Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta Ran Miami's Largest Cocaine Operation in the '80s. Here's Where They Are Now.
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In the late ‘70s, high school dropouts and childhood friends Augusto ‘Willie’ Falcon and Salvator Magluta began selling drugs for extra cash. Turns out, they were really good at it. In the decade that followed, they came to control the largest cocaine smuggling organization on the East Coast and one of the biggest in the world, making more than $2 billion in cash by bringing at least 75 tons of cocaine into the U.S. from Colombia. With a network of suppliers, boat drivers, pilots, and bankers, Falcon and Magluta supplied Miami, as well as many other major cities including New York and D.C., with cocaine throughout the 1980’s.
A new Netflix docuseries from director Billy Corben called Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami debuts Wednesday, 15 years after his cult classic film adaptation of the same name. The piece documents the making of Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta’s cocaine empire and the years-long dance between the drug kingpins and law enforcement. Told through interviews with their close friends and co-conspirators, the six-part doc details everything from the drug smuggling operation to the many trials, convictions, murders, bribes, and escapes in the wild case.
Here’s where the major players in the series are now.
Falcon and Magluta were indicted on October 14, 1991 on 17 drug trafficking charges after many years of evading the police. After a lengthy trial, as is detailed in the Netflix doc, they were acquitted in 1996. However, three witnesses who were to testify against them were murdered in the five years between their arrest and trial, and it later came out that they paid off several jurors to swing their case in their favor. In 1999, prosecutors reconstructed a case charging Magluta and Falcon with ordering the deaths of three witnesses, bribing two of the jurors, and paying for that with laundered money.
Willie Falcon eventually pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in 2003 and spent the next 14 years in jail. He was freed in June 2017 at the age of 62. A lawful permanent resident of the United States born in Cuba, Falcon was deported to the Dominican Republic upon his release at the request of his lawyers, who stated that he feared for his life in Cuba. According to the Netflix series, he left the Dominican Republic soon after, following an uproar about his presence there, and has not been located since. He is 66 years old today.
Sal Magluta did not plead guilty to any charges brought against him in 1999. He was tried again in 2002 and convicted of money laundering and bribery. Though he was acquitted of the murders of witnesses from their 1991 trial, the judge sentenced him to the maximum possible sentence of 205 years. After an appeal, it was reduced to 195 years, but Magluta—who was never convicted on any of the major drug or murder charges against him—will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. He’s serving his sentence in a maximum-security federal prison in Marion, Illinois.
Sal’s longtime girlfriend Marilyn Bonachea testified in six trials against Falcon, Magluta, and their associates after she was apprehended by police with the drug operation’s ledger book in her trunk. She was in the Witness Protection Program until 2003, and explains in the doc that she lost everyone in her life aside from her son when she chose to cooperate with and aid the government.
Jorge Valdez, a kingpin in Falcon and Magluta’s drug empire, served ten years in prison on cocaine-related charges. He was released in 1995, and soon after became a pastor and got his Ph.D. at Loyola University in Chicago in New Testament Early Christianity and Ethics. He’s the author of a biography called Coming Clean: The True Story of a Cocaine Drug Lord and His Unexpected Encounter with God, a motivational speaker, a YouTuber, and runs the Tres Hermanos Foundation for criminal reform.
Magluta and Falcon’s boat driver Ralph “Cabeza” Linero served eight years in prison, and was released in October 1999. He drove boats in the 2006 film Miami Vice, and is still in the high performance boat business today.
Justo Jay, another member of Falcon and Magluta’s operation, was released from prison in 2007 after serving 19 years on drug charges. His son, Jon Jay, is a Major League Baseball player currently on the Chicago White Sox.
Pedro “Pegy” Rosello, another drug kingpin, was convicted of smuggling cocaine in 1992. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison, but was released after serving four and a half. He was arrested again in 2007 for having sex with a minor and was sentenced to 12 years probation. In September 2012, he was arrested again for violating his probation. Then, in November 2017—after he was interviewed for Netflix’s series—he was arrested for attempting to sell 5 kilograms of cocaine to a DEA informant. He is currently in jail, and set to be released in 2022. He and his wife Alexia Echevarria divorced after he was released from prison in 1997, and she joined the cast of the Real Housewives of Miami from 2011 to 2013.
Willie’s brother Gustavo “Taby” Falcon spent 26 years as a fugitive, remaining at large since the original 1991 indictment of the cocaine cowboys. In 2017, however, at the age of 55, he was arrested in Kissimmee, Florida while on a bike ride with his wife. They had been living as "Luis Andre Rice" and "Maria Ava Rice" and had only moved a few hours north of Miami. "I'm not proud of being on the run for 26 years," Falcon told a federal judge in 2018 before his sentencing. "That's no way to live. I paid for it every day for 26 years." He pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 11 years, which he began serving just as his brother Willie Falcon was released.
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