.
No one knew who was in charge in Russia.
And I distinctly remember arriving in Moscow
and saying to myself,
"Oh, my God.
Everything is for sale?
I mean, everything?"
It was just a... a complete free-for-all.
In some point, we came here to Moscow
to buy motorcycles.
We wanted to travel to a motorcycle factory
about 100 miles
to the east of Moscow,
and I had this idea
uh, from owning my own aircraft in the States
that we should just charter a helicopter.
And I called the airport
and I said, "Excuse me,
uh, my name is Tarzan,
and we would like to rent the helicopter,"
and the lady said, "To rent?"
She said, "We never rent the helicopter."
I said, "Do you have a helicopters?"
She said, "Yeah, they... we have, like,
400 of them right here,"
doing nothing, because in the time, Russia...
they didn't have even gas for them.
And I said, "400 of them?
How about you gonna rent one?"
And, uh, she said, "Let me call you back.
We're gonna calculate."
They calculated, calculated,
they call me by the end of the day, and she said,
"Well, I'm sorry, you probably guys not gonna rent it,
'cause it's coming out very expensive.
It's a helicopter, Mi-17,
with the three pilots.
It will cost you, like,
back and forth... like, $500.
I said, "How much?
She said, "$500."
I said, "Yeah, you know, this is really expensive,
but we are ready to pay,"
and I told Juan,
"They're giving us the helicopter for $500,"
and the guy said, "Listen, let's get ten of them!
Let's fly, like, ten of them
Let's occupy that seat."
You know Juan is like... you know this guy.
After a few drinks, he think he's Tony Montana.
We finally, uh, got to an area that we knew was the city
and the pilot says, "So where do you want to go?
We gave him the address. He goes,
"Well, I don't know where that is."
And I ask the pilot,
"How are we gonna find out
where's the factory?"
And the guy said, "We're gonna land in the middle of the city
and we're gonna ask for the direction."
People were running to see the helicopters,
because the last time they saw helicopters:
never.
They never saw the helicopters.
They were thinking that, I don't know,
somebody came from the Moon.
And he just pulled over this helicopter
and he made his approach right into...
the kids had to move.
Had to move.
This guy just lands this monster right there.
And the guy, you know, pilot,
jumped out. I jump with him,
and he see the lady, you know,
with the shopping bags, going,
and he said, "Excuse me, uh,
where's that factory?" and she said,
"Son, you need to fly this way."
I said, "My God, you know, I love this place!"
And then, the policeman come.
He come with the motorcycle
and with a little stick,
you know, that white and black stick.
He didn't have nothing else.
He had a whistle.
He had a stick and a whistle,
and he was, like, looking at us
like we are aliens, and he said,
"Who are you?"
I said, "We are from Moscow."
And that was it.
"From Moscow." That was the password.
And he said, "Uh, okay,
what do you want me to do?"
I said, "I want you to stay
and watch the helicopter."
We purchase, like,
250,000 of
motorcycle by the name Izh.
We... we got those motorcycle
for $200.
It was like nothing.
So these are the kinds of things
that you can do in Russia at the time,
which, you know, is unheard-of.
It's unheard-of.
And we had a great time.
We enjoyed ourselves. We flew back
and then me and Juan and all the people...
we were all so happy about everything.
It was fun.
We had a pretty wild and crazy lifestyle.
I've personally flew a Gulfstream,
a Gulfstream II.
Sometimes we'd go to Zurich for... for dinner.
You know, me and Juan would go flying
in his helicopter
to buy cars in Orlando.
We're just flying with a helicopter to buy a car.
We were landing in Orlando, buying ten cars,
He was saying, "Give me five Ferrari,
five Maserati, five Lamborghini.
Ciao."
We lived really nice life.
Things worked out so well for Tarzan
that he actually opened up a, uh,
a restaurant
in the North Miami Beach area
and that was called Babushka.
So between his restaurant
and his strip club,
you know, he was getting
the bulk of the Russians
coming to South Florida.
Yeah.
You're asking about Grisha Roizis?
You know, I'm always getting touchy
when you mention this guy.
Really.
A good story of betrayal of a friend.
Grisha Roizis is probably the worst kind of thug
uh, that you could find in Russian organized crime.
He could kill you with his bare hands,
and he used to tell me how to do it,
and, uh, I don't know how many people he'd killed,
but I'm sure that it's more than one.
You know, I really loved that guy.
