Colombian customs official pleads guilty in money laundering case tied to DEA misconduct
Colombian customs official pleads guilty in money laundering case tied to DEA misconduct
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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.”. 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.
