Legendary Cartel Drug Lord Fabio Ochoa Vasquez Freed From US Jail, Colombia Deported

One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords and A A key operator of the Medellin cartel has been deported. in the South American country, after serving 25 years of a 30-year sentence in the United States.

After a while, Fabio Ochoa was a free man again.

Ochoa arrived at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport on a deportation flight on Monday, wearing a gray sweatshirt and carrying his personal belongings in a plastic bag. After exiting the plane, the former cartel boss was met by immigration officials in a bulletproof vest. No police was present to take him into custody.

Colombia’s national immigration agency immediately posted a brief statement on social media platform X, saying Ocho was “released to join his family” after immigration officials fingerprinted him. and confirmed through the database that he was not wanted by the Colombian authorities.

Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers made their fortunes when cocaine began to flood the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to U.S. officials, making them one of Forbes magazine’s billionaires in 1987. Added to the list.

While in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel he once headed. Pablo Escobar. Escobar died in 1993 in a shootout with authorities in Medellín.

Ochoa was first indicted in the United States for his alleged role in the 1986 murder of Barry Sale, an American pilot who flew cocaine flights for the Medellin cartel but turned informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration. had gone

Along with his two older brothers, Juan David and Jorge Luis, Ochoa surrendered to Colombian authorities in the early 1990s under a deal that avoided extradition to the United States.

The three brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ocho was arrested three years later on drug-trafficking charges and in 2001 he and more than 40 others were indicted in a drug-trafficking conspiracy in Miami. was extradited to the United States in response to charges of .

He was the only suspect in the group who chose to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and 30-year sentence. The other defendants received much lighter prison sentences because most of them cooperated with the government.

Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory after Mexican drug traffickers became central to the global drug trade.

But the former Medellin cartel member was recently featured in the Netflix series Griselda, where he first battles successful businesswoman Griselda Blanco for control of Miami’s cocaine market and then teams up with a drug trafficker. Whose role was played by Sofia Vergara.

Also shown in Ochoa The Netflix series Narcosas the youngest son of an aristocratic Medellín family engaged in farming and horse breeding, contrasts sharply with Escobar, who came from more humble roots.

Richard Gregory, 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 illegal drug proceeds and expected more. The ex-mafia boss will be welcomed back home.

“He’s not going to retire a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregory told The Associated Press earlier this month.