Really, the guy was like my
older brother, like my father.
He knew me from the childhood.
He were friend of my parents.
His nickname is "Cannibal."
He was arrested once in New York,
and what he did... he was so angry that he got arrested
and the officer who arrest him,
he was putting the handcuffs,
and Gregory bite off his h... his nose.
He bite... actually bite part of his nose.
After that, he received the nickname "Cannibal."
Grisha Roizis became
a major heroin trafficker,
and, uh, the Feds, DEA, and New York
finally nailed him,
and he was facing, probably, near life in prison,
and so he got out on bail and fled,
and through INTERPOL lookouts and so forth,
he was found in Bulgaria
and arrested and thrown in jail.
DEA heard about it eventually
and sent a nice young agent from Vienna, Austria,
to see Grisha in... in jail,
and Grisha had no teeth because he said
when he was arrested,
the cops had kicked all of his teeth out
with their boots.
Well, the agent from Vienna...
he said, "We know you're associated with
some major, major heroin traffickers,
not only in New York, but internationally,
and if you want to help us,
we'll get you out of here,"
and he said, "I'll do anything to get the hell out of here."
At that time, uh, Tarzan was in debt with Babushka.
I mean, it was a fun club,
but it... it wasn't turning a profit.
Somehow, he just got there on vacation,
and, of course, he saw my operation in Miami
and he really like it.
Tarzan, he said,
"I need somebody to run this place,
but also, I'm short of cash."
I didn't want him
as a partner in the restaurant,
but I needed a little money,
extra money, and I thought, you know,
he was gonna do...
he... he knew how to run a restaurant.
So Grisha came to us,
and we were able to get him 70 grand,
and he... he, uh, gave that
to, uh, Tarzan, and, uh,
Tarzan was in love with him then.
Grisha was the maître d' and manager
and walking around in a tuxedo,
and then started walking around
with a camera, taking photos of everyone
and having... having fun in the club.
He was putting pictures on the wall,
but he was also giving copies of those pictures
to us and going through those photos, saying,
"This is Joe Blow. He does this.
This is John Doe. He does this,
and he's important in this area."
So one night, at midnight,
a bunch of us went in,
DEA and the FBI,
and wired some of the booths in Babushka for sound.
We gained a lot of intelligence that way.
And Nelson Yester, who was
a fugitive at that time,
and living in, uh...
in South America,
moving from location to location,
was the closest conduit to the Colombians,
and he was close to Almeida
and then Almeida was close to Tarzan.
Nelson Yester,
Magnum,
he got caught with, uh, 41 passports.
He had 41 names.
He was a Cuban secret service agent.
He was a pilot in Miami
who was, uh, flying the drug money,
and he...
is a fugitive from the United States for many years.
Tonight, on America's Most Wanted...
Marshals recently received
this picture of Nelson Yester.
Investigators believe Yester
has a British passport
bearing the name Hector Santana.
He speaks Spanish, German, and English.
If you've seen Nelson Yester,
call 1-800-CRIME-TV.
He's a brain.
If we did any kind of operation,
he was the brain of those operations.
I worked the case of Nelson Yester for nine years.
I started in '94,
and we discovered that
this guy was an... an international
uh, smuggler
and was a huge part of
helping the cartels traffic in narcotics.
He had contacts all over the world.
South Africa, uh, Russia,
Amsterdam, Venezuela,
and in Colombia.
He was a major player.
He's very connected worldwide.
He knows who to call.
He knows exactly how to maneuver
in that arena.
Tony had a relationship with Pablo
and they worked together
for many years.
Pablo had a large network
of dealers, if you will,
and Tony was within that network.
His reputation is
that he can be extremely violent.
He deals with cocaine dealers.
Uh, he deals with
weapons traffickers.
He's really a bad guy.
Tony can be extremely...
Dangerous, if he needs to be.
If you cross him, he will deal with you,
and he is very unforgiving.
He was a fugitive
from, uh, the FBI, and he still is.
He's still a fugitive.
No.
I don't think so.
I'm pretty sure Tony will not talk to you.
Tony will not talk
because Tony is very
serious guy,
he is very
secretive,
he is very cautious.
Never. Never in a million years.
AO55, Tony interview, take one.
Mark.
Quiet, please!
As you are running the motor in this room,
you're watching your oil and your fuel and everything,
- ...just like a boat. - Right.
And then you're throttling it here on the computer.
