Margins
The Real Mr. Big book cover
The Real Mr. Big
How a Colombian Refugee Became the United Kingdom's Most Notorious Cocaine Kingpin
2021
First Published
3.72
Average Rating
229
Number of Pages

Born in 1960, Jesus Ruiz Henao grew up poor, but wanted to be rich like the drug dealers he saw growing up in the cocaine-producing region of Colombia’s Valle of the Cauca. To realize his ambition, Ruiz Henao moved to London, United Kingdom, in 1985. There he and his wife settled in the quiet suburb of Hendon, where he held down mundane but respectable cleaning and bus driving jobs. At least to outward appearances ... Actually, Ruiz Henao kept a low profile while he built a wide-ranging drug distribution network that extended from Colombia to Spain and Europe and to the United Kingdom. For years, he stayed one step ahead of law enforcement, making more than a billion pounds over a ten-year period. However, it was a risky business with law enforcement on one side and ruthless competitors on the other. By the summer of 2003, Ruiz Henao decided to get out of the drug business. But he finally made the one mistake that would get him caught. It cost him a 17-year prison sentence, with more tacked on when he tried to make one last deal from behind prison walls. THE REAL MR. BIG, co-written by Ruiz Henao with bestselling author Ron Chepesiuk, is the story of how an ambitious Colombian immigrant set up a sophisticated drug trafficking enterprise that earned him law enforcement's description as "the Pablo Escobar of British drug trafficking."

Avg Rating
3.72
Number of Ratings
18
5 STARS
28%
4 STARS
33%
3 STARS
22%
2 STARS
17%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Author

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved