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The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.

Evan Ratliff

4.06 · Rating details · 1,972 ratings · 248 reviews

The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux—the creator of a frighteningly powerful Internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur

It all started as an online prescription drug network, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of painkillers to ...more

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Hardcover, 480 pages

Published January 29th 2019 by Random House

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Lists with This Book

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Start your review of The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.

Jul 05, 2019 Julie rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019

Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal by Evan Ratliff is a 2019 Random House publication.

2012-

Catherine Lee was found dead in a dumpster in the Philippines. Charles Shultz, owner of an independent pharmacy and well past retirement age, is arrested by DEA agents. An Israeli- Australian citizen with ties to a major cocaine cartel, leases a warehouse in Hong Kong, which is raided by an organized crime unit.

How were these three incidents related?

Evan Ratliff connects the dots and uncovers a ...more

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Feb 21, 2019 Jeanette rated it really liked it

This man, Paul Le Roux, ran an empire. And he did it internationally. Selling "legal" drugs through the internet, after developing an encrypted software. And when you think of Empire, with the big E- this is one. As much as any former multi-continental colonial or otherwise "Empire" within orders / laws/ merchant pathways for productions and distributions- with all authority coming from the "top-down". And within its own shared to the underlings "culture" as well. Countries and substances both, ...more

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Jan 27, 2019 Murtaza rated it liked it

Very strange and dark story about a man, Paul Leroux, who used his coding knowledge to eventually set himself up as some kind of barbarian drug kingpin. I am impressed at the massive amount of reporting that went into this story over several years. Despite that, it was not really my favorite. There is lots of blow-by-blow of this complicated and disturbing criminal plot but not much reflection on what it all means for our society and the human condition.

My own takeaway is that Leroux was a ...more

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Dec 15, 2018 Bonnie Brody rated it really liked it

What does the murder of a female realtor in the Philippines, shot by a 22 under each eye, have to do with small pharmacies all over the United States that are filling prescriptions over the internet? In addition, what does the foregoing have to do with hitmen, international arms dealers, the smuggling and selling of cocaine and meth, and other international crimes? If you want to know, read this book which is an investigative reporter's dream (or maybe nightmare). The author spent several years What does the murder of a female realtor in the Philippines, shot by a 22 under each eye, have to do with small pharmacies all over the United States that are filling prescriptions over the internet? In addition, what does the foregoing have to do with hitmen, international arms dealers, the smuggling and selling of cocaine and meth, and other international crimes? If you want to know, read this book which is an investigative reporter's dream (or maybe nightmare). The author spent several years working with various police agencies in several countries, the FBI, Interpol, the DEA, etc. to figure out how all of this was connected.

Witnesses often disappeared or were killed. Some of the agencies, and those who worked there, were crooked. The author, Evan Ratliff, realized that police in the Philippines, Somalia, Colombia, and other countries involved in this huge conspiracy, often made so little money that they were unable to live on it. Naturally, they were the perfect targets for payoffs.

If you are a computer buff or a techie, this book is perfect for you. There is a lot about encryption, including a brief mention of Edward Snowden, and the programs that lie just beneath the surface of the regular internet that most of us are not even aware of.

As the author looked into the selling of drugs and arms, murders and international connections, one name kept popping up - Paul Calder Le Roux. When described, he didn't look the part of the mastermind behind all of this. He was very overweight, dressed casually in shorts and flip-flops, but believe me, you didn't want to get on his bad side.

The book is rather complex to follow, mainly because large and brilliant conspiracies are complex and difficult to unravel. If you are a conspiracy theorist, this book is a golden find. It is heavy reading and I was glad that the author included a 'cast of characters' in the beginning as I referred to it many a time.

I love non-fiction books about true crime and there are not much worse crimes than those described in this book. ...more

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Nov 07, 2018 Randal White rated it really liked it

Shelves: netgalley, crime-police-corrections, political-diplomacy-terrorism

An amazing story! Reads like a Vince Flynn or James Bond type thriller. Who would ever have believed that there was actually a "super-villain", who manipulated events world-wide, all the while staying hidden behind the scenes? I couldn't put it down!

