Suspected cocaine Brit Andrew Deamer drove a Rolls-Royce, claimed he had two planes and is the son of a drugs villain who was locked up for 18 years.
Deamer hails from the East Midlands village of Barrow upon Soar, population 5,000.
He swapped his Leicestershire home’s picturesque canals and historic rail lines for a life in Florida and eventually South America.
In the US, he drove a Rolls-Royce, told neighbours he worked in aviation and that he owned aircraft.
There was no clue as to how he afforded that.
And just as neighbours were getting to know him he vanished – to later surface in Colombia.
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Back in the UK, Deamer’s dad Freddie was serving 18 years after being arrested over a huge drug haul off the French coast.
He, too, had a Rolls-Royce and a judge ruled he had £5.5million from drugs deals.
Pieces of the jigsaw of Deamer’s extraordinary life are being put together as he faces a 14-year jail term in return for helping Colombian authorities who smashed a £354million drugs empire.
Only one other foreigner is believed to have run a drugs operation from Medellin, where Pablo Escobar’s feared outfit flooded the US with coke in the 1980s.
Deamer set himself up in a hillside farmhouse on the edge of Rionegro, Escobar’s home town.
Somehow he appeared to gain the trust of the cartels and went into business. And rather than hiding his wealth, he loved to display his Colombian life online.
He posted snaps of himself in a pool with his five golden retrievers. In other shots he posed with his Colombian second wife Marcela Zapata, 37, who is under house arrest.
Under one snap posted in 2016 Marcela said: “My husband the cutest in the world and the best.”
Other posts make political points about drug use – including one of ex-US President Obama saying: “We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.”
Another shows Mexican drug lord El Chapo, Joaquin Guzman, mocked up opposite current President Donald Trump saying: “I’m going to make you eat all your ***** words.”
Deamer is currently in La Picota jail after a dramatic 6am raid and the villa where he was nicked is up for sale on an estate agent’s site, with pictures and a video.
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Meanwhile, the Mirror has uncovered details of his mysterious life in the US and back home in Barrow upon Soar.
He spent a number of years in Florida, in the tight-knit community of Coconut Creek, 40 miles north of Miami.
Deamer bought two newly-built houses next door to each other in 1995. One was for him and his first wife, and the other for his relative.
They made friends quickly and were regulars at Saturday night barbecues – though neighbours were agog at their apparent wealth.
A Rolls-Royce was parked in one of the garages, Japanese Akita dogs roamed the gardens and Deamer had a flashy customised pick-up truck.
A neighbour who still lives in the cul-de-sac said: “I saw their garage door open once and there was a dark-coloured Rolls-Royce inside.
“I thought Holy Mother, who the hell lives in a quiet little place like this and has a Rolls-Royce.
“A couple of months later and the Rolls was gone. We never saw it again. Andrew had these Akita attack dogs, two of them roaming around his garden. They would go nuts at times.
“There was no need for that around here. It was, and still is, a very quiet community. We all know each other.
“He also had a customised Ford pick-up that he said cost him $70,000 (£54,000) – and remember this was 1997. It had a camera fitted to the rear which I thought was strange.
“In 1997 this was not at all usual. Why would he need that?’
“I asked him what he did for a living and he claimed he worked in aviation and had two small planes. He’d tell you a certain amount but then no more.”
Neighbours were stunned when Deamer left suddenly and everything was shipped out two months later.
Back in the UK, Deamer’s father Freddie was jailed for 18 years in 1998, a year after being caught off the French coast in a boat named Lucky Lady. Two tons of cannabis resin was hidden in the ballast tanks.
The former accountant was given 12 years for importing drugs and a further six years for supply.
Freddie also had a Rolls-Royce – coloured gold – and was known as a “bobby dazzler” by locals in Barrow upon Soar, where he lived with his wife Gloria.
He played for the village cricket team and his picture still hangs on the clubhouse wall. It is understood he died in Spain five years ago. The arrest of his son – who had £36,000 in cash at his villa – has been analysed for the Mirror by Mike Vigil, who headed international operations for America’s Drug Enforcement Administration and worked three years undercover in Colombia.
He told us: “Deamer took a tremendous risk. The Colombian organisations are highly volatile and violent. Even if they merely suspected he was not what he seemed, they would have killed him on the spot, maybe after torturing him.
“It is exceptional that they allowed a foreigner to come into their country and start working with them so closely. If he had tried to take business away from them, he’d be a dead man walking. The only way to survive is to work alongside the cartels and that is likely what Deamer did. Moving their cocaine.
“But he would have gone through a lot of testing and scrutiny. He would have needed introductions – somebody to vouch for you.
“The cartels have to learn to trust you and I have to say Deamer probably had great diplomatic skills.
“Because he was British, it would have been
even tougher.
“They might have thought he was law enforcement or someone trying to infiltrate their organisation. He was clever.
“They won’t hand over a ton of cocaine to just anybody so it appears Deamer was able to work his way up and start doing heavy volume.”
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