College football quarterback to drug kingpin isn’t exactly a typical career path, but that’s exactly what Owen Hanson did. Hanson’s outrageous, larger-than-life story is the subject of Prime Video’s new docuseries, Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel. Told by an assortment of talking heads, including various reporters, police officers, and the friends and family of Hanson, the series also includes contributions from Hanson himself from Englewood Federal Prison. This is the wild true story of how Owen Hanson went from backup quarterback to a leader in the drug-smuggling scene.
Hanson grew up in Redondo Beach, Calif. He developed a passion for volleyball, and his success in the sport led to various offers from universities, including the University of Southern California in the early 2000s. Unable to land a starting spot on the team, Hanson turned to drugs to get ahead, smuggling in steroids from Tijuana to gain a physical advantage. His ambitions were great, and he tried out for the USC football team in 2004. His tryout was so impressive that he made the team—the only person who tried out, rather than having been recruited, to sneak onto the roster.
Though Hanson didn’t wind up playing much, he served as the backup quarterback when they won the National Championship game against Oklahoma in 2005. Hanson garnered a reputation as a great team player, an all-around hustler, and someone with valuable connections to illicit drugs that would help players through pain. When his college career ended, he was back living with his father in Redondo Beach, but still striving for something greater. His ambition to become a real estate agent was crushed by the 2008 recession, so he started a sports betting operation. Working with powerful clients, the docuseries outlines how Hanson was recruited by the dangerous Mexican drug cartel Sinaloa, as his networking skills and people knowledge were of great value to them. As someone with a self-described hustler mentality, Hanson leapt at the opportunity to make money and have power beyond his wildest dreams. He soon found himself in Australia on behalf of the cartel, exchanging huge sums of cocaine for huge cash payouts.
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Because of Australia’s remote location, drug prices are exceptionally high, and the strict border authorities mean that taking large sums of cash out of the country is a considerable challenge. Hanson had millions upon millions of dollars of cartel money in his Australian apartment, filling his cabinets and even his dishwasher, which he needed to launder. To start moving the money, he took advantage of the popular Australian craze of the Ugg boot, buying the shoes and placing four gold bullions (worth $1600 each) into the soles of the Uggs, shipping them back to the US. Hanson estimates he was laundering $100,000 to 150,000 a day. But with millions coming in daily, he was in desperate need to get the money laundered a whole lot faster.
Through his deep well of contacts, Hanson received a tip that a man known as Robert Cipriani, a.k.a. Robin Hood 702, would be the perfect person to help solve his problem. Cipriani was a notorious high roller, known for winning huge amounts of money from casinos in Las Vegas (702 is the Vegas area code), giving it back to the poor. In 2011, Hanson reached out to Cipriani under the alias Junior DeLuca, offering him the money to gamble in Australia, so he would then be issued a cheque to cash at a sister casino in Vegas, getting the money into the United States. According to Hanson, Cipriani was happy to participate for a fee, and successfully laundered $1.5 million in just 48 hours—though in Cocaine Quarterback, Cipriani completely denies the money laundering allegations. In the documentary, Cipriani says that when he returned to Australia to work with Hanson again, this time for $2.5 million, he became suspicious of Hanson and wanted to back out, but Hanson threatened him and forced him to work with him—which Hanson denies in Cocaine Quarterback. While their testimonies conflict, what did happen is that Cipriani lost all $2.5 million at the casino.
Under threat from Hanson and his associate Sean Carolan after losing the money, Cipriani tried to take them down. “I go after people in a very artful way,” Cipriani says in the docuseries. Cipriani was set to meet Hanson and Carolan at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, but he placed a call to the hotel, telling management that someone in room 3206 had a gun. The police came to investigate and found Carolan in that room, holding a suitcase with over $700,000 in cash. Carolan was brought into the New South Wales Police Department and told the authorities the cash belonged to DeLuca. They were beginning to piece things together, but didn’t have enough evidence to place Hanson in jail. Hanson, meanwhile, began to come after Cipriani for his $2.5 million.
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Danno Hanks, a private investigator, and bounty hunter Jack “Animal” Rissell, both of whom appear in the docuseries, were hired by Hanson to pursue Cipriani. They found Cipriani’s home, and Hanson had pizza and a bouquet delivered to the house to mess with him. Cipriani’s breaking point came Hanson had Hanks deface Cipriani’s mother’s grave. He also had Hanks Photoshop Hanson into an image of the defaced gravestone, holding a shovel, so it looked as if Hanson did the defacing himself.
The New South Wales Police had a breakthrough when they discovered that Junior DeLuca was the alias of Owen Hanson. Suffering immense stress under his debt owed to cartel boss El Jefe, Hanson agreed to speak to the Australian police, hoping to get back the $700,000 that they previously seized. This backfired badly; not only did Hanson not get the money, but he was further scrutinized by the police, who were aware of his connection to Cipriani. Hanson communicated via phone as he was no longer in Australia, but it was clear that returning to the country was no longer an option, as he’d be arrested the moment he landed.
The doc asserts that after meeting El Jefe in Tijuana, Hanson had to work in the U.S. for the cartel, and every penny he earned would go straight towards clearing his multi-million dollar debt. He assembled a team to help his drug-smuggling operation, including his best friend Giovanni “Tank” Brandolino. Hanson’s operation to clear his debt was successful. He had the opportunity to move on from smuggling unscathed, but the pull of earning upwards of a million dollars a day proved too powerful to resist, and Hanson went deeper and deeper into the world of drug smuggling.
It had to end somewhere: On Sept. 9, 2015, Hanson was arrested for drug trafficking by the FBI as part of a joint investigation with the IRS and the New South Wales Police. Cipriani was also working with the FBI to assist in Hanson’s arrest. His empire had come crashing down, and over 20 men who worked with Hanson were also charged, including Brandolino. In late 2017, Hanson was given a 21-year sentence, which was massively reduced as he gave information to Australian police that led to the arrest of Australian attorney Michael Croke for perverting the course of justice, who Cocaine Quarterback compared to Better Call Saul’s Jimmy McGill (Bob Oderkirk). In March 2024, after nine years in prison, he was transferred to a halfway house before his release in June 2025. He remains under supervised parole.
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