A legendary Colombian drug lord and key operator of the Medellin cocaine cartel has been released from a US prison and is expected to be sent back home.
U.S. Bureau of Prisons records show Fabio Ochoa Vasquez was released Tuesday after serving 25 years of a 30-year sentence.
Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed fortunes as cocaine flooded the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to U.S. officials, and in 1987 they were included on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires. Living in Miami, Ochoa once ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel led by Pablo Escobar.
Though somewhat lost to memory when the center of the drug trade moved from Colombia to Mexico, he reappeared in the hit Netflix series “Narcos” as the youngest son of an aristocratic Medellin family into cattle ranching and horse breeding that cut sharp contrasts. With Escobar, who came from very humble roots.
Ochoa was first indicted in the U.S. for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Drug Enforcement Administration informant Barry Seal — whose life was popularized in the 2017 film “American Made” starring Tom Cruise.
He was initially arrested in Colombia in 1990 after promising that the drug kingpin would not be extradited to the U.S. At the time, he was on the U.S. list of Colombia’s “dozen most wanted” Colombian drug lords.
Ochoa was arrested again and extradited to the US in 2001 in response to an indictment naming him and more than 40 others as part of a drug-trafficking conspiracy in Miami. Of those, Ochoa was the only one who chose to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and 30-year sentence. Other defendants received much lighter prison sentences because many of them had cooperated with the government.
Richard Gregory, a retired Assistant U.S. A lawyer on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa said authorities were unable to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illegal drug proceeds, and he expects Ochoa to return home.
“He’s not going to retire a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregory told The Associated Press.
Richard Klug, a Miami-based attorney for Ochoa, declined to comment.
But during years of litigation, he argued unsuccessfully that his client deserved early release because his sentence was appropriate for the amount of cocaine seized that authorities could attribute to Ochoa.