Demolition begins on Florida mansion owned by Pablo Escobar

Demolition began this morning on the mansion formerly owned by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, the main character in the popular Netlix series, Narcos. Chicken Kitchen restaurant owner Christian de Berdouare bought the home in 2014 with his wife Jennifer Valoppi.

As wrecking crews begin demolishing a Miami Beach mansion once owned by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, police and the home’s current owners are investigating a mysterious and very recent theft from the property.

De Berdouare said he plans to build an entirely new, modern-style mason on the 7,336-square-foot plot.

Its new owners have hired professional treasure hunters to comb through the rubble in the hope of finding items belonging to the former leader of the Medellin cartel.

Though the mansion was listed under Escobar’s own name, it’s unclear whether he ever spent any time in Miami Beach.

The new owners said Escobar never lived there but had visited the property on occasion.

The mansion, which was built in 1948, features four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a pool and garage as well as a marina, 150 feet of frontage on Biscayne Bay and views of downtown Miami.

Escobar’s drug cartel was responsible for much of the cocaine imported into the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Escobar was killed in a shootout with Colombian authorities in 1993.

De Berdouare gave a simple reason for why he bought the aging, fire-damaged home in May 2014 for about $9 million from a private owner.

Today, he exists only in documentaries and on Netflix, but Pablo Escobar and his drug-dealing empire were real.

Ms Valoppi said the workers had found a buried safe but that it was stolen before they could open it.

The seizure of Escobar’s property marked in a turning point in the government’s efforts to stop the drug smuggling, said Mark Schnapp, who was an assistant USA attorney from 1982 to 1989 and one of the lawyers who wrote the 1986 federal indictment in Miami that recognized Escobar’s Medellin cartel as an organized business enterprise.

Since the 1980s, seizing civil assets assisted law enforcement acts against drug cartels, the news outlet added.