In The Accountant's Story, Roberto Escobar discusses the means by which Pablo rose from middleclass simplicity and

obscurity to one of the world's wealthiest men. Beginning in 1975, Pablo started
developing his cocaine operation, flying out planes several times, mainly between Colombia and
Panama, along smuggling routes into the United States. When he later bought fifteen bigger
airplanes, including a Learjet and six helicopters, according to his son, a dear friend of Pablo's died
during the landing of an airplane, and the plane was destroyed. Pablo reconstructed the airplane
from the scrap parts that were left and later hung it above the gate to his ranch at Hacienda Npoles.
In May 1976, Escobar and several of his men were arrested and found in possession of 39 pounds
(18 kg) of white paste, attempting to return to Medelln with a heavy load from Ecuador. Initially,
Pablo tried to bribe the Medelln judges who were forming a case against him, and was
unsuccessful. After many months of legal wrangling, he ordered the murder of the two arresting
officers, and the case was later dropped. Roberto Escobar details this as the point where Pablo
began his pattern of dealing with the authorities, by either bribery or murder.[16]
Roberto Escobar maintains Pablo fell into the drug business simply because other types of
contraband became too dangerous to traffic. As there were no drug cartels then, and only a few drug
barons, Pablo saw it as untapped territory he wished to make his own. In Peru, Pablo would buy the
cocaine paste, which would then be refined in a laboratory in a two-story house in Medelln. On his
first trip, Pablo bought a paltry 30 pounds (14 kg) of paste in what was noted as the first step
towards building his empire. At first, he smuggled the cocaine in old plane tires, and a pilot could
return as much as US $500,000 per flight, dependent on the quantity smuggled. [17]