High Tide: The Coronado Company

Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller

National Geographic

Documentary, Tv & Film, Society & Culture, True Crime

4.7 • 527 Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Just off the coast of San Diego, a group of high school surfers and their former Spanish teacher get involved in an unusual extracurricular activity: international weed smuggling. They called themselves the Coronado Company and Lee Strimpel was one of their leaders. For years, Lee’s team of “pot marines'' circumvented the U.S.-Mexico sea border. What started with a bunch of high school students swimming bundles of marijuana on their surfboards, grew to become a multimillion dollar smuggling empire. Their hauls got bigger and bigger, and so did their means of transport. But by the time they tried to expand their business across the Atlantic, the DEA caught wind. Lee’s plans all came down with a crash in a cinematic takedown on a freezing winter night in Maine. Join Mariana deeper into the underground, and don’t miss the TV series Trafficked With Mariana van Zeller Wednesday on National Geographic and streaming on Hulu. Recording assistance provided by Alexis Peery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Trafficked Podcasts with Mariana Van Zeller is intended for mature audiences.
0:13.6	Listener discretion is advised.
0:18.8	One of the episodes we did for the TV series was about black market marijuana.
0:23.6	Reporting on weed has changed just so much over the course of my career.
0:27.6	And now, despite its legalized status, or maybe because of it,
0:31.6	I found myself reporting from really intense situations,
0:35.6	like the rooftop of this parking garage,
0:38.3	right in the middle of Los Angeles.
0:41.3	This is very strange.
0:43.3	You're looking at us.
0:45.3	I would put cameras down.
0:47.3	Right there, at the top of this open-air garage,
0:51.3	they're dealing millions of dollars worth of illegal weed.
0:57.0	So people come in here and that's what we're seeing,
0:59.0	is customers coming up here and buying wheat from your guys?
1:01.0	Yeah, they come in and they donate their funds in capital.
1:05.0	And they get to leave with some great flowers.
1:09.0	Their operation was so brazenly out in the open that I'm amazed they were able to pull it off.
1:14.6	Do you guys, because we were able to pretty much just drive up, do you have lookouts, do you have people knowing who comes in and out?
1:20.6	Yeah, I mean, there's a strategic system in place.
1:23.6	Is that your security guard behind you?
1:25.6	No.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from National Geographic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of National Geographic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.