DALLAS – The Colombian cocaine kingpins faced extradition to the U.S. on serious drug trafficking charges and a lifetime in federal prison. They were desperate, wealthy and needed excellent legal advice.
What they got were attorneys who scammed them out of millions of dollars with false promises of beating drug charges. The plots were uncovered, however, and the feds have now won convictions against three lawyers – one Texan and two Colombians — for their corrupt dealings and interference in Texas drug trafficking cases.
The latest, a Colombian lawyer, was sentenced Thursday in Plano to seven and a half years in federal prison.
Maritza Claudia Fernanda Lorza Ramirez, 49, was convicted in June of obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting after a weeklong trial in Plano. Because she’s been in custody since her 2019 arrest, she’ll have to serve about more three years, her lawyer said.
Prosecutors asked for nine years, saying it is important to stop the exploitation of international drug traffickers by greedy and corrupt lawyers. Such meddling, they argued, hurt drug investigations by convincing defendants not to cooperate.
“I only wanted to defend and to use the law of my country,” Lorza told U.S. District Judge Sean Jordan on Thursday through an interpreter. “I’m a human being, with a lot of flaws.”
The Colombian drug traffickers turned the tables on their former counsellors, testifying against them in writing and in court.
In a striking reversal of fortunes, Lorza will now spend as much prison time as some of the international drug traffickers she represented who were responsible for much of the cocaine smuggled into the U.S. over the past decade.
The Colombians got breaks for their cooperation on the lawyers’ cases and for giving up other South American drug traffickers. For the U.S. government, it was worth it. Prosecutors said they wanted to send a strong message by making an example out of the lawyers.
Federal prosecutors first high-profile victory was the bust of Austin lawyer Jamie Balagia, a quirky and flamboyant ex-cop who marketed himself as the “DWI Dude.”
Balagia, 65, who went to trial in 2019 in Sherman, is serving 15 years in prison. Prosecutors said he told his Colombian clients he could get cases thrown out using well-placed connections within the U.S. government. It was a lie.
Bibiana Correa Perea, a Colombian lawyer who helped him swindle the drug lords, is serving about five years in prison.
Lorza was charged in 2018, about a year after Balagia’s arrest. Her scheme originated with the historic peace agreement between the Colombian government and a leftist revolutionary group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC.
Under the December 2016 peace treaty, which ended more than 50 years of armed conflict, former FARC rebels were protected from extradition to the U.S. for crimes they committed prior to the agreement.
Lorza pitched her Colombian clients — all major cocaine producers and smugglers — that she could get them on the FARC list for a sizeable fee and thus stop their extradition, prosecutors said.
Jordan called it “troubling” that practicing lawyer would engage in such a scheme, which he termed a “duplicitous swindle.” And the judge said Lorza “made a mockery” of an important peace plan.
Her efforts began in 2016 and involved at least seven defendants charged in the Eastern District of Texas, along with others indicted in Florida. The scheme netted her more than $3 million, prosecutors said.
“She proposed that, in exchange for a large fee, she could get the defendants designated as FARC, even though they were not, to shield them from extradition,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather Rattan said in a filing.
The Colombians were helping U.S. authorities at the time with drug trafficking and money laundering investigations, the prosecutor said.
“However, once they thought they could be designated as FARC, the cooperation came to an abrupt halt,” Rattan said. “Lorza’s scheme thus had the effect of stymying ongoing investigations.”
Lorza was selling FARC memberships for up to $500,000, Rattan said. The Colombian lawyer approached “multiple large-scale drug traffickers” indicted in Texas and Florida.
“Not only did the defendants not cooperate, they used money that would have been forfeited to the United States to pay Lorza to execute the fraudulent scheme,” Rattan wrote in a court filing.
Lorza got at least one client onto the FARC list. But that victory was short-lived. In the end, all her clients were brought to the U.S. to face prosecution.
Lorza was arrested in Colombia in June 2019 and fought extradition to the U.S. She arrived in North Texas in September 2021 and remained in custody since then.
