01x02 - 75 Tons

[bunniefuu]

[salsa music playing]

[man] As of 1987, Sal Magluta

was wanted in the state of Florida

by virtue of his plea and conviction

in the operation

Video Canary case ten years earlier.

Once the Supreme Court

had rejected his various appeals,

he was then wanted, expected to surrender,

along with his partner, Willy Falcon

to serve his 14-month sentence.

That he did not.

So he's a fugitive.

[man 2] Sal's renting a place

in Miami Beach for 5,800 dollars a month.

[woman] Hiding in plain sight.

[man 2] Willy's up in Fort Lauderdale

renting a 9,000-dollar-a-month mansion.

[woman] Willy was hiding out with Alina,

his wife.

I used to go to La Gorce

at least once a week to see Sal,

spend two or three days

'cause he was lonely over there.

I was, like, taking care of him,

bringing him food.

He said, "Well, I could go to Cuba

and live like a king."

Well, go to Cuba and live like a king.

"I have an emerald that I could live

the rest of my life off of."

Well, take that emerald, put it

in your pocket, take off to Colombia.

Do something. What are you waiting for?

You're waiting for them to catch you,

and it will all be over?

But Sal was more like,

"Oh, I could still go and maybe eat

and have dinner at Joe's Stone Crab

and they'll hide me in the back."

He enjoyed living on the edge

and being like cat and mouse.

"See if you can find me," you know?

Willy didn't have that mentality.

Willy's like, "I don't wanna go to jail."

I knew it was a matter of time.

Sal and Willy were going to be caught.

["Blood Sport" by Pitbull plays]

Woo!

Sniff, co- ♪

Snort, -caine ♪

Deal, cow- ♪

Snort, -boys ♪

Will, will, k*ll, k*ll ♪

For the love of the blood sport ♪

They'll do 25 to life

For the love of the blood sport ♪

See this cute little vial here?

It's crack, rock cocaine,

the most addictive form.

You think

it's the glamour drug of the 80s?

Well, that's the point

of this friendly little reminder.

The drug dealers need to know

that we want them out of our schools,

neighborhoods, and our lives.

What would I do

if someone offered me these drugs?

I'd tell them to take a hike.

Say no to drugs.

[man] I mean, they had

all this "Say no to drugs!"

I was thinking, "This is gonna get tough.

There's not gonna be any work for me."

It was the other way around.

We had more coke coming

into the United States than ever before.

[somber music playing]

I had come back to Miami from L.A.

I was with my friend,

and we stopped

at Latin American to eat something.

And there's this blonde girl

sitting with this older man.

My friend's like, "Hey, look at that

blonde girl. She's really pretty."

I'm like, "Bro, stop looking over there.

She's with her husband, you know?"

"You wanna get us

into a fight or whatever?"

I was at lunch with my dad,

when I saw Peter and his friend

for the first time at Latin American.

He just, like, caught my attention.

[Pegy] That was on a Wednesday.

["Rhythm is Gonna Get You"

by Gloria Estefan playing]

- I go to Club Nu on a Friday night.

- I went to Club Nu.

And Peter's friend goes, "Oh my God!

You're the girl from Latin American."

[Pegy] He comes running, "Hey!"

"Remember that pretty blonde girl

at Latin American?"

I go, "Yeah."

"She's here!" I'm like, "Go get her."

At night

We can turn off all the lights ♪

[Alexia] I think he was in the VIP.

And I saw, like, all these girls

around him. I was like, "Oh my God."

The rhythm is gonna get you ♪

When she gets there, I'm like,

[speaks Spanish]

"Find me the priest. I'm getting married."

[laughs]

Throw the covers on your head ♪

[Alexia] But it was funny,

'cause Jose Canseco was there too.

So, it was kinda like,

"Okay, now you got competition."

Jose was, like, trying to talk to me.

When he saw that, he was like,

"Okay, I'm gonna, like, step forward."

And I'm like,

"Okay, I really like this guy."

The rhythm is gonna get you

Tonight ♪

That next day,

we went to the beach, we hung out,

and then something

really interesting happened.

While we were at his apartment,

it was like one in the morning.

He gets a phone call, and he's like,

"I gotta go."

"What do you mean, you gotta go?"

He's like, "Yeah, but you can stay."

