An Austin-area lawyer was sentenced to nearly 16 years in federal prison for swindling his Colombian drug trafficking clients out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, lying that he would bribe U.S. justice officials for favorable results in the clients’ criminal cases.

In addition to the 188 month prison sentence, James Morris Balagia received a $1.5 million money judgment and U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas ordered him to forfeit his law office building in Manor, an Austin suburb.