YouTube / VH1 Stephanie Acevedo of "Cartel Crew" isn't hiding from her family’s dark past.
Stephanie Acevedo is a cast member on VH1’s series Cartel Crew. The show follows the lives of sons and daughters of notorious drug cartel members to witness how the kids will cope with their family legacy and move forward with their lives outside of the drug scene. Acevedo’s father was “one of the biggest drug smugglers in Miami history,” according to VH1. He was eventually arrested for cocaine trafficking and sent to federal prison, which upended Acevedo’s life and had a powerful effect on the young girl. When her father was arrested, she was only eight years old.
On the show, Acevedo is trying to piece her life back together and leave behind the cartel life while focusing on making a name for herself in the music industry. After seeing her family lose everything, she promised herself she’d do whatever it takes to be successful.
Acevedo was born on October 11, 1990, and is currently 28 years old. She is of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent but was born and raised in Miami, Fla. where her father became a notorious drug smuggler. He served six years in prison and years on probation. Led by her mother, Gloria, Acevedo’s family struggled financially when her father did his time. While she wishes her father didn’t have a history with the cartel lifestyle (due to the affect it had on her family), she refuses to let her father’s criminal history holds her back.
Acevedo started her career as a model and later segued into a singing career. Her dream came true when she was signed to Young Money in 2015. She worked with Lil Wayne on his song name “Crystal Ball” from the No Ceilings 2 mixtape that dropped November 26, 2015. She also showed her singing prowess in a video covering Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love.”
In a recent episode, fellow cast member Nicole Zavala suggested that Acevedo’s father may have gotten a reduced sentence because he snitched to the Feds. Stephanie, Marie, and Kat weren’t happy with Nicole’s words, finding her to be extremely disrespectful. All three of them suffered many hardships after losing a parent to the cartel business.
Just as Stephanie and Kat planned on taking Nicole to task for what she said about Stephanie’s father, Nicole apologized (thanks to her father’s suggestion), and Stephanie graciously accepted. Stephanie and Nicole’s amends didn’t sit well with Marie, however, which raised tensions between Stephanie and Marie (the girlfriend of Michael Corleone Blanco).
The official description for the episode airing January 28 reads, “Kat convinces her mom to take a trip to New York and uncovers secrets about her father’s last night. Stephanie pursues a new friendship with Nicole. Loz and Michael Blanco deal with the demons of their past.”
Blanco, the unofficial leader of this Crew told Newsweek, “People have to understand that these are human characters. [Our relatives] were cartel bosses and boss ladies, but they were still people with families. They would come home and have a meal with their families. They’d walk the dogs together with their family. That’s part of our culture too, the family essence of us Latin Americans,” Blanco said. Blanco says the show is not trying to glamorize the narcos lifestyle. He added: “There’s more to the culture than the bad people doing bad things. It’s not like someone woke up in the morning and was like ‘I’m gonna dedicate my life to selling drugs.’ At that time and in that era, people had no choice. They were farmers. They weren’t getting paid. People had to build some type of industry to feed their families.”