---
category: Organized Crime
created: 2025-08-05
location: Washington, D.C.
relations:
- fn: 1
  role: 'staff assistant to an assistant attorney general; director, Office of International
    Affairs, Criminal Division, 1979-1982 (sole source: Seymour)'
  start: 1973
  type: employed_by
  with: '[[Department of Justice]]'
- fn: 2
  role: Ristau & Abbell
  type: partner_of
  with: '[[Bruno Ristau]]'
- fn: 3
  type: represented
  with: '[[Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela]]'
- fn: 3
  type: represented
  with: '[[Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela]]'
summary: Former head of the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs who
  became a Washington lawyer for the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers of the Cali cartel
  and was convicted in 1998 of conspiring to launder its money.
tags:
- Person
- OrganizedCrime
- CaliCartel
- Lawyer
- DepartmentOfJustice
updated: 2026-09-22
---

Michael Abbell was a staff assistant to an assistant attorney general of the [Department of Justice](/organizations/department-of-justice/) from 1973 to 1979 and director of the Office of International Affairs of its Criminal Division from 1979 to 1982, according to [Cheri Seymour](/people/cheri-seymour/). On leaving the department he joined the firm of Kaplan, Russin and Becchi, which had an office in Bogotá, and later formed his own Washington firm, Ristau & Abbell, with [Bruno Ristau](/people/bruno-ristau/).[^1][^2]

### The Cali Case

Abbell acknowledged that Miguel and [Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela](/people/gilberto-rodriguez-orejuela/), the heads of the [Cali Drug Cartel](/organizations/cali-drug-cartel/), were his clients.[^3] In an affidavit for a search warrant on his office, issued on September 2, 1994, the Customs agent Edward Kacerosky described the role of the organization's lawyers as defending arrested members at the request of the brothers "in order to assure the organization that these individuals will [sic] not cooperate," supplying the brothers with information on the government's investigations, serving as "conduits for legal fees, bail monies and support payments" to the families of arrested members, and obtaining affidavits "which falsely exculpate Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez-Orejuela" for use in Colombia's courts.[^3] A grand jury in Miami returned a third superseding indictment against Abbell and the lawyer William Moran on June 2, 1995, for racketeering conspiracy and related counts.[^3]

The evidence at trial showed that the cartel kept its employees silent with "a carrot-and-stick approach," paying the legal fees and family expenses of those arrested and threatening those who cooperated; that Ristau & Abbell paid about 100 dollars a month into the prison commissary accounts of two convicted cartel employees; and that Abbell told the lawyer of the cartel's former Miami manager, Harold Ackerman, that Rodríguez Orejuela would pay his fees and wanted Ackerman to sign an affidavit "that both Shohat and Abbell knew to be false." In the days and weeks before the search, Abbell "destroyed or altered his records of his bills to Rodriguez-Orejuela." After a first trial in 1997 ended in an acquittal on one count and a hung jury, a jury convicted him in 1998 of racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to launder money; the trial judge set aside the racketeering count, and Abbell was sentenced to 87 months. On November 7, 2001, the Eleventh Circuit reinstated the racketeering conviction, affirmed the money-laundering conviction and ordered him resentenced.[^2]

### The Octopus

According to Seymour, the last lead [Danny Casolaro](/people/danny-casolaro/) pursued before his death in August 1991 was a connection between Abbell, the Cali cartel and [Robert Booth Nichols](/people/robert-booth-nichols/). [Michael Riconosciuto](/people/michael-riconosciuto/) told her that Abbell, Nichols and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela were "all in bed together," and that Nichols had given Abbell 50,000 dollars in cash to handle a Justice Department internal inquiry that would have led to the extradition of Rodríguez Orejuela and [José Santacruz Londoño](/people/jose-santacruz-londono/), whom Nichols considered "intelligence people."[^1]

[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010. Sole source for the Justice Department career dates, the Kaplan firm and Riconosciuto's claims.
[^2]: *United States v. Abbell,* 271 F.3d 1286 (11th Cir. 2001). https://openjurist.org/271/f3d/1286
[^3]: *United States v. Abbell,* 963 F. Supp. 1178 (S.D. Fla. 1997), order denying motions to suppress. https://openjurist.org/963/fsupp/1178