Aronow may have built a boat or 2 back in the old days under the assumption of " Hear no Evil See no Evil" back in the days with the old widebody 36s but as his notoriety with the honest money halves grew I think he had enough sense to steer clear of the shady characters ..

Of all the Cigarettes how often does anybody come along a purpose built on e from back in the day?

Also I used to go to the drug seizure auctions in Florida back in the 80s and looked at many of the offshore boats that were seized. Many were privately made poorly built like they had been laid up in the mold and pulled the same day and then had 500 gallon tanks stuffed in them

The whole Columbian story is bullchit.

I agree the Columbian story may be bullchit. But, he made plenty of deals with suitcases full of money. Just because most of the seized boats were junk that doesn't mean there weren't others out there. There were also plenty of drug dealers back then wanted a bad azz offshore boat a status symbol, and never even used the boat to smuggle.

I don't care about the drug charge...but chit..he was 35 when he went in? Dam...another young talented builder lost....now if he had anything to do with murder or don's death than F " him and feed him fish heads....

This whole story with Lanier, Ben Kramer, Aronow etc, Just reeks of a movie. Fleeing from federal charges, prison break attempt, drugs, boat and car racing...Hollywood should be all over this. The whole story is better than any movie I have ever seen.

If Miami vice kept us entertained, could you imagine?..............

Back in the day it was just away to make easy money . no killings .no crime. I can barely keep track of all the people on my 10 fingers that I have known personally that used to be in the trade in the day that had nothing to do with offshore boats .

This assumption that Don was getting suit cases of money comes from where?

And Colombians had nothing to do with weed they were Coke people.. all the weed back in the day was Mexican.

And just one more thing on these Columbians, who was this Cartel that has never been exposed nor convicted for smuggling. murders .etc.

Don was the King and Ben was the new punk that phucked with Don and Don had a chance to Phuck him back in the Blue Thunder deal and got murdered for it.

Maybe Ben will tell his story on OSO.....I wonder what his screen name would be???

Orange Jumpsuit

If you have watched Cocaine Cowboys I think the evolution of the story has something to do with why a lot of people think Kramer should rot. I wasn't there (I just lived within sight of the Cocaine highway, I-95 thru my teens and 20's back then and that's all I'm going to say) but I've talked to a lot of people who were there around those times. It’s funny how you can be researching a boat and the conversations you end up in. But from what I have gathered at first So FL had nothing going on. Your basic lawless (not needed) paradise where a lot of people from my area for some reason escaped to. I figure it was like the modern day probation or pirate days kind of town. Sure some knew something was going on but you mind your business and I will mind mine kind of thing. Then it became like the bar you started going to that no one knew and then it became real popular. I was still cool but at the same time it wasn't the old bar. Then it turned into an Animal House frat party. At that point you knew the cops were coming to break up the party but for now it was a party! But it wasn’t cops it was guys with big guns who would use them and for that matter didn't follow the rules even the mob had used. The party was over and in a dead woman found murdered floating in the pool way. Ben was the celebrity face of everyone that ruined the party.
IMHO they are right. Ben and the people like him (high profile shoot them up type) f_ed it up for everyone. I mean most knew it wasn’t going to last forever when it got to the frat party level but no one thought it was going to end like it did with guns a blazing. Up until then it may have been screwing up the rest of the country with their imports but So FL and all the way up I-95 benefited immensely even if you never touched a drug. Then it all went to crap and Kramer was in the middle of it all for killing an icon.
Not to mention that George Sr liked Don.

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