It gives you a print-off of the horsepower
and the foot-pounds, torque and temperature,
and that's how they actually test a motor
before the motor's actually released.
He knew how to vanish.
He used to travel extensively
and just when you were getting that information,
you were already three steps behind him.
One day, I'm at the fort,
and I see these
very interesting characters
pull up in a...
in a Lamborghini at the front gate.
They wanted two very, very special,
highly specialized cigarette boats,
and the requirements were A, the speed,
and B, the distance,
and, uh, they were probably going to be used
to smuggle large amounts of coke.
So I made the sale,
and from there on,
um,
I started to build the boats for them.
It was a total custom job,
and I discussed with them
the possibility of putting turbines
in the cigarettes.
It's like an aircraft on a boat.
In fact, the sound of it... when it's approaching,
you have... you look up to the skies
'cause you think something's landing somewhere,
and you don't realize it's the boat.
And so that elevated the price of the boats
to a couple million dollars apiece,
which was just outrageous,
completely outrageous, at the time.
And so, um,
once I succeeded at selling them the turbines,
uh, I had some brochures on my desk
about some helicopters
that I'd been negotiating turbines for,
and they inquired about the helicopters
and that began
the, uh, sort of trajectory
to acquiring specialized helicopters
for, uh, Colombia.
I loved him right away.
He definitely looked like a movie star.
I hated to go with him anywhere,
because all the girls were looking at him.
I remember a story
when we went to St. Petersburg,
and he, uh, hired some prostitute
and he fall in love with her
and he bought her some very expensive perfume,
and then when he left, the girl approach me
and she said she liked me more than him
and I was very happy that he didn't hear that,
but as a friend, I told him that,
"All right, I'm dating your prostitute,"
and he told me the first thing,
"You owe me the perfume."
Uh, he was serious about it.
The helicopters were known as, uh, Kamov KA-32s.
Imagine it picking up a container
and taking it for 200 or 300 miles.
It could pick up 5,000 kilos of cocaine on a hook.
Uh, these helicopters were very capable of that.
So we contracted to purchase
uh, two of those for Colombia,
and I told him that I could buy those helicopters
for a million dollars.
And they said, "Well, if you
can buy them for a million,
we'll give you $1.5 million."
So that was a no-brainer.
We came to Moscow, and, uh,
I said that, "Well, we would like to buy helicopters,"
and I said, "How many do you have?"
And they told me, "Well,
we have, like, 600 helicopters.
Go take any one you want."
So I succeeded in negotiating the aircraft
from a million down to $650,000.
The same helicopter in the United States
were costing approximately $10 million.
I chartered, uh, an Antonov 124.
It's bigger than a 747
and larger than a C-5 Galaxy.
It's a military aircraft.
This thing is just humongous.
I chartered that airplane for 250 grand.
I understand today
you could not charter it for under $1 million.
And inside that bell mouth,
I just stuck these birds in there,
together with motorcycles
and all kinds of other stuff.
So the Antonov 124
is leaving Moscow
from a military air base
loaded with the helicopters and spare parts,
and as the plane pulls away from the tarmac,
and it's headed down the runway,
it's snowing, it's the... you know, blizzard conditions.
And suddenly, some group of...
guys show up with machine guns drawn
and they're pointing it at the airplane
and they're not allowing the plane to take off.
They point the guns at the plane,
and they say, "You're not...
You're not going anywhere."
And these guys are the mob, the Mafia,
and "Wait a minute. And what are these aircraft
doing inside this plane
leaving this country
without our permission?
No way! Not happening."
And then I saw
two humongous guys,
like a monkey's, monsters,
you know, with the necks like that?
You know, with the gold chain like that, here and here?
Huge.
And those guys are leaders of the gang
who is looking to collect money from us
for the helicopters that we took
without their permission.
These guys are... gun-wielding fucks.
They heard that there's some helicopters leaving,
and nobody got paid any money,
and what the fuck? We're not gonna
allow them to do that,
so they... they pull the plane back.
I see five, six, jeeps are standing there,
and the guys are start coming out of the jeep.
Each jeep has five, six people,
and each one of them with the machine guns.
You know, with the Kalashnikov, with the gun, with the pommel,
and the guys were rough, they were loud,
they were screaming that
"You go... you gonna pay."
I say, "What the fuck?"
Those guys came to war.
And he tell me, "We want money."
