Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami (2021) s01e06 Episode Script

[reporter] First at 5:30.
They are two of South Florida's
most notorious criminals,
Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta
are already in federal prison.
[Mario] Willy Falcon was in jail
doing ten years on a gun charge.
Sal was doing ten years
on a false passport case.
[reporter] Tonight, the Feds want to make
sure they stay behind bars for good.
[dramatic music playing]
[reporter 2] It reads like a script
from Goodfellas,
murder, attempted murder,
payoffs, and intimidation.
It's got the nicknames to match,
Blondie, Ikey, Willy, Sal, and Ouija.
It is a 46-count indictment.
And it comes on the heels
of two decades worth of investigation.
[Raquel] Finally, a chance
to retry the case again
and put the right people in jail
for the murders,
for the money laundering,
for the corruption.
The three major components
of our RECOIL case.
[Mario] We really as the FBI
and the United States Attorney's Office,
had to send a message
that this wasn't gonna happen
in the United States.
Charging in effect conspiracy
by the Falcon and Magluta organization
to obstruct
the entire criminal justice system.
[Mario] We wanted to indict and convict
every single individual
in the organization
that had anything to do
with obstructing that 1996 case.
[reporter] Magluta and Falcon are charged
with conspiracy to obstruct justice
by bribing jurors,
paying witnesses to lie,
and murdering three witnesses
who were about to testify against them.
The term witness tampering
are in fact murder of government witnesses
and they carry a life in prison penalty.
[Mario] If you attempt to corrupt
our justice system,
we're going to come back at you
and make sure that in the end,
justice is served.
["Blood Sport" by Pitbull playing]
Woo!
Sniff, co- ♪
Snort, -caine ♪
Deal, cow- ♪
Extort, -boys ♪
Will, will, kill, kill ♪
For the love of the blood sport ♪
They'll do 25 to life ♪
For the love of the blood sport ♪
[Raquel] On the day
that the indictment was unsealed,
we already had served
25 search warrants.
We had seized 20 bank accounts
and we indicted 13 co-conspirators.
[reporter] FBI agents served
search warrants yesterday on 13 homes.
[reporter 2] In the attic
of the Valverde house,
agents found nine boxes stacked with cash.
[Marilyn] Luis Valverde.
I was the one that told Mario,
go to his house,
'cause, you know, he keeps money there.
[Raquel] He was an AC repairman
for Miami-Dade County school.
And I doubt that even in his lifetime
he would have had
six million dollars in his attic.
[reporter] They have found so much cash,
they haven't even been able to count it.
[Marilyn] They only found six million.
To me, that was nothing.
I was thinking they were gonna find
a lot more than that.
[reporter] Among those arrested,
lawyer and Magluta brother-in-law
Richard Martinez, seen here in the middle,
charged with bribing witnesses.
Attorney Mark Dachs is arrested
accused of telling witnesses not to talk.
[Jim] There used to be a sense
of camaraderie among the white powder bar.
Prosecutors understood
defense attorneys were doing their job.
Defense attorneys understood
prosecutors were doing their job.
Falcon and Magluta changed that.
Prosecutors had to say, "You know what?"
"We can't give the defense side
a free pass anymore."
"They're no longer just sort
of equal players like us in the system."
"They're the enemy."
I didn't know if I was
a target, a subject, a witness.
I didn't know what I was,
but I knew I was very uncomfortable.
[Marilyn] They got Sal's ledger book.
They were aware of every attorney
that was in that ledger book,
and they were interested in each
and every one of them.
I think everybody was subpoenaed
to explain the story behind the fees.
[Frank] How dare the government
ask defense lawyers who paid them,
how they were paid?
[Bobby] It's a chilling effect
on the entire defense bar.
That doesn't necessarily
make you wanna wake up
and take the next big case
that comes into town.
It was an unnecessary, unwarranted,
and unprecedented intrusion
into the attorney-client relationship.
Business as usual
for some of those attorneys
and how they conducted themselves
and accepting drug money as fees.
[Albert] If you know
that the money is dirty,
you may well be committing the crime
of money laundering by taking that money.