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Apr 22, 2019 Scott Hitchcock rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019-published-an-read, true-crime, nonfiction

Interesting if a bit dry in spots. The amount of people carrying out billion dollar schemes in the international markets is both amazing and horrifying.

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Sep 18, 2019 Alex Givant rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio, best-of-2019, memoirs, crime

Reads like a fiction, cannot put it down. This guy is coward, killing his workers on assumption they betrayed him, when caught by DEA - betrayed all of them without second thought.

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Jun 08, 2019 Mona rated it really liked it

Very fascinating piece of non fiction. This is a story about Paul Le Roux's criminal activities which could be a base of a good movie. The computer coder turn criminal. Author researched topic well, had numerous sources and did his homework by reading all available legal documents. The story is so compelling that the reader can forget about the shortcomings of this book.

I found the narration a bit chaotic at times, maybe due to multiple characters involved and occasional inconsistencies in ...more

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Mar 04, 2019 Stephanie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: true-crime

I’m a podcast listener. I listen to a dozen or more each week, and I’m someone who cannot differentiate between (or among) multiple hosts most of the time. One podcast that I listen to fairly regularly is Reply All, hosted by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman. Their February 14th episode (#136) was entitled The Founder, and either PJ or Alex talked about Paul LeRoux, former programmer, former criminal cartel boss, and informant to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It was incredibly ...more

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Mar 07, 2019 Jared rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, audiobooks

It is a compelling enough story, but the book suffers from a few flaws:

- The author inserts himself into the story a few too many times. This is a pet peeve of mine.
- We don't really get a close look at the life of the main subject, Paul Le Roux.
- Given the way the book is structured, it is hard to follow the plot at times. The individual vignettes are fine, but how exactly do they line up?

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Mar 27, 2019 Jim Crocker rated it it was amazing

The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.
by Evan Ratliff

This amazing book chronicles a modern-day mega-criminal – his tools a combination of subterfuge, fraud, intimidation, intelligence, intuition, craftiness, daring, murder, mayhem, greed and computer programming expertise. Evan Ratliff spans the entire globe for over a decade in time in the pursuit of THE MASTERMIND, his global empire and the billions he accumulated.

In one outstanding respect, this has become an example of BUSINESS AS ...more

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Mar 09, 2019 Nick Black rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: some-of-that-funky-stuff, read-on-kindle, i-heart-war, libertarian-paradise

for fifteen years or so, since selling my first startup, i've dreamed of moving into the criminal cartel space, building one up around me and some trusted rogue engineer associates, with the eventual goal of turning warlord in some ungoverned territory and building out a libertarian paradise. turns out someone already did most of that, and did a pretty decent job, too.

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Feb 23, 2019 Angela H. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, audible

The book is about LaRoux, a mastermind behind multiple illegal smuggling! He's a genius in maintaining an empire of crimes through manipulation of the laws within the countries he operated. He manages stay hidden yet present in his empire and instill fear as a quiet, merciless leader.

Read the book to find out more about his illegal empire.

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Feb 19, 2019 Niklas Laninge rated it it was amazing

A top notch story which Ratliff has taken really good care of. True crime doesn’t get any better than this.

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Feb 21, 2019 Myles rated it liked it

Shelves: crime, true-crime

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In Evan Ratliff’s absorbing account of Paul Le Roux’s criminal empire, I am reminded of another criminal trial that is presently wrapping up, and a couple of trials that ought to be but are unlikely ever to take place.

Joaquim “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, head of a deadly Sinaloa Mexican drug cartel sits in a Manhattan prison awaiting sentencing for murder, money laundering, drug trafficking, racketeering, and organized crime.

Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, may never stand trial for ...more

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Jun 15, 2019 Karin rated it it was amazing

This is a wild ride uncovering a global drug and arms ring that also hits the online pharmaceutical industry. The amount of reporting, on a subject straight up filled with unreliable narrators, is astounding. Really fascinating what goes on in our world.

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Mar 08, 2019 Amar Pai rated it really liked it

Crazy story! Who knew that the guy who wrote TrueCrypt would be a shadowy criminal mastermind. Well, sort of a mastermind. Real masterminds don't get caught

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Feb 25, 2019 Kenneth rated it liked it

This was decent brain candy non-fiction. A rollicking adventure tale but, as thoroughly reported as it is, it seems to me to be that there is still more to the tale and it doesn't quite live up to its billing.

