Inside the Cartel

Author: Martin Suarez and Ian Frisch

Paperback

How an Undercover FBI Agent Smuggled Cocaine, Laundered Cash, and Dismantled a Colombian Narco-Empire

The gripping true story, that reads like fiction, of how legendary FBI Special Agent Martin Suarez went deep undercover—and lived a double-life for years—to infiltrate Colombia's most insidious drug cartels.

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29th September 2025

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Summary

How an Undercover FBI Agent Smuggled Cocaine, Laundered Cash, and Dismantled a Colombian Narco-Empire

Description

Martin Suarez, a legend within the FBI who specialized in Colombian drug cartels, holds the record for the longest time spent continuously undercover. As his alter ego Manny, Martin followed the unspoken rules of the cartels: He knew the right lingo to use, the right whiskey to drink, the right watch to wear, the wrong questions to ask. He smuggled over $1 billion worth of cocaine into the United States for the Medellín Cartel and, as his cover deepened, he graduated to become a high-level money launderer for the North Coast Cartel. He helped wash tens of millions of dollars worth of drug money, ensnaring himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse while simultaneously exposing the Black Market Peso Exchange, the most insidious money laundering apparatus in the world that involved billionaire bankers, blue-chip American corporations, and even the President of Colombia himself.

Martin was raised by a father who served in the military and valorised the nobility of the FBI, and Martin stopped at nothing to allow his father to live vicariously through his son. He wanted nothing more than to make his father proud—and to be a good husband to his wife, and a loving father to his two young sons. He became a man caught between two worlds—that of an undercover agent who wanted to rid the world of its evils, but also that of a family man who was trying not to lose himself in this dark, brutal underworld that captivated the globe during the War on Drugs.

And yet his worlds begin to collide as danger creeps dangerously close to his doorstep when his cover is blown and a cartel-hired sicario comes hunting for him.

Inside the Cartel is told with the pulse-racing action of a Hollywood blockbuster. This is the story of Suarez and his time undercover and how maintaining the trust of hardened criminals can start to tear away at even the most principled soldier.

About the Author

Ian Frisch has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, Playboy, Wired, and Vice. He has appeared on Bloomberg Television and speaks regularly at universities both about writing and entrepreneurship, and was a finalist for the 2016 Associated Press Sports Editors Explanatory Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.