'Prince of Semi-Submersibles': Columbian drug lord who ran fleet of narco-submarines gets 20 years in jail

The “Prince of Semi-Submersibles,” a Colombian drug lord known for running a fleet of narco-submarines that smuggled thousands of kilogrammes of cocaine into the United States from South America, was sentenced to more than 20 years in jail.

Oscar Adriano Quintero Rengifo, 35, commonly known as “Guatala, was sentenced to 20 years and 10 months in federal prison for smuggling cocaine in narco-subs.

According to a federal plea bargain, Quintero Rengifo was a member of a global criminal organisation that transported cocaine from South America to Central America for ultimate importation into the United States.

Prosecutors claimed that the organisation mostly deployed self-propelled semi-submersible boats to Guatemala from whence cocaine was carried into Mexico and subsequently into the United States.

Quintero Rengifo was referred to as “the Prince of Semi-Submersibles” in a statement by federal prosecutors.

In a Colombian-Guatemalan drug cartel, Quintero Rengifo worked his way up to become a skilled international smuggler.

Court documents stated that the organisation mainly dispatched boats to Guatemala, where the cocaine was then trafficked over the Guatemala/Mexico border and into the United States.

“Cocaine was smuggled to Mexican cartel members by a former mayor of Guatemala who was in charge of the country’s northern trafficking routes into Mexico.

Within the gang, Quintero Rengifo advanced from planning smuggling operations to eventually investing in cargoes and obtaining investors.

The U.S. Coast Guard seized at least four vessels, including two semi-submersibles, that were connected to the defendant’s organisation and contained more than 13,000 kilogrammes of cocaine from at least January 2015 through September 2019, court documents revealed.

Rengifor was arrested on January 29, 2021, in Colombia at the request of the US, and on January 26, 2022, he was returned to the US.

In a guilty plea on May 20, 2022. U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell gave him a prison term.

For years, gangs have smuggled cocaine and other drugs via narco submarines, primarily from Colombia and Ecuador to Central America, Mexico, and the United States. They enable Mexican and Colombian drug organisations to work together to move drugs quickly and increase revenues.

What is Narco-submarine?

Narco-submarines are improvised boats painted in ocean colours with one mission: to carry drugs in hermetically sealed canisters over countless ocean kilometres to unsavoury ports of call in other nations.

Narco-submarines, according to the reports, have improved in recent years with the advancement in technology. And it is widely popular in drug-trade industry.

Authorities in Colombia reported that well over 100 narco-submarines had been found since 2018. The ships typically transport 1,543 pounds of marijuana and 286,600 pounds of cocaine. The most popular routes for drug traffickers are through Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, and El Salvador.

Because narco-submarines transport goods valued at millions of dollars, traffickers employ engineers to construct them.

To be able to make them safe initially, they need special training on construction and ship design.

Large amounts of drugs “can be loaded and transported quickly,” and they “have two important characteristics: Their profiled displacement on the coast makes them much less detectable due to their appearance.”

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