I'm not going to play the game
as to how close I can come
to the cliff of money laundering
and get away with it.
That's not for me.
I wanna go home at night.
I wanna sleep well.
I wanna see my children.
I don't want to become any more familiar
with the inside of a jail than I have.
[reporter] Miami's famed criminal defense
lawyer Roy Black is withdrawing
from a notorious drug case.
Prosecutors say Black unknowingly took
at least 300,000 dollars
in laundered drug money
from his clients
Willy Falcon and Salvador Magluta.
[Pat] Some lawyers in the community,
criminal defense lawyers,
tended to think
that we just wanted revenge, etcetera.
They were sore losers.
[dramatic music playing]
[man] In comes a new team of lawyers.
Jack Denaro, the lead attorney.
Every bit as good
as Mr. Krieger and Roy Black.
[man] Jack, in turn, brought in
Neil Schuster.
I received a phone call
from one of Sal's assistants
and she says,
"Sal would like to see you."
Now, mind you, I've heard of Sal.
I've never met Sal.
I was like, "Why the hell
would I be going to see Sal?"
She said, "He wants to interview you
for purposes of representing him."
You have the melting pot
of Miami as your defense team.
He had an Anglo,
he had a Jew, and he had a Black.
[reporter] The father and son
of reputed drug kingpin
Sal Magluta
are now facing federal charges,
accused by the government of
money laundering and obstructing justice.
[Jim] There was some interesting tactics,
played on the prosecutor side of things,
as a form of leverage
against Willy and Sal.
I had asked Mario and Pat please
not to do anything to Christian Magluta
or to Manolo 'cause he's an older man.
And they said that they had to
because they felt it was a way
to pressure Sal into cooperating.
[melancholy music playing]
That was the US Attorney's Office,
myself, playing hardball.
The government
is not interested in your family.
The government is gonna use
your family as leverage if they can.
[reporter] Twenty-eight-year-old
Christian Magluta
and his 80-year-old grandfather Manuel
are said to have tampered
with government witnesses
and used drug money to buy land and cars.
[Jorge] Manolo, that man was a saint.
That man was incapable
of committing a crime.
And Christian, his son,
I guarantee that he never did anything
thinking that it was illegal.
We've now gotta prepare
a defense to the charges.
We hope they don't indict
the dog and the parrot tomorrow.
Sal Magluta very well
could've plead guilty
and not gone to trial, and the end result
of all that would've been,
I think, a great benefit to loved ones,
friends, and family members.
Maybe he thought he was calling our bluff,
that we wouldn't prosecute
a father and son.
What would you do
for your dad not to spend a day in jail?
I'd take life.
And he was confronted
with that dilemma directly,
and he was resolute in his decision
that he is not going to cave in.
Sal wanted to save himself, that's it.
For Sal, it was about winning.
He couldn't let go of that.
He just kept it going.
[reporter] The case against reputed
drug kingpins Sal Magluta and Willy Falcon
took yet another twist today.
[Mario] We indicted Sal Magluta
on the murders,
the government was never
able to gather any evidence
against Willy Falcon linking him.
So the judge granted their motion to sever
Willy Falcon from Sal Magluta for trial.
[Marilyn] It was Willy Falcon's decision
that he wanted to be separated from Sal.
Because he had nothing
to do with the murder charges.
And if he went with Sal,
it would hurt his case.
[Jim] The thing about Falcon and Magluta,
the thing about the Boys, Los Muchachos,
was they were always greater
than the sum of their parts.
They were stronger and more powerful
together than they ever were separate.
[dramatic music building]
Once you split them apart,
once you no longer had Falcon and Magluta
as Falcon and Magluta,
it sorta weakened them.
Sal seemed less than.
Sal didn't seem
as great, as strong, as big.
[glass shattering]
[reporter] He was known as one
of the original Cocaine Cowboys.
He and partner Willy Falcon suspected
of using high-speed boats
to smuggle billions of dollars' worth
of cocaine into the US.
The reputed cocaine kingpin
is finally getting his day in court again.
It's showtime. [chuckles]
[reporter] Jurors enter the courthouse
underground in a Marshal's van,
kept under guard in a hotel
somewhere in South Florida,
sequestered as they will be
for this three to six month trial.