She argued that she was just being a good lawyer, trying to find a legal loophole to legitimately help her clients avoid extradition.
Her attorney, Alexei Schacht, told Jordan that Lorza’s clients, although not members of FARC, were nonetheless affiliated with the rebels because they had to pay them a tax to move drug loads through their territory.
“This case is simple,” Schacht said in court documents. “We argue that she was practicing law, if perhaps not that well.”
Schacht’s other argument, which he repeated on Thursday, was that his client’s behavior is “totally commonplace” in Colombia. Many other attorneys there tried to get clients onto the FARC list, but she was the only one charged with a crime, he told the judge.
“She thought it was like jaywalking and no one gets in trouble for it,” Schacht said.
Extradited to Texas
Courts in the Eastern District of Texas — in Plano and Sherman — have for about the past decade successfully prosecuted dozens of Colombian cocaine producers and smugglers who used Mexican cartels to get their product to the U.S.
Cases typically began with the interdiction of small, makeshift submarines, go-fast boats and other vessels laden with cocaine. The smugglers were plucked from international waters off South America and flown to rural North Texas for trial.
They told agents what they knew about the drug trafficking conspiracy, and it wasn’t long before their bosses were also indicted and brought to Texas.
Because the Colombian drug lords knew their product was destined for the U.S. — and Texas in particular — federal prosecutors here used “long-arm statutes” to win jurisdiction over their cases, which traditionally have wound up in South Florida federal courts.
The prosecutors’ aim was to disrupt a global supply chain that brings South American drugs to the Dallas area via boat, plane and Interstate 35.
More Colombian drug defendants were extradited to the Eastern District of Texas in 2018 than anywhere else in the U.S., officials have said.
But the pipeline of these cases from the jungles of Colombia to North Texas may soon dry up.
Colombia’s new leftist president is rethinking his country’s drug enforcement and extradition policies.
In addition to wanting to decriminalize cocaine, President Gustavo Petro, who took office in August, said he will renegotiate his extradition treaty with the U.S. Under his proposal, only those drug traffickers who refuse to cooperate with Colombian authorities will be sent to the U.S. for prosecution.
That could mean the loss of not only big international drug cases for North Texas but also millions of dollars in drug forfeitures, in which offenders’ ill-gotten assets are seized and awarded to the federal government.
The major Colombian cocaine producers caught in the middle are the big winners. They tried to game the system to avoid paying for their crimes and later lied to U.S. authorities about the extent of their assets, authorities said.
One is already out of prison for helping the U.S. government. Others will serve a handful of years — no more than about a dozen — after initially looking at three decades or more for supplying North America with huge quantities of cocaine grown in Colombia’s mountains and jungles.
Sweetheart deals
Of the Colombians involved in Lorza’s prosecution, Juan Carlos Melo Guerrero was given 17 years in prison, one of the highest sentences. But he will serve only about 13 years, according to Bureau of Prison records.
Guerrero, 42, supplied “multi-ton quantities of cocaine” and used boats and submarines to smuggle the drug, prosecutors said. He was a multi-millionaire who owned a professional sports stadium, cattle ranches and various businesses, according to authorities. His eventual cooperation, they said, led to the arrest of other drug traffickers.
Guerrero initially faced up to life in prison. As part of his plea deal, he forfeited to the U.S. government $1 million as well as real estate in Cali, Colombia.
“And thanks to the help of the U.S. Attorney and the agents, I’ve been able to pay for this, and I hope that…can be taken into consideration in my favor,” he told the sentencing judge in his case. “I’ve also surrendered all of the properties that I acquired.”
Ramiro Figueroa Legarda, 65, was a cocaine broker who coordinated multi-ton loads of cocaine, records show. He was sentenced to 14 years but will be released after about nine, according to court and prison records.
His cooperation, delayed for almost one year by Lorza’s efforts, led to the arrest of other drug traffickers, court records show.
