Drug Parolee’s Resume Wins Job in Sales

Bruce Perlowin, a convicted big-time drug smuggler who admitted his illegal expertise in an unusual resume, has landed a job.

The resume, which began with the headline: “Ex-Marijuana Kingpin Needs a Job,” helped Perlowin get a $25,000-a-year position as national sales manager for the Rainforest Products company in Mill Valley.

Perlowin said he will use the same entrepreneurial skills that helped him build what federal authorities called the West Coast’s biggest marijuana-smuggling ring to market nut and cashew cereals.

“I can sell like a madman--I’ve proved that before,” the 41-year-old parolee said Thursday. “But this time I’ll do it in a legal, socially responsible, contributing way.”

Perlowin wrote the unusual resume upon his release last month from nine years in federal prison, reasoning that, under the circumstances, filling out an ordinary job application would be “somewhat preposterous.”

The resume referred to Perlowin’s considerable management abilities, honed as he built and ran a smuggling empire that used a fleet of 90 boats and ships to haul 500,000 pounds of marijuana into California, with sales totaling half a billion dollars.

One of those who read the resume was Sat Santokh Singh Khalsa, a former manager of the Grateful Dead rock group who now heads Rainforest Products. “I think he’ll do a great job,” Khalsa said. “He’s shown that he’s imaginative and can work on a large scale while keeping track of details at the same time.”