Medellin Cartel Drug Lord Released After 25 Years in US Prison

Miami: One of Colombia's infamous drug lords and a major figure in the Medellin cocaine cartel has been released from a U.S. prison and is set to be deported to Colombia.

According to records from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, Fabio Ochoa Vásquez was released on Tuesday after serving 25 years of his 30-year sentence.

Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers built a vast fortune as cocaine flooded the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with U.S. authorities stating that by 1987, they were listed in Forbes Magazine’s billionaires list. Residing in Miami, Ochoa operated a distribution center for the cocaine cartel once led by Pablo Escobar.

Although largely forgotten as the focus of the drug trade moved from Colombia to Mexico, Ochoa reappeared in the popular Netflix series “Narcos,” portrayed as the youngest son of a prestigious Medellin family involved in ranching and horse breeding. This starkly contrasted with Escobar, who came from modest beginnings.

Ochoa was initially indicted in the U.S. for his suspected involvement in the 1986 murder of Drug Enforcement Administration informant Barry Seal, whose story was brought to the big screen in the 2017 film “American Made” starring Tom Cruise.

He was initially arrested in 1990 in Colombia under a government program promising drug kingpins would not be extradited to the U.S. At the time, he was on the U.S. list of the “Dozen Most Wanted” Colombia drug lords.

Ochoa was arrested again and extradited to the U.S. in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and more than 40 people as part of a drug smuggling conspiracy. Of those, Ochoa was the only one who opted to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and the 30-year sentence. The other defendants got much lighter prison terms because most of them cooperated with the government.

Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant U.S. attorney who was on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that Ochoa will have a welcome return home.

“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told to the agency.

Richard Klugh, a Miami-based attorney for Ochoa, declined to comment.

But in years of litigation, he argued unsuccessfully that his client deserved to be released early because his sentence far exceeded what was appropriate for the amount of seized cocaine that authorities could attribute to Ochoa.

(with agency inputs)