SAN JOSE \u2014 Jose Julian Toro-Marin agreed to act as a middle man in a plot to smuggle 22 kilograms of cocaine out of Colombia, but it all ended when he showed up in San Jose for a face-to-face meeting with a person who turned out to be an undercover federal agent, court records show.<\/p>\n
In court filings, Toro-Marin, 63, revealed publicly for the first time that his crime \u2014 a break from his \u201cperfectly law abiding life,\u201d according to his lawyer \u2014 wasn\u2019t a random occurrence. He had been contacted with a $100,000 extortion threat, ostensibly by a now-defunct group of communist guerrilla fighters, to pay up or his family would be harmed, according to court records.<\/p>\n
\u201cDesperate to raise the money demanded by the guerillas, after the Colombian authorities failed to even try to protect his family from them, Mr. Toro agreed to act as the middle-man in a conspiracy to import cocaine for distribution into the United States that turned out to be a sting operation,\u201d a defense sentencing memo says.<\/p>\n
Now, Toro-Marin has faced the music. In custody since his arrest in 2024, and despite pleas from his daughters to remember the grandfather acted \u201cout of desperation, not malice,\u201d U.S. District Judge Rita Lin sentenced Toro-Marin to four years in federal prison. Prosecutors had asked for even more prison time, arguing a 57-month sentence would be \u201csufficient but not greater than necessary to reflect the seriousness\u201d of what he did, according to court records.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said that over several months, Toro-Marin and unnamed \u201cassociates\u201d worked to smuggle cocaine, and that he eventually met with \u201cconfidential\u201d informants working with the federal government. Their planning included \u201ca meeting in Bogot\u00e1 on July 2, 2024, during which the conspirators agreed that they would attempt to send 22 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to the United States approximately 20 days later,\u201d a prosecution sentencing memo says. Toro-Marin met with an undercover agent in San Jose two weeks later.<\/p>\n
\u201cToro-Marin told the (agent) that he knew people who wanted to smuggle hundreds of kilograms of cocaine to the United States, and further stated that he was hoping the (agent) could help him smuggle more than 20 kilograms at a time to the United States,\u201d the memo says.<\/p>\n