Former Miami congressman David Rivera, a longtime ally of Marco Rubio, received a 10-year prison sentence for undisclosed $50 million lobbying tied to Venezuela’s Maduro regime.
Judge Melissa Damian handed down the term Friday after a jury convicted Rivera in May on every count, including failure to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The 61-year-old Republican has remained behind bars since the verdict.
Prosecutors said Rivera used a consulting deal with a U.S. affiliate of Venezuela’s state oil company as cover for unlawful foreign influence work during the first Trump administration. They argued he tried to lean on Republican contacts so the White House might ease its hard line and sanctions against Caracas.
The Independent reported that Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Cruz pressed for a stiff sentence and told the court the public paid the price.
“The United States and the public were the true victims of this fraud,” Cruz said. “He used his position of trust, and betrayed it consistently and repeatedly.”
Damian rejected a defense bid to lower the federal guidelines range. She made plain where the money originated and how she viewed the scheme.
“There’s no dispute this money came from the Maduro regime,” the judge said. “This is a classic money laundering case.” She added, “Nobody would accept that’s ok and I don’t think this is different.”
Rivera, elected to Congress in 2010 after years as a Florida state lawmaker, ran the effort through his single-person firm. The arrangement with PDV USA, the New York-based arm of PDVSA, totaled $50 million over three months.
Evidence included an encrypted group chat labeled “MIA.” Participants used nicknames: Nicolás Maduro as the “bus driver,” then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez as “The Lady in Red,” Rubio as “Miss Clairol,” and Texas Rep. Pete Sessions as “Sombrero.”
Prosecutors said Rivera and co-defendant Esther Nuhfer, a political consultant, worked contacts that included Rubio and Sessions. The 2022 indictment described Rodríguez approaching Rivera to tap his Republican network. Meetings were set in New York, Caracas, Washington, and Dallas.
One contract justified a $3.75 million transfer to a South Florida firm that maintained a luxury yacht belonging to Raúl Gorrín, a Venezuelan media mogul listed as the primary contact inside the Maduro government. Gorrín later faced separate U.S. charges for allegedly bribing senior Venezuelan officials. Prosecutors also pointed to backdated paperwork and fraudulent contracts meant to hide the true purpose.
They contended Rivera never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act because open disclosure would have wrecked his political standing in Miami’s large exile community.
Defense attorney Ed Shohat argued the project was commercial: a bid to draw ExxonMobil back into Venezuela and encourage a leadership shift. He said Rivera believed no FARA filing was required.
“David Rivera does not deserve to die in prison because he failed to file a FARA registration,” Shohat told the court. “If he had filed that paper, that form, everything he did, including the $50 million contract, which totally distorted this case, is perfectly legal.”
Shohat insisted the record showed no aid to Maduro himself. “There’s not one word in any chat, not one document, not one thing he did to help Nicolás Maduro.”
Longtime Miami GOP committee member Liliana Ros testified for leniency. “I don’t think it’s productive for society by sending David away for a long, long time,” she said. A former Florida International University president and the Miami-Dade elections supervisor also appeared in support.
Sessions, through his chief of staff, had a letter read into the record. It noted Rivera’s decades in public service devoted mainly to protecting freedom and democracy and urged a lighter hand.
Trial testimony described Sessions learning of the consulting arrangement and feeling betrayed. He had tried to set up talks between Rodríguez and an ExxonMobil executive who followed Rex Tillerson. After a covert meeting with Maduro in Caracas, Sessions agreed to carry a message from the Venezuelan leader to Trump.
Rivera and Rubio once shared a Tallahassee residence while both served in the Florida legislature. They remained close for years. Rubio now serves as Secretary of State and has kept his focus on the State Department rather than immediate 2028 speculation.
Prosecutors cast the lobbying as an attempt to blunt the first Trump administration’s pressure campaign. Within six months of taking office, Trump sanctioned Maduro, labeled him a dictator, and launched a maximum-pressure strategy. Reporting on the case notes that after Maduro’s later removal by U.S. military action, Rodríguez has been described as a workable partner for the second Trump administration.
Rivera still faces other federal counts in Washington connected to a separate foreign lobbying matter. His team filed a presidential pardon request in June and plans to appeal the Miami case. A prior 2012-related matter over claims he financed a Democratic spoiler candidate was dismissed last year after an appellate court wiped out a large fine. He was also scrutinized, but never charged, over a $1 million gaming-company deal and possible campaign-finance issues.
Miami has long sat at the crossroads of exile politics and foreign influence efforts. Secret paid work for a sanctioned regime, run through coded chats and shell contracts, strikes at basic rules meant to keep foreign money out of American policy debates. Readers tracking Rubio’s current portfolio have seen him flag foreign-actor concerns in other security cases and move quickly on visa and status decisions.
Clean disclosure laws exist for a reason. When a former member of Congress skips the paperwork, routes regime cash through yacht maintenance invoices, and targets colleagues who later learn they were part of the pitch, the breach is not technical. It is a direct hit on public trust.
Rubio has also denied visas to birth-tourism operators and exercised authority on legal status in immigration enforcement matters, underscoring an administration emphasis on controlling who operates inside U.S. systems. The Rivera sentence fits the same demand for accountability when foreign principals buy access in the dark.
FARA is not optional paperwork for people who once held office and still claim the mantle of public service. Selling proximity to power on behalf of a hostile government, then hiding the check, invites exactly the prison term Damian imposed.
Lawmakers and lobbyists who take foreign money without telling the American people should expect the same hard landing, no matter which party once put them on the ballot.
