Venezuelan first lady’s 2 nephews found guilty in drug case

Two nephews of Venezuela’s first lady were convicted on Friday of charges they conspired to send drugs to the United States.

The jury returned its verdict in the case against Efrain Campo and his cousin Francisco Flores after less than a day of deliberations. The nephews of Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores were charged with conspiring last year to import more than 1,700 pounds of cocaine into the United States.

Lawyers for Campo and Flores argued no drugs traded hands and the men never intended to deliver any. They blamed a flawed Drug Enforcement Administration-led probe that relied on a longtime informant who was using and dealing cocaine as he helped build the case.

A defense lawyer told the jury on Thursday in closing arguments that the first lady’s nephews should be acquitted because a U.S. sting operation was so deeply flawed that prosecutors had to take the rare step of notifying its star witness that they were ripping up his cooperation deal because of his lies.

“He lied in your face!” attorney David Rody told the jurors. “You saw a rare thing, a government cooperator get ripped up in court.”

Rody said the testimony by the informant was crucial to the government’s case against Campo and Flores. And he said it explains why the government didn’t cut ties with him after learning in April that he had been dealing drugs for the last four years even as he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to work as an informant for the DEA and others.

Prosecutors had urged jurors to look at other evidence in the case, including statements the defendants made to federal agents and recordings of meetings.

“The defendants thought they were above the law,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Brendan Quigley said. “They thought they could operate with impunity in Venezuela because of who they were and who they were related to. They thought they could easily make tons of money sending drugs out of the country because, as defendant Flores said, the DEA is not here and the Americans don’t come in here. But they were wrong.”

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