MIAMI — Former U.S. Rep. David Rivera was sentenced Friday to 10 years in federal prison for secretly acting as an agent of Nicolás Maduro’s government, moments after his voice broke as he pleaded with the judge for leniency, saying his cancer diagnosis made him fear he will die behind bars.

“I only beg for your mercy in not letting me die in prison,” Rivera, 61, told U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian near the end of a lengthy and deeply personal appeal for leniency. He also pleaded for his sons, nine-year-old twins, saying the boys do not deserve to grow up without a father.

The judge nevertheless sentenced the former Republican congressman to 10 years, twice the prison term she imposed on his co-defendant and longtime political associate Esther Nuhfer. The judge said Rivera’s years of public service could not outweigh what she described as “greed and betrayal” in accepting millions of dollars tied to Venezuela’s government while concealing the financial relationship from longtime political allies, including his friend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“I don’t know what you would have done for a million dollars, two million dollars, three million dollars, but fifty million dollars somehow was enough to convince your group to deceive good friends like Secretary Rubio,” Damian said. “It was a matter of greed and betrayal.”

Damian sentenced Rivera to 120 months on five counts and 60 months on two others, with all terms running concurrently. She also imposed one year of supervised release, no fine and a $700 mandatory assessment.

Plea for mercy

The former politician’s appeal to Damian came at the end of a statement lasting more than half an hour in which he traced his political life from his early years at Florida International University through his time in Congress.

Rivera said reading Against All Hope, Cuban political prisoner Armando Valladares’ memoir, while attending FIU persuaded him to abandon plans to become a sportswriter and devote his life to political and human-rights causes.

He recounted working for Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, assisting Valladares after he became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and spending eight years at Radio and TV Martí before entering elected office. He served a term in Congress, from 2011-13.

“At the end of the day, this was a two-year slice of my life,” Rivera told Damian. “I’m not here to tell you I deserve anything. I’m not. I don’t deserve anything. But I also don’t think I deserve to die in prison.”

Rivera told Damian he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2022 and said testing produced what he described as a statistical prognosis of a survival probability of seven to 10 years. He acknowledged that “only God knows when your time’s over” but said he has been unable to obtain updated prostate antigen testing, an MRI, a PET scan or a biopsy while detained, and does not know his current condition.

He characterized the lengthy prison sentence sought by prosecutors as effectively a “death sentence.”

“I only beg for your mercy in not letting me die in prison,” Rivera said.

Four-hour hearing

Rivera’s attorneys, Edward Shohat and David Weinstein, spent much of the nearly four-hour hearing trying to persuade Damian that, despite the jury’s guilty verdict, the six-week trial had produced no compelling evidence that Rivera was actually working to advance Maduro’s interests.

They argued that the consulting work at the heart of the case was aimed in part at helping ExxonMobil return to Venezuela and that Rivera’s political activities consistently supported Maduro’s opponents. Rivera reinforced that argument during his own statement, pointing to his work with Venezuelan opposition leaders and U.S. officials who favored removing Maduro from power.

The defense also called members of the Miami community who described Rivera’s decades of public service and the help he had provided to people in South Florida. The courtroom was packed with supporters, some of whom told Damian that Rivera had helped them when they needed it most.

Damian expressed sympathy for those who spoke on Rivera’s behalf and acknowledged his record of public service. But the judge, who presided over the trial, said the evidence overwhelmingly supported the jury’s finding that Rivera knowingly acted as an agent of Venezuela’s government without making the disclosures required by federal law.

“I am not doubting for one second all of the good Mr. Rivera has done over his years on this planet,” Damian said. But, she added, “as firmly as you believe that you were working on behalf of the opposition, all of the other evidence points to this otherwise.”

$50 million contract

The case centered on a $50 million consulting agreement signed in March 2017 between Rivera’s company, Interamerican Consulting, and PDV USA, a U.S. affiliate of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA.

Prosecutors said the agreement provided the financial foundation for an undisclosed campaign by Rivera and Nuhfer to influence U.S. policy toward Venezuela.

Interamerican ultimately received $20 million in four $5 million payments. Three came from PDV USA between March and April 2017. A fourth came directly from Venezuela’s state oil company through Russia’s Gazprom Bank in October 2017, according to financial records introduced by prosecutors.

Government exhibits showed millions of dollars moving from Interamerican to people and companies tied to the operation, including a net $5.29 million to accounts associated with Hugo Perera, $4.69 million to Nuhfer’s Communication Solutions and $3.75 million to Interglobal Yacht Management on behalf of Venezuelan businessman Raúl Gorrín.

Damian said both the size of the contract and the money laundering made the crime considerably more serious than the defense maintained.

