After serving 25 of the 30 years of his prison sentence in the United States, one of Colombia’s most legendary drug lords was deported to South America.

Fabio Ochoa became free again not long after.

Ochoa, wearing a grey sweatshirt with a modest design and his belongings packed in a plastic bag, arrived in Bogota Monday afternoon on a flight of deportation. Ochoa, after stepping off the plane, was met by immigration officers in bulletproof vests. No police were on hand to detain Ochoa.

Officials from the Immigration Department took his fingerprints, and through a database confirmed that Ochoa was not wanted by Colombian officials. On the social media platform X, the country’s Immigration Agency said that Ochoa had been “liberated so that he can join his family.”

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Ochoa said, “I was framed” when reporters asked him if he regrets his actions at Bogota’s El Dorado Airport.

The former cartel leader hugged his daughter whom he hadn’t seen for seven years and announced that he was going to move to Medellin with his family.

Ochoa (67) said, “The nightmare has ended.”

Ochoa’s older brothers and he amassed an enormous fortune when cocaine began flooding the U.S. during the late 1970s to early 1980s. According to U.S. officials, they even made it to Forbes Magazine’s billionaires list in 1987.

Ochoa, who lived in Miami, ran a cocaine distribution center once run by Pablo Escobar. Escobar was killed in a shootout in Medellin, Colombia in 1993.

Ochoa, who was initially indicted by the Drug Enforcement Administration in the U.S., was accused of killing Barry Seal in 1986, an American pilot for the Medellin drug cartel.

Ochoa, along with his older brothers Juan David and Jorge Luis turned himself into Colombian authorities at the beginning of the 1990s as part of a deal that prevented them from being extradited to America.

Three brothers were released in 1996. However, Ochoa was arrested three years later on drug trafficking charges. He was then extradited to America in 2001 after an indictment was filed in Miami that named him and over 40 other people as being part of a drug-smuggling plot.

The only suspect from that group to choose to go to court, his conviction resulted in a sentence of 30 years. Other defendants received lighter sentences because they had mostly cooperated with government.

Ochoa has been largely forgotten as Mexican drug traffickers have taken the lead in the global drug industry.

The former Medellin cartel member was recently portrayed in Netflix’s Griselda series, where he fights the plucky Griselda for control of Miami’s cocaine market and then forms an alliance with Sofia Vergara as the drug trafficker.

Ochoa, the youngest son in a wealthy Medellin family, is depicted as such in Netflix’s Narcos. The family is involved with horse breeding and ranching, and this contrasts sharply with Escobar who comes from humbler roots.

Richard Gregorie is a retired Assistant U.S. Attorney who was part of the prosecution team which convicted Ochoa. He said that authorities never managed to seize the entire illicit drug proceeds from the Ochoa Family and he anticipates that former mafia chief will be welcomed back home.

“He will not be retiring a rich man, I can assure you,” Gregorie said to The Associated Press in a statement earlier this month.