How A Guy From Staten Island With Ties To Costa Rica Brought Drug Lords To Their Knees

Diane Kruger (L) stars as undercover U.S. Customs agent Kathy Ertz and Bryan Cranston (R) as her partner Robert Mazur in THE INFILTRATOR, a Broad Green Pictures release. Credit: Liam Daniel / Broad Green Pictures — Diane Kruger (L) stars as undercover U.S. Customs agent Kathy Ertz and Bryan Cranston (R) as her partner Robert Mazur in THE INFILTRATOR, a Broad Green Pictures release.
Credit: Liam Daniel / Broad Green Pictures

From a meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica with Gerardo Moncada, right-hand man to Pablo Escobar, Robert Mazur, a Staten Island (U.S) native, was able to bring drug lords to their knees.

Mazur, known to the drug lords as Bob Musella, spent 18 months developing his character and putting together a portfolio of businesses that he could show himself to be a part of, and resulted in more than 100 indictments,the seizure of some 3,000 pounds of cocaine and penalties in excess of US$500 million. Big money now, even bigger in the 1980s.

TI_D009_LD_00285_R_CROP (l to r) Bryan Cranston stars as undercover U.S. Customs agent Robert Mazur and John Leguizamo as his partner Emir Abreu in THE INFILTRATOR, a Broad Green Pictures release. Credit: Liam Daniel / Broad Green Pictures — Bryan Cranston (L) as undercover U.S. Customs agent Robert Mazur and John Leguizamo (R) as his partner Emir Abreu in THE INFILTRATOR, a Broad Green Pictures release. Credit: Liam Daniel / Broad Green Pictures

A veteran investigator for the US Customs Service, Mazur — along with a female agent posing as his hot fiancée — penetrated the top levels of South American drug cartels. And the bankers who helped them to launder profits.

Years later, from prison, Escobar would have Moncada rubbed out. (Mazur never met Escobar, because a visit to Colombia was deemed too dangerous.)

the_infiltrator-3 — Simón Andreu stars as Gonzalo Mora Sr., Rubén Ochandiano as Gonzalo Mora Jr., Joseph Gilgun as Dominic, Bryan Cranston as undercover U.S. Customs agent Robert Mazur, John Leguizamo as his partner Emir Abreu, Yul Vazquez as Javier Ospina and Xarah Xavier as Lau in “The Infiltrator.” Broad Green Pictures

The life of Masur is now immortalized on film, “The Infiltrator”.

Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) stars as Robert Mazur. As depicted in the film, Mazur showed up to meetings carrying a leather briefcase. Criminals knew it as the vessel for their illicit banking records; Mazur valued the bag because of its hidden recording device. The briefcase could have gotten him killed during a meeting with a cartel senior advisor, when the recorder sprang loose and “a nest of wires were sitting on top of the records.”