Former Florida Rep. David Rivera was sentenced Friday to 10 years in federal prison for a secret multimillion-dollar lobbying push for Venezuela’s Maduro regime that never cracked Trump’s sanctions.
A federal judge handed down the decade-long term after a Miami jury convicted Rivera in May on conspiracy to commit money laundering and related crimes tied to the illegal campaign. He has been held without bond since that verdict.
The Hill reported that Rivera, a Republican who served one House term from 2011 to 2013, worked with consultant Esther Nuhfer to lobby U.S. lawmakers and officials in the first Trump administration on behalf of PDV USA, the U.S. affiliate of Venezuela’s state-run oil company. The pair was also found guilty of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act after a weeks-long trial.
Prosecutors said the goal was clear: ease U.S. pressure on Caracas. Rivera’s side now plans an appeal.
An 11-page indictment unsealed in 2022 laid out the alleged deal structure. Prosecutors charged that Venezuela’s then-foreign minister, Delcy Rodríguez, recruited Rivera to push the Trump administration toward softer sanctions.
The indictment claimed Rivera and Nuhfer signed a contract worth $50 million total, five payments of $5 million each and one of $25 million. After the company terminated the contract, prosecutors said, the pair still took in about $20 million.
The lobbying ran in 2017 and 2018, while Maduro still ran the government and Rivera was already out of Congress. They kept the work undisclosed, which is the core of the FARA case. American law requires people acting here for foreign principals to register so the public can see who is buying access.
They did not register. A Miami jury later decided that was not a paperwork slip. It was a crime.
Whatever Rivera sold, the policy did not move his way. President Trump chose not to loosen sanctions on Maduro’s government. Within the first six months of that White House term, the administration moved to sanction the regime rather than relieve it.
That record matters. Secret money from a hostile foreign oil apparatus did not purchase a softer line. The first Trump administration kept pressure on Maduro, and the covert pitch failed on the merits.
Rodríguez later became acting Venezuelan president after the United States arrested Maduro in January, according to the same reporting. The cast of characters in Caracas changed titles. The underlying problem, foreign regimes hunting American influence through cutouts, did not.
At trial, high-profile Republicans pushed back on any suggestion they were in on a paid arrangement with PDV USA. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, described as a longtime friend and former roommate of Rivera, testified that he did not know about a contract between PDV USA and Rivera’s consulting company.
Texas Rep. Pete Sessions gave the same account. So did a top Washington lobbyist who took the stand. None of that erased the jury’s findings against Rivera and Nuhfer. It did show how the defense tried to wall off elected officials from the secret consulting deal.
FARA cases often turn on exactly that gap: private operators cashing in while public officials say they were never told the money trail. The statute exists so voters and Congress are not left guessing who is really paying for the pitch.
Nuhfer received a five-year prison sentence in August for her part in the illegal lobbying, the Miami Herald reported in coverage cited by The Hill. Rivera’s 10-year term is double that stretch and follows a longer paper trail.
In 2021, before this federal conviction, Rivera was fined $456,000 after state and federal investigations into an improper campaign finance scheme. Separate probes. Same name. The new sentence stacks on a record that already included a major civil penalty.
Defense lawyers applied for a presidential pardon in June and now plan to appeal the fresh sentence, the Associated Press reported in material carried in the same account. He remains a convicted former member of Congress headed to federal prison unless a higher court or clemency intervenes.
Rivera represented Florida’s 25th Congressional District for a single term. He left office years before the 2017, 2018 lobbying campaign. The conduct that drew the 10-year sentence was not floor debate or a messy vote. It was off-books work for a Venezuelan state oil affiliate during a sanctions fight.
PDV USA sat at the center of the contract story. Prosecutors described payments, a terminated deal, and roughly $20 million that still changed hands. Juries are not required to like foreign policy. They are required to decide whether defendants hid foreign-principal work and laundered the proceeds. This one said yes.
Money laundering conspiracy and FARA convictions are not technicalities for people who want a clean influence market. They are the tools Congress built for cases in which foreign governments, or their corporate arms, try to rent American voices without daylight.
Rivera’s team can argue the sentence on appeal. What it cannot revise is the timeline already on the record: recruitment allegations aimed at softening sanctions, a nine-figure contract claim, millions received, no registration, a May conviction, custody without bond, and a Friday sentence of 10 years.
Washington has enough open advocacy. It does not need covert retainers from Maduro-linked oil money. When a former lawmaker takes that route and a jury convicts, a serious prison term is not theater, it is the cost of treating U.S. sanctions policy like a secret client file.
