Colombia murder leads attorneys for Florida man to Utah looking for drug money

Colombia murder leads attorneys for Florida man to Utah looking for drug money

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SALT LAKE CITY — Seeking to collect on a $191.4 million award in a court case against some of Colombia's most notorious drug traffickers and guerrillas led lawyers for a Florida man to Utah.

Antonio Caballero wants a federal judge to enforce the ruling in the state because the cartel transported drugs into and through Utah.

Caballero, 59, sued the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, National Liberation Army and Norte del Valle Cartel in 2012 over the kidnapping, torture and killing of his father, Carlos Caballero. The elder Caballero served as a senator, ambassador to the United Nations and president of the Liberal Party.

In November 2015, a Miami-Dade County Circuit Court judge found Colombia’s two largest guerrilla groups were working with the cartel to smuggle cocaine into the United States.

The were found guilty of racketeering, torture, extrajudicial killing and a host of other crimes. Because none of the defendants responded to the complaint, the judge ruled without a jury.

The ruling allows Caballero's attorneys to target seized assets of a wide range of individuals and organizations, Mexican cartels, Colombian right-wing paramilitary groups and their successor criminal gangs, and hundreds of front companies and businesses.

Some of those assets apparently are in Utah.

Caballero's legal team, Zumpano, Patricios, Winker & Helsten, in Florida and Utah, argues the federal court in Utah has jurisdiction because the defendants "transacted business in this state and caused injury in this state, by their criminal activity and operations trafficking millions of dollars of illicit drugs," according to a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City.

"Agents of the defendants transported illicit drugs into and through Utah, as a major transshipment point of their trafficking of illegal drugs throughout the United States," the complaint says.

Caballero's Utah attorney, Brad Helsten, referred requests for comment to his Florida attorney, who did not immediately return a phone call Monday.

Collecting from defunct cartels and active guerrilla groups poses a major challenge for the lawyers.

But in February they managed to get just under $1 million following a trail of drugs and money that went from Colombia’s heartland, through Mexican cartels, into a Texas armored-car company and, finally, into Florida bank accounts, according to the Miami Herald.

“It’s not about the money,” Caballero told the newspaper. “This shows that lives cut short by violence aren’t forgotten. … This has returned my faith in justice.”

The newspaper reported that the case centered on two farms that Carlos Caballero owned and his son helped run in northern Colombia, in a violent area known as the Magdalena River Valley. The properties had been in the family for four generations, but starting in the late 1990s, they became a strategic thoroughfare for cocaine being transported to hidden airstrips and river ports, the ruling found.

In 1999, Carlos Caballero, 76 and a father of 10, was stopped at a guerrilla checkpoint and dragged out of his car near the town of Pivija. He had hypertension and was prediabetic.

The rebels marched him through the jungle for days, forced him to sleep in caves and holes and often denied him food, water and medication during 184 days of captivity, the Miami Herald reported citing court documents.

Carlos Caballero's relatives paid a $6 million ransom, but his body was found dumped by the side of a road with five bullet holes in the back of the neck

Newspaper reports at the time blamed the National Liberation Army. In the ruling, the court found that such a high-profile assassination would not have been carried out without the knowledge and consent of both guerilla groups and the cartel.

"This is not simply a wrongful death type of case, but is much more profound," according to the ruling, citing Antonio Caballero’s mental anguish and post-traumatic stress disorder. “This is a case that justifies an extraordinary judgment."

Antonio Caballero, who received asylum in the United States, said the ruling provided some closure.

“This puts all our pain, the drama, the barbarity into context,” he told the Miami Herald. “We were alone fighting against the world trying to save a loved one. … I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”

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