10 Years: Ex-GOP Congressman David Rivera Jailed for Secret Venezuela Lobbying
October 4, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
David Rivera, a former Florida Republican congressman, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for secretly lobbying on behalf of Nicolás Maduro's government under a $50 million contract.
Ten years. That is the sentence U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian handed David Rivera, 61, on Friday, after a federal jury convicted the former Florida Republican congressman of secretly lobbying for Nicolás Maduro's government while publicly positioning himself as an anti-communist crusader.
The case centered on a $50 million contract, according to the Department of Justice, that Rivera and co-defendant Esther Nuhfer secured with PDV USA, a New York-based affiliate of Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA. Rivera had faced a maximum of 60 years in federal prison and a potential $20 million asset forfeiture, CBS News reported. He will also forfeit properties in Doral and the Florida Keys.
A federal jury in Miami convicted Rivera in May on all counts after a seven-week trial, the DOJ confirmed. The charges included conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and four counts involving transactions with criminally derived property. Co-defendant Nuhfer was found guilty on all counts as well.
Prosecutors alleged that Rivera and Nuhfer worked from 2017 to 2018 to soften U.S. policy toward Venezuela without registering as foreign agents, CBS News reported. They lobbied then-Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Representative Pete Sessions, arranging meetings for then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez in New York, Caracas, Washington and Dallas. Sessions later agreed to deliver a letter from Maduro to President Donald Trump after a secret meeting in Caracas, according to CBS News.
To hide the arrangement, Rivera set up an encrypted chat group called "MIA" with Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín, his main conduit to the Maduro government, according to the New York Post. Members used code names: Maduro was the "bus driver," Sessions "Sombrero," Rodríguez "The Lady in Red," and Rubio "Miss Clairol" (rubio means blond in Spanish). Payments were referred to as "La Luz," the Spanish word for "the light." The DOJ said Rivera directed $1.5 million from the contract into his campaign account between March 2017 and August 2018. A wire transfer of $3.75 million went to a South Florida company that maintained Gorrín's luxury yacht, CBS News reported.
U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said Rivera "sold his reputation to communists to fill his greed," CBS News reported. "This was not some paperwork violation, or a simple mistake," Quiñones said. FBI Special Agent in Charge Brett D. Skiles said the sentence proved that "operating illegally and covertly on behalf of a foreign government has consequences," CBS News reported.
Rivera's attorneys argued at sentencing that the $50 million contract covered commercial work exempt from FARA because it was signed with a U.S. subsidiary, not the Venezuelan government directly, the New York Post reported. Defense attorney Ed Shohat told the court that if Rivera had filed the registration form, "everything he did, including the $50 million contract, which totally distorted this case, is perfectly legal." Judge Damian rejected that. "There's no dispute this money came from the Maduro regime," she said, according to the BBC.
Rivera had built his political identity in South Florida's Cuban exile community on anti-communist credentials, and prosecutors argued that is precisely why he kept the arrangement secret: disclosure would have ended his career, CBS News reported. Rubio, now Secretary of State and Rivera's former Tallahassee housemate, testified he knew nothing of the lobbying contract. Rivera's attorneys plan to appeal and applied for a presidential pardon in June, the New York Post reported. He also faces additional federal charges in Washington, D.C.
A man who built a career opposing one regime spent two years secretly serving it.
Published October 4, 2026 · Frisian News