Thursday, February 22, 2007

Los Niches Cartel leader gets 30 years


A Colombian drug lord has been sentenced to 30 years in prison plus five years of supervised release for shipping 50,000 kilograms of cocaine into the United States, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Jorge Eliecer Asprilla-Perea was sentenced in Manhattan yesterday by U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa. Asprilla-Perea, 51, was the reputed head of a cocaine distribution organization known as the "Los Niches Cartel."

He pleaded guilty to cocaine importation and distribution charges in May 2002. In a post-plea stipulation, he admitted to trafficking cocaine valued at more than $1 billion.

Authorities say he operated his organization from inside a jail cell in Cali, Colombia, before being extradited to the U.S. late in 2000, with full diplomatic assurances that neither the death penalty nor life in prison would be sought by prosecutors.

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Writer, editor, researcher, web publisher, specializing in organized crime history. (Available to assist with historical/genealogical research, writing, editing. Email at tphunt@gmail.com.)
Editor/publisher of crime history journal, Informer; publisher of American Mafia history website Mafiahistory.us; moderator of online forums; author of Wrongly Executed?; coauthor of Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia and DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime; contributor of U.S. Mafia history to Australian-published Mafia: The Necessary Reference to Organized Crime; writer/co-writer of crime history articles for several publications.
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