However, the only confirmation of a link was in 1984, after Seal was working as an informant for the DEA, Hahn discovered. It is not clear whether Seal and his crew were informed of this before they returned to Nicaragua. Barry Seal made a killing selling drugs for the Ochoa brothers, but after being outed as a key DEA informant, he was a marked man. And while his movie wife was aware of Barry's illegal activities, his real wife insists she was kept in the dark about her. Escobar and his associates simply knew him as El Gordo, the fat man, and this is why the cartel did not know that Seal had finally been arrested and, rather than serve a long prison sentence, he had agreed to become an informant for the U.S. government.. As The Advocate reported