Our sketch artist not allowed
to draw their faces.
Civilians not allowed to stand
in the lobby when jurors walk by.
The reason, as prosecutor
Pat Sullivan phrased it,
"This trial is about another trial."
[dramatic music builds]
[Rod] Pat Sullivan,
the assistant United States Attorney
who was handling the case,
he makes his opening to the jury.
[Pat] This prosecution was about righting
a series of really serious wrongs,
about setting the ledger straight.
[Rod] They said,
"Sal Magluta used his money
to deny justice in the first case."
They said he was able to finance
the crimes they said he was involved in.
The bribery of the jury,
where did the money come from?
The money laundering itself,
where did the money come from?
The hit teams that came
into United States to kill witnesses
involved in this case,
where did the money come from?
There was a technical
money-laundering aspect,
but it was a murder case.
[Rod] If convicted of money laundering,
the most he can get is 20 years.
He probably would've been looking at
anywhere from eight to ten years.
But the killing of witnesses,
he would face life in prison.
[Mike] When the indictment
of the drug case came down in 1991,
there was also
a sweeping restraining order
that restrained about two billion dollars
in organization drug assets.
And the organization had to figure out
some way of paying their attorneys
'cause they didn't want to get
publicly appointed counsel.
They were used to getting what they wanted
and they wanted the best attorneys
their drug money could buy without being
seen as violating the restraining order.
And so what they did is they created
a variety of different mechanisms
to pay the attorneys
through purported third parties.
One of the ways was that Marilyn Bonachea
paid people through cash
that was recorded in the ledger.
[Richard] But some of the attorneys
wanted a more legitimate
recognized paper trail that money
had been transferred by check.
Magluta was not in position
to have his own bank account,
so he had to use another bank account,
and another name, to pay the attorneys.
The paper record that they had been paid
was certainly better than taking cash.
That ultimately proved to be
another one of Magluta's downfalls.
[Mario] Antonio Garcia was the individual
in charge of laundering money,
so accounts could be opened up overseas,
so checks and wire transfers could be
paid to defense attorneys in the case.
He agreed to tell us exactly
how the accounts were being opened up
and how defense attorneys were being paid.
[Pat] He basically showed us firsthand
how this money route worked.
He was taped picking up cash
in Miami from another associate.
That money was transported
up to New York by plane.
And he was taped delivering that money
to a person from New York
named Harry Kozlik.
Harry Kozlik would give Tony Garcia
back checks from Israel,
and remarkably these checks would appear
in the accounts of the attorneys.
[Benson] Interestingly,
I did receive a check in the amount
for 50,000 dollars drawn
on the Bank of Israel.
And Pat Sullivan asked me
if this was from Sal's rabbi.
- [producer] Was it from Sal's rabbi?
- Apparently.
I had never had any prosecution
involving a rabbi
who was involved with money laundering,
and since that trial,
I have never come into any other rabbi
involved in money laundering.
That was a first for me.
[reporter] And the star
government witness,
Marilyn Bonachea, who prosecutors
say helped her former boyfriend Sal
run his drug ring from behind bars.
[man] Marilyn Bonachea was a witness
the government deemed
to be critically important.
[Pat] We were trying to prove
that all this money
reflected in the Bonachea ledger
was drug money.
[Rod] For those who have seen the movie
The Untouchables,
Marilyn Bonachea's character would have
been played by Al Capone's bookkeeper.
[man] Two coded entries in this ledger
represent cash disbursement
to Alphonse Capone.
[man 2] That is correct.
That's what Marilyn was supposed to do
for the jury.
She understood the ledger.
She was supposed to walk the government
and the jury through his finances.
But more importantly,
she was supposed to be the missing link
between Sal and these murders,
this so-called confession
that Salvador Magluta made to her.
[Marilyn] Six years had gone by,
and I hadn't seen Sal.
In an odd way, I wanted to see him
and see how he was doing.
I walked out and sat down,
and he was already there.
And the first thing Sal does,
he starts crying.
There was a sadness about the whole thing.
I turned around
and we started talking in sign language.
He knew sign language because
my brother and sister were both deaf.
