FAMILY BUSINESS

The Ochoa clan went from breeding horses to trafficking drugs and back
again. Now the family has gone into another business: defending one of its own.

MEDELLIN, Colombia - Proud locals call this the "city of eternal spring"
for the cool, damp mist that blankets the mountains, verdant with
eucalyptus and pine. It's hard to fathom that with 3,500 killings last
year, Medellin ranks among the hemisphere's most violent cities.

From afar, the skyline of downtown glass towers could be any big city,
interspersed with smart condominiums and familiar fast-food restaurants.
Closer in, the scars of Colombia's drug-fueled conflict are evident: The
infamous comunas, barrios rife with guns and drugs, gangs with hit men for
hire, police armed to the hilt, bombed-out buildings.

A short world away, in the lush hills above the valley, is the town of
Envigado, home to some of Medellin's fabled drug lords. Here is La Loma,
the horse stables of the Ochoa family.

Stable hands attend to dozens of horses around a central patio while Juan
David Ochoa, 54, seated in a coarse leather-backed wooden armchair, takes
calls from clients. A group of schoolchildren on vacation pass by on their
way to classes at the family's riding school.

In their day, the three Ochoa brothers, Juan David, Jorge and Fabio were
storied figures in the Medellin cartel, a loose association of ranchers,
businessmen and entrepreneurs who trafficked cocaine.

All three did short terms in Colombian jails and, upon their release in
1997, said they were retired from the drug business and just wanted to go
home to La Loma and the horses.

But now the youngest, Fabio, is in jail in Miami, accused in a massive
conspiracy said to have smuggled as much as 30 tons of cocaine a month. His
trial is scheduled to begin this morning.

To defend him, the Ochoas sold 120 of their horses to raise the money to
hire renowned South Florida attorney Roy Black. He advised them not to
discuss Fabio's case, but they are eager to talk anyway. They say the
United States has done Fabio wrong; for once an Ochoa is innocent.

Smack in the middle, naturally, is Baruch Vega.

Juvenal and Chat Rooms

A Colombian-American fashion photographer blessed with chameleon-like
charm, Vega was a self-styled DEA "mediator," one of the best U.S. assets
in the war on drugs. His handlers were a pair of agents working for the
Drug Enforcement Administration's Group 43 in Miami, Larry Castillo and
David Tinsley.

They were trying to penetrate the Northern Valley cartel, led by some of
Colombia's most deadly drug kingpins. Their method was to run a scam.

For his fee, Vega would tell the Colombians, he could get his crooked
American law enforcement contacts to arrange sweetheart deals, with short
prison terms. The deals were not really crooked but were so attractive that
Vega arranged for dozens to surrender to the United States.

A DEA team from Fort Lauderdale, Group 9, was running a separate
investigation that targeted a blue-eyed young man from Medellin's upper
middle class, Alejandro Bernal.

Known as Juvenal (Young One), he modernized the drug trade. His syndicate
operated cloned cell phones, encrypted landline telephones and private
Internet chat rooms with firewalls to keep out nosy police hackers. Bernal
was a broker, a clearinghouse for Colombian drug dealers. He made millions
from drugs and supplied guns to Colombia's illegal paramilitary forces.

The DEA persuaded Colombian authorities to plant a bugging device in his
office in Bogota. They wiretapped 53 supposedly secure cell phones, pagers,
fax machines and landline phones. It wasn't long before Fabio Ochoa's name
popped up.

U.S. drug agents had been frustrated in repeated efforts to bring the
Ochoas to trial in this country. They especially wanted Fabio, who they
said had ordered the 1986 murder of one of their own, a former drug pilot
turned DEA informer named Barry Seal.

Overtaken by newer cartels, the Ochoa name faded. But inside the DEA, the
name meant unfinished business. It began at La Margarita

Horses are king at La Loma, as it was in the days before drugs, when the
Ochoas were among the country's top animal breeders. They date their
association with livestock to the beginning of the last century, when Don
Abelardo Ochoa began importing new breeds of cows, pigs and mules from Europe.

They raised Paso Fino show horses, famous for their elegant rapid-stepping
gait and smooth ride. Fabio, the youngest, specialized in breeding horses
for a form of bullfighting called rejoneo, where the matador rides horseback.

Today each brother owns a farm, with a collection of hundreds of horses.
They openly confess to the "terrible error" of the drug trade, which
brought them riches but racked their family.

