Former Aussie cocaine kingpin owed millions to Mexican cartel
An athlete turned drug lord found himself hiding millions of dollars in his Bondi flat. He made one crucial mistake that led police right to his door.
A US college athlete turned cocaine kingpin has opened up about how he found himself owing millions to a Mexican drug cartel after being sent to run its Australian operation.
Owen “O-Dog” Hanson recalled the panic of learning he needed to move $10 million in drug money out of the country, half of which belonged to a man he called “El Jefe” – Spanish for “the boss”.
Hanson, then 24, was stuffing stacks of $50 notes into his kitchen cabinet, dishwasher, attic and bedroom at the Bondi unit he was living in as the profits of Australia’s lucrative cocaine market rolled in.
But when he asked El Jefe how to get the cash back to the America, he was told “that’s your job”.
“I’m thinking, ‘what did I get myself into? I can’t just get on the plane with millions of dollars’,” he told the Fresh Out YouTube channel.
“Now I’m f***ing freaking out, I’m like ‘man I didn’t sign up for this part’.”
Hanson, a chiselled sportsman, became tabloid fodder in Australia after police exposed him as a millionaire cocaine boss who owned luxury properties in his home country.
He was jailed for 21 years in 2017 but has already been released from prison, leaving him free to tell his extraordinary tale of how he ended up supplying coke Down Under.
Hanson has written a book and spoken openly about the fast lifestyle he led, which included him rubbing shoulders with Mike Tyson, Paris Hilton and former President George Bush Jr.
‘Do you know anyone in Australia?’
The former University of Southern California volleyball and football player started out selling recreational drugs and steroids to fellow college students in the early 2000s.
He ended up running a large illicit bookkeeping business and his acumen with money impressed the cartel boss, who unbenownst to Hanson was a high-betting client.
El Jefe in 2011 recruited Hanson to collect money from around the US, paying him a 10 per cent cut, through his bookmaking agents. Hanson claimed he did not yet know the source of the cash.
Then the request came for Hanson to pick up US$1 million from El Jefe’s “rival’s turf” in Texas, a task he thought was a “no-brainer” due to its $100,000 payday.
After successfully collecting the boon alongside a crew of UFC fighters, Hanson received a proposition from El Jefe.
“He then asked me the famous question, the question that cost me my prison bid,” Hanson said.
“He said, ‘do you know anyone in Australia?’ He said, ‘Wetto I can do the same thing you’re doing in the US right now for me, but I’m gonna make you $1 million a day’.”
Hanson told the crime lord his aunt lived in Perth and that sealed the deal.
“He said, ‘I have some of the best product in the world in Australia … he says, ‘I have a tonne of cocaine in Australia now. And the price for wholesale is $100,000 a key (kilogram).”
Overnight millionaire
Hanson told Fresh Out he had never dealt drugs on a commercial level and ended up being connected with an Italian mafia figure, dubbed “Uncle Louie”, who was sceptical of the venture but joined him in Sydney.
There they were told to get a room at the Four Seasons hotel and wait for “20 birds” – or bricks – to get dropped off.
“So 20 minutes later I get that knock on the door and there’s a guy with the box and he goes ‘there you go’,” he said.
“I go f*** I’m scared this is going to get me a life sentence right here. Anything over two kilos here in Australia you go to jail forever.
“I knock on the wall … Uncle Louie came and looked in the boxes. He said, ‘holy sh*t, nephew, you just became a millionaire overnight’.
“Thirty minutes later he was back with $2 million and asked, ‘When can we get the next shipment?’”
The money problem
Hanson said he facilitated the sales of another “20 birds” several times and ended up holding $10 million in cash at his apartment.
The problem became, how could he clean the cash and get it offshore?
An accountant, who believed the money came from a Chinese betting client, suggested they buy solid gold coins and ship it back to the states inside the soles of Ugg boots.
They also started exchanging the bills for €500 notes before sealing them in comic books and masking the overseas shipments as sales from an Aussie eBay retailer.
But this was slow, Hanson said, and there was still millions of dollars sitting in his eastern suburbs home.
That’s where professional gambler RJ Cipriani, dubbed Robin Hood 702, came in. Hanson claimed he was told Mr Cipriani could clean large sums of cash at casinos.
Mr Cipriani, for his part, denies any knowledge he was recruited to launder money and has threatened legal action over a new documentary helmed by superstar Mark Wahlberg.
“If the docuseries paints me in any way as being knowingly complicit with Owen Hanson and his crimes, then do so at your own legal peril,” he told the US Sun.
Mr Cirpriani’s evidence was crucial in bringing down Hanson’s operation.
Hanson claimed Mr Cipriani flew to Australia and managed to get $1.5 million out within two days, but a second attempt to move $2.5 million ended in disaster.
He said the gambler lost $2.2 million in a few hours playing cards at Sydney’s Star Casino, and Hanson sent his personal trainer to collect the last $300,000 from Mr Cipriani at the Four Seasons.
The trainer took $700,000 in drug money with him in a suitcase, but when he arrived “the cops were waiting”.
“We got a call from the American saying there’s a gun in the hotel room and we need to check your bag, sir,” Hanson said a cop asked the PT.
“They check his bag and there’s not a gun but there’s $700,000.”
Attempts to regain the $700,000 from police ended with a Sydney lawyer jailed for more than four years in 2020.
Owing $4m to the cartel
Hanson decided to flee Australia and resolved to explain to the cartel how he had now lost more than $3 million in profits.
He was asked to meet El Jefe in Tijuana, Mexico, and arrived at a McDonalds to find a bulletproof Cadillac complete with two sicarios – hired assassins – holding AK47s.
“I thought I was going to get f***ing killed,” he said.
The car joined an entourage and he was whisked to a face-to-face with El Jefe, with the two sipping margaritas as he explained where the money had gone.
“Wetto you don’t owe me $3.2 million now you owe me $4 million, and now you work for me,” Hanson was told
“I get back in the car and think, ‘well at least I’m alive’.”
Wine bottles and chocolate
Hanson was told to focus on his gambling syndicates and lay low for two years.
Two years later, in 2013, he received a message: “you ready?”
He set about making back the money he’d lost but this time had to find his own “route” to get cocaine into Australia.
Hanson said he broke down cocaine into liquid form and sent the drugs in Napa Valley wine bottles, and also hid bricks in chocolate bar wrappers.
“About two weeks before my arrest I paid back the cartel,” he said.
Hanson, now in his 40s, was a wanted man in Australia before the FBI caught up with him in his home state in 2016 after an investigation into his “ODOG Enterprise” racketeering network.
According to the District Attorney of Southern California’s office, Hanson’s network sold vast quantities of drugs, ran a massive illegal gambling racket and used “threats and violence” against its customers “to force compliance”.
NSW Police had previously stated it would seek to extradite Hanson to Australia to pursue criminal charges once he was released from jail.
It is unclear whether that is still the case, and news.com.au has contacted police for comment.