Casey Anthony’s former lawyer has been sentenced to 15 years prison for plotting to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine aboard his private jet.
Todd Macaluso was found guilty of an international cocaine distribution conspiracy after plotting to fly a plane-full of the drugs from Ecuador to Honduras last November.
On Thursday, the former attorney was sentenced to 15 years in jail and a $10,000 fine.
Casey Anthony’s former lawyer Todd Macaluso (pictured) has been sentenced to 15 years prison for plotting to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine aboard his private jet
Prosecutors said the 55-year-old had planned to fly more than 3,000 pounds of cocaine, worth tens of millions of dollars, on his Falcon 10 plane.
Once the drugs reached Honduras, they would be sold to Mexican drug traffickers and imported into the United States.
Macaluso would have gotten $200,000 in return after the drop-off was complete, federal agents claim.
Prosecutors say he met repeatedly with drug traffickers in Tijuana, Mexico ahead of the scheme and then in November 2016, Macaluso flew his jet to Haiti, to meet with the drug traffickers, agreeing to transport the cocaine the following day.
But the disbarred lawyer was arrested in Haiti and extradited to the United States for prosecution.
Prosecutors said the 55-year-old had planned to fly more than 3,000 pounds of cocaine, worth tens of millions of dollars, on his Falcon 10 plane (pictured)
At the time he was out of jail on a supervised release after being convicted for defrauding clients in California.
He was sentenced to five months in jail and hit with heavy fines in November 2015 after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud. He admitted putting his clients’ personal injury cases up as collateral against their knowledge, and often forging their signatures and that of the ‘witnesses’, to enter into funding agreements with investors.
Macaluso was immediately suspended by the California Bar and disbarred in 2016.
In the drug smuggling case, authorities first noticed the suspicious activities in October while investigating drug traffickers who were trying to use a plane registered in the states.
Carlos Almonte Vasquez and Humberto Osuna Contreras, co-defendants with the former lawyer, said they met Macaluso in Port au-Prince in early November to plot out how to pull of the drug smuggle.
‘Macaluso described, in the presence of both Almonte Vasquez and Osuna Contreras, the structure of the subject aircraft, stating that it could hold 1,500 kilograms of cocaine,’ Detective Alexander Sosa of the DEA task force said.
All three men were flown to MacArthur Airport in Long Island to be arraigned, and were denied because it was believed they were flight risks.
Today, law enforcement celebrated Macaluso’s sentence, warning that ‘No individual is above the law.’
One of Casey Anthony’s former lawyers Todd Macaluso (pictured comforting Anthony in 2009) was convicted of cocaine trafficking in November
Macaluso worked as Casey Anthony’s lawyer in 2009 and 2010. A year later she was found not guilty of murdering her two-year-old daughter Caylee
‘This individual is someone who was sworn to uphold the law and conspired to break it,’ stated NYSP Superintendent Beach.
‘The culmination of this investigation and the disruption of this international illegal drug trafficking operation sends a clear message that we will find and punish the people who are responsible for putting these illegal substances in the hands of our youth and others.’
FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Lasky added that Macaluso had been ‘driven by greed.’
‘Instead of profiting from this poison, his illicit career was brought to an abrupt end through close cooperation with our law enforcement partners.’
Macaluso worked as Anthony’s lawyer for roughly a year in 2009 and 2010. In 2011 the Florida woman was acquitted of murdering her two-year-old daughter.
Anthony was first charged with killing Caylee in 2008 when a family member reported that they hadn’t seen the toddler in over a month, and thought the mother’s car smelled like a dead body.
The toddler’s skeletal remains were found in December in a trash bag in the woods near the family’s home, and it is thought she died after duct-tape placed over her mouth caused her to suffocate.