“The fact that there’s money laundering involved to the tune of more than $20 million also adds to the fact that this was an extremely serious offense,” she said. “It’s about not filing a piece of paper to disclose the fact that you are getting paid by the government of Venezuela, an authoritarian regime, in a contract for $50 million.”

Castro comparison

Damian drew a pointed comparison to Cuba while explaining why she considered the conduct so serious.

Looking around a courtroom she described as predominantly Cuban American, including people whose families had fled Cuba, Damian asked what they would think if Rivera had accepted $20 million from someone affiliated with Fidel Castro.

“I don’t think there’s any getting around,” Damian said. “Whatever the excuse might have been, nobody would accept that that’s okay.

“And I don’t think it’s different when there’s no dispute that the money that was paid in this case came from the Maduro regime,” she said. “You might have had good intentions with it, but I don’t think anybody that is sitting here would appreciate if that money had come from someone in the Cuban regime.”

She added: “I can’t help but see the parallels here.”

Opposition contacts

Rivera and his lawyers relied heavily on his contacts with Maduro opponents to argue that the government had misconstrued his work.

Rivera said Rubio asked for his help in early 2017 developing a Venezuela policy that included sanctions against Maduro officials and business associates, visa revocations, the release of political prisoners and free elections.

He also pointed to messages from Venezuelan opposition leader Julio Borges thanking him for his work for Venezuela and from former U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions praising his work after meetings involving Venezuelan officials and opposition figures.

Sessions testified as a defense witness that Rivera recruited him to help persuade Maduro to step down and allow democratic elections. But Sessions also said he did not know Rivera’s company had signed the $50 million PDV USA agreement.

Rivera and Nuhfer later helped arrange for Sessions to travel to Caracas in 2018 to meet Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Rivera traveled with the group and acted as an interpreter.

Rivera also met with Rubio in Washington in July 2017 to discuss whether Gorrín could help broker Maduro’s departure. Rubio testified that he did not know about Rivera’s lucrative PDV USA agreement.

Damian pointed to that lack of disclosure in explaining her sentence. She also cited testimony from Borges, who said he would not have worked with Rivera “in a thousand years” had he known Delcy Rodríguez, at the time Maduro’s foreign minister, had authorized payments to Rivera’s company. Rubio similarly testified that he would not have acted at Rivera’s request had he known Rivera was receiving payments tied to Venezuela’s government.

Sentencing fight

Federal probation officials calculated Rivera’s advisory sentencing range at 262 to 327 months, driven largely by the money-laundering convictions and sentencing enhancements.

Rivera’s lawyers argued that the calculation vastly overstated the seriousness of what they described as fundamentally a case involving the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires anyone working for a foreign government to disclose it. They asked Damian to impose no additional prison time beyond the roughly four months Rivera has already spent in custody since his conviction or, alternatively, no more than one year and one day.

Prosecutors sought a more substantial prison term, portraying Rivera as the leading participant in the operation.

Damian said she did not believe Rivera is likely to commit a similar crime in the future.

“I don’t think you’re ever gonna do anything like this again,” Damian told him. “I think you’ve learned your lesson.”

But she said a substantial sentence was necessary to provide general deterrence, just punishment and respect for the law.

Damian ultimately concluded that 10 years was “sufficient, but not greater than necessary.”

New trial denied

Rivera entered the sentencing hearing after Damian rejected his request for either a judgment of acquittal or a new trial, another setback as he prepares to appeal his conviction.

Damian ruled that the evidence presented during the trial was “more than sufficient to sustain his conviction on all counts.”

Rivera had challenged several rulings made before and during the trial, including the court’s handling of the statute of limitations under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, restrictions on his cross-examination of government witness Perera and an instruction Damian gave jurors during the defense’s closing argument.

Damian said Rivera had preserved his legal challenges for appeal but failed to demonstrate “any injustice — let alone a manifest injustice — requiring a new trial.”

Forfeiture unresolved

Prosecutors have also asked Damian to impose a $20 million forfeiture judgment representing proceeds they say were traceable to the foreign-agent offenses.

Damian did not resolve that dispute Friday. After defense attorneys objected, she concluded that the forfeiture issue needs to be litigated and directed prosecutors to submit a general forfeiture order while allowing the defense to challenge it.

She scheduled an Oct. 9 status conference to address forfeiture and the scheduling of Rivera’s separate federal tax trial. Those tax charges, involving Rivera’s 2017 and 2018 returns, remain pending.

Rivera will remain at the Federal Detention Center in Miami while the tax case is pending. After that case is resolved, Damian said she would recommend that the Bureau of Prisons place him at the minimum-security camp at the Federal Correctional Institution- Miami, close to his family.

Rivera has 14 days after entry of judgment to file a notice of appeal.

Despite imposing the decade-long sentence, Damian closed the hearing by praising Rivera’s demeanor throughout:

“He was a true, a true gentleman the entire time we tried this case.”

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