In November 1981, their sister Marta was kidnapped by guerrillas and held
three months. The guerrillas were hoping for a big ransom to buy weapons.
In 1986, kidnappers murdered the husband of another sister, Angela.

During several meetings by the patio in La Loma, surrounded by photos of
prize-winning horses with such names as Profetisa, Rock and Capitan, the
Ochoas recounted how they got into the business - and when they decided to
get out.

It began at La Margarita, the family-run restaurant in Medellin, famous for
its meats and regional Antiochia cuisine.

"It was frequented by all those people who were involved in the business,"
said Jorge, the middle brother, drinking a Coca-Cola with a straw. In case
there was any doubt, his sister Marta interjected: "When he uses the word
"business,' he means drugs."

Early on, the drug trade was dominated by well-to-do families with
legitimate businesses who considered drugs an irresistible and not very
risky venture.

"Everyone wanted to be involved," either in trafficking or helping launder
money. "No one really felt we were doing anything wrong," Jorge said,
slurping the last of the soda from the Coca-Cola bottle and earning a
scolding from Marta. "All these bandits got involved. That's when it turned
violent."

A mafia formed, led by Pablo Escobar, that demanded utmost loyalty, on pain
of death. "They say that about the Mafia, like it was a joke. But it's the
absolute truth," Jorge said.

"We did business with all those people because we couldn't be their
enemies," said Juan David, the oldest brother. "Otherwise I wouldn't be
here today talking to you. We were very young when we got into it and we
had no idea what consequences it would bring."

Drug experts contest the Ochoas' version of falling into the drug business
almost by accident. They say the Ochoas were pioneers in the early drug
trade, forging early links with U.S. pilots and dealers. But they agree the
Ochoas never went in for the ruthless violence of their narco brethren,
opting instead for a low profile.

In 1979, Colombia signed a treaty with the United States making drug
smuggling a crime for which traffickers could be extradited. They faced
life in U.S. prisons. Some resisted, with bribes and later with bullets. In
April 1984, hit men killed the Colombian minister of justice, Rodrigo Lara
Bonilla. It was open warfare.

"The Lara Bonilla killing changed it all," Marta said. "That's when Pablo
Escobar became very radical and began acting by force. Until then, everyone
wanted to do business with the narcos and sell them farms and horses.
Everyone came to us. It was seen as normal."

The Ochoas say they played no part in the war, which they say was led by
Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, El Mexicano.

"They painted us all in the same basket because we were all
"extraditables,' " Marta said.

The Ochoa brothers went into hiding in the jungle. After a few years and
with the mediation of a parish priest, their surrenders were arranged. Each
brother would get 20 years in jail and turn over $2-million in cash and
property; Colombia would not extradite them.

Fabio surrendered in December 1990, Jorge followed a month later, and Juan
David, a month after that. With good behavior, all three were out in less
than seven years.

They swear they kept their word to turn their backs on drugs - which is why
they were suspicious when Vega came calling.

Others Might Know More

Vega met with Juan David and Jorge at La Loma shortly after their release.
Only by cooperating with the United States, he said, could the family's
legal problems be settled once and for all.

"I told them, "Help us. Your criminal indictments in the U.S. are never
going to expire,' " Vega said.

Besides his own investigation, Vega said the DEA wanted help gathering
information about drug and arms trafficking in Colombia by Russian mafia
groups with branches in Florida.

Jorge and Juan David rejected any cooperation deal. They said they had
retired from the drug business and had nothing to offer the government in
terms of collaboration.

"What Vega was proposing would have meant us getting back into the
business," said Juan David. "After all we had been through and knowing how
bad and dangerous a business it is, there was no way we were going to go back."

Vega met separately with Fabio. He was more flexible.

He turned down full-scale cooperation, saying he knew nothing about Russian
mafia activities in Colombia, but he agreed to put Vega in touch with
others who might know more.

"There were a lot of rumors that Fabio was still trafficking," Vega said.
"That's why I went to see the family. The idea was to flip Fabio.

"He said he couldn't go back into business. He said he was being watched
too closely. But he agreed to work strictly in gathering intelligence for us."

Over the next few months, Fabio met and spoke with Vega and his Miami DEA
handlers.

