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ABREGON: BROTHERS IN CRIME

Having my credit card and the money sent by my friends in Europe meant that I wasn't forced to get a job in the prison or become involved in negocios. However, Abregon's first proposal was too good to refuse – he would put up all the money and organise everything, while I simply had to find a reliable buyer in Europe who could be trusted to pay when the merchandise arrived. We would split the profit fifty-fifty. I could use the money to pay my lawyers, bribe the judges or save it for when I got out.

The deal came off. There were some small hitches and we had to pay a few people more than expected, but the deal went through and Abregon received our sixty thousand dollars. I asked for my share straight away. I paid five thousand dollars to my lawyers, and sent another ten thousand for the judge – making the total five thousand more than he had asked. My lawyers were now one hundred per cent confident I'd get off. It was only a matter of waiting a little while longer. But the trouble was where to keep the rest of the cash in the meantime. At any time the police could raid my room (particularly if anyone found out about the money) or I might be sent to Chonchocoro, the maximum-security prison, before my trial began. Abregon had legal bank accounts outside where he could safeguard the money for me. So, that's what I did with my remaining fifteen thousand. Abregon put some of his in the bank, but no one ever messed with him – not even the police – so he often kept a lot of money in his room for when he needed it on short notice.

Not long after that first deal, Abregon's brother-in-law suggested another scam, which was also very easy money: bringing stolen cars across the border from Chile and rebirthing them. Bolivia was a far poorer country than Chile, so the price you could get for stolen cars was a lot lower, but it was far easier and safer to get rid of them because the controls on secondhand car sales were almost non-existent. With a little help from the police, you could be the legal owner holding all the right papers. And how would anyone from another country ever trace a stolen car in a place like Bolivia?

It sounded too good to be true and I wondered why other people weren't doing it. The answer: capital. Abregon explained to me that lots of people knew about it, but not everyone could do it because you needed to put up a significant investment to buy the cars in the first place, which most people didn't have. However, once you had that