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Mar 19, 2019 Matt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mystery, giveaways, non-fiction, spy

Evan Ratliff has delivered an almost unbelievable account of a sociopathic software engineer who gradually slips through the veil into a shadow world of drugs, mercenaries, and contract killings, eventually becoming a global kingpin able to sponsor coups, buy off politicians and law enforcement, and ship arms, drugs, gold, and diamonds around the world, unfettered. If Mastermind were not such an impressive display of in-depth journalistic talent, it would make an incredible spy-thriller novel. ...more

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Jan 31, 2019 Melody (OhTheBooksSheWillRead) Hawkins rated it really liked it

The Mastermind by Evan Ratliff is a non-fiction true crime book that focuses on the rise of Paul Calder Le Roux. Le Roux was a drug lord of international consequence. He was unique in that he was a techie, his specialty being encrypting software to enable the purchase of legal pharmaceuticals over the internet.

This story concerns a criminal organization that conducted business on six continents and involved thousands of people. Amongst the various international crimes involved, are acts of ...more

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Jan 02, 2019 Victoria rated it really liked it

Shelves: netgalley

Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this upcoming true crime work. I requested it because I knew I had read something about the main character (the Mastermind) but I couldn’t remember where or when. After finishing the book, I determined from the author’s notes that it was long form articles by the same author that I had read in The Atavist. This book expands on those articles about an international criminal and possibly genius and was a great read. I applaud Mr. ...more

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Nov 13, 2018 Simonne Lambert rated it really liked it

Thanks to Random House via NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
It’s hard to believe this is not fiction. The story of Paul LeRoux is just so incredible. One can only wonder what may have happened had he put his considerable talents and smarts to something legitimate. Evan Ratliff spent four years researching this book and it certainly shows in the details he gives us. And I wasn’t bogged down by these details - I found them fascinating. The book is as good as any mystery ...more

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Aug 16, 2019 Val rated it liked it

The real life Paul Le Roux was every bit as cruel, calculating, greedy, murderous, and despicable as any international criminal syndicate head you’ve ever imagined or seen in movies or read about in fiction. This book takes you into his world, into his very conversations, which gives you a chance to see the type of criminals US federal law enforcement and its international partners are up against on a daily basis. You could read this book and assume, ok, but that’s as bad as it gets. Paul Le The real life Paul Le Roux was every bit as cruel, calculating, greedy, murderous, and despicable as any international criminal syndicate head you’ve ever imagined or seen in movies or read about in fiction. This book takes you into his world, into his very conversations, which gives you a chance to see the type of criminals US federal law enforcement and its international partners are up against on a daily basis. You could read this book and assume, ok, but that’s as bad as it gets. Paul Le Roux was really evil, but he’s the worst. You would be wrong. Le Roux was just one of countless enterprising and ruthless crime syndicate bosses out there, and as evil as he was, there are worse out there. That doesn’t minimize any of the heinous crimes Le Roux committed, all to make more and more money, but it is something to keep in mind as you read, realizing this guy was horrible, but he was only one of a species that is still propagating.

The strength of this book is how much of it is told in Le Roux’s own words, from recorded conversations, e-mails, and witness accounts (from the members of his organization he didn’t have killed). If you like to get a feel for a criminal’s mind through his own words, you will like this book. However, this strength of the book is also its weakness. Le Roux is depraved, callous about ordering people’s assassinations, requesting and receiving reports of hits carried out the way we would ask a family member if they remembered to bring back tortilla chips from the store. The descriptions of murders can be detailed and gruesome, but in addition, Le Roux’s language is so over-the-top with the F-word and other vulgarities that the entire book is just not a good reading experience. Yes, criminals use harsh language, and I didn’t expect it to be censored and absent any vulgarities, but Le Roux and his associates, and his competitors, all come from the school of fake masculine bravado where the more you say the F-word the tougher and more feared you think you will be, so be prepared... there are pages in this book with 25+ f-words in normal quoted conversation. They use it like we use the word “the”, and although it makes the conversations realistic, it is something that will bother some readers, so go into it knowing it’s there. I thought the author, who is a good journalistic writer, could have summarized a lot of these conversations with his own prose and it would have told the story of the criminal syndicate more fluidly and with some elegance, but the author chose to give us Le Roux’s verbatim words, which really won’t make you despise him any more of less than if told in the author’s words. Le Roux’s deeds destroyed thousands of lives worldwide, and they speak for themselves.

