From Congress to prison: David Rivera is convicted in case tied to Venezuela

As the son of Cuban immigrants who escaped Fidel Castro’s regime, David Rivera dove into the anti-communist wave of Miami’s exile community and rode it into a political career as a Florida legislator and member of Congress.

But his time on Capitol Hill would last only one term, leaving the conservative Republican with an uncertain future churned up by ethics and corruption investigations.

On Friday, his fall was sealed as U.S. deputy marshals led him from a courtroom to a detention center: A jury convicted the 60-year-old politician on charges of failing to register as foreign agent in 2017, when he signed a $50 million contract with the American arm of Venezuela’s national oil company and lobbied major U.S. politicians in a scheme to “normalize” relations with socialist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

“His public image was as an anti-communist, but he was working for the Maduro regime the whole time, and he knew it,” federal prosecutor Roger Cruz told the 12-person jury during closing arguments just days earlier in Miami federal court. Cruz said Rivera and his co-defendant, political consultant Esther Nuhfer, “were pretending to do good but in reality they were making money” off a political crisis in Venezuela, which was economically collapsing under Maduro’s leadership.

Cruz described the government’s case against Rivera and Nuhfer as a tale of “greed and betrayal.”

The jury unanimously agreed, finding Rivera and Nuhfer guilty of breaking a foreign-agent registration law when they secretly worked on Venezuela’s behalf while they lobbied their friend, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and other U.S. officials in 2017 and 2018. Both were stone-faced when the jury’s verdicts were read, but afterward Rivera walked over to Nuhfer and gave her a hug at the defense table.

U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian ordered that Rivera be detained before sentencing, at the request of federal prosecutors, who recommended that Nuhfer, 51, be allowed to remain free on bond as she awaits sentencing. They will be sentenced on July 20.

Rivera and Nuhfer now face a decade or more in prison for their convictions on conspiracy, foreign-agent and related money-laundering charges. He was convicted on seven counts, and she was convicted on four charges. The jury reached the verdicts after a five-week trial with 14 witnesses, including Rubio, and thousands of records, such as text messages, emails and financial documents. The jury began deliberations on Thursday morning.

Both defendants also face a potential forfeiture judgment of $20 million, representing the proceeds that they received from Rivera’s consulting contract with PDV USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s national oil company. Both used their fees from the contract to buy real estate in Florida. Rivera, who served between 2011 and 2013 in Congress, also used about $300,000 for his unsuccessful bid for a state representative seat in 2018, according to court records.

After the jury’s verdicts were read, federal prosecutors urged Judge Damian to send Rivera to the Federal Detention Center in Miami as he awaits sentencing.

The argument over revoking Rivera’s bond was contentious. Assistant U.S. Attorney Harold Schimkat argued that Rivera is a flight risk because he faces a potentially long prison sentence and still has a pending federal trial on tax charges related to his foreign-agent case. He also faces another foreign-agent registration indictment in Washington.

“He is convicted of serving a foreign regime in Venezuela,” Schimkat told the judge, noting his sentence could exceed 10 years. “He has multiple times in this case and other cases failed to comply with court orders. It is a pattern he has repeated over and over again in his life.”

But Rivera’s defense attorneys argued that he has strong ties to family in Miami-Dade County and has two sons from a marriage that ended in divorce last year.

“As the last few weeks have shown at trial, Mr. Rivera was working against the Venezuelan government,” lawyer Thomas Bardenwerper said, criticizing the government’s bid to have Rivera detained. “It doesn’t seem right.”

“He is a Miami-Dade County citizen,“ lawyer David Weinstein added. “I would submit to you that there is clear and convincing evidence that he is not going anywhere.”

Damian was not persuaded, saying she agreed with prosecutors that Rivera faces a potentially lengthy sentence and viewed him as a flight risk, possibly to Venezuela. She ordered that Rivera, who had been free on bond, be detained before his sentencing. He was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals.

“There are ties to Venezuela that are concerning,” Damian said, adding that it’s unclear how much money Rivera has access to in bank and real estate assets.

During closing arguments this week, prosecutors said Rivera and Nuhfer deliberately avoided registering as foreign agents for Venezuela with the U.S. government as they “preyed” on politicians such as Rubio because they wanted to keep the public in the dark about their consulting relationship with the socialist Maduro regime, Cruz, the prosecutor, told jurors.

“Marco Rubio was one of the many pawns used by these two defendants,” Cruz told jurors on Tuesday. “They couldn’t make the money [off Venezuela] if anybody found out about it.”