I said, "You know,
I'm not gonna give you money,
but you know what? I can give you cocaine."
I just came out of nowhere.
I was playing a game.
I didn't have no connection to cocaine.
I didn't have nothing, but I just needed to talk.
And he said, "What?"
You can get us cocaine?"
I said, "Yeah,"
and I told him, "Listen,
you know who is Pablo Escobar?"
And they said, "Whoa,
don't tell us that you know Pablo Escobar."
I said, "Pablo Escobar?"
I said, "I'm working with him.
He's my partner.
I'm gonna make a phone call right now
and the Pablo... I can put him on the phone
and you're gonna talk to Pablo."
I'm in Cali, Colombia
waiting for that airplane
and I get a phone call from Tarzan,
and Tarzan says "Pablo,
we need to talk."
I said, "Pablo,
you get...
you get... need to get here to Russia.
We do have a little problem,
and we need to solve this.
You get here in Russia
and get here please tomorrow.
Otherwise, I'm a dead man."
And I was like, "Okay.
All right.
What does that mean, exactly?"
And I was just...
Naive, I was stupid... call me what you want...
but I actually boarded a flight
as if I was Pablo
and I showed up at
Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport.
And these goons all pick me up
in... in a Lamborghini jeep
as Pablo Escobar.
And you know, Juan looked like Pablo.
I swear to God, if you go to look picture,
if you gonna take picture of Pablo,
and you gonna take picture of Juan,
they... they like twin brothers.
They drove down that main boulevard,
when you leave the airport,
100 miles an hour.
There was no law, there was no order,
there was nothing. These guys
were actually holding guns.
They were impressing me, is what they were doing,
and when we got there,
we stepped into this building
and we went into their offices
and when we got up,
there was a big boardroom,
a long table, maybe,
I don't know
14, 16 chairs,
and there was maybe ten guys there,
and Tarzan, with the very little corner.
He did not look like the Tarzan I knew.
He looked like a deflated balloon.
When he comes to grab me and hug me, "Pablo,"
he whispers in my ear, "Act tough.
Act tough.
Be mean."
And I was like, "Man, this is the real deal.
Holy fuck.
What am I gonna do here?"
Well, I present myself the way Pablo Escobar would,
you know?
Just... mean fuck.
Don't talk, and whenever you talk,
just talk like you're... fucking drug dealer.
We sit down
and we start to talk about this.
"Pablo, listen.
So we know
that those helicopters are yours,
and we know that you need
those helicopters to aid your...
your shipments, and all your...
Great.
And so we just want you to know
that we're not kidnapping.
We're not holding them against their will.
We want to partner up with you.
We want to be your reps in Russia."
Okay?
"Yeah, we want to handle
your cocaine distribution
here in Russia."
And I was like, "Okay,
what are your capabilities?"
He goes, "Well,
we'll take
something like 50 kilos."
And he's tell me, "You're joking."
I looked at them, I said,
"Are you kidding me?
You... you brought me to Moscow
to talk about 50 kilos of cocaine?
Are you serious?"
And I go, "Come on.
It takes me the same time it takes me to pack 50
to pack 2,500 or 5,000.
50 is a joke.
Please, don't tell me you brought me here for this.
Don't tell me I came to Russia to talk about 50 kilos."
And Juan is telling them,
"You are stupid,
crazy,
or you have a big cojones."
"Tell you what we can do.
Get me a safe house.
I'll bring some Colombians.
We'll put them in the house,
and as you need, as you get.
You pay, you get.
So you don't need to order
that m... that much,
but you need to move the stuff.
I can't keep it around forever."
And they all looked at each other, and they were like,
"Khorosho! Khorosho! Good idea.
Good! We can do that.
Na Zdrovie!
Pablo Escobar is here!"
And I fucking grab these...
this guy, he stood up and he hugged me
and we got a deal.
I delivered the helicopters in Cali, Colombia,
on or about April of 1994,
and I remember being there
when the aircraft arrived,
and, uh, it parked on the tarmac,
and... and it lowered...
it... it was, like, on hydraulics
and the whole front end started to lower like this
and then the whole nose gear
just opened up, like, beautifully.
It was just perfect.
The whole thing was perfect.
♪ Come on ♪
Being able to deliver on that deal like that,
you sort of create a name for yourself.
Doors were opening.
Things were taking place,
and we got caught up in that.
I became wealthy, rich, known.
