A federal jury on Friday convicted former Republican U.S. Rep. David Rivera of Florida and political consultant Esther Nuhfer of secretly working as foreign agents for Venezuela’s government in 2017 and 2018, capping a five-week trial that featured testimony from Secretary of State Marco Rubio against his longtime friend and former roommate.

At the heart of the case was a $50 million contract that Rivera’s firm, Interamerican Consulting, signed in March 2017 with PDV USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company, The New York Times reported. Prosecutors said Rivera was hired to lobby members of Congress and the White House for a normalization of U.S.-Venezuela relations on behalf of Maduro’s government, at a time when Caracas was facing economic collapse and U.S. sanctions. 

Nicolás Maduro’s government and then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez authorized about $20 million in payments before the deal collapsed in late 2017, the Miami Herald said. Rivera then split the proceeds with Nuhfer and two other men: Miami businessman Hugo Perera, a convicted drug trafficker who cooperated with prosecutors, and Venezuelan television network owner Raul Gorrín, who had access to Maduro and Rodríguez. 

“These convictions expose a simple truth: the defendants sold access and influence to a hostile foreign regime for money,” Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement quoted by the Times. “In South Florida, where so many families fled communist oppression, that kind of betrayal carries real weight.”

Rivera still faces a separate federal tax case tied to the foreign-agent matter, as well as another foreign-agent indictment in Washington alleging he lobbied a Trump administration official between 2019 and 2020 on behalf of Gorrín, who allegedly paid Rivera $5.5 million while seeking removal from a U.S. sanctions list, according to the Herald.