The Ochoa brothers in Griselda: Are they real people and what happened to them?

A key part of Netflix's new series Griselda focuses on the Ochoa brothers, but who were they really and where are they now?

Viewers have been obsessed with Sofia Vergara's transformation into Griselda Blanco in Netflix's latest series Griselda which was released last week. While some are desperate to know what happened to key characters such as Chucho Castro and Carmen Gutierrez, others are interested in some of the more shady characters in the show such as the Ochoa brothers. So what happened to the Ochoa brothers in real life? Here's what you need to know...

In Griselda, the Ochoa brothers ally with Griselda and unite their cocaine empires. However, the fractious relationship doesn't go entirely to plan and when a drugged-up Griselda makes her liaison with the Ochoas, John Roberts, strip naked and bark like a dog at gunpoint during a birthday party. 

To make matters worse, the next day Griselda is doing drugs with Marta Ochoa when Marta overdoses and dies, smashing into a glass table in the centre of the room. While this death was an accident this was really the nail in the coffin that killed Griselda's relationship with the Ochoas who then decided to kill her. 

Rather than getting murdered by her former allies, Griselda then turned herself into the CENTAC unit and went to prison. Although Griselda's prison sentence ended up being just 19 years, this was still significantly more than some of her accomplices. So what happened to the Ochoa brothers in real life?

What happened to the Ochoa brothers?

In real life, Jorge, Juan David and Fabio Ochoa were brothers and key members of the Medellin cartel, run by Pablo Escobar.  In 1987, all three were on Forbes Billionaire list and in an interview with PBS, Jorge, said that drug trafficking was more of a 'part-time' job for him.

In 1996 Jorge and his brothers turned themselves into the Colombian authorities. Jorge and Juan David both served 5 and a half years in prison. Fabio, the youngest of the brothers also served this short five-year sentence then was arrested again for trafficking three years after his release in 1999. He was sentenced to 30 years in a US Federal prison and is still currently serving in Jesup, Georgia.

As of 2024, Fabio is 66 and still in prison, Jorge is 73 and free. Juan-David, the eldest, died in 2013 at the age of 67 when he suffered from a heart attack. 

Was Marta Ochoa a real person?

In real life Marta was actually the sister of the Ochoa brothers, but in Griselda, she was their cousin and was dating Rafa. In real life, Marta became famous when she was kidnapped in 1981 by M-19, a revolutionary socialist movement in Colombia. This was a storyline that was also featured in the series Narcos. In reality, she was also never linked with Rafa and instead reportedly worked as a trafficker with Griselda directly.

Per DMT, Marta's death wasn't quite the accident that it appeared to be in the show. Apparently, Griselda Blanco murdered Marta Ochoa because she owed Marta money and needed to clear her debts. It was Marta who was a key business liaison between Griselda and the Medellin cartel and it was the Medellin cartel who were apparently to blame for the death of Griselda Blanco's sons as revenge for Marta.

In the PBS interview, Jorge said about his family, "My father and my mother, my sisters and everyone was very sad that we had gotten involved in that business. At any given time, they could kill us, or they could take us, or they could extradite us, or they knew that we weren't doing anything good. Everyone in my family lived very sadly. My father, my mother, everyone."