And I'm like, "I'm not staying."

He left so quickly.

That, at that moment I said, "This guy

has a girlfriend or he's married."

So I picked up my things,

my beach stuff, and I left.

Little did I know, that it was, like,

some shipment that was coming in,

and he had to go pick up the merchandise.

Tonight ♪

[man] In 1989, a grand jury

was investigating Falcon and Magluta.

But the investigators at that time

really didn't have, uh, any sources,

like undercover agents into them.

They didn't have any informants into them.

This was a kind of a family organization.

Everybody was related to somebody

that worked for Willy and Sal.

They knew each other for years

from little kids on Little Havana.

So they had a lot of loyalty

to each other.

So that makes it difficult

to penetrate and get somebody

to cooperate against them.

[ominous music playing]

[reporter] Miami lawyer Juan Acosta

was bumped off by a Colombian hit man

just days before he was due

to testify before a grand jury.

One of the probably biggest breaks for us,

not such a good break

for an attorney named Juan Acosta,

was when he got m*rder*d.

He'd been subpoenaed

to turn over records to a grand jury

that was investigating Falcon and Magluta.

[Marilyn] Juan Acosta

was an attorney that Sal had

to oversee his offshore accounts.

He was gonna cooperate.

He knew where the money was coming from.

[Pat] When he got m*rder*d,

all those records

that they could have destroyed or hidden

fell into the hands of law enforcement.

They were all in cabinets in his office.

And all these records in his files

showed all this money

going to and from Panamanian banks.

So local law enforcement,

Metro Dade Homicide, got a search warrant,

seized those records out of his cabinet,

and we brought them to the grand jury.

The K*llers are still on the loose.

They say at this point,

they have no suspects.

In the very, very beginning,

I never suspected anything of him.

Peter did not look

like a drug dealer to me.

I didn't know what a drug dealer

was supposed to look like,

except maybe Scarface.

Nobody, not any of his friends,

not none of my friends,

nobody that I knew

ever came to me and said,

"Be careful with him."

Everybody spoke so nicely of him.

And I would ask him,

"Where do you work?"

He's like, "I run my father's business

and my mom's business."

So he would leave in the morning to go

to the gym and to supposedly go work.

But I didn't know what work was.

[salsa music playing]

[Pegy] Justo Jay took care of the loads

that came in at the stash houses.

He's the one that showed me

everything in the drug business.

Jay had gotten arrested.

He did not cooperate, and uh,

the judge goes to him,

"I think you love Willy and Sal

more than you love your family."

So they gave him life.

Jay goes away

and I take over.

[music builds]

To me, I didn't see, like, I was hurting

anybody or doing anything wrong.

I used to have two apartments,

two or three houses.

My rent was like 30,000 dollars a month.

I'm making close to 250

on a monthly basis.

I'm 21 years old.

I provided my family

with whatever they needed.

"You guys don't work anymore. From now on,

you know, I take care of everything here."

I started thinking about all these

different things that were like signs,

the cash, the different boats,

the different cars.

I mean, nothing was ever his,

but it was the family.

I'm not gonna lie. He wasn't

the first drug dealer I went out with.

[Pegy] Drug dealing was something

that was, like, natural to me.

You tell me, "Go in that store

and steal a candy bar," I can't do it.

I'll start sweating, I'll get nervous.

You put me in a van with 3,000 keys,

I'm like, "This is my world," you know?

[Alexia] I always liked those kinda guys

that were cute

with a good car, with the boat,

with that kind of, that bad boy.

You know, I guess like unconsciously,

I wanted to make 'em good boys.

[Pegy] It took about a year and a half

for me to start dating Alexia seriously.

'Cause of the lifestyle I lived,

you don't wanna, like,

get tied up to anybody, you know?

I mean, you're in the drug business.

You're a drug dealer, you know?

That's the last thing you wanna do

is get married and have somebody involved

in a world that's crazy.

[man] For the last 75 years,

the finest expressions of love have come

I love you.

from Mayor's.

We went to Mayor's,

and I picked out my ring.

[salsa music playing]

We paid 42,000 dollars for the ring.

He did pay cash.

We're engaged,

and I'm already making plans

to get married

at the InterContinental Hotel.

Willy Chirino was gonna sing

at our wedding.

