One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords and a major operator in the Medellin cocaine cartel has been released from a US prison and is set to be deported back home.
The United States Bureau of Prisons released Fabio Ochoa Vásquez on Tuesday after he had served 25 years of a 30-year sentence.
According to US officials, Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers made a fortune when cocaine began flooding the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to the point that Forbes Magazine named them billionaires in 1987. Living in Miami, Ochoa oversaw a distribution hub for Pablo Escobar’s cocaine organization.
Although he faded from memory as the drug trade shifted from Colombia to Mexico, he resurfaced in the hit Netflix series “Narcos” as the youngest son of an elite Medellin family into ranching and horse breeding, in stark contrast to Escobar, who came from more humble beginnings.
According to the US Justice Department, Ochoa, also known as “Julio” and “Pepe,” was first indicted in the US for his alleged role in the 1986 murder of Drug Enforcement Administration informant Barry Seal, whose life was popularized in the 2017 film “American Made” starring Tom Cruise.
In 1990, a government initiative that promised not to extradite cocaine kingpins to the United States led to his capture in Colombia. The United States at the time listed him as one of the “Dozen Most Wanted” Colombian drug lords.
In 2001, a Miami indictment accusing Ochoa and over 40 others of a cocaine smuggling conspiracy led to his capture and extradition to the United States. Of those, only Ochoa chose to go to trial, which resulted in his conviction and 30-year sentence.
To maintain their identity during the trial, jurors were ferried back and forth to court in vans with darkened windows, according to the BBC, and their identities were even kept hidden from prosecutors and defense lawyers.
The other defendants received substantially lesser prison sentences since the majority of them cooperated with the government.
The BBC reports that Ochoa displayed billboards in Medellin and Bogota in 1999, proclaiming, “Yesterday I made a mistake.” Today, I am innocent.”
According to Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant US attorney who served on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s unlawful drug proceeds, and he anticipates Ochoa’s welcoming return home.
“He will not retire as a poor man,” Gregorie told The Associated Press.
However, after years of litigation, he unsuccessfully contended that his client deserved to be released early since his sentence was far too long for the amount of cocaine seized and attributed to Ochoa.
Colombia remains the world’s largest cocaine producer and exporter, primarily to the United States and Europe. Last year, the South American country broke new records for cocaine production and coca leaf cultivation.
Just last week, the Colombian Navy said that officials from dozens of countries had recovered over 225 metric tons of cocaine during a six-week mega-operation that discovered a new Pacific drug route.