In the 1980's a woman named Lori Arnold became America's first female drug kingpin. She married a biker gang president and started out just slinging a little of the gang's meth around her hometown of Ottumwa Iowa. Despite being a high school drop out with no real business experience it turned out Lori was kind of a genius at setting up and running a meth empire that Gustavo Fring would be proud of. She needed supply which came from California, so she bought cars and hired drivers to constantly bring in meth by the trunk load. That wasn't enough, so she invested in a string of over a dozen car dealerships so she'd always have a steady supply of cars, drivers and dealer plates to make the drug runs from California to Iowa. As her business grew she expanded across the entire midwest and used horses as her cover like Gus used chicken. She bought a horse farm to breed and train thoroughbreds and used that as her product transportation hub. She housed her workers on her farm and she convinced her cartel contacts to loan her a cook to teach her own people to manufacture meth and she set up her own lab on her horse farm. She was manufacturing hundreds of pounds a week and even that wasn't enough, so she kept her car fleet bringing in more and more meth from California. And like Gus, she hid in plain site, friend and booster to the police, do-gooder, champion of the community while running a huge drug empire under their nose. Of course she was eventually caught and served a couple of long prison sentences, but not before making so many millions that she couldn't count it all and almost single-handedly creating the meth epidemic in the USA.
What's especially impressive is that she was a teenager the first time she tried meth and started selling her hubbies biker meth. She quickly ditched him and the gang and did almost everything herself and was so successful at it that it all happened REALLY fast. From slinging free samples and selling $10 bags to buying her own car dealerships to owning 14 houses to buying her own planes and a 170 acre horse ranch for distribution in less than five years. Truly the very definition of a drug kingpin and the self-made millionaire American dream.
Now the kicker. Ever hear of Lori Arnold before today? Probably not. But I bet you have heard of her big brother. Lori is the little sister of actor and comedian Tom Arnold, co-star of True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and best known as the former husband of Roseanne Barr.