I could do anything and everything.
I wanted a yacht, I got a yacht.
I want a Ferrari, I got a Ferrari.
Want a Mercedes, got Mercedes.
I want the girls, I was getting the girls,
and I bought a limo.
You know, I had the driver
was taking my little girl
to kindergarten.
It was very nice feeling to live like that, you know?
Kind of, like, untouchable.
I said, "Look, you're bringing a lot of heat here, man.
I said, "You're fucking driving
a Mercedes,
you've got a limo picking your daughter up."
I'm driving a Honda Accord
because I was schooled
from the old guys back in New York.
This is not how you... how you act.
You know? You walking around with
fucking, uh, $2,000 leather jacket on,
a Versace.
You gotta look like a regular guy.
I mean, this is...
you know, we're making money here
doing things we shouldn't be doing.
There were all kinds of stories
and allegations about what he was really up to,
so we all decided to
get a undercover in to see
what he was really doing.
He was a DEA special agent in Washington, D. C.
who grew up in Brighton Beach,
where both Grisha Roizis
and Tarzan also grew up.
His name was Alex Yasevich.
Growing up in Brighton Beach area,
I knew Grisha Roizis very, very well,
but I was never friends with, uh, Ludwig Fainberg.
I seen him in the neighborhood.
He saw me in the neighborhood,
as I discovered later on.
Both Alex and Tarzan
uh, thought the same way, spoke the same way,
they had the same ethnic values
and ethnic backgrounds,
and, uh, it was just perfect.
Alex and I sat down with Grisha
before first introduction,
and Grisha said, "I know you from a kid, you know?"
Roizis said,
"Hey, Tarzan, do you remember? This is Alex.
Uh, you remember him from Brighton Beach?
You remember him when he was young?
You remember?"
Roizis introduced me, uh, to Tarzan as
"This is our trusted man from New York."
And that's when we figured out
we knew each other from the old neighborhood,
kind of saw each other all the...
so that kind of helped a lot.
For me, it was irrelevant,
uh, if I know him a lot,
or long time, not long time,
because he was friend of Gregory,
and to me, Gregory was as a family.
In Russian, we're saying
"Your friend is my friend,"
so yes, we should automatically
become a friend.
So originally, it was more "Let's get to know each other.
Then I'll tell you what I can do, what I need,
and then we met in Babushka
and Porky's, back and forth,
until one time
we walked outside Babushka,
and that's when the decision was made,
"Let's tell him exactly what I am."
Said, "Look, let me tell you what I do.
I'm into heroin and weapons trafficking,
but I want to expand
my operations to cocaine,
and that's why I'm in Florida."
"Okay."
He goes, "Let me see what I can do."
With Yasevich,
he invited me to hotel.
I think it was Fontainebleau.
And he was telling me, "Tarzan, uh,
why did you sit in this chair?
You better sit in this chair.
And I said, "Why would... do you want me
to switch the places?
Why... what, is it...
it's not comfortable
for you to see me this way?"
Alex couldn't have been
in a more precarious, dangerous situation.
'Cause Tarzan was sitting there
in a armchair with his legs crossed,
and he had a... a .38 Special
in his ankle holster, pointing right at me.
The camera was disguised as a device in the hotel room.
It was a radio,
which was connected to the wall, and...
I was sure it was a camera.
He looked right at it and he pointed at it and said,
"There is a camera inside this object.
Because me and Juan
in that time,
we were playing, uh, spy games.
In downtown Miami, we had a spy store,
and I saw exactly the same camera
in the spy store.
And he said, "No,
it cannot be. No, no, it's not a camera."
I said, "Alex, I swear, this is a camera.
Of course, he was 100% right.
It happened to be a camera. I was right.
I said, "Look, if you... you're full of shit.
If you think there's a camera in there,
go take the... the freaking thing apart.
You know? Don't freaking insult me."
And he looked at it, he thought about it.
And then he said, "Ah, I guess I'm wrong."
That cost me about five years of my life in stress.
After the meeting, we met, as usual,
and I crawled into his car
and we're talking about it,
and he said, "You won't fucking believe this."
He said, "They're getting ready to purchase a Russian sub
and broker it to the Colombian traffickers
so they can run dope to the United States."
I mean, it just blew his mind.
Nelson Yester.
He was the man that, uh, had the...
he was the conduit to the money
that was financing this deal.
I had a friend of mine
living in St. Petersburg.