And he spent a lot of time
in my house when we were kids.
And he said, "I forgive you."
"Well, I don't need your forgiveness,
but that's nice."
"Thank you." Yeah.
It was either Pat or Mario
who told us to stop.
[melancholy music playing]
I testified for over two weeks.
I had knowledge
of all the charges against Sal.
I would translate
the ledger book for the jury,
Sal's dealings, Willy Falcon's dealings.
And then we talked about
what I call "confession day."
[dramatic music building]
How Sal had admitted
to the murder of Acosta.
And he was behind the other murders also.
He opened up and starts telling me
about all the other ones
that he's planning to murder,
or he already attempted and failed.
He told me about Tony Posada.
He says,
"Well, you know, I tried to murder him."
He put a bomb in Tony Posada's car.
Juan Barroso was also
on his potential witness list.
Sal kind of joked around
about him not dying
'cause he had attempted twice
and he wouldn't die.
"The guy's immortal. The guy
keeps getting shot and he won't die."
I told him,
"Well, maybe it's not his day to die."
Sal told me
they tried to put a hit on Pegy.
But it didn't work out.
Sal was especially worried
about Bernie Gonzalez.
Bernie Gonzalez knew a lot.
Bernie was gonna testify
he was smuggling for them.
One day Sal tells me,
"Well, you know, something good happened."
And I'm thinking, "Okay, good. He decided,
you know, he's gonna let Bernie go."
He says, "No, I found a way in."
Bernie's brother is selling his boat.
So Sal said, "We're in. We're finally in."
And I was kind of,
"Oh, no. He's gonna die."
And Bernie wasn't home,
but his brother was.
And they took his brother
and tied him up and put him in the garage.
And they waited for Bernie,
and then Bernie came in.
As soon as Bernie came in,
they shot and killed him.
And then they went
into the garage and killed the brother.
Sal told me,
"We didn't intend to kill the brother,
but he just happened to be there."
I was scared that Sal was becoming
a different person.
He wasn't the person that I knew anymore.
The person I knew would never have done
the things that he was doing.
I said, "Don't keep doing it.
It's gonna get worse and worse."
"You're just gonna have
to add more people."
One day, I got mad. I said,
"What are you gonna do?
Kill 100 of them?"
"If there's 100 people that testify,
you gonna kill them all?"
[melancholy music playing]
He cried.
He did cry.
I told him, "God always forgives."
And that's what he needed to hear.
I think that's the reason he told me
'cause he needed to hear that.
[Jim] That betrayal by Marilyn Bonachea,
a childhood sweetheart,
someone he relied on his entire life,
worked at his family's bakery.
You just know that Sal never thought
Marilyn would do that to him.
[Pat] Marilyn Bonachea was one
of the best witnesses
I think I've ever seen on a witness stand.
Some of the criminal defense lawyers
who saw her testify said the same thing.
[Mario] We didn't just wanna rely
upon just Marilyn's testimony,
but that was really all we had
at that point to link him to the murders.
We had hit team members in custody.
But none of the cartel members
who cooperated ever had any direct contact
with Salvador Magluta.
So really,
we didn't have that direct link.
That essentially left the government
with one remaining witness,
Marilyn Bonachea.
Their linchpin.
Why would she lie? She's his girlfriend.
Marilyn Bonachea,
she was a heavy user of opiates.
Orlando Leyva, her side piece,
who unbeknownst to her
was a confidential informant.
She's telling Orlando that
it was very hard for her to function.
[Marilyn] I am mentally ill, you know,
that they have driven me to a point.
[Orlando] That's rotten.
[Marilyn] I just couldn't handle
what was going on anymore.
In 1996, she was actually
involuntarily committed.
As a result of that, Sal cut her money.
He lost trust in her.
[Marilyn] A month before that
I tried to kill myself.
[Rod] Marilyn Bonachea
was a scorned lover.
She knew Sal when they were teenagers.
We're talking about decades.
She was in love with Sal.
So for five years before the first trial
while Sal has been sitting in jail,
Marilyn Bonachea is spending all
of her time and energy catering to Sal,
going to visit him on a daily basis,
doing everything Sal asks her to do.