It turned out this book was more informative for me because of other books I’ve been reading this year, particularly about Africa and the colonial exploitation and dictators that also played a role in Le Roux’s criminal syndicate. Money really can buy anything in this world, as this book makes clear. Everyone has a price, and the more impoverished a nation is, the more likely it will be open to infusions of cash into a leader’s bank account. Guns, diamonds, drugs, all of these were flowing through Le Roux’s syndicate, including African nations where labor was cheap (or enslaved), and I keep using that word ‘syndicate’ because that’s the way it is referenced in the book and court documents for the prosecutions that came many years later. Just like in Mission Impossible, except this Syndicate was real. Such groups are more common and in greater number than most people know. The international bankers who facilitate criminal enterprises like Le Roux’s also play a key role in helping murder and mayhem spread unchecked. Crime goes where the money flows.

My bottom line rating for the book was 3 stars - it gives you a clear picture of an international criminal syndicate with its own teams of assassins, one team to assassinate assassins who don’t go through with assassinations they were hired to perform. It’s a fascinating, though grisly, topic, starting the book with the murder of a real estate agent and working backward from there to tell the story of Le Roux’s rise to infamy. However, for me personally, the sheer number and predominance of verbal vulgarities detracted from the reading experience. It was bad enough that Le Roux and his associates couldn’t go two words without a vulgarity when quoted, but then the author himself inserted his own vulgarities into his narration when NOT quoting people. He would write things like , “After this ‘F-up’, he knew....”. I’m sure the author knows several synonyms for “f-up” but goes to the lowest common denominator and just lazily uses vulgarities when he doesn’t have to. That aspect was disappointing in an otherwise intriguing book. However, it took a ton of courage to be an investigative reporter trying to write about the syndicate and the DEA’s excellent and dangerous investigation to root out Le Roux, and it is good that people can read books like this to understand the depths of depravity people will go to satisfy their greed for money and power. High marks for bravery, but I wish Ratliff had written more of the book like a long expose in his own prose. Accordingly, I rated it three stars right down the middle, not loving it, but not hating it either. ...more

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May 27, 2019 Anthoferjea rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, journalism

The last time I read a work of longform journalism that better expressed the soulcrushing evil at the heart of global capitalism today it was John Seabrook's "The Song Machine." His tale of how the music industry has algorithmitized our tastes mostly involved an alliance between Swedish songwriters and record executives in L.A. and New York. Ratliff's story nearly avoids all of western and northern Europe but snatches parts of every other continent in its omnivorous tour of the alliance between The last time I read a work of longform journalism that better expressed the soulcrushing evil at the heart of global capitalism today it was John Seabrook's "The Song Machine." His tale of how the music industry has algorithmitized our tastes mostly involved an alliance between Swedish songwriters and record executives in L.A. and New York. Ratliff's story nearly avoids all of western and northern Europe but snatches parts of every other continent in its omnivorous tour of the alliance between global capital flows, multinational companies, stateless nations ripe for takeover and control, the overwhelming force of the pain of U.S. citizens, and the inevitable way that U.S. legal institutions fail to bring justice to the evilest parts of this system in their desire to fight drugs and terrorism rather than the crushing force of global capitalism.

It's very good and once you start reading it you will probably dissolve into a multi-day fever to finish it. As you do, consider the way that the vast resources of our justice system has failed to stop or even control money laundering and the opioid crisis to any degree. Consider how Paul Le Roux is a product of a coder culture predicated on blank irony (his all caps HITLER password), privacy, and a sadistic attitude towards women. Consider how, as Ratliff points out, the killing of foreign nationals on foreign soil by U.S. citizens is not a crime unless the killing was planned in the U.S. Consider how Le Roux's internet prescription opioid business in the U.S. was found to be entirely legal. Finally consider how Le Roux's ultimate plan once the federal government releases him is to open another call center.