He was a general director of a factory
and I said, "Misha,
tell me something.
I know it's gonna be a strange question.
Is this possible, to buy a military submarine?"
He called me in two days,
and he said, "The answer is yes."
I called immediately Juan,
and I said, "Juan,
we can get a submarine.
Prepare yourself for trouble.
We going to Russia."
We did meet, uh,
with the captain of the submarine.
He did bring some Navy admirals.
We had a talk in a restaurant,
and all of them said, "Yes, no problem.
You can get a submarine."
Tony said, "Listen,
we're gonna be able to get money
to finance this deal
only
if we can get on a submarine.
Almost any country
who has the submarine assets...
the submarine bases are
the most closely guarded facilities.
Without permission, you can't enter those bases,
even if you're a member of the armed forces of that country.
And, of course, they said, "You guys are welcome.
Let's get into the submarine."
He could not believe that we in the submarine
in the secret Navy base.
When I was getting out of the sub,
Tony told me,
"Tarzan,
we have to get a picture."
I said, "Tony, a picture of what?"
He said, "Picture of the submarine."
I said, "Tony, you crazy.
They're gonna kill us,"
and Tony said, "I don't care.
You take the picture.
We're not gonna get the money.
We need the proof."
I came to the captain, I said, "Captain, I'm sorry,
but I want to ask you
another stupid question.
Can I take the picture?"
and the captain said,
"The question is really stupid.
The answer is no."
Said, "You cannot. It's a military base.
You cannot take the pictures here."
I said, "We really need it."
I said, "How about $200?"
$200 was a lot.
A lot.
They were making, probably a month,
$20, $30.
I offer him, right there on a pier, $200.
And what do you think?
The guy agree.
I took the picture of Tony of the submarine,
then I took the picture of the captain of the submarine,
then somebody took the picture of me
with the captain of the submarine.
It was like we're buying a... a car,
like we're buying a used car, we're buying the submarine.
Everything was smooth, beautiful.
Mission is accomplished.
Nice.
So for these three individuals,
one with the Israeli passport,
one was, I believe,
a Cuban and a Venezuelan passport...
They just walked into the base
and not only walked in the base,
were given a tour of the base...
this is drug traffickers, criminals,
getting access to a submarine base
to... to look and see and shop
for a boat
in the Russian base.
That's just unheard-of.
So, as Tarzan returns
from our trips to Russia,
he and Tony were taking pictures,
just like tourists take pictures of anything, right?
And they would come back...
Tarzan would come back with his camera,
and Tarzan was leaving these pictures on his desk.
And I start looking at them,
and it was pretty...
uh, pretty shocking.
Little did Tarzan know
that his buddy Yasevich,
Agent Yasevich...
he, of course, helped himself
to all these pictures.
So that's when we reached out to
the... the Navy, U. S. Navy,
and, uh, we had meetings with some of their experts.
We had the Department of Defense involved.
We had NATO involved.
We showed them the photos and ask them,
"Can you please tell us
if these photos were, in fact,
taken on the Russian submarine base?"
They told us,
"Yeah, they were."
NATO's concern was,
even though it was a noisy,
old-fashioned diesel sub,
but all diesel subs can go electric,
because the diesel motors charge up the batteries
for the electric motors,
and once it goes silent
and goes underwater,
it could disappear.
It can't be impossible, because Tarzan's doing it.
He is crazy enough to try something like this.
Detective Joe McMahon and I
went over to Almeida's house in Doral,
and, uh, when we arrived,
the maid answered the door,
and we told her
that we wanted to talk to Mr. Almeida.
They were all over me.
Michael McShane,
a U. S. Marshal.
He was a real prick.
They banged in the doors at my home
while my family was there with my children,
and they scared the living daylights out of them.
The main topic of the... the questioning
was his association with
Nelson Yester, "Tony" Yester.
We obviously wanted to know
what he knew about him,
but more so, where we could find him.
We never knew where Tony live.
One day, he lived in Panama,
one day, he lived in Ecuador,
one day, it was in Peru, one...
You know, we never knew where's Tony.
We went to extraordinary lengths
to try to lure him to the United States.
So I mention to Tarzan
that I can have access to clone phones.
He wanted one. The clone phones would have
the capability to make calls overseas, no problem.
He said, "I want that."
So we went to the Secret Service,
and they provided us with a clone phone
which the FBI was tapping,
so when he was calling overseas,
or anywhere else, for that matter.
