Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Montoya’s lawyer said his client hoped his life story would send a message that drug trafficking destroyed everything in its wake.
In court documents, Montoya’s defence team traced his progression from a teenager with dreams of becoming a Catholic priest to the man at the helm of a drug-trafficking ring believed to have exported $10bn worth of cocaine to the US.
Montoya points to his father’s death when he was 14 years old as the catalyst which set him on the wrong path.
Forced to help out with his family’s coffee farming business, he quickly found there was more money to be made by acting as a driver and messenger for a local cocaine laboratory.
Montoya, along with two of his brothers and cousin, quickly rose through the ranks, running their own cocaine processing lab and expanding the transport side of the business by buying a fleet of planes and boats, which they would lease to other drug traffickers.
the 1990s, the Montoya family had risen to the top of the Norte del Valle cocaine cartel and its members were enjoying lavish lifestyles, complete with luxury apartments in south Florida.
Diego Montoya himself, meanwhile, had made it to the list of the FBI’s top 10 most wanted fugitives, with a $5m prize offered for information leading to his capture.
But with the family’s growing profits and visibility also came increasing pressure from both Colombian and US law enforcement agencies.
Two of Montoya’s brothers were arrested in Colombia and extradited to the US in 2005, where they were sentenced to 20 and 22 years for importing cocaine.
Another brother was arrested in January 2007 and jailed for 30 years.
Diego Montoya himself was captured after a long manhunt led Colombian police to a remote ranch in the Valle del Cauca region in September 2007, where he was found hiding in a dry river bed.
Tags: news