Le Roux is a product of failed global capitalism, funded by U.S. citizens and then supported by the U.S. government in its search for terrorists and drug traffickers. Given his own galaxy-brain level of detail and intelligence, I am surprised that Ratliff never mentioned the brutal colonization of the Philippines by either the Spanish, U.S., or the Japanese as he relayed the way that LeRoux owned the justice system and systematically attempted to impregnate Filipino women. His two page description of Knaussen playing his Somali mercenaries "Black Hawk Down" in order to gain their trust and admiration was pitch perfect, and his description of the way that Duterte is both a symptom and a mirror of Le Roux's actions in the country, as well as his source's belief that Le Roux would have thrived under Duterte, offer yet another view into a kind of neo-imperial rule of the Philippines. Every human being loses when sociopath coders run our economic system and neoliberals and fascists fall over themselves in our political system to give them as much power and control as possible. However, some people lose even more, especially the people who have been losing and losing under industrialization and global trade for the past 200 years. Ratliff could have made this connection, but he did such a great job with all of the other dots, and created such an intricately layered combination of first-person reportage, exhaustive archival research and zoomed-out, small reflections on the connections between our current economy and the hunt for Le Roux that I can't fault him on it.

...more

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Apr 03, 2019 Marcia Meakim rated it liked it

A deeply disturbing picture of the evil one man can perpetrate and the power he held over those who were lured into his sordid plans. While I found it difficult to read and keep the myriad of players straight, my utmost respect to the two DEA agents who persevered, and investigated him endlessly, only to have him snatched from their grasp at the end with nary a thank you for their persistence and diligence.
It read like a James Bond book, each incident more bizarre than the preceding one. The ...more

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Apr 09, 2019 Simone rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooks, 2019-read

What a ride. There's a lot of craziness here, but this is mostly a beat-by-beat account of the tracking and evolution of a criminal empire. I wish there had been connections between the piracy and the pill mill to our current opioid crisis, and I think the book suffers for being unable to get close to Paul La Roux (through no fault of the authors).

I think this suffered to me because of how much I liked Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, and if you need a what-the-fuck true ...more

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May 17, 2019 Leslie rated it liked it

I guess I don’t pay enough attention to current events or the man this book is about is the greatest criminal mastermind that I’ve never heard of. At times his criminal empire seems vast and menacing and at other times bumbling and mundane. Maybe that’s its true horror that this kind of malevolence exists just beyond the veneers of polite society taking advantage of chaos to create a criminal empires. It seems sad that Paul Le Roux isn’t going to fully pay for his crimes and it seems likely he’ ...more

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May 13, 2019 Jennie rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019, 2019-published, genre-crime, audioreads, genre-nonfiction, really-3-and-a-half-stars, romance-less-books, library

3.5 stars. Ratliff does some impressive reporting here about Paul Le Roux, a criminal mastermind raking in millions of dollars first by online drug sales, then by expanding into more traditional lines of criminality. This is a pretty wild story, I just wanted more out of the telling, more finesse to how the story was presented. As is, it's pretty blow by blow, dry in parts and compelling in others. I wish I had read this in print, the narration was a little uninspiring. The government's failure ...more

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Aug 24, 2019 Ryan Lackey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Paul Le Roux is almost a comic book villain. When I only knew of his grey market online pharmacy and money laundering operations, development of crypto software, possibly being Satoshi, and similar things, I thought he was somewhat admirable. Turns out he was also a fairly ruthless international murderer and generally an asshole, too, and a snitch. But still, he is a pretty complicated crime lord, and the organization he created (and then helped DEA disassemble) was very interesting to learn ...more

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Mar 14, 2019 Armand Rosamilia rated it it was amazing

If you picked this book up without knowing it was nonfiction, you'd think it was an international crime thriller with so many over the top villains as to be unbelievable. Yet... this is a real story about a criminal mastermind who couldn't stop, and all the people who gravitated toward him.

A fascinating read!

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About Evan Ratliff

Evan Ratliff

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Evan Ratliff is the editor of The Atavist magazine. His writing has appeared in Wired, where he is a contributing editor; The New Yorker; National Geographic; and other publications. He is also the story editor of Pop-Up Magazine, a live event.