He was using the crap out of it.
The bills were pretty high.
We're recording all the conversations.
Alex, in one of his meetings with Tarzan,
said, "I've got a present for you,"
and he gave him a cell phone.
They said, "Here's a phone.
Use it... it calls international.
You know, free."
He takes it. It's bugged.
We had a big wiretap room at
FBI headquarters in Miami
with, uh, Russian translators.
And, uh, that's how the DEA
and FBI had, uh,
15,000 hours of wiretaps.
Believe me, 15,000 hours of wiretaps is a lot.
We start focusing on Tarzan,
Tony, and the whole crew.
I was in Miami, running my
exotic car rental business,
and the phone call came.
Cali Cartel member.
"Where are you?
We'd like to meet with you.
Can you see us tonight?"
"Sure."
Guys flew into town
and next thing you know, it's like,
"Let's go have a drink.
Let's talk."
We went out and partied that night,
drank best wine, best liquor.
We had women. We had everything.
It was the greatest time.
The next day,
they woke up, like, 4:00 in the afternoon,
called me up.
"Can we meet?" "Sure."
So they did it right, 'cause we had a great time.
You know, we broke bread and we had...
we partied together.
They said, "Juan,
there's some things we need to know.
We need your help."
"Okay."
"You know your friend Tony?
Suddenly, he's gone.
He's on the run.
He's not around anymore,
but we know where he is.
We just need your help."
I was like, "Really?
What do you mean?"
He goes, "Well, you can start off by telling us
where his family lives.
Where's his wife and where's his kids?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa.
What do you mean? What are you talking about?"
They say, "Yeah, where does his wife
and children live here in Miami?
We know you know that."
"Why would you be asking?"
"Well, he's not around anymore.
He's gone,
and he took our money."
"What?"
"Yes."
A lot of money."
And I'm like, "You're kidding me."
Say, "Yeah.
You need to do this for us."
"Okay."
I remember I had a white Rolls-Royce at the time.
I jump in the Rolls. Shoom.
I drove 'em, and right at the front of the house,
they looked at the house and wrote the numbers down.
They wrote the numbers down.
He says, "Okay, we can go."
He said to me, "Here's the deal:
talk to him.
Talk sense into him.
Tell him we're watching him.
He's not going anywhere."
Juan got him on a line.
Uh, he said, "Tony, we have to talk to you.
The situation is getting hot."
And I tell him, "Buddy,
you're in a heap of shit."
We were sure they were gonna kill Tony.
We were absolutely sure,
because that's what Juan was told.
These guys are the real deal.
They do business differently.
They've explained it,
and the way it works is real simple.
If you cross them,
they have to do what they have to do
to just earn the respect
that they need in their business.
If word gets out that you crossed them
and you're walking around,
then no one respects them.
Good morning, Miami.
It's sunny and 78, another beautiful day
in the magic city.
One day, I woke up,
regular beautiful day in Miami,
sunny, stunning.
Woke up my daughter.
I, uh, give her a bath.
Uh, dress her beautifully.
Papa! Father... your daughter?
- No. - Dad? Father?
Took my two guns, like always,
with me.
Um, put her in the car,
and I was driving quietly with the music,
put a seat belt on my daughter,
and holding her by the hand and we were driving,
but inner feeling was telling me
something is wrong. I look left and right
driving slowly, enjoying myself
kind of feeling that something is in the air.
We thought that Tarzan found out
that he was being investigated.
We're not sure how.
It... could it be a leak somewhere?
So the decision was made to arrest him.
We followed him to drop off his daughter
at kindergarten.
I drop my daughter in Aventura school,
and then, as soon as I pull out of the kindergarten...
I see them in the rearview mirror.
They were driving slow.
I say, "Oh, my God, here we go."
I drove slow,
knowing that something is gonna happen right now,
and, of course, I see the woo-woo-woo.
Then we stopped him.
They placed him in my car
And then I said, um,
"Am I arrested?"
And, um, Brent Eaton said,
"Oh, no, no, no. You're not arrested.
No, we're not arresting you."
I said, "Good, then I don't want to come with you."
He said, "No, no, you need to come with us."
I said, "But I don't want to come with you."
They said, "You have to come with us."
I said,
"Why do I have to come with you
if I'm not arrested?
I don't want to go with you.
You want to arrest me?"
"We're not arresting you."
