Fabio Enrique Ochoa-Vasco helped transport over 5 tons of Columbian cocaine into the United States, beginning in the 1970’s. Ochoa was sentenced last week to 17 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to smuggle 5 tons of cocaine between 1978 and his surrender in January 2009.
It could have been worse. Prosecutors agreed to a reduction in the federal sentencing guidelines because Ochoa has cooperated with authorities, although they refused to go any lower.
“He’s in the upper echelon of the world’s cocaine traffickers,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Perry said.
Ochoa previously agreed to relinquish $15 million in assets to the government – including property in Miami, Mexico and Venezuela, as well as the contract of a professional soccer player. Investigators said Ochoa had headed a Medellin-based organization since 1986; a group they claim smuggled 6 to 8 tons of cocaine monthly from Colombia to the United States by cargo ship, speedboat, and airplane through Jamaica, Honduras, Belize and Mexico.
Ochoa pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy – two Miami cases from 1989 and 1990, and a Tampa case brought in 2004.
He apologized to the court and to his relatives, who filled the first two rows of the courtroom, including his wife, two children, mother, three brothers and two sisters.
“My life is full of mistakes,” he said. “I knew the only way to fix the problem was to surrender.”
Ochoa said he began negotiating his surrender in 1999. Defense attorney Roy Kahn said his client’s desire to stay with his family and his fear of a long prison sentence scuttled earlier surrender attempts. Ochoa was born in Colombia but raised in Miami. He fled in 1987, before the first of the federal cocaine indictments.