[singing in Spanish]

Yoly Muñoz did my wedding dress.

["Wedding March" plays]

And he's living the perfect fake life

when all this stuff is gonna happen

in the next few months.

[dramatic music playing]

[Chris] In April of 1991,

based on documentary evidence

and testimony

from several cooperating witnesses,

gathered over a two-year period of time,

the grand jury

returned a sealed indictment.

[dramatic music playing]

In that indictment, Falcon, Magluta,

and eight of their colleagues,

co-defendants, family members,

were charged with conspiracy to import

and conspiracy to possess

with intent to distribute

thousands of kilograms of cocaine.

[reporter] 75 tons,

they were accused of smuggling.

[Christopher] 2.1 billion dollars worth

of narcotics.

The U.S. Marshals now had

an active case for Falcon and Magluta.

They were all in the wind,

hiding out everywhere.

[Pegy] Sal goes to me,

"Hey, you are in the indictment."

I was indicted under Louis Mendez.

That was my fake name, Louis Mendez.

Sal goes to me, "What do you wanna do?

You wanna turn yourself in

or stay fugitive?"

I go, "I ain't turning myself in."

"It's just not gonna happen."

We weren't gonna stop.

[Alexia] Peter's sister showed up, Gina,

at the house, which was very unusual.

She's the one married to Taby,

Willy Falcon's brother.

It was really late at night.

She's like,

"I know you guys are getting married."

"Cut off the wedding

'cause they're gonna catch you."

"Be careful, my brother."

I looked at him,

and you can see that he was afraid.

[Pegy] I heard that they were waiting

for me to get married,

that they were gonna go arrest me

the day of my wedding.

That's something you'd see in a movie.

Like, that they'd arrest you

while you're walking down the aisle.

[Pegy] I had to call the whole thing off.

I mean, it broke my heart to tell her,

"Hey, listen. We can't do it."

- [sirens]

- ["Bad Boys" by Inner Circle playing]

What you want, what you wanna do ♪

It's funny, 'cause me and Alexia,

we used to watch the show, Cops.

You know that song that's so catchy?

That's like "Bad boys, bad boys."

What you gonna do ♪

What you gonna do

When they come for you ♪

Alexia would look at me and say

"Bad boy, what you gonna do

when they come for you?"

And they did come for me.

They came for me, bro. [laughs]

[Alexia] We woke up that day.

We were having breakfast.

[Pegy] And I'm getting in my car.

All these cops surround me.

[sirens]

They come out of everywhere.

Cars, they were all hiding here.

g*ns, everything.

And I got busted.

They showed me pictures of Willy and Sal.

"Do you know these guys?"

"Do you work for these guys?"

I'm like, "I don't know who they are."

They're going through that gate.

They knock on the door.

I'm standing here. I'm handcuffed.

They knock on the door, and then I hear

him say, "Don't open the door."

I go, "Don't let 'em in!

Don't let 'em in!"

And she saw the commotion.

They started fighting with her.

[man] Sheriff's office! Search warrant!

I don't know how she did it.

She locked them out of the house.

She starts burning the Ferrari pictures,

the Apache pictures.

[Alexia] They were like,

"Oh, you know, we're the DEA."

"We're the U.S. Marshals.

You need to let me in."

So I open the door a little bit,

and then, they're like, "What's his name?"

I'm like, "I don't know his name."

They're like "You live here with him?"

I'm like, "You don't know I live here."

"So, what do you call him?"

I'm like, "Oh, babe."

U.S. Marshals and DEA,

they were doing surveillance

from the house right in front of it.

And the people let them

do the surveillance.

They should've come knock on my door

or throw a little note or something.

"Hey! Get out. Run!"

[man] Stop or I'll sh**t you in the back!

[Pegy] But they didn't.

If you were in Little Havana,

I would have never gotten caught.

I should have stayed

living in Little Havana. [laughs]

And then everybody started

getting arrested after that.

I got arrested first and then another guy.

[man] I thought I had escaped. [laughs]

I thought I escaped

until I heard the knock at the door.

The DEA says "Ralph, you're going down.

You're all going down."

"You got a chance right now

to make a deal for yourself

before the sh*t hits the fan."

And of course, you know, I kept saying,

[repeating] "No."