I said, "I don't want to go."
"No, I think you need to come with us."
I said, "Okay."
And we drove him to the DEA office.
I was in Moscow,
um, closing a
$47 million deal
for the Helitaxi company,
and when I arrive there,
I was traveling with my lawyer, who's Jewish,
and who wanted to visit
the synagogues in St. Pete, which are...
...beautiful.
And so I called up Tarzan's brother
and I said, "Do me a favor.
Can you take
my... my attorney
take him to visit the synagogues?
Uh, and then we'll do...
we'll get business knocked out."
He says, "What are you talking about?
Do you not know what's happened?"
Said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "My brother was just picked up
yesterday morning in Miami
on a major cocaine
distribution case...
...Involving submarines."
"What are you talking about?"
He goes, "I'm telling you,
my brother has been arrested
and there's a manhunt out for you."
Brent Eaton said to me,
"Hey, Tarzan, you're, like, in deep shit."
I was saying things like,
"You're either gonna go home today
or you're going to go to jail.
It's up to you."
And he kept saying,
"Well, what did I do?
Explain to me what I did."
I didn't sell nothing. I didn't kill nobody.
I didn't steal from nobody.
I didn't do anything illegal
for them to arrest me.
They're not just gonna arrest you
because you talk about it.
You have to do something
in furtherance of the conspiracy,
and he did that.
He flew to Russia.
He did negotiate for the submarine.
It made major headlines.
We were on the front cover
of every major newspaper in the world.
From Vanity Fair magazine to Playboy magazine,
you name it. All of them.
When you make The New York Times,
when you make America's Most Wanted,
you're in deep shit.
There were very clever prosecutors and agents
who knew what they were doing.
They threatened him,
they were taking his child,
and last minute, they flipped him.
We did outsmart the FBI, we did outsmart DEA,
we even did outsmart, uh, the court.
You know, after all,
I was free and my partner Juan,
who received 40 years,
was free,
and basically none of us in jail.
You know, one thing I guess
we never discussed between us.
Each one of us,
me, Tony Yester, and Juan,
we were planning to leave the Colombians.
Eh, I didn't have no access to the money.
Otherwise, I would already be taking my...
Um, the, um...
We're still friends.
We're still doing business together.
We're not buying submarines, but...
we're still doing business.
Since that case,
in Colombia, up in the mountains,
they found
a Russian submarine being assembled.
I always wanted to know,
what is the difference between the agent
and a special agent?
What was so special about those guys?
I mean, they were super good-looking?
What was special?
What... what was special?
Why he is special?
Why he's better than me?
I'm also, uh, special.
I didn't tell them
that I'm a super Tarzan.
You know, a special Tarzan.
I just was a regular Tarzan.
♪ Yo, VIP, let's kick it ♪
♪ Ice, ice baby ♪
♪ Ice, ice, baby ♪
♪ All right, stop, collaborate and listen ♪
♪ Ice is back with my brand new invention ♪
♪ Something grabs ahold of me tightly ♪
♪ Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly ♪
♪ Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know ♪
♪ Turn off the lights and I'll glow ♪
♪ To the extreme, I rock a mic like a vandal ♪
♪ Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle ♪
♪ Dance, go rush to the speaker that booms ♪
♪ I'm killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom ♪
♪ Deadly when I play a dope melody ♪
♪ Anything less than the best is a felony ♪
♪ Love it or leave it you better gangway ♪
♪ You better hit bull's-eye the kid don't play ♪
♪ If there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it ♪
♪ Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it ♪
♪ Ice, ice baby ♪
♪ Vanilla Ice, ice baby ♪
♪ The girls were hot wearing less than bikinis ♪
♪ Rock men lovers driving Lamborghinis ♪
♪ Jealous 'cause I'm out getting mine ♪
♪ Shay with a gauge and Vanilla with a nine ♪
♪ Ready for the chumps on the wall ♪
♪ The chumps acting ill because ♪
♪ They're full of eight ball ♪
♪ Gunshots ranged out like a bell ♪
♪ I grabbed my nine all I heard were shells ♪
♪ Ice, ice baby ♪
♪ Vanilla Ice, ice baby ♪
♪ Vanilla Ice ♪
♪ Yo, man, let's get out of here ♪
♪ Word to your mother ♪
♪ Ice, ice baby too cold ♪
♪ Ice, ice baby too cold, too cold ♪
Subtitles by explosiveskull