Pablo started moving to bigger jobs, he started stealing cars and giving them to his friends or selling them. He was becoming keen in the criminal life, people started respecting him, but it was not until he was introduced to the cocaine that he became a "don-. At the beginning of his cocaine business he would ransom and sometimes kill people who owed him money to place fear in them, or his rivals. His name started walking the streets, he was feared and respected, and took this to his advantage by charging people for protection. .
By the age of 26, Pablo made the transition from drug courier to drug smuggler. At that time, cocaine was worth $35,000 a kilo and a small plane carrying only a small amount could make big money. This began the rise of "El Patron", also known as "El Doctor-. Soon by the age of 30, Pablo had made enough money from smuggling drugs into the United States that he purchased the Hacienda Napoles for $63 million and owned his own helicopter, a private zoo, and thousands of acres of land throughout Colombia. Pablo and his close associates thought of themselves as the new Al Capone because what he did eventually became legal after prohibition. Pablo and his friends seriously believed that what they were doing was not illegal and one day it would become legal and their money and enterprises would be legitimized. Pablo even owned a car of Al Capone.
Pablo's planes loaded with cocaine had a great success rate and the equipment of U.S. Customs planes only detected one in a hundred. These planes were smuggling about 400 kilos of cocaine a trip and one flight could net his cartel $10 million. By the age of 32, Pablo was earning a half a million dollars a day. One problem he had was competition in Medellin. His biggest three competitors were the three Ochoa Brothers. The question for Pablo was to cooperate or compete. Pablo decided to cooperate and soon these loose business organization merged into one organization and began to work together cooperatively.
