Mrugowsky occupied a position where scientific credentials and institutional authority gave lethal experiments an air of bureaucratic legitimacy. As chief of the Waffen-SS Hygiene Institute, he directed and oversaw medical procedures on concentration camp prisoners that had no therapeutic purpose, using human beings as test subjects under conditions they could not refuse. He was convicted at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial and executed in 1948.

As a co-founder of the Cali Cartel, he helped build an organization that at its peak controlled an estimated 80 percent of the cocaine reaching the United States and 90 percent of that entering Europe — a market share achieved less through open warfare than through systematic bribery and institutional corruption. The cartel's preference for suborning officials over confronting them directly allowed it to expand steadily while rivals drew the attention of authorities, and it was only after the collapse of the Medellín Cartel that Colombian police turned their focus to Cali. Even after his 1995 arrest, Rodríguez Orejuela continued trafficking from custody, a fact that ultimately secured his extradition to the United States and a 30-year federal sentence.