One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords ia The key operator of the Medellín cartel has been deported again in the South American country, after serving 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence in the United States.
Soon after, Fabio Ochoa was a free man again.
Ochoa arrived at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport on Monday on a deportation flight, wearing a gray sweatshirt and carrying his personal belongings in a plastic bag. After exiting the plane, the former cartel boss was greeted by immigration officials wearing bulletproof vests. There was no police at the scene to arrest him.
Fernando Vergara / AP
Colombia’s national immigration agency quickly released a brief statement on social media platform X, saying Ochoa was “released so he could join his family” after immigration officials took his fingerprints and confirmed through a database that he was not wanted by the Colombian authorities.
Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine began flooding the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to U.S. authorities, to the point that in 1987 they were included in Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires.
Living in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel he once led Paul Escobar. Escobar died in a shootout with authorities in Medellín in 1993.
Colombian Immigration via AP
Ochoa was first indicted in the United States for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Barry Seal, an American pilot who flew cocaine for the Medellin cartel but became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Along with his two older brothers, Juan David and Jorge Luis, Ochoa surrendered to Colombian authorities in the early 1990s under a deal in which they avoided extradition to the United States.
The three brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again three years later on drug charges and extradited to the United States in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami that named him and more than 40 persons as part of a drug trafficking conspiracy. .
He was the only suspect in that group to choose to go to trial, which resulted in his conviction and a 30-year sentence. The other defendants received much lighter prison terms because most cooperated with the government.
Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade.
Fernando Vergara / AP
But the former Medellín cartel member was recently featured in the Netflix series Griselda, where he first battles businesswoman Griselda Blanco for control of Miami’s cocaine market and then forms an alliance with the drug lord, played by Sofia Vergara.
Ochoa is also represented in the Netflix series Narcosas the youngest son of an elite family in Medellin that is dedicated to livestock and horse breeding and cuts a strong contrast with Escobar, who came from humbler roots.
Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant U.S. attorney who was part of the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and who expects the former mob boss to return home.
“He’s not going to retire poor, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told The Associated Press earlier this month.