Federal prosecutors in New Jersey sentenced Salomon Camacho Mora, a notorious Colombian drug lord and former associate of the late Pablo Escobar, to 11 years in a U.S. prison Wednesday. The sentence comes after he pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to traffic cocaine.
Camacho, 71, went by the nicknames "Papa Grande" and "El Viejo," establishing himself as a leader in the Guajira cartel along the border of Colombia and Venezuela, Yahoo News reports.
Following an original indictment in 2002, the United States offered a hefty $5 million reward for information leading to Camacho's arrest. He evaded law enforcement in South America until he was captured by Venezuelan authorities in 2010.
The U.S. State Department traced Camacho's criminal activities back to the 1980s when he began trafficking cocaine for the Medellin cartel. Between 1999 and 2000 alone, officials with the State Department say Camacho coordinated the shipment of as much as 10 tons of cocaine to the United States.
In his guilty plea, Camacho explained how he bought bulk quantities of cocaine from Colombian processing labs and later had them routed through Venezuela for transport and distribution in the United States, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, according to prosecutors.
As part of the plea agreement, Camacho was forced to forfeit $1.6 million and eight properties in Colombia. He was also sentenced to five years of probation after his release from prison.
The sentencing comes a week after Mexican drug lord Joachin "El Chapo" Guzman was recaptured in a military raid six months after he dramatically escaped from the maximum security Altiplano prison. Mexican authorities said they plan to extradite Guzman to the United States for prosecution, a process that could take at least a year as various U.S. attorney's offices secure indictments and Guzman's lawyers challenge the request.