Colombian Cryptocurrency Broker Sentenced to 160 Months: About $14.5 Million in Drug Proceeds Laundered Through U.S. Shell Companies
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced that Leonardo De Jesus Zuluaga Duque, also known as 'Rey,' a Colombia-based cryptocurrency broker, was sentenced on October 21 by U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil to 160 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, and ordered to forfeit $14,751,846 and the tokens previously held in four cryptocurrency addresses he controlled. He was the last of six defendants in the international laundering network to be sentenced.
Prosecutors said Zuluaga Duque played a supervisory role in a network that converted drug-trafficking proceeds into Tether, a dollar-linked stablecoin, and moved it through the United States to Colombia. Working with Erica Milena Lopez Ortiz, he transferred Tether to Maximilien De Hoop Cartier, whose unlicensed money-transmitting business used U.S. shell companies to convert the funds to dollars and send them to Colombian companies, where they were converted into pesos for distribution. Between May and November 2023 the network laundered about $14.5 million in drug proceeds; De Hoop Cartier's business transmitted more than $470 million in illicit proceeds overall, and he was previously sentenced to eight years in prison. U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said the defendants used cryptocurrency, a network of shell companies in the U.S. and Colombia, and numerous crypto accounts to exploit the U.S. financial system to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money and other criminal proceeds.
Zuluaga Duque also conspired to import cocaine: in November 2023, law-enforcement sources arranged the purchase of about nine kilograms of cocaine paste, delivered to an undercover officer, for which he took a commission; during negotiations for a further roughly 100-kilogram deal in February 2024, the Colombian National Police seized about 111 kilograms of cocaine paste from two co-defendants. The other five defendants were previously sentenced to between 36 and 96 months in prison. The case was investigated by the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations' New York El Dorado Task Force, and IRS Criminal Investigation.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：纽约曼哈顿的瑟古德·马歇尔美国法院大楼（资料图），纽约南区联邦地区法院所在地，本案在此宣判。Kidfly182 摄，CC BY 4.0，取自维基共享资源。Photo: The Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan, New York (file photo), home of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Kidfly182, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- 2026-10-21Colombian Cryptocurrency Broker Sentenced to 160 Months: About $14.5 Million in Drug Proceeds Laundered Through U.S. Shell CompaniesThis story
- 2026-10-22Colombian Crypto Broker Sentenced to 160 Months in New York for Laundering Drug Proceeds: About $14.5 Million in USDT, Plus a Cocaine Import Plot
