David Rivera, a former Miami congressman and longtime friend of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for his role in a covert $50 million lobbying campaign carried out on behalf of Venezuela during the first Trump administration.
The Republican has been behind bars since a jury convicted him in May on every count, including failing to register as a foreign agent and conspiring to commit money laundering while working for the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Rivera, 61, sat stone-faced as US District Judge Melissa Damian condemned what she described as a betrayal of the mission he had built his life around. The judge said Rivera’s friends would almost certainly have viewed the case more harshly if the millions had come from Cuba rather than Venezuela, an allied government in Caracas.
“Nobody would accept that’s ok and I don’t think this is different,” Damian said. “There’s no dispute this money came from the Maduro regime.”
The seven-week trial provided a rare look at Miami’s role as a hub for foreign influence operations seeking to shape US policy toward Latin America. It also underscored the city’s complicated reputation as home to both staunch anti-communist activists and corruption within its large exile community.
Among those who testified were Rubio, President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Texas Rep. Pete Sessions and a prominent Washington lobbyist. Each said they felt deceived after learning about Rivera’s enormous consulting agreement with a US-based affiliate of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.
Rivera’s attorneys intend to appeal the conviction and applied for a presidential pardon in June. He also faces additional federal charges in Washington, DC, stemming from a related foreign lobbying case.
Prosecutors said betrayal featured coded figures — ‘Sombrero’ and ‘Miss Clairol’
According to a 2022 indictment, then-Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez — now the country’s acting president — recruited Rivera to use his Republican connections to persuade the first Trump administration to soften its position and lift crippling sanctions on Venezuela.
As part of the campaign, Rivera and co-defendant Esther Nuhfer, a political consultant, attempted to leverage influential contacts, including Rubio and Sessions. Prosecutors said they wanted to restore relations with the incoming Trump administration and normalize ties even as Maduro’s government faced sanctions over serious human rights allegations.
Prosecutors argued that Rivera and Nuhfer concealed their lobbying because disclosure would have destroyed Rivera’s political career as a prominent anti-communist figure.
“The United States and the public were the true victims of this fraud,” Assistant US Attorney Roger Cruz said while seeking a severe sentence. “He used his position of trust — and betrayed it consistently and repeatedly.”
Prosecutors also alleged that Rivera created an encrypted chat group called MIA, short for Miami, to conceal his activities. His primary link to the Maduro government was Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín, who was later charged in the US with bribing senior Venezuelan officials.
Participants used joking code names in their messages. Maduro was referred to as the “bus driver,” Sessions as “Sombrero,” Rodríguez as “The Lady in Red” and the lucrative payments as “La Luz,” or “The Light” in Spanish. Rubio was called “Miss Clairol,” a reference to the Spanish meaning of “rubio,” or blond, according to messages shown to jurors.
Defense said only missing paperwork made the $50 million contract illegal
At Friday’s sentencing hearing, Rivera’s lawyers reiterated their argument from trial: that the former congressman did not believe he was legally required to disclose his work.
They maintained that the three-month, $50 million agreement with Rivera’s one-person consulting firm was aimed at bringing oil giant ExxonMobil back to Venezuela. Such commercial activity is generally exempt from registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, they said.
“David Rivera does not deserve to die in prison because he failed to file a FARA registration,” defense attorney Ed Shohat told the court Friday. “If he had filed that paper, that form, everything he did, including the $50 million contract, which totally distorted this case, is perfectly legal.”
The defense argued that Rivera’s meetings with Rubio and Sessions were separate from the consulting work. Those discussions, attorneys said, focused on encouraging a change in Venezuela’s leadership toward a government less hostile to the United States — not on helping Maduro normalize relations with Washington.
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“There’s not one word in any chat, not one document, not one thing he did to help Nicolás Maduro,” Shohat said.
Prosecutors countered that Rivera used the contract with PDV USA, the New York-based affiliate, as a cover for unlawful lobbying on Venezuela’s behalf.
“This is a classic money laundering case,” Damian said Friday as she rejected Rivera’s request to reduce the federal sentencing-guidelines range.
Where did the money go? A luxury yacht, among other things
The partners tried to hide the work — backdating documents and coming up with sham agreements, like one to justify a wire transfer of $3.75 million to a South Florida company that maintained Gorrín’s luxury yacht, prosecutors said.
The political activity included setting up meetings for Rodríguez in New York, Caracas, Washington and Dallas.
As part of the effort, Rivera roped in Sessions, who later tried to broker a meeting for Rodríguez with the ExxonMobil executive who took over as CEO when Rex Tillerson became Trump’s first-term secretary of state.
After a secret meeting in Caracas with Maduro, Sessions also agreed to deliver a letter from the Venezuelan president to Trump.
The outreach quickly unraveled, however. Within six months of taking office, Trump sanctioned Maduro and labeled him a “dictator,” launching a “maximum pressure” campaign to unseat the president.
And now, nearly a decade later, Rodríguez has emerged as the second Trump administration’s trusted partner after the US military’s ousting of Maduro.
Rubio’s former housemate faced scandal before, but Cuban Americans support him
Before being elected to Congress in 2010, Rivera was a high-ranking Florida legislator and shared a Tallahassee home with Rubio, who eventually became the Florida House speaker.
Rivera faced earlier controversy, including allegations that he secretly funded a Democratic spoiler candidate in a 2012 congressional race.
Last year, federal prosecutors dropped that case after an appeals court threw out a sizable fine imposed by a lower court.
Rivera was also investigated — but never charged — for alleged campaign finance violations and a $1 million contract with a gambling company while serving in the Florida Legislature.
Despite all that, Rivera remains popular among Miami’s Cuban American establishment.
Friends of the former congressman, including the former president of Florida International University and Miami-Dade County’s supervisor of elections, packed the courtroom to show their support.
Sessions, in a letter seeking leniency that was read into the record by his chief of staff, said his former congressional colleague devoted decades to public service, much of it focused on defending liberty and democracy.
“I don’t think it’s productive for society by sending David away for a long, long time,” testified Liliana Ros, a longtime Miami GOP committee member.