She is thinking if somehow
he gets exonerated from this,
they're gonna spend
the rest of their lives together.
But it didn't work out that way.
Thank God. It was all only done,
it was only possible by God.
[Rod] Sal gets acquitted.
She doesn't hear from him
for over a month.
He is gallivanting all around town
celebrating his acquittal.
[Orlando] If you could tell him now,
if you could talk to him,
what would you tell him?
[Marilyn] "I thought you were my friend."
[Rod] Here comes October of 1996.
[sirens wailing]
Marilyn Bonachea is stopped.
The ledgers are seized.
Sal now wants her to leave her family
and hide out in these dump hotels.
Yet, he's staying at the Ritz-Carlton.
She's pissed.
The US Attorney's Office advised her
that she's looking at spending
approximately 205 years in prison.
So, she's going to cooperate.
She's gonna do
and say everything she has to say
to not spend any time in jail.
[Marilyn] You know what?
I've taken the rap for everybody. I, yo.
I've been like Virgin Mary.
[in broken Spanish] Here, I have beared
and suffered for everyone.
There'll come a time,
it's gonna be their turn.
'Cause my mom didn't raise no fool either.
[Rod] But if Sal was responsible
for the murders of all of these witnesses,
if she was the one that can take Sal down,
why would Sal
allow Marilyn Bonachea to live?
He could've easily killed her
if he wanted her dead.
It just doesn't fly.
Sal is not a violent individual.
Sal never put a hit out
on Marilyn Bonachea.
So, how would she know those facts
about the death of the witnesses
if Sal didn't tell her?
How would she know
about the deaths of those witnesses?
Places, the times, who did what,
how would she know that?
And then, it became obvious
how she knew it.
The Miami Herald.
Because the Miami Herald ran an article
that detailed in specificity
the deaths of these witnesses.
When Marilyn is pulled over in 1996,
in the trunk of the vehicle
are the ledgers.
But also in the trunk
was this July 18, 1993 article
that she had for three years.
[Marilyn] Sal said,
"You know about the attorney?"
He said, "Well, I had him killed."
"Juan Barroso," he says, "We shot at him
five times. The guy's immortal."
[Rod] The testimony that Marilyn Bonachea
gave during the trial
mirrored that article.
[Marilyn] Luis Escobedo.
He was killed in a club in Coconut Grove.
Sal tells me,
"Bernie's brother is selling his boat."
[Jim] It was like the end of
The Usual Suspects, when you find out
that everything Keyser Söze told
the Customs agent during the whole movie,
he was just reading off the wall
directly behind him.
[Rod] And when the jury finally saw
that her testimony was consistent
with what was printed by the media,
they completely lost trust in her
as a witness.
[Richard] We truly demolished that case.
[Rod] Can I get a what, what?
[Mario] This is a complex,
complicated case.
The jury was definitely out
for several days.
And we just wait.
We were very nervous.
More so in this case
than any other case I've ever worked.
[reporter] Jury deliberations continue for
a fifth day in the trial of Sal Magluta.
We were waiting for the verdict,
knots in your stomach,
almost like a sick feeling.
[dramatic music playing]
[Reporter] We're following breaking news
within the last few minutes,
there is now a verdict, finally,
for drug kingpin Sal Magluta.
It took eight days of deliberation.
[Mike] It was standing room only
in the courtroom.
We were looking back
waiting for the jury to come in.
And it was packed.
[Mario] When the jury stands up
and they give their verdict,
you can hear a pin drop
in the courtroom.
And then of course, the verdict comes.
[dramatic music building]
[reporter] Sal Magluta not guilty
of the most serious counts.
[reporter 2] The jury found the defendant
not guilty of ordering the murder
of three government witnesses.
The counts that could have
put him away for life.
Those "not guilty" counts were not, um
Those were disappointing.
Forty-one counts.
He's found not guilty of 33 counts.
[Richard] It was a murder case,
but the only counts he's convicted of
are paying his lawyers eight checks.
The jury said, "He paid his lawyer
with the wrong check."
"But he's absolutely innocent
of all of this other stuff
that the whole trial was about."
