The Untold Truth Of Pablo Escobar's Son Sebastián Marroquín

When you picture the life of a billionaire's son, do you imagine fantastical mansions, sports cars, airplanes and gold-plated ice cream cones? Is every day a competition to make Richie Rich eat his pampered heart out? Looking back on his own billionaire boyhood, motivational speaker Sebastián Marroquín said his family "had every type of luxury you could imagine." Speaking with The Week in India, he recalled having hamburgers delivered via helicopter and a zoo which he likened to having "having your own Jurassic Park in your backyard." Yet there were days when he stayed in hideouts crammed with as much as $3 million in cash but didn't have enough food to eat.

Marroquín wasn't the child of a law-abiding billionaire. Born Juan Pablo Escobar, he was the son of cutthroat kingpin and Medellin cartel founder Pablo Escobar. Marroquín was just 16 when his infamous father perished in a hail of gunfire. The bereaved teen initially vowed to avenge his dad's death, per The Independent, but Pablo Escobar's enemies delivered an ultimatum to the fallen drug lord's family: either leave Colombia or leave the world entirely. So Marroquín, his sister Manuela, and their mother Maria Henao wisely retreated to Argentina to start anew.

In the decades following Pablo Escobar's diery demise, Sebastián Marroquín has tried to distance himself from his father's heinous legacy while embracing the fame that comes with it. According to Colombia Reports, he denied inheriting his father's mountain of blood money, walking away with nothing but "a watch and an undesirable surname." And he later relinquished the name. He made the film Sins of My Father in an attempt to atone for political assassinations Escobar committed.

The Latin Post reports that Marroquín wrote a bestseller, Pablo Escobar: My Father, in which he dedicated to Escobar: "To my father, who showed me the path that should not be taken." But whether he completely steered clear of that path is debatable. As the BBC details, in 1999, Marroquín and his mother were arrested for allegedly laundering money in Argentina. In 2018, they were arrested again, this time for possibly laundering money for a Colombian drug baron.