"I don't believe Fabio ever went back into business," Vega said. "But he
helped introduce us to a lot of important figures," including a lawyer who
introduced Vega to Pacho Herrera, one of Colombia's wealthiest drug lords.

Having assisted Vega and the Miami DEA, Fabio hardly expected the Colombian
police to come for him. Acting for the Bogota DEA, they arrested him in his
pajamas.

Oct. 13, 1999

Equipped with night vision goggles, two heavily armed police units closed
on their target, a luxurious villa, La Ahumada, in the hills above
Envigado. An intelligence plane flew surveillance overhead.

Security guards put up no resistance, nor did the man police had come for.
Fabio was handcuffed and whisked to a police helicopter for the ride over
the mountains to Bogota. He stepped from the chopper looking pale and haggard.

"I'm innocent. I swear it before my children," he shouted to reporters as
some 60 officers escorted him into their headquarters. "After what happened
to me, I wouldn't be so stupid as to continue in this."

It was a point not lost on his captors.

"You would have thought that the Ochoas would be careful, attending to
their fortune," remarked Colombia's police chief, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano.

Across Colombia that day, police arrested 30 people in Operation
Millennium, the product of the investigation led by the DEA's Group 9. They
said the accused, including Bernal and Fabio, were responsible for
supplying 20 to 30 tons of cocaine per month to the United States.

Bernal's broker status earned him top billing, but it was Fabio's arrest
the DEA celebrated most.

"To say the DEA is excited about the prospect that Fabio Ochoa will be
extradited to the United States to stand trial for his drug offenses would
be an understatement of great proportions," remarked DEA administrator Asa
Hutchinson.

He called Fabio "the right-hand man of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar" and held
Fabio "responsible for the destruction of countless lives. His greed and
ruthless behavior are unsurpassed, even among the most notorious
traffickers of the "cartel' era."

Call Them "Positivos'

Efforts to get Fabio to cooperate intensified after he was indicted, but
the Ochoas were having none of it.

"I never saw it as something normal," said Juan David. "I couldn't believe
people bought into it. But Baruch is very convincing, and he had done all
these trips and taken people to the United States."

Between late November and late January, the Ochoas were visited by some of
the traffickers who had joined Group 43's program. One was Jorge Orrego,
whose wife, Ivonne Escaf, had struck a deal with Vega.

The Ochoas secretly tape recorded the meeting.

Orrego told Jorge Ochoa that traffickers coughed up multimillion dollar
fees to Vega, who would steer cases through the courts with the help of his
law enforcement friends. For his wife's deal - one year in a minimum
security jail, possibly house arrest - he said he paid Vega $1-million and
gave him a house in Key Biscayne.

"That's the commitment with them. Get there, bail and out on the street."

To win brownie points with the government, they were expected to help
agents make cocaine busts. But instead of making legitimate seizures,
Orrego said, they prearranged their own busts, with the prior knowledge of
the DEA. Sometimes they laid claim to cocaine shipments they had nothing to
do with. They dubbed this phony cooperation "positivos."

"You don't have to talk about anyone, and you don't have to compromise
anything; the positivos are based upon information they give you themselves
so that one delivers it in turn," Orrego said.

Nothing would be written down. "Nothing of this exists on record, publicly."

Vega says the positivos required genuine cooperation, Orrego was just
following the government's instructions to make the cooperation pitch sound
corrupt, the only way agents thought the traffickers would fall for it. If
they believed cooperation really meant betraying their drug partners,
they'd never go for it.

On Dec. 12, 1999, a few days after trafficker Carlos Ramon arranged a
multimillion dollar deal with Vega, he came to Jorge's home. Again, the
Ochoas secretly tape-recorded the conversation.

Ramon said the program had been approved in Washington and money paid to
Vega "goes to financing causes that they can't finance officially."

He said he bought into the program and had "40-something million to go -
half in money and half in positivos," for a package that included his
brother-in-law and two more relatives in the drug trade. In other words,
$20-million cash and $20-million worth of cocaine busts.

Ramon said it was a bargain to a trafficker of his wealth. "Thank God, the
price they're collecting from me is less than what I earned in the business."

"They send me in a private plane everywhere. They send him (Vega) the per
diems for all, to pay us everything, everything we do."

He delivered what the Ochoas took to be the U.S. government's offer: four
to five years in prison in return for Fabio's cooperation in Millennium,
plus $30-million in cash and positivos.

