The Real Mr. Big: How a Colombian Refugee Became the United Kingdom’s Most Notorious Cocaine Kingpin

By: Ron Chepesiuk and Jesus Ruiz-Henao

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Synopsis: This true crime memoir is both a &“high-speed train trip through the modern cocaine trade&” and a story of reform, redemption and family (Gerald Posner, and author of Pharma). Born in 1960, Jesus Ruiz Henao wanted to be rich like the drug dealers he saw as he grew up in the cocaine-producing region of Colombia&’s Valle of the Cauca. In 1985, he moved to the quiet London suburb of Hendon, where he and his wife held down mundane cleaning and bus driving jobs. At least to outward appearances . . . While keeping a low profile, Henao built a drug trafficking network reaching from Colombia to England and across Europe. It was a risky business with law enforcement on one side and ruthless competitors on the other. By the summer of 2003, he decided to get out. But then he made the one mistake that would get him caught. It cost him a seventeen-year prison sentence, with more tacked on when he tried to make one last deal from behind prison walls. Co-written by Henao with bestselling author Ron Chepesiuk, The Real Mr. Big is the story of how an ambitious Colombian immigrant became known to law enforcement as &“the Pablo Escobar of British drug trafficking.&”