Gerardo Enrique Obando Montano, 51, whose cooperation with U.S. officials also was delayed by Lorza, will end up serving about a dozen years in prison despite being, according to authorities, a “long-term Colombian narco-trafficker” with a prior drug trafficking conviction.
Intercepts of his phone conversations led to the 2015 capture of a vessel loaded with 600 kilograms of cocaine headed for Guatemala, prosecutors said. Lorza told Montano she had “contacts with a high-ranking FARC commander” who would vouch for him, court records show.
The government highlighted Montano’s case for the jury at Lorza’s trial.
A DEA agent, Guillermo Fuentes, testified that Montano was awaiting extradition inside a Colombian prison when he approached the DEA about wanting to cooperate. Ernest Gonzalez, a North Texas federal prosecutor, authorized Fuentes and another DEA agent to interview Montano at the notorious La Picota prison in Bogota.
Such meetings are routine for Colombian defendants indicted in U.S. courts and awaiting extradition. Prosecutors say it’s key to make contact early with cooperating defendants so their information is fresh and accurate.
“Stale information will not identify current transportation routes, transportation methods, money laundering schemes, loads waiting to ship, phone numbers used to coordinate international transactions,” Rattan said.
Fuentes testified that during the interview, Lorza “stormed into the room” and instructed Montano “not to say anything,” court records show.
Montano’s American attorney, who was present at the meeting, explained to Lorza that U.S. authorities authorized it and Montano wanted to talk.
“But Lorza, in an agitated state, ordered Obando [Montano] to leave and say no more,” prosecutors said.
Montano followed her advice and did not speak to the DEA again while in Colombia, court records show.
“Only after he was extradited to the United States — after he learned the hard way that Lorza’s scheme was a hoax — did he resume his cooperation,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bradley Visosky in a court filing.
Tomas Martinez Minota, 42, was sentenced earlier this month to just five years in prison.
Lorza got Minota placed on the FARC list for a time, and he became her success story she shopped around in a bid for more clients, according to prosecutors.
Minota described his alleged FARC membership in a signed declaration in which he said he was trained “in Marxist-Leninist matters.” The letter was used as evidence against Lorza during her Plano trial.
“I enrolled as an informant militant and guerrilla aide starting in the year 2010, passing and bringing war elements and medicines from the neighboring country of Ecuador,” Minota wrote in his declaration.
Schacht said Lorza never maintained Minota was a FARC member. Rather, Lorza advised him to tell the truth — that he grew up very poor in Colombia, became a drug dealer and was related “directly and indirectly” to the FARC.
Minota paid “taxes” to the FARC for permission to traffic drugs through a region the rebels controlled and therefore supported the FARC financially, Schacht said.
“That is not obstruction of justice…this was being a lawyer,” he said in court records. “The government is attempting to criminalize the practice of a foreign lawyer who sought to provide assistance to possible clients in avoiding extradition. That is a novel abuse of the law by the American government.”
Lorza’s conviction was not her first in a U.S. court. Rattan noted on Thursday that Lorza and her husband were convicted in 2012 of laundering more than $1 million for health care companies that committed fraud. Because of her cooperation in that South Florida case, she was sentenced to time served and returned to Colombia.
Jordan said he considered Lorza’s age in his sentencing decision. But in arguing for a tougher sentence, Rattan told the judge her age “hasn’t stopped her previously.”
Schacht said the Colombian drug traffickers who helped the U.S. government “lied repeatedly about their assets” and yet stood to benefit greatly.
“They will likely be rewarded for cooperating against Ms. Lorza while still being allowed to shield their drug money from American law enforcement,” he wrote in court filings.
Jordan acknowledged problems with the credibility of some Colombian witnesses.
“To be sure, the jury heard evidence that some of the cooperating defendants lied about their assets in paperwork and statements they made to the U.S. Probation Office,” he wrote in an order.
But prosecutors said Lorza swore as an attorney to uphold the law and yet violated the public trust.
“Lorza exploited a very difficult and sensitive peace process between the government of Colombia and the FARC for her greed,” Rattan wrote.