In a separate meeting, a Miami lawyer who represented several traffickers,
Joaquin Perez, handed Jorge the business card of assistant U.S. Attorney
Theresa Van Vliet. On the back she had written: "Jorge, feel free to call
me. Theresa," which the Ochoas took to mean the U.S. Attorney's Office was
on board with what Group 43 was offering.

Joining Perez was a client, Nicolas Bergonzoli, who had availed himself of
Vega's cooperation program.

"Do they (DEA) know the deals are arranged and all that?" Jorge asked.

"They will play the fools," Bergonzoli said.

The Ochoas were not convinced. They decided instead to put their faith in
the courtroom skills of a well-regarded attorney.

1,280 Audio Cassettes

For Fabio, the first day of the new millennium followed another
uncomfortable night awaiting extradition in Bogota's maximum security jail,
La Picota.

While he sat, his family, led by his sisters, threw themselves into his
defense.

A remarkably tight clan, the Ochoas - three brothers and five sisters -
reside within a few miles of one another. The entire family, including
husbands and wives, meet for dinner three times a week, rotating homes.

While the brothers attend to horse business, the sisters spend their days
dissecting the government's evidence. They work in a two-story brick
building, tucked in a tropical garden setting off one of Medellin's main
streets.

Working here are Maria, 50, a sociologist; Marta, 47, an economist; Fresia,
46, a translator; and Angela, 44, the widowed mother. Cristina, 51, a
social worker, helps from home.

The sisters live comfortably but display none of the trappings of narco
wealth. They come to the office wearing inexpensive blouses, jeans and
Birkenstocks. Marta wears her grandmothers' sapphire ring and drives a
Chevy hatchback.

The office is equipped with cheap furniture and divided by glass
partitions. A chart maps the Millennium case, with the names and aliases of
the 43 defendants.

From jail, Fabio mails legal pads with notes he writes in pencil. The
sisters translate, type and send the notes on to Fabio's attorneys in Miami.

The government's case centers on 1,280 audio cassettes of police recordings
made from the listening device planted in Bernal's office. There are
hundreds more hours of intercepted phone conversations and beeper text
messages.

Rarely does Fabio appear on the tapes. According to an affidavit by Bogota
DEA agent Paul Craine, 197 evidentiary acts were gleaned from the
recordings. Eight involve Fabio.

The sisters say his voice is heard on only two, neither time discussing
drugs. The other six times, conspirators mention Fabio's name while
discussing drug deals.

Using old secretarial dictation recorders, the sisters went to work. "We
did our own study of the cassettes, one by one. We listened to all of them
over and over again trying to decipher every word," Marta said.

"We are still polishing our transcriptions. It's exhausting. They go on for
hours and hours about their drug deals. I'm sick of listening to it."

Shortly after Fabio's arrest, a co-defendant provided them a set of tapes.
Some two years later, the U.S. Attorney's Office provided another set. "The
quality is slightly better," said Marta. She says the government sent the
tapes in batches, ignoring chronological order. "They sent us all the most
useless ones first. Just secretaries talking. The important ones came later."

Comparing their versions to the government's, the sisters say they found
discrepancies and misunderstandings. Some Marta attributes to Bernal and
Fabio's close childhood friendship and their shared passion for horses and
bullfighting.

"Fabio should have known better than to hang out with Bernal," she said.
"But everyone believed Bernal was retired."

In conversations taped May 25, 1999, the government says Bernal offered to
introduce a friend to a man "in charge of managing Fabio Ochoa's drug
trafficking activities."

The sisters say the original police analysis of the conversation refers to
a man who "manages property" for Ochoa. The words "drug trafficking
activities" are never mentioned.

Concluded Marta: "The suggestion of drugs is Paul Craine's idea."

On June 16, 1999, at Bernal's office, Fabio is alleged to have participated
in a discussion about a five-ton cocaine shipment bound for Mexico.

Fabio was there but denies participating in the drug discussions. He says
he went to the office to take Bernal to lunch and discuss a real estate
deal for which Bernal owed him money.

The tape makes clear that Fabio waited for Bernal to finish his drug
meeting before the two of them spoke about other matters. Bernal was too
busy to go out for lunch, so a takeout meal of rice and shrimp was ordered.

Part of the time Fabio was in another room, part of the time he was in the
office where Bernal and others concluded a drug deal. Fabio did not join
the conversation, but can be heard on tape at the other end of the room
watching a soccer match on television between Colombia and France.

