The government says he earned $169 million flying cocaine for the Colombian cartels while pretending to be a U.S. Customs Service informant.
Rodney Matthews, once featured on a "60 Minutes" show about secret government sources, lived extravagantly, traveling worldwide with his family and buying jewelry, furs and fancy clothes as they went, federal officials say.His joy ride came to an end Thursday when he was sentenced to life in prison for smuggling more than 25 tons of cocaine.
"Rodney Matthews was double-dealing, pretending to be a confidential informant for the government but actually using inside information to run his major narcotics enterprise," U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey said. "This is a just result that truly fits the crime."
He was convicted Dec. 15 and the jury agreed with government estimates that he had earned $169 million from his drug smuggling activities.
Matthews, 50, received a life prison sentence for running a continuing criminal enterprise. He also received two concurrent life sentences for conspiracy to import cocaine, 12 years for conspiracy to engage in money laundering and 40 years for money laundering.
Matthews was smuggling marijuana into Texas in the early 1980s before he was caught in 1984 and agreed to cooperate with drug agents.
By 1985, he was running his own smuggling operations again in Texas and south Florida, this time with the help of inside information he claimed included knowledge of military reconnaissance flights.
His smuggling runs continued from Colombia between 1985 and 1988, prosecutors said.
During Matthews' trial, defense attorneys F. Lee Bailey and Ronald Dresnick portrayed their client as a victim of dueling Customs Service agents, arguing that since Matthews was an undercover government informant, he was authorized to participate in drug flights.
Customs officials in Miami had no comment Thursday on the sentencing.