War Dogs: How Two Teenage Stoners Won a $300 Million Arms Deal

Presented By Warner Bros

We all know about the black market, but what about the gray market? You know, the place where war lords, gun runners and international arms dealers make quasi-legal—and super illegal—deals. Where upstanding governments from world-leading countries pay shady shell corporations to deliver munitions from once-Soviet lands to countries ending in "stan." And also, where two Miami teens with a wifi connection, a bunch of weed, and the biggest balls in North America became one of the Pentagon's most trusted arms dealers in the mid 2000's.

The true story of Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz brims with unbelievable-but-true anecdotes and unlikely characters—shell companies incorporated in Cyprus, U.S. government contracts worth hundreds of millions awarded for delivering knock-off munitions to rebel forces in far away countries, Albanian stockpiles of decades old AK-47 ammunition, and a government arms contract big enough to not only fuel an army, but literally create one. Now add in a couple of stoner teenagers, a part-time masseur, a millionaire Mormon gun manufacturer, a movie-star caliber Swiss arms dealer, and many, many more military contracts.

Each is enough to inspire a new Bond movie alone, but together, they form the craziest—and true—story of the notoriously nefarious Bush Administration era. And all it took was a $300 million government contract, a bit of greed, and a whole lot of bad luck for the otherwise unknown story to come crashing into the public eye in 2007.

So how exactly did two twenty-somethings became one the Pentagon's largest weapons suppliers in a matter of years, then blow it in a quarter of the time? Well, the story starts in Miami Beach with two long time friends—Efraim Diveroli, a 21-year-old gunrunner by blood, and 25-year-old part-time masseur David Packouz—looking to make a quick buck by any means necessary, and smoke a ton of weed while doing it.

To bring this story to life Todd Phillips (Hangover and Project X) is directing his next film called War Dogs which uncovers the absurdity of this story. This is the first project that Todd Phillips and Bradley Cooper produced together under their recently formed production company Joint Effort. See below on the trailer.