A Colombian national, Alberto Alonso Jaramillo Ramirez, was sentenced to 150 months in prison for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. The announcement was made by Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Jaramillo Ramirez pleaded guilty on March 24, 2025, before U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman, who imposed the sentence.
“Our fight against the flood of dangerous drugs from Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico is about protecting our children and our communities,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. “Jaramillo Ramirez conspired to traffic massive amounts of cocaine into our country, working with paramilitaries. New Yorkers want him and others like him put out of business.”
Court documents and statements from court proceedings indicate that Jaramillo Ramirez worked with co-defendants and individuals linked to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), an organization based in Colombia known for producing and distributing much of the cocaine that reaches the United States. He negotiated with people he believed were members of a Mexico-based drug trafficking group to set up a supply line from Venezuela to the United States; these contacts turned out to be confidential sources cooperating with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Recorded communications revealed that Jaramillo Ramirez agreed to use his connections in Colombia to support this effort by providing access to large quantities of cocaine as well as transportation and security for shipments. In December 2021, he and his co-defendants sold a five-kilogram sample of high-purity cocaine—lab tests showed purity levels between 86.6% and 89.1%—to undercover sources at a FARC-associated farm outside Medellín.
Jaramillo Ramirez was arrested in Colombia in February 2022 at the request of U.S. authorities while finalizing plans for regular shipments estimated at about 500 kilograms per week.
He is the third defendant sentenced in this case; Libia Amanda Palacio Mena and Alvaro Fredy Cordoba Ruiz each received sentences of 168 months earlier in April 2024.
In addition to his prison term, Jaramillo Ramirez will serve four years of supervised release after completing his sentence.
Jay Clayton commended DEA’s Special Operations Division Bilateral Investigations Unit and Bogotá Country Office for their work on this case, along with support from other offices within the Department of Justice involved in securing Jaramillo Ramirez’s arrest and extradition from Colombia.
The prosecution was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicholas S. Bradley, Kaylan E. Lasky, and Kevin T. Sullivan from the National Security and International Narcotics Unit.
