Arturo Marrero, a Broward real estate developer, was acquitted by a federal judge Monday of conspiring to smuggle cigarettes from Miami to Europe without paying millions of dollars in customs duties.

Marrero, who had two jury trials in Miami federal court, called his experience a “legal nightmare.” One day after his uncommon victory, Marrero said he believes the U.S. attorney’s office and Immigration and Customs Enforcement tried to railroad him.

“How the government assumed that I was a co-conspirator is beyond me,” Marrero, 48, of Davie, said in a statement. “The sad part is that they will go on with their lives as if nothing happened, and my life has been turned upside down because the U.S. government made a mistake.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Miami declined to comment.

In September 2010, Marrero was charged with the smuggling conspiracy and later with money laundering.

The indictment accused him of trying to “enrich himself” by buying cigarettes overseas and hiding the cartons inside textiles and furniture stored in cargo containers at the Port of Miami before shipping them to Portugal, Ireland and Germany. He was further accused of falsifying records to conceal the cigarette shipments and failing to pay at least $22 million in customs taxes and duties in Europe.

But Marrero and his defense team argued that he had sold the freight forwarding business at the center of the alleged smuggling network in early 2000. Defense attorney Joseph Rosenbaum said Marrero had no knowledge of “what was going on in Europe.’’

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke granted Rosenbaum’s motion for acquittal after Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Stone rested her case. The judge declared that the statute of limitations had run out on the conspiracy charge.

Marrero’s first trial in October ended in a mistrial when the FBI arrested a juror who tried to extort money from the defendant’s family in exchange for the promise of a “not guilty’’ verdict by the 12-member jury.

On Monday, Cooke threw out the case altogether before Marrero’s attorney even put on a defense during the second jury trial.

Marrero’s two-step journey rarely, if ever, happens in Miami federal court. Rosenbaum said his client refused to accept a plea offer from the government between trials because he always believed in his innocence.

Cooke’s judgment of acquittal followed a guilty plea earlier in January by one-time juror Italo Campagna, just as Marrero’s second trial was getting under way.

Campagna, 55, of Miami, was charged with soliciting a bribe after demanding between $50,000 and $100,000 from Marrero’s relatives to sway the jury during the first trial in October. Marrero and his family immediately contacted authorities.

Campagna, a dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizen, was arrested by the FBI after he met with the defendant’s brother in Miami Beach to finalize the bribery deal, according to a criminal complaint. He tried to extort the bribe by promising he could influence the verdict in favor of the defendant.

They eventually settled on $20,000 — the amount that the brother said he had brought with him in a brown paper bag.

Campagna faces up to 15 years in prison at his sentencing April 4 before U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz.