Updated

A Cuban immigrant has been sentenced to more than six years in prison for his role in the theft of pharmaceuticals worth more than $50 million from a Connecticut warehouse.

Forty-two-year-old Yosmany "El Gato" Nunez was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in New Haven.

In a request for leniency, a defense attorney argued Nunez is more likely to be deported now than he was at the time of his guilty plea in November because the U.S. and Cuba have since taken steps toward normalizing relations.

Five defendants have pleaded guilty in the heist at the Eli Lilly and Co. warehouse in Enfield in March 2010. The robbers broke in through the roof and loaded a tractor-trailer that brought the pharmaceutical drugs to Florida. Nunez is the first to be sentenced.