A Colombian customs worker admitted his role Tuesday in taking bribes and funneling more than $1 million in drug proceeds in a case that threatened to expose dirty dealings between U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and their informants.
Omar Ambuila’s surprise guilty plea to a single count of conspiring to commit money laundering came on the second day of his trial in federal court in Tampa, Florida.
Ambuila, 63, was extradited to the U.S. from Colombia in 2023. He faces up to 20 years in prison at an April sentencing.
The proceedings had been expected to shed new light on a scandal that resulted in more than a dozen federal agents being disciplined or ousted from their jobs for a range of misconduct during DEA money laundering investigations around the world.
Among the witnesses called to testify by the government was Jose Irizarry, a notoriously corrupt DEA agent serving a lengthy federal prison term for his role in a closely related money laundering conspiracy.
The Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Homeland Security first came to suspect Ambuila after his daughter posted photos of herself carrying designer handbags, taking luxury vacations to Paris and driving a $330,000 red Lamborghini.
“People assume that because they can’t make it you can’t make it either,” Jenny Ambuila wrote in a May 2017 Facebook post where she shows a photo of the Lamborghini. “Prove them wrong.”
JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/AFP via Getty Images
The lavish, fairy tale lifestyle of the 20-something University of Miami graduate didn’t match her modest income as a social media influencer or that of her father, who was earning about $2,000 a month as a mid-level supervisor in Colombia’s main port of Buenaventura, a major transit point for U.S.-bound cocaine.
A chunk of the funds used in 2016 to pay for the Lamborghini Huracan Spyder originated in an account controlled by Jhon Marin, whom an IRS criminal investigator described at trial as the Florida-based nephew of a “known contraband smuggler in Colombia.”
An Associated Press investigation previously identified the smuggler as Diego Marin, a longtime DEA informant known to investigators as Colombia’s “Contraband King” for allegedly laundering money through imported appliances and other goods. A trove of government records obtained by AP describe Marin as a one-time U.S. law enforcement source who eventually was deactivated and then operated by federal agents “off the books.”
For years, DEA agents partied with Marin around the world after purportedly targeting him, the records show, with Marin frequently picking up the bill for dinners and prostitutes.
Two lawyers for Marin declined to comment on the case.
Marin has not been charged in the U.S. But prosecutors in Colombia last year requested his extradition from Spain, where he was living, to face criminal charges.
In an unusual move, Colombian President Gustavo Petro spoke to his Spanish counterpart about the case and described Marin in a social media post as the country’s main “contraband smuggler and drug money launderer.”
Nonetheless, Marin, who has Spanish citizenship, was allowed out on bail while fighting extradition. He then allegedly fled and was later captured in Portugal, where he remains imprisoned.
Chris O’Meara / AP
Irizarry, who is serving a 12-year sentence for his crimes, described to the AP how Marin for years bribed officials in Colombia and gifted prostitutes, expensive meals and tickets to U.S. anti-narcotics agents in a bid to avoid arrest. He gave a similar account to federal investigators, saying DEA agents falsified government records about Marin to justify profligate international travel.
“Irizarry abused the trust of the American people when he repeatedly violated his oath as a federal law enforcement officer,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said after Irizzary was sentenced in 2021.
Irizarry’s case highlighted the DEA’s continued use of so-called Attorney General Exempted Operations to launder tens of millions of dollars a year on behalf of the world’s most violent drug cartels through shell companies. Agents describe the AGEOs as a robust tool that has resulted in scores of high-level arrests and cocaine seizures.
But the DEA also has faced criticism for allowing huge amounts of money in the operations to go unseized, enabling cartels to continue plying their trade, and for failing to tightly monitor and track the stings, making it difficult to evaluate their results.
Colombia remains the world’s leading producer of cocaine, despite decades of war against the cartels.
In Tampa federal court Tuesday, Ambuila showed no emotion as U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Hernandez-Covington complained about the considerable amount of money the U.S. Justice Department spent preparing for a trial scuttled after just two days. As recently as this month, prosecutors led by Joseph Palazzo had offered Ambuila a plea agreement recommending a sentence of time served.
“I feel an obligation not to waste government expenses,” the judge said.