Cruz said Rivera and Nuhfer cared only about making millions off the Venezuelan government, while Cruz cited one of Rivera’s text messages in which he described Venezuelans who fled to the Miami area as “savages.”

Lawyers for Rivera and Nuhfer, who did not testify at their trial, attacked the government’s case, asserting that Rivera’s highly lucrative consulting contract was with a U.S. corporation even though it is a subsidiary of PDVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company; therefore, they did not have to register as foreign agents in the United States.

Perhaps more significant, the lawyers argued, Rivera and Nuhfer tried to promote the refinery business of the subsidiary, PDV USA, which operates as Houston-based Citgo, and reestablish business relations between Venezuela and the U.S. oil giant Exxon, whose assets were seized by Maduro’s predecessor. Their representation of a Venezuelan business did not require them to file papers under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a transparency law dating back to 1938, the lawyers claimed.

Moreover, the lawyers said, they interacted with Rubio, now the Trump administration’s secretary of state, and Texas Congressman Pete Sessions for one purpose: removing Maduro from power and replacing him with an opposition candidate in democratic elections in Venezuela. They sought to weaken Maduro, who faced economic sanctions along with other senior officials and Venezuela’s national oil company, PDVSA, the parent company of the U.S. subsidiary.

‘Trying to blind you’

“They have spent this entire trial trying to blind you with the light of that $50 million contract,” Rivera’s lead attorney, Ed Shohat, told the jurors. “This case from the very beginning has been nothing but shifting sands and changing positions.

“There is not one word in the indictment about manipulating Sessions or Rubio. All that David Rivera cared about during the entire time frame of this case, without exception, was removing Nicolás Maduro. The only thing that he did was try to get that SOB out of Venezuela.”

Shohat also said his client’s description of Venezuelans as “savages” in a text was political commentary, not a racist slur.

Nuhfer’s lead defense lawyer, David O. Markus, made similar arguments, but she played a supporting role in the alleged conspiracy led by Rivera. For starters, Rivera’s company, Interamerican Consulting, signed the $50 million contract with PDV USA in March 2017. Nuhfer was not a party to that agreement.

Soon after, Rivera cut side deals with Nuhfer and two others, Miami businessman Hugo Perera, a convicted drug trafficker who cooperated with the government, and wealthy Venezuelan TV network owner Raul Gorrin, who had access to Maduro and his then-foreign minister, Delcy Rodriguez.

Prosecutors say Maduro and Rodriguez authorized a series of payments totaling $20 million under terms of the PDV USA contract before having a falling out with Rivera’s group by the end of 2017. Of that sum, Rivera paid about $4 million to Nuhfer, mainly for introducing him to Perera, who lived on exclusive Fisher Island. Rivera gave about $5 million to Perera for introducing him to Gorrin, who also had a home on the island. And Rivera gave about $4 million to Gorrin for his access to Maduro and Rodriguez and gaining their approval for the contract.

“Esther Nuhfer is innocent,” Markus told the jurors on Wednesday, as about 30 of her supporters sat in the courtroom. “The question is, why did they charge her in the first place?”

Markus pointed out that when Perera, who was not charged, testified for the government at trial, he said he believed what he was doing with Rivera was legal.

“That’s exactly what Esther believed,” said Markus, who handled Nuhfer’s defense with partner Margot Moss. “Never in a million years did she think she had to file” a registration form as a foreign agent for Venezuela.

“They gave the benefit of the doubt to Hugo Perera,” Markus said. “Why do you think they gave him the benefit of the doubt? Because he was willing to point the finger at David Rivera.”

Markus also said Nuhfer did not lobby Rubio, Sessions or any other U.S. official, as prosecutors Cruz, Schimkat and David Ryan allege in the indictment.

During the five-week trial, Rubio, Sessions and influential GOP lobbyist Brian Ballard testified. None said he knew about Rivera’s consulting contract with the Venezuelan subsidiary, PDV USA, until the company sued Rivera over allegations of doing little work in May 2020.

Sessions testified as a defense witness on Monday that Rivera enlisted him in 2017 to persuade Maduro to step down and hold democratic elections in Venezuela.

But the Republican lawmaker acknowledged he did not know at the time that Rivera’s consulting company had signed the $50 million contract that March with the U.S. subsidiary, which prosecutors say was controlled by Maduro’s government.

“I did not ask, nor did they say anything,” Sessions, who was first elected to Congress in 1996, testified.

Sessions testified he agreed to meet on April 2, 2017, in New York City with Rivera, Rodriguez (the Venezuelan foreign minister), and others.

