Cocaine Money in Tether: Colombian Broker Gets Over 13 Years for Laundering $14.5M

On Wednesday 21 October 2026, a 63-year-old Colombian known as "Rey", Spanish for "King", was sentenced in federal court in New York to 160 months in prison: 13 years and four months. Leonardo de Jesus Zuluaga Duque was a crypto broker based in Colombia. He helped turn drug money into Tether's USDT, a digital token built to be worth one US dollar, and then into Colombian pesos.

US District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil of the Southern District of New York also ordered him to forfeit $14,751,846 and the crypto from four wallet addresses he controlled, and to serve five years of supervised release, a period of court monitoring after prison that works much like parole. US Attorney Jamie McDonald announced it the same day.

Between about May and November 2023, Zuluaga Duque and others laundered roughly $14.5 million in Tether from drug trafficking. He also took a commission for helping to set up a cocaine sale to a buyer working for the police. He was the last of six defendants to be sentenced, and got the longest term. Maximilien de Hoop Cartier, whose American shell companies turned the crypto into dollars, and whom prosecutors called a "purported member" of the family behind the Cartier jewellery house, got eight years.

Tether, the company that issues USDT, is not accused of wrongdoing, and neither is the Cartier jewellery business. The Justice Department's announcements describe no role for Tether beyond its token being the one the network chose.

Why drug money travels as a digital dollar

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency pegged to an ordinary currency. Bitcoin's price rises and falls like a share's; one USDT is meant to stay at one dollar, and Tether says every token is "backed 100%" by its reserves. In stock market terms it is less like a share and more like the cash balance in a brokerage account, except that it can be sent anywhere in minutes.

That is what makes it useful to a trafficker. Drug cash collected in the United States has to get back to the suppliers. Carrying bulk cash across borders is risky, and wiring it through a bank invites questions. USDT moves between digital wallets at any hour, across any border, with no bank in the middle, and loses no value on the way. A wallet address works like an account number.

It has weaknesses. Every transfer is written onto a public ledger, the blockchain, that investigators can trace years later. An issuer such as Tether can also freeze tokens: in November 2023 Tether froze about $225 million in USDT while working with the Justice Department and the exchange OKX, Cointelegraph reported. And the people at the end of the chain wanted pesos, so the tokens had to be walked back into the banking system. That was the network's job.

Five steps from drug cash to pesos

First, Zuluaga Duque worked with others to collect criminal proceeds, including drug money, that had been converted into Tether. Second, he and a co-defendant, Erica Milena Lopez Ortiz, sent the USDT to de Hoop Cartier.

Third, de Hoop Cartier sold it for dollars. He ran an unlicensed over-the-counter (OTC) crypto desk: a private dealer that trades large amounts of crypto away from the public exchanges, much as a block-trading desk handles a big share order away from the open market. The dollars landed in the bank accounts of American shell companies he controlled, firms that prosecutors say existed only to move money. Six are named in the 2024 charges: Bullpix Solutions LLC, Vintech Capital LLC, VC Innovated Technologies LLC, AZ Technologies LLC, Softmill LLC and Sun Technologies LLC.

Fourth, the shell companies wired the dollars to companies in Colombia controlled by Felipe Estrada Echeverry, known as "Pepe", and others. Fifth, the money was changed into pesos and handed to Lopez Ortiz and Zuluaga Duque to distribute. To the banks, each payment looked like one technology company paying another. Each step put another layer between the money and the drug sales, which is what laundering means.

The Cartier descendant who got seized money back

When de Hoop Cartier was charged in 2024, prosecutors called him a "purported" member of the Cartier family; by his sentencing they called him a descendant. An Argentine citizen living in France, he was arrested in Miami on 22 February 2024. Prosecutors say he opened more than a dozen American bank accounts, told the banks his companies did software development, and backed that with forged contracts and invoices. He never registered as a money transmitter or ran the anti-money-laundering checks the law requires, the identity and source-of-funds checks any broker runs on a new client. In all, prosecutors say, he personally helped launder more than $470 million.

He had already talked his way out of trouble once. In April 2021, in a separate investigation, a court approved the seizure of three of his shell companies' accounts after they received about $937,000 in drug money from an undercover law enforcement account. Meeting federal agents and prosecutors from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, he admitted operating as an unlicensed money remitter but falsely claimed to have customer checks and a licence application under way, and supplied forged records, prosecutors say. Part of the money was returned to him. Two years later he was converting Zuluaga Duque's USDT.

He pleaded guilty on 23 October 2025 to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiring to commit bank fraud. On 28 April 2026 Judge Vyskocil gave him eight years and ordered him to forfeit $2,362,160.62, the commission he had kept.

The cocaine deals

In November 2023, confidential sources working for law enforcement arranged with Lopez Ortiz and Alexander Egidio Areiza Ceballos to buy about nine kilograms of cocaine paste, a crude form of the drug, to be refined and delivered to New York. Adrian Fernando Areiza Ceballos handed it to an undercover officer, and Zuluaga Duque was paid a commission for helping to set up the deal. In February 2024 a confidential source arranged to buy about 100 kilograms of paste from the two Areiza Ceballos men; before the deal, the Colombian National Police carried out two search warrants and recovered about 111 kilograms.

On 30 April 2024 Colombian authorities took all five Colombians into custody, Zuluaga Duque in Medellín, El Colombiano reported. Colombia's Supreme Court approved his extradition, and in July 2025 he was handed to US marshals in Bogotá, according to the Spanish news agency EFE. He pleaded not guilty in New York on 15 July 2025. As first charged, the cocaine count alone carried a minimum of ten years and a maximum of life. With a trial on the calendar, a new indictment was filed on 23 April 2026, and he pleaded guilty under a plea agreement to conspiring to launder money and to import cocaine, a court order signed on 12 May 2026 shows.

Six defendants, six sentences

Lopez Ortiz got 60 months and $14.75 million in forfeiture; Estrada Echeverry 48 months and $14.74 million. Alexander Areiza Ceballos got 66 months and Adrian Areiza Ceballos 36 months, each with $9,650 in forfeiture. Adrian Areiza Ceballos's term runs alongside a 128-month sentence a court in Medellín had already given him in June 2024, court records show.

The arithmetic stands out. De Hoop Cartier, who prosecutors say moved more than $470 million, got 96 months. Zuluaga Duque, whose laundering covered $14.5 million, got 160. The announcement does not give the judge's reasoning. What separates them on paper is the cocaine: Zuluaga Duque admitted a drug importation conspiracy, in a role prosecutors call supervisory, while de Hoop Cartier's plea covered an unlicensed money business and bank fraud, with no drug count.

Forfeiture lets the government take money and property tied to a crime; a money judgment is a debt owed whether or not the cash is ever found. Some of it was: the court's forfeiture order lists about 290,357 USDT, roughly $290,000, already seized under a warrant.

"Such conduct reduces trust in the financial system and endangers lives," McDonald said. The FBI's New York Field Office, Homeland Security Investigations' New York El Dorado Task Force and IRS Criminal Investigation investigated, with the Colombian National Police. The shell-company route is familiar: Daren Li admitted laundering at least $73.6 million of scam money, much of it through American shell companies, and was given 20 years in February 2026.