Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York | Department of Justice
Alberto Alonso Jaramillo Ramirez, a Colombian national, was sentenced to 150 months in prison for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman after Jaramillo Ramirez pleaded guilty on March 24, 2025.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton stated, “Our fight against the flood of dangerous drugs from Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico is about protecting our children and our communities. 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 revealed that Jaramillo Ramirez worked with members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), an organization based in Colombia responsible for producing and distributing much of the cocaine that enters the United States. He negotiated with individuals he believed were narcotics traffickers from a Mexican drug trafficking organization to establish a supply line from Venezuela to the U.S., but these individuals were confidential sources working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
During recorded communications, Jaramillo Ramirez agreed to use his connections in Colombia to source large quantities of cocaine and arrange 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%—from a FARC-associated farm near Medellín to undercover agents as proof of their capabilities.
Jaramillo Ramirez was arrested in Colombia in February 2022 at the request of U.S. authorities while finalizing plans for weekly shipments of approximately 500 kilograms of cocaine to the United States.
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 upon completion of his sentence.
U.S. Attorney Clayton acknowledged the investigative work by DEA’s Special Operations Division Bilateral Investigations Unit and Bogotá Country Office, as well as support from the Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section’s Office of Judicial Attaché in Bogotá for securing Jaramillo Ramirez’s arrest and extradition.
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.
