The Fallout
Max began providing witness testimony in the indictments of Carlos Lehder, Rafael Cardona Salazar, Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, and testified against the three Colombians charged with the murder of Barry Seal.
Mermelstein testified at former kingpin Carlos Lehder's and deposed Former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega's trials among other work as a witness while in WITSEC from 1987 until his death in 2008. His testimony, amongst others, led to Lehder's imprisonment.
His testimony helped bring down the Medellin Cartel's distributors in Miami. A three million dollar contract was on his head after he turned informant in 1985 and remained until his death in 2008. Mermelstein has given testimony to grand juries in New Orleans, Miami and Los Angeles. His accounts have led to indictments-and some convictions-of some of the most elusive and powerful drug lords in the world and their lieutenants, the men who operate the cartel in Medellin, Colombia, that is believed responsible for 75% of the cocaine that is shipped into the United States.
As a direct result of Mermelstein's testimony, indictments were returned against Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, head of the Ochoa family's operations in Medellin; Pablo Escobar Gaviria, a former Colombian senator who headed the Gaviria drug family, and Rafael Cardona Salazar, the elusive drug kingpin who headed the cartel's operations in the United States. Together, the Medellin cartel families are believed to gross an estimated $7 billion a year in the United States.
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