Francisco Oneto is in the middle. He is the point of contact between Javier Milei and Federico “Fred” Machado. Between the libertarian presidency and the North American Justice. Between the small table of power and a drug trafficking file. How did it get there? He trained at the UBA. But the real leap came on the networks, when they began to call him a “God-level lawyer” and he began to go viral in clips where he vehemently defended his clients and fired off effective phrases.
Today Oneto is, at the same time, the personal lawyer of the President of the Nation and the legal defender of a businessman who is on his way to being extradited to the United States for drug trafficking and money laundering. His name is Machado. They call him “Fred”. He is already detained. And the fact that made everything explode is that one of Milei’s closest allies, Congressman José Luis Espert, received 200 thousand dollars from Machado for a presidential campaign that they are not giving up anywhere.
Oneto, who in 2023 had been a candidate for the Province of Buenos Aires on the Milei list, was left as the President’s sole judicial representative when Diego Spagnuolo left, after the scandal over the audios and bribery at Andis.
Handbook. Oneto has a specialty that does not appear in university degrees but does appear on his agenda: taking on causes that make people uncomfortable. His resume as a criminal defense attorney includes a parade of characters that are difficult to defend. Scammers, murderers, abusers, femicides and even Iranian pilots under international investigation.
One of the high points (or low points, depending on how you look at it) was the Generation Zoe case, the pyramid scam network led by Leonardo Cositorto, who promised financial freedom, spirituality and impossible returns. Oneto’s voice did not tremble when, in a debate on Twitter Spaces, he blurted out: “Yes, they hired me to defend a scam.” Cositorto ended up sentenced to 11 years in prison for illicit association and repeated fraud. The sincericide left it trending topic for hours.
He also sat on the less empathetic side in one of the most shocking cases of the last decade: the murder of Fernando Báez Sosa in January 2020 in Villa Gesell. Oneto was part of the legal team of Máximo Thomsen, one of the rugby players sentenced to life imprisonment. He participated in the trial with very high media exposure in 2023, and his sole presence in the defense ended up making him a visible face of a crime that continues to generate collective repudiation.
It wasn’t the only time. In the Érica Soriano case, Oneto joined the defense of Daniel Lagostena, the partner of the young woman who disappeared in 2010. Érica’s body was never found, but the Justice Department sentenced Lagostena to 22 years in prison as the perpetrator of the femicide. Oneto intervened in the early stages of the file, which ended up becoming an emblem of the fight against gender violence.
The list does not end there. As revealed by journalist Carlos Pagni, he would also have been a lawyer for the Iranian crew of the Emtrasur flight, the Venezuelan plane detained in Ezeiza in 2022 on suspicion of espionage and links to terrorist organizations. Oneto would have intervened in the legal defense of some of the pilots, until they were allowed to leave the country.
The pattern is clear. Oneto does not choose easy causes or comfortable clients. Nor does it try to please. And along that path, he achieved what many seek without success: to be noticed. Even if that means being, once again, on the less popular side of history.
Mileism. His landing in Javier Milei’s environment was less ideological than relational: first he was a friend of Diego Spagnuolo, the lawyer who accompanied Milei on his first trip to politics and who, in turn, came from the universe of José Luis Espert. It was he who acted as a link between the economists when they attempted an alliance in 2021. In that same back and forth, Oneto appeared, summoned in 2023 to lend a hand in a lawsuit by Patricia Bullrich against Milei.
When it came time to put names on the ballot, Oneto was already in. In 2023 he was a candidate for vice-governor of the province of Buenos Aires, accompanying Carolina Píparo, in the La Libertad Avanza formula. They lost. Later, with Milei in the presidency, Oneto took another leap: he became his personal lawyer. The move was simple: Spagnuolo took over as head of the National Disability Agency (Andis) and left the legal role vacant. Oneto occupied it without the need for a formal act. He was already doing that work since the campaign.
Since December 2023, he has been seen entering and leaving Casa Rosada and Olivos, sometimes with a name in the records, sometimes without a trace. He even held meetings with Santiago Caputo, meaning that he not only entered the Casa Rosada to have the President sign judicial documents. What did they talk about? Of Milei’s defense, of media defense or of weapons issues? Caputo and Oneto share a passion for guns. They have the same shooting instructor: Sebastián Flores, from Tecprocom.
Oneto also defends Milei in the complaint for his promotion of the $Libra cryptocurrency, in which he was accused of having encouraged a financial scam. In his media defense he said: “If a president wanted to commit a crime, he would not leave all his fingers glued together.”
From the courts, some look at him as an outsider with more “talk” than roles. It sponsors the President in lawsuits against journalists like Carlos Pagni and politicians like Elisa “Lilita” Carrió, and even defends him in a lawsuit filed against him by Jorge Fontevecchia, founder of this magazine and CEO of Perfil, for calling him “
