Tirso "TJ" Dominguez, once Pablo Escobar's personal cocaine pilot, revealed he initially turned down an offer to work for the cartel kingpin, until Escobar upped the pay to $20 million a month.
Dominguez, a former real estate heir from South Florida, told the Cocaine Air podcast that he first entered the drug trade in the late 1970s after his father died suddenly, according to The Guardian. Desperate to fund a sugar mill project left unfinished by his father, Dominguez began flying marijuana for traffickers before graduating to cocaine smuggling following a botched drop that nearly got him killed.