If he had been convicted of the murders
it would have been mandatory life
in the strictest prison
in the United States.
By winning the verdicts
on the murder cases,
I think his freedom from prison
in the future is almost assured.
Oh, he's getting out.
Sal's gonna walk out of here one day.
Yeah, he'll do, you know,
a little short period of time
for the money laundering counts.
He's gonna get outta here.
[reporter] Magluta's family
had little to say about the proceedings
although his mother was relieved,
expecting a harsher verdict.
If you look at the verdict sheet,
uh, he had some successes.
We lost the murder counts,
which was certainly a big disappointment.
We lost a lot of money laundering counts.
But we had to get the sentence
that we believed Sal Magluta deserved.
So sentencing comes around.
[reporter] We begin
with breaking news right now,
sentencing for notorious
cocaine kingpin Sal Magluta.
[reporter 2] Sal Magluta is set
to learn his fate tonight.
It's been the federal government's crusade
to put Magluta behind bars
for the rest of his life.
And right now a judge is deciding
whether to do just that.
[Rod] The judge
maxed him out.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] It was the accumulative
or aggregate statutory maximum
of all the crimes he was convicted.
Twenty years for this count
plus 20 years for this count.
And you just run the adding machine tape
and his maximum exposure was 205 years
and that's what the judge
sentenced him to.
[reporter] Prosecutors emerged
from federal court with smiles
after putting away one of the Boys,
as he came to be known.
Today, justice answered back.
Today, the court sent a clear message
that this community and this court
will not tolerate those who attack
and obstruct our system of justice.
[Chris] It wasn't a matter
of being vindicated.
Eventually the federal government's
gonna catch up to you.
[reporter] Magluta fined more
than 60 million dollars
and sentenced to 205 years.
This for being found guilty
of 12 nonviolent felonies,
money laundering,
and obstruction of justice.
A punishment that was equivalent
to a murder conviction
was just inordinate.
I thought it was awful.
I didn't expect 205 years.
I felt it was my fault.
Sal was punished for his acquittal.
Sal was punished for the drug charges.
Sal was punished for everything.
Whether he was acquitted
or convicted didn't matter.
[Rod] When they went after Al Capone,
they didn't get him
for bootlegging or murder.
They got Al Capone for tax evasion.
You don't sentence Al Capone to life
for tax evasion and they didn't.
He served eight years.
[Rod] He did a portion of that
and he lived out the rest of his life
in a mansion on Miami Beach.
Salvador Magluta
is not convicted of murder.
He's not convicted of selling drugs.
What does he get?
[Chris] I can tell you, I prosecuted
a number of drug traffickers,
and there is a host of individuals
who are serving life sentences in prison
for far less egregious conduct
than Sal Magluta committed.
The only thing he's found
guilty of was paying his lawyers.
[Richard] Sal, had he paid the attorneys
in cash instead of paying by check,
he would have long since completed
his time in prison and be a free man.
[Marilyn] Facing reality,
I thought, "Yeah, this is the last time
I'm ever going to see Sal."
But part of me said,
"This is not over yet."
"One day, I'm still gonna run into him."
I still kinda feel that way.
- [reporter] No comment?
- No.
- [reporter] Been a long journey for you.
- Yes, but it's not over yet.
This is just one down and one to go.
[Mario] After Willy Falcon
saw the government's case
that we had put on
against Salvador Magluta,
obviously, he did not want a similar fate
of facing a life sentence in jail.
So he immediately had
his defense attorneys begin to negotiate
a plea deal with the government.
[Richard] Willy Falcon plead to conspiring
to launder drug proceeds,
and he was sentenced
to the maximum 20 years.
[Jorge] Willy was smart enough
to take the plea.
Sal, he could have easily taken ten years.
The government would've saved face.
They would've closed the file.
It was such a mess
in so many different ways.
He'd be out already.
[Richard] Sal is out in Florence, Colorado
with the Unabomber
and other lovely violent characters
who probably should be housed inside
of a mountain where they can't get out.
[Rod] It's the highest level of security
in any federal prison
in the United States.
He's a non-violent offender
convicted of money laundering.
[Raquel] He's exhausted all his appeals
and he probably will die in jail.
