Former Republican Rep. David Rivera of Florida was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison (Screenshot: WPLG Local 10)

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.

Federal prosecutors said Rivera and political consultant Esther Nuhfer secured a staggering $50 million contract with a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA.

But prosecutors said the arrangement went far beyond ordinary consulting.

According to evidence presented at trial, Rivera and Nuhfer secretly worked to advance the interests of the Venezuelan government in Washington while failing to register as foreign agents as required by federal law.

The pair allegedly leveraged Rivera’s political relationships to lobby American officials, including then-Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Pete Sessions, and helped arrange contacts between U.S. policymakers and senior Venezuelan officials, including Nicolás Maduro and Delcy Rodríguez. Prosecutors also said Rivera and Nuhfer used coded language in their communications while conducting the operation.

Rubio testified during the trial that he was unaware Rivera was working under the Venezuelan-linked consulting agreement, according to the Associated Press.

Rivera’s attorneys have maintained that his work was commercial rather than political and have indicated they intend to appeal his conviction.

Federal prosecutors said the money did not simply remain inside a consulting operation.

Evidence introduced at trial showed Rivera deposited approximately $1.5 million in proceeds from the contract into his Florida state congressional campaign account between March 2017 and August 2018, according to the Justice Department’s sentencing announcement.

Nuhfer allegedly used approximately $455,000 in proceeds to purchase a home in Key Colony Beach, Florida.

Nuhfer was convicted alongside Rivera of FARA and money-laundering offenses and was previously sentenced to five years in federal prison.

The case was investigated by the FBI’s Miami Field Office and IRS Criminal Investigation.

U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones said following Rivera’s sentencing that “foreign influence in America cannot operate in the shadows.”

“Today’s sentence reinforces a simple rule: foreign influence in America cannot operate in the shadows,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida. “If you act at the request, direction, or control of a foreign government and engage in covered political activity, you must comply with our disclosure laws. That can include conduct like arranging a meeting with policymakers, lobbying a government official, or promoting a foreign government’s message on social media.

“For a former Congressman from South Florida, this betrayal cuts especially deep. Rivera represented a community shaped by generations of families who fled communist oppression and came to this country seeking freedom. He knew that history. He knew what this community had endured. Yet the jury found that, for millions of dollars, he secretly used the access and relationships entrusted to him to advance the interests of the Maduro regime.

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