In his affidavit, Craine wrote: "Fabio Ochoa did not participate directly
in the load by providing cocaine to add to the overall shipment, but rather
furthered and facilitated the shipment by making a financial investment and
serving as a kind of counsel or mentor to Bernal."

The affidavit said Fabio told Bernal he knew someone who could help him set
up "a new route to transport drugs." The original police investigator's
analysis of the tape said Fabio mentions someone he could count on to run
"errands."

The sisters say the word used - vueltas - can mean a route in drug
terminology, but more commonly describes errands. Contracting individuals
to take care of household errands is common practice in Latin America. To
make her point, Marta produced a handful of publicity leaflets by companies
offering vuelta services, including returning video rentals, buying theater
tickets, messenger services, package deliveries, bank deposits and
supermarket purchases.

"The whole thing is ridiculous," she said.

Prosecutors acknowledge that the tape transcripts are not perfect. Key
segments are being reviewed. But the case no longer rests on the tapes
alone. Co-conspirators - including Bernal himself - are cooperating.

Bernal pleaded guilty to conspiring to smuggle nearly 20 tons of cocaine
and is expected to testify against Fabio. Based on the tonnage and the tens
of millions of dollars at the heart of the case, prosecutor Ed Ryan said
guidelines would call for a sentence of 30 years to life. The plea
agreement, filed 2 1/2 weeks ago, calls for 20 years. He can earn further
reductions.

If Fabio is convicted as charged, guidelines would call for a much longer
sentence - though by the government's own reckoning, Bernal was the biggest
catch of Operation Millennium and Fabio was at most a bit player.

Bernal previously attested to Fabio's innocence. In July 2000, in an
interview in La Picota jail with Gerardo Reyes of Miami's El Nuevo Herald,
Bernal admitted he trafficked drugs but emphatically absolved Fabio. "Why
would I need his advice? For God's sake, we knew everything there was to
know about this son-of-a-bitch business."

Reyes observes that Fabio was in earshot, so the comment could have been
self-serving.

Setting the Bar High

Attorney General Janet Reno touted Operation Millennium as a major blow in
the drug war. "It is as if we have removed the CEOs of several major
corporations who had joined together in a major conspiracy."

To be sure, Operation Millennium penetrated deep inside the guts of a major
drug organization and bolstered U.S.-Colombian cooperation. Fugitive
traffickers surrendered.

But the sentences that followed hardly lived up to the billing, in part
because some traffickers availed themselves of Vega's "Colombian
Traffickers Rehabilitation Program."

For the 17 Millennium defendants sentenced to date, the average term has
been less than 6 1/2 years. Four have done their time and been released.

Fabio's defense is that he is innocent ...

- - by virtue of which he could not avail himself of Vega's scam ...

- - for which he could end up with the longest sentence.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Michael Moore granted a government motion:
When Fabio's lawyers present his case, they are prohibited from raising
Vega's "alleged misconduct."

A Place to Buy Mangos

The sisters wanted to get visas so they could visit Fabio in jail in Miami.
They accompanied his wife to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota last fall. After
waiting their turn, they say, a consular officer ejected them.

Said Marta: "She screamed at us, "Get out of here and don't ever come
back,' " and threw a piece of paper at them, listing the categories for
denial of a U.S. visa. "Involvement in drug trafficking" was circled.

The experience is typical of what the family says is a vindictive streak
running through the government's case.

"Our brothers recognized that they committed a very grave error," Marta
said. "They admitted to everything and they did their time. Now they
deserve forgiveness, but it seems that is something they are never going to
get from the U.S."

Despite the shame and international notoriety the Ochoas have brought to
Medellin, many here regard the family as examples of the dynamic business
spirit for which the city is famous. They draw a distinction between the
Ochoas and more violent narcos.

"The Ochoas are very different - good, enterprising people," said Juan
Rojas, 30, who sells mangos at the entrance to the Virgin of the Mystic
Rose, a popular roadside religious shrine.

In the city's heyday in the 1980s, when the Ochoas were king, Rojas said
young traffickers would stop at the shrine, dubbed the "Virgin of the
Kilo," to ask Godspeed for a shipment of drugs.

These days, the tips Rojas gets at the Virgin of the Mystic Rose are not
nearly so good.