Where he needs to stay.
And what should be killing him
is the pain that I put
both my parents through.
And the pain
that he's put those two old people.
And the fact that
he didn't get to bury his father.
He's not gonna get to bury his mother.
[emotional music playing]
I feel really bad
for Sal that he is in that prison,
especially when we grew up the same.
We had dreams to just be successful.
There was a lot else we could have been.
Right now, we could be talking
about a story of redemption.
The real irony is that
we, law enforcement,
and the citizenry have lost out
because of the things
Sal could have provided.
Under the terms of our offer
before the first trial,
they would've had Sal and Willy in prison
for a substantial period of time.
In addition, they would have had
all of the drugs that were on the street,
all of the money,
the people that assisted them.
People who occupied
positions in the public realm,
local government, individuals
[Raquel] Police officers
providing security for drug dealers.
Falcon and Magluta and all his people
don't operate in a vacuum.
They had facilitators,
those who helped them all along the way.
[Raquel] I think if Sal had flipped,
I'm sure he could have opened up
a Pandora's Box.
[Bobby] You start to understand
that the whole system, perhaps,
has a corrupt level to it.
[Chris] In direct prosecutions,
I would say at least 50 individuals
were convicted of crimes
related to the Falcon-Magluta group.
[Benson] This case was so overarching
in so many different respects
that it impacted literally
hundreds of people directly.
[emotional music playing]
I was in the Witness Protection Program
'til 2003.
I lost everybody.
Everybody that I testified against
were my friends.
I lost my family.
I don't know where they are
except for my son.
I have no idea if they're still alive,
if they're dead, I don't know.
I lost Sal.
I lost everything.
I even lost my two dogs.
They finally died.
[laughs] So, I ended up losing everything.
[theme music playing]
Jorge Valdes is setting an example
of cleaning up his life.
I didn't walk away 'cause I got arrested.
I didn't change my life,
because I'm sorry, I got caught.
I walked away 'cause I want
nothing to do with that world.
[organ music playing]
[reporter] Jorge's biography,
Coming Clean,
helps support a ministry by the same name.
He speaks at over 30 youth rallies
every year.
He is now establishing a center
for counseling and working with youth.
Now, my passion is to make more money,
so I can send a million books
and help prisoners to find hope
and to find redemption.
And to look at the world, "Hey,
Jorge Valdes changed, I can change too."
It doesn't matter how we fall,
what matters is how we get up.
[Ralph] I got out in October of 1999.
[dramatic music playing]
I'm involved in
the high-performance boat business.
[engine revving]
Miami Vice, they needed
some high-performance boats.
We set up all the boats for them.
I did some of the driving
of the boats in the movie.
But I lost ten years of my life.
My wife, she left me.
At the end of the day, it's not worth it.
[Pegy] When he went away, I remember
Jay's son being like two, three years old.
[announcer] In the air, right-center field
Jay on the ball. Jon Jay is there!
[crowd cheering]
[Pegy] I came out of prison summer of '96.
[funky music playing]
[Alexia] This Cuban doll is back
on the scene and living the dream.
I was on a reality show
with Roy Black's wife.
- I loved your father.
- [Peter] Always, always.
[Alexia] I didn't wanna leave him
at a time like that.
Peter's always been a great dad.
He refuses to grow up,
but he's grown up a little bit.
I don't want him to get in trouble again.
Like, I don't want my kids or myself
to go through that pain.
[Pegy] The drug business,
it catches up sooner or later.
At the beginning, you're making money,
you think you're invincible
and nothing's ever going to happen,
but sooner or later, it catches up to you.
[dramatic music playing]
There's no way out, or there is a way out,
in prison, or you probably get killed.
[music intensifies]
The life that I live,
I don't want it for my kids.
[Jim] The amazing thing is,
there are actually still
defendants out there
who have never been arrested
from the '91 indictment.
Willy's brother Taby is still at large.
[Chris] Gustavo Falcon
has not been apprehended.
There's not even been a close call.
Over 20 years after his indictment,
he still is at large.
[reporter] Over the years,
the Marshals release fliers with photos
of how Falcon might have aged.