[dramatic music builds]

They get Peter.

The sister, Gina, and Taby, disappear.

[Pegy] My sister didn't have to leave.

You know, he wasn't in the indictment.

But I mean, I guess she was really,

really loyal to her husband, to Taby.

They were hanging out

since they were like 14, 15 years old.

They took their kids with 'em.

My parents thought that,

"This will go on for four, five years."

"They'll come back."

It's been almost 25 years.

You know when your kid leaves to go out

and you sit home waiting

for your kid to come back home?

That's my parents for the past,

like, 25 years.

[Alexia] We go to court

two or three days later to get bond.

For the first time,

I'm hearing all the charges

that this person

that I'm marrying is being charged with.

I just remember the "75 tons of cocaine."

I remember "conspiracy,"

and I remember "25 years, minimum."

Chris Clark, the U.S. attorney,

I just remember him being an as*h*le,

like they all are, and he was just like,

"Okay, he's not getting bond."

"He belongs to this, like,

horrific organization."

"He's, like, a threat to society."

And I was like, "They have

to have the wrong person."

My tears were just, like,

coming out, and like,

"I'm never gonna be able

to be with this person again."

My family thought,

"Okay, this is the perfect opportunity

for you to say, you know, 'I'm walking.'"

I couldn't do it.

I couldn't do it. I just couldn't.

I'm like,

"This is when he needs me the most."

"This is when I'm gonna fight for him,"

and, you know, I had to do it.

I don't wanna talk about it,

because I'm gonna start crying right now.

So, um, anyways

[Pegy] Chris Clark.

He told me, "If you don't wanna spend

the rest of your life in jail,

you just do the right thing."

They tried to convince Pegy

to turn in Sal.

I don't think it took too much convincing

'cause Pegy doesn't have much backbone.

[Pegy] I had no choice.

I mean, it was either cooperate

or spend the rest of my life in prison.

So, I mean, I gave 'em Sal.

[somber music playing]

Louis Mendez agreed to cooperate

with the government.

[Pegy] I drew, like, a map.

That's how they found La Gorce.

[Chris] The Marshals

then conducted their own surveillance.

Sal Magluta was the person

who was renting that property.

[music intensifies]

[Marilyn] They started throwing tear gas

and doing whatever it is they do,

because nobody wanted

to come out of the house.

Sal slips out the back.

And then the rest of them come out,

and they get arrested.

They didn't know he was on the property

'til they went to his office,

and then they saw

that his wallet was there

with his 50 passports

and his 20 driver's licenses,

so they said, "We know he's here."

So they set the dogs out.

[dogs barking]

And the dogs dragged him out,

and he got arrested also.

[reporter] Agents found boxes

with stacks of cash there,

sophisticated equipment smugglers use,

and documents the government claims

were drug ledgers, account books,

agents said, for a vast smuggling ring.

[Marilyn] One of the people in the house

doesn't wanna go to jail.

He started crying,

"No, I don't wanna go to jail."

I'll tell you where Willy Falcon is."

"This is like a gold mine now.

We're getting Willy too."

[Chris] I obtained a second search warrant

authorizing federal authorities

to search that residence.

And Willy gets arrested.

[Jim] They were here the whole time!

[Chris] As of that point,

with the exception of Taby Falcon,

the wanted fugitives

in the indictment were apprehended.

[Pegy] It just stopped. It just stopped.

It all came to an end, and, you know

[repeating] I mean, it was over.

[dramatic music fades out]

[Alexia] Peter was out on bond for a year,

and I get pregnant and have little Peter.

Within a year, he had to turn himself in.

He was gonna start

serving the five-year sentence.

I just remember holding him

and just hugging him

and just crying and crying.

And, like, it's different, like, a mom,

a woman cries, and it's

you know, it's meaningful,

but when a dad cries, it's a different

A different kind of crying.

[reporter] The Federal Metropolitan

Correctional Center

houses some of the nation's

best-known drug traffickers.

[Chris] After Falcon and Magluta

had been arrested,

their next task was to hire counsel.

And befitting their reputation

as the kings of cocaine,

the biggest drug traffickers

in the United States,

they needed to have representation

commensurate with their image.

Defendants are not permitted

to use their ill*gal proceeds,

in this case, drug proceeds,

to pay for their representation.

