Leonardo de Jesus Zuluaga Duque, a 63-year-old Colombia-based crypto broker known as "Rey," received a 160-month U.S. prison sentence on October 21, 2026, for laundering approximately $14.5 million in drug proceeds and conspiring to import cocaine. Between May and November 2023, the funds were converted into Tether's USDT in Colombia, routed through a U.S. intermediary and shell companies, exchanged for dollars and returned through Colombian businesses for conversion into pesos. The case also exposed an unlicensed crypto money-transmitting operation run by Argentine citizen Maximilien de Hoop Cartier that prosecutors said processed more than $470 million in illicit proceeds. Zuluaga Duque was ordered to forfeit $14,751,846 and cryptocurrency linked to four addresses, serve five years of supervised release and received the sentence after a wider cocaine investigation that included a planned nine-kilogram cocaine-paste transaction and a later prospective purchase involving about 100 kilograms. Colombia approved his extradition in early 2025, and all five co-defendants have now been sentenced.