Operation Playboy: Bali, Brazil and the Drug Runners

news.com.au featured Kathryn Bonella’s Operation Playboy, the true crime story of Brazilian surfers, cocaine trafficking and the Brazilian Federal Police operation that hunted them down.

Read the original news.com.au feature.

**CATCHING THE WORLD’S MOST RECKLESS PLAYBOYS:** Police Chief Fernando Caieron was as fixated as the drug traffickers, but on catching them through ‘Operation Playboy’. Source:Supplied

News.com.au

Australian author Kathryn Bonella — who wrote the books Hotel Kerobokan, Snowing in Bali and Schapelle Corby My Story — became aware of these wealthy, risk-addicted Brazilian drug lords when she met those who had paid the ultimate price: incarceration on Indonesia’s death row.

Surfer Rodrigo Gularte was busted smuggling cocaine to Bali in surfboards and executed alongside Bali Nine members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. One of the organisers of Rodrigo’s run, surfer Timi, confessed to Bonella.

“Timi was still living with dreadful guilt,” the author told news.com.au. “But that did not stop him for a second from doing the next run.”

The smuggled cocaine in surfboards. Picture: AP — Rodrigo Gularte and Marco Archer trafficked cocaine to Bali and were both executed. Rodrigo carried these “blow boards”.

These are smart, charismatic educated young men. Most speak excellent English, have wealthy parents and some have even studied law. They’re also thrill seekers, who love skiing and skydiving as they roam the globe — and for whom trafficking drugs is the ultimate adrenaline rush.

“They could do anything with their lives, but they choose this,” added Bonella.

“These guys love women, clothes, fast cars, travel. It’s a true life Point Break.”

“I think anyone can understand why they do it, the riches alone.”

“They spend $5, 000 transporting one kilo and make $500,000 AUD.”

“It gives them a lifestyle people dream of like jumping on a first-class flight on a whim and the rush of beating the authorities, getting the drugs across international borders.”

But even she can’t comprehend why anyone would take the risk of trafficking to Indonesia.

“It’s like playing Russian roulette with a firing squad and it’s hard to understand that gamble,” Bonella said.

Bonella’s book, Operation Playboy, follows an international manhunt to bring these surf-loving drug kingpins to justice.

The drug mules and ‘horses’ were constantly looking for new methods to transport the cocaine: on one occasion, rolled into a paraglider. Picture: Kathryn Bonella — The drug mules or ‘horses’ are constantly looking for new methods to transport the drugs. One method is inserting the drugs in the tubes of a paraglider kite. Picture: Kathryn Bonella (NB: men in photo are not traffickers)

Bonella says she doesn’t see this lucrative illegal industry stopping any time soon. Source: Pan Macmillan Australia

Kathryn Bonella has gained unprecedented access to the world of cocaine trafficking. Picture: Kathryn Bonella Source:Supplied“WE WERE sniffing and drinking champagne, and then this guy starts pissing me off.

Surfer Jorge says the feeling of trafficking drugs is ‘like an orgasm’. Picture: Federal Police Brazil

Buy Operation Playboy from publisher Pan Macmillan

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