No luck.
[Jim] He's on America's Most Wanted
like some sort of golden oldies.
You know, whether or not
he's alive or dead, nobody knows,
at least nobody
in law enforcement is saying.
[Pat] Usually it happens that some
misfortune will befall a fugitive,
he'll get stopped driving
without a license or something,
and they'll get captured,
but it's been quite a while for Taby.
I don't know
if that's ever gonna happen to him.
[reporter] Captured!
Gustavo Falcon collared after more
than a quarter-century on the lam.
[reporter 2] We have live team coverage
of the capture of the last
of the Cocaine Cowboys.
This indicted Miami drug kingpin
has been hiding essentially
in plain sight.
It turned out, they've been living
in their Orlando suburb
not far from Disney World.
[reporter 3] Gustavo Falcon's life
on the run came to a halt
at this Kissimmee intersection
just blocks away
from the home he was renting.
On Wednesday, while Falcon
and his wife were on a lengthy bike ride,
Deputy Marshals
conducting surveillance arrested him.
[somber music playing]
[reporter 4] Sources tell CBS 4 News
that Gustavo Falcon
seemed almost relieved that his years
on the run had come to an end.
But while his entry
into the legal system is just beginning,
his older brother, Willy Falcon,
is scheduled to be released in June.
["Willy Falcon" by DonCu playing]
One of the so-called
Cocaine Cowboys has been deported.
[reporter] Falcon was born in Cuba
and never became a US citizen.
So after he was released from jail, he was
immediately placed into ICE custody.
[reporter 2] His attorneys fought
deportation to Cuba,
saying he would be killed
if he was returned to the island.
Well, he struck a deal
with the Justice Department.
CBS News confirms that Willy Falcon
was taken to the Dominican Republic.
Willy Falcon, Willy Falcon ♪
[reporter in Spanish] Augusto Willy Falcon
led the Cocaine Cowboys.
He will be coming
to the Dominican Republic, Augusto Falcon.
[man in English] The fastest
little V-bottom in modified, Seahawk 31.
Sal Magluta, the driver.
[Sal] You have mistakes made, but you just
try to make 'em as minimal as possible.
[man] What are the consequences
of those mistakes?
[laughs] Well, uh
["Kings of Miami" playing]
Do, do money
Sal Magluta ♪
[Jim] Really telling the story of Willy
and Sal is telling the story of Miami.
Now we the kings ♪
[Chris] This was the pinnacle
of drug dealing in Miami.
I think the Falcon-Magluta case
represented the end of that era.
Now who the king ♪
They were the last of the Cocaine Cowboys.
[Jim] Two immigrant kids come here
and go from high school dropouts
to the kings of cocaine in South Florida.
[Pegy] I mean, America, what is it,
the land of opportunity.
I mean, we came from Cuba with nothing.
But now, the Cubans, we own Miami.
[Marilyn] Miami really did love the Boys.
[reporters repeating] The Boys.
- [reporter] The Boys.
- [Jim] The Boys, Los Muchachos.
They were almost like folk heroes.
We didn't need to create Tony Montana.
We had them.
They were Falcon and Magluta,
Willy and Sal. They were the Boys.
The king of Miami ♪
Now who the king,
Who the king of Miami? ♪
Sal Magluta, Sal Magluta
Willy Falcon ♪
Run the prices up and down
Like Dow Jones ♪
We're the kings
We're the kings of Miami ♪
[Jim] The feds were trying to catch
Willy and Sal for two decades
with massive resources,
dozens of law enforcement agents.
Who knows how much money they spent?
But you have to put it
into the larger context.
Now who the king,
Who the king of Miami?
The government says Willy and Sal
brought in 75 tons of cocaine.
That's 68 million grams,
hundreds of millions of lines snorted
by tens of millions of people
in Miami,
Los Angeles,
Chicago,
New York,
all over the country.
That gives you an idea
of the scope of the problem.
As long as there's demand,
there will always be someone
willing to bring it in.
We're the kings
We're the kings of Miami ♪
[Jim] But for decades,
the Boys were the best.
They were the kings of Miami.
The kings of Miami ♪
[closing theme music playing]