In a clip from the September/October Fraud Magazine interview with retired U.S. DEA special agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña, the former agents talk about the work they did in Colombia investigating notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Peña spent three harrowing years in Colombia tracking Escobor before Murphy joined him for 18 more months that would later become the inspiration behind Netflix's hit show, "Narcos."

Below is an excerpt from the full transcript, where Murphy and Peña discuss some behind-the-scenes details of Escobar’s custom-made prison, as well as the character flaw that eventually brought about the downfall of Pablo Escobar. Download the full transcript in PDF form or listen to the episode at the bottom of this post.

Emily: Yeah, it sounds like it. You said that three days later, he surrendered himself. What was the plan then for the two of you?

Javier: When he surrendered, and obviously, we did not like that. We were very much against it. The conditions he surrendered to, it was out of a movie.

Emily: It was good basis for a TV show. [laughs]

Javier: I know and we never thought of it. You know what? Back then, somebody mentioned, “Hey, one of these days someone is going to do a movie about this.”

I said, “Who would want to know about Pablo Escobar?”

Boy, was I wrong, right?

Anyway, so when he surrendered, it was basically nobody could go into the prison. No visitors, no checks. There was no control. Took his sicarios with him. He negotiated a five-year prison sentence. The main thing, like I said, was that prison was off-limits, and it was by the government of Colombia. Nobody could go close. Nobody could go check on it, so it was like, “What’s going on?” We knew that he was going to continue his trafficking activities.

Basically, that period, I think was about a little over a year, we were just monitoring. We started working other cases obviously. That’s where Steve and I hooked up. There was a lot of other drug investigations in Colombia. Pablo was not in our sights. He surrendered. I said everybody was disappointed, was mad, and obviously, you got to be mad, all the people he killed. He killed some good friends of ours, other innocent people, but it was part of the plea agreement. Columbia is their country. It’s not our country, so we couldn’t do anything about it, so we worked other cases, obviously, for a little over a year.

Then until, like he said, that fateful night that he escaped. Steve and I were there the following, the very next morning. We arrived at his prison, and it was something out of a movie material what we discovered inside the prison.

Emily: Why is that? What was it about it that made it so “special”?

Javier: Steve, you want to? Steve does a good job.

Steve: Yes. You know what? We’ve been in prisons all over the world with suspects and so forth. This was the farthest thing from a prison you’ve ever seen in your life. It was more of a country club.

When you got to the entrance, there were two sets of green steel bars to present the facade, the appearance that this was a prison, but once you got inside that second set of steel bars, it’s wide open. You got to the back perimeter of the prison up where the outer perimeter fence is, there’s a hole in the fence so you can come and go as you please. Pablo was building a series of cabanas and chalets on the hillside behind the prison.

He was throwing parties up there. He had plans for the place after his five years in prison. It just confirmed everything that we suspected, that it’s a country club. The guy had a two-room suite for his prison cell. It had — you’ve seen the pictures I believe — a microwave oven, refrigerator, freezer. He had a king-sized bed. He had a fireplace in his bedroom. He had a Jacuzzi tub in his private bathroom.

Now, all the prisons I’ve been in, what they have are called group showers.

Emily: Yeah. [laughs]

Steve: It was just a real, real joke, what was going on up there.

Emily: So then why do you think he decided to escape?

Javier: Well, it wasn’t that he…he decided at the last minute. He was there and he had already done like one year, so he’s got four more years to go, right? Like Steve said, he had chalets, apartment built into the sides mountains, camouflaged. You know what, when you ask the question, “What decided for him to escape?” You know, it was, you know what, basically his ego. That’s probably what it was, that super, super ego that he had. The real story is he thought a couple of his lieutenants were stealing money from him, which was not true, so he called them into the prison, and they were his two favorite lieutenants, and these guys were loved by their underling traffickers.

In the drug world, they were good bosses. They love their bosses. However, the Pablo sicarios in Medellín at an old site found some money, it was about 10 million. The money had deteriorated, so they take it to Pablo, and the sicarios do not like the two lieutenants because it’s jealousy. They say, “Hey, boss.” They sort of egg him on. They say, “Hey boss, look what your two favorite lieutenants have been holding on you.” And they throw the money in front of him deteriorated in public property. In that instance, Pablo, where he calls those two guys into a meeting, and they had their own security, but Pablo made a point. “Tell them it’s a friendly, friendly meeting, no security. I just want to talk to them and see what’s going on.”

They come in thinking it’s, you know, and all of a sudden, they see the money and Pablo just goes ballistic. They try to explain to Pablo. The real story is they forgot they buried it, so Pablo just cannot hold it back.

He goes insane, he goes ballistic. What I’ve heard from people inside, Pablo himself killed one of them. One of his best friends himself, clubbed him. Sicarios killed the other guy. That information goes back to the government of Colombia, and then they decide, “All right, we’re going move him.” They kept the plan kind of quiet. They kept it real quiet. They surprised Pablo when they went to the prison and says, “Mr. Escobar, we have to move you.”

Pablo says, “What do you mean you got to move me? Part of my contract with the government or the president is that I’m staying here,”

And they said, “No, the president has changed his mind.”

And that’s when it all went to you know what. Pablo’s trying to call the president in Bogotá who’s not answering the phone. The military guys, it was only about 20, they said. Why 20 guys? Why didn’t they send the police? The police would have taken care of this.

Anyway, there’s a firefight and Pablo walks out of that door, opens the door, takes about seven, I think, eight sicarios, and he had some money. He took it with him and off he goes, like I said, into the night trying to reorganize.

Like I said, we get the information, we get the news, we know what’s going on, so the very next morning… In fact, the government of Columbia asked for us to go there in person. I’m glad we did because, by going there in person, firsthand, we saw the evidence firsthand. We saw a lot of what he didn’t have time to carry with him. He left behind, so it was good for us that we were actually there.