U.S. prosecutors announced on October 21, 2026, that Colombian crypto broker Leonardo de Jesus Zuluaga Duque had received a 160-month prison sentence for laundering about $14.5 million in drug proceeds and conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. The source does not give the date of his sentencing.
Prosecutors said the laundering network moved the proceeds through USDT, U.S. shell companies and Colombian businesses before converting them into pesos. A separate unlicensed crypto operation run by Maximilien de Hoop Cartier processed more than $470 million in illicit proceeds, prosecutors said; that larger sum was not attributed to Zuluaga Duque. A judge also ordered Zuluaga Duque to forfeit $14,751,846 and cryptocurrency tied to four addresses, and imposed five years of supervised release.
