3 Brothers Sentenced To Federal Prison For Smuggling Cocaine

TAMPA, FL — Tampa's U.S. Senior District Judge Susan C. Bucklew has sentenced three brothers to federal prison for taking part in a Colombian international cocaine-smuggling operation.

Mario Mitchell Pereira, 43, Olario Mitchell Palacio, 49, and Mike Mitchell Palacio, 52, were arrested for conspiring to distribute cocaine on board a boat in U.S. water.

In October, Pereira was sentenced to 19 years and 7 months in prison. In November, Mike Mitchell Palacio was sentenced to 21 years and 10 months in federal prison. And last week, Olario Mitchell Palacio was sentenced to 17 years and 6 months in federal prison.

Senior District Judge Virginia M. Hernandez Covington also sentenced Mike Mitchell Palacio to an additional consecutive sentence of two years in prison for violating his federally supervised release.

According to court records, in November 2015 the brothers, all Colombian nationals, conspired to have 1,280 kilograms of cocaine smuggled from La Guajira, Colombia, by boat. They arranged operation after a previous trip that Mario Mitchell Pereira organized but had to be aborted because the smugglers suspected the presence of a patrol aircraft in the Caribbean Sea.

Olario Mitchell Palacio and Mike Mitchell Palacio forced co-conspirators to work without payment in sending the second shipment of cocaine. However, a Dutch vessel carrying a law enforcement detachment of U.S. Coast Guard personnel stopped the boat while in international waters about 60 miles north of Colombia. The Coast Guard recovered 1,280 kilograms of cocaine.

The three men were arrested in Colombia in November 2017 after being indicted and were extradited to the United States.

The case was investigated by the Panama Express Strike Force, a standing Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) made up of agents and analysts from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and the U.S. Southern Command's Joint Interagency Task Force South.

The mission of the OCDETF is to dismantle the most serious drug trafficking and money laundering organizations.