At their meeting, he said Rodriguez resisted the idea of regime change in Venezuela but urged him to consider bringing Exxon, the Dallas-based oil behemoth in his congressional district, back to the negotiating table with Venezuela. Exxon and Venezuela had a major legal battle after Maduro’s predecessor, the late President Hugo Chávez, confiscated the company’s assets in the South American country.

Sessions testimony

Sessions testified that he also met separately that day with Rivera, Nuhfer, Venezuelan political opposition leader Julio Borges and Orlando business consultant Bertica Cabrera Morris, a friend of his wife Karen, at the Manhattan apartment belonging to Gorrín, the wealthy Venezuelan businessman.

The gatherings set the groundwork for Sessions to act as an “intermediary” between the U.S. government and Maduro’s socialist regime during the first Trump administration.

But Sessions testified that Exxon’s lawyers refused to negotiate directly with senior Venezuelan officials to resolve their legal dispute, which was going through arbitration in the International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, little progress was being made in the parallel effort to promote democratic elections in Venezuela, whose top officials, including Maduro, and Venezuela’a national oil company, PDVSA, were slapped with U.S. economic sanctions in July 2017.

As a result, Maduro and Rodriguez stopped paying Rivera’s company, Interamerican Consulting, through the American subsidiary.

Despite the setbacks, Rivera and Nuhfer continued to communicate with Sessions and arranged for the congressman to travel to Caracas to meet with Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at a military compound near the presidential palace on April 2, 2018. Sessions testified that Congress, the State Department and Trump administration were fully aware of his meeting with Venezuela’s president.

Rivera, Perera and others — excluding Nuhfer — flew to Caracas in Gorrín’s private jet from South Florida. Sessions made the trip on a commercial flight.

Sessions said he and Maduro — with Rivera acting as an interpreter — discussed holding democratic elections, freeing political prisoners and allowing the president and his family to move to a “safe haven” after he left power. He said Maduro expressed interest in the plan.

The following day, Sessions testified that he met with Venezuelan opposition leader Henry Ramos Allup and with U.S. Embassy officials at Gorrín’s palatial estate in Caracas. (The No. 2 embassy official, Brian Naranjo, testified at Rivera’s trial that he saw Sessions’ visit as a “back-channel” mission that would come to nothing, and he described Allup and Gorrín as “corrupt.”)

After the trip, Maduro and Sessions exchanged letters. On April 13, 2018, Sessions wrote that he shared “issues of mutual concern between the United States and Venezuela” with incoming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and planned to discuss them with President Donald Trump and National Security Advisor John Bolton.

But, ultimately, Maduro did not agree to any of the U.S. demands in exchange for his exit.

Rubio meetings in D.C.

The previous year, Rivera and others met twice with Rubio in Washington, court records show.

In the first meeting, Rivera and Rubio met at the senator’s residence in Washington on July 9, 2017. They discussed how Gorrín could broker Maduro’s exit. Rivera and Rubio were longtime allies, having been roommates when they served in the Florida Legislature. Rubio was the speaker of the Florida House from 2006 to 2008.

A few days later, on July 12, 2017, Rubio met with Rivera, Nuhfer, Gorrín and others at the Marriott Hotel off Connecticut Avenue in Washington rather than Rubio’s office because he didn’t trust Gorrín.

Rubio testified during Rivera’s trial that he thought the meeting was going to be about Gorrín’s role to obtain a letter from Maduro indicating his willingness to hold democratic elections in Venezuela. But Gorrín spent the meeting talking about how life was bad in Venezuela.

Rubio — like Sessions — testified during the trial that he had no idea Rivera had secured the highly profitable agreement with PDV USA when he met with him.

READ MORE: Rubio testifies he was ‘unaware’ of Rivera’s $50M deal with Venezuelan subsidiary

In late 2018, Gorrín was charged with foreign corruption and money laundering in federal court in South Florida. He was also charged in another foreign-corruption case in the same court in late 2024. Gorrín, in Caracas, is considered a fugitive wanted by U.S. authorities.

Also in late 2024, Rivera was charged again with secretly working as an unregistered foreign agent in the United States — this time in Washington, for trying to lobby a Trump administration official between 2019 and 2020 on behalf of Gorrín. Authorities say Gorrín paid Rivera $5.5 million while trying to get himself removed from a federal government sanctions list. The case is pending for trial.

In early January, U.S. military forces seized Maduro and his wife from a compound in Caracas and brought them to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in New York.

Maduro was replaced by Rodriguez, the former foreign minister who had become vice president.

This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 12:06 PM.