A former U.S. congressman will now spend a full decade behind bars after being handed a 10-year federal prison sentence on Friday.
Former Florida politician David Rivera was slapped with the decade-long sentence after being convicted of secretly acting as an unregistered foreign agent for a hostile regime, failing to register under FARA rules, and conspiring to launder tens of millions of dollars tied to the illicit scheme.
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported in May, Rivera and Nuhfer were found guilty by a federal jury following a trial that exposed the secret Venezuela-linked lobbying arrangement.
The previous Gateway Pundit report detailed prosecutors’ allegations that Rivera and Nuhfer accepted millions connected to the Maduro government while concealing the relationship and using Rivera’s political connections to pursue Venezuela’s interests in the United States.
Rivera had faced a statutory maximum of as much as 60 years behind bars following his conviction.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian handed down the 120-month sentence on October 2 following Rivera’s conviction on conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), violating FARA, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and four counts involving transactions in criminally derived property, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
Rivera, 61, represented Florida as a Republican in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2013.