According to the law,

that money does not belong to a defendant.

It was ill-gotten.

Therefore, the government is entitled

to that money, and I sincerely believed

that the public defender would have

to represent Falcon and Magluta.

That thought was quickly dissipated.

[funky music playing]

[Pat] Albert Krieger

[Chris] Perhaps the most renowned attorney

in the country.

[Pat] who gets retained

to help on Willy and Sal's case,

while he's representing

John Gotti up in New York.

[reporter] A jury in New York City

convicted alleged mob boss John Gotti.

This very unhappy day exemplified

Mr. Gotti's strength of character.

One of the major reasons

for getting out of New York

was that I wanted to go to a place

where I could keep my boat

in the water 12 months a year.

[cash register]

Roy Black is one of the most

well-respected criminal defense lawyers

in America.

He represented Griselda Blanco.

[reporter] Griselda Blanco, La Madrina,

or "godmother"

headed a large cocain e organization,

k*lling her way to the top.

[Alex] He represented

one of the Miami River cops.

The largest police corruption case

in the history of the United States.

He represented William Kennedy Smith.

[reporter] The issue is whether

William Kennedy Smith r*ped a young woman

at the Kennedy family compound

on Palm Beach Easter weekend.

[reporter 2] Do you think all this

media coverage is hampering your ability

to get a fair trial?

[William] No, it's hampering

my way of going to lunch.

[Jim] Roy Black not only won

the William Kennedy Smith trial,

he also married one of the jurors.

[Marilyn] We had Frank Rubino,

who we all love.

[Jim] Frank Rubino's on the case,

and his other client is Manuel Noriega.

[reporter] Former Panamanian strongman

Manuel Noriega is scheduled

to be sentenced for drug trafficking

and racketeering convictions.

We do not believe that it's a valid

drug case, we never have, we never will.

They called us the white powder bar,

because at that time, it was

almost exclusively cocaine cases.

I never found it to be a favorable term.

I actually disliked it.

An intelligent defendant

wants to be represented by a lawyer

who has not only apparent integrity,

but real integrity.

You may think I'm jesting,

but one of the important standards

was to make sure I was going to get paid.

[cash register]

Within a couple of weeks of their arrest,

I had my first meeting with them.

Certainly gave me the impression

at that time that,

shall we say, they understood the rules.

[Frank] Willy and Sal,

the government seized those assets

they knew about,

but to add another layer, if you will,

there was a protective order

basically saying,

"Any assets that we haven't seized,

you can't have those either."

You have to be able to have an explanation

for where the funds came.

There was an explanation given to me

that was satisfactory to me.

They paid me, I accepted their funds,

and I filed the appropriate 8500 forms

with the Internal Revenue Service,

reported everything as required by law.

[Jim] The feds thought

that when they captured Willy and Sal,

they were gonna put Willy and Sal in a box

and that'd be the end of them.

And then eventually, you sort of work it

out in trial, but once you catch them

that's really the end of the story.

No. Catching them was just

the beginning of the story.

And catching them didn't stop

Willy and Sal from being Willy and Sal.

[salsa music playing]

[Chris] There was an incident

in which a cell phone was seized

from a fellow inmate,

who was holding it on behalf of Magluta.

Falcon and Magluta,

they were put in solitary confinement.

[Jim] You can keep 'em in isolation

unless they needed to help

in their defense.

All you need to do is say,

"This is a legal visit.

We're sending over a paralegal to go

and review documents with Willy and Sal."

Sal called me,

and he said to me, "I need you now."

"Go fill out a form

and become a paralegal."

Not become a para

"Make believe you're a paralegal,

and that way you can come

into the jail every day."

Everybody became a paralegal.

Everybody became a private investigator.

Well, I guess I got to tell you

about the A Team and the B Team.

The A Team were the lawyers

who were going to try the case.

Very little of our time

was taken up with the jail problems.

There were other lawyers who handled that.

They should have been

in solitary 23 hours a day.

They maybe were in solitary

two or three hours a day.

Sal was not spending his day in jail.

He was spending it in the visiting room.

When I would go in, instead of just

putting Sal and Willy to pull 'em out,

I would pull out five other prisoners

that Sal wanted to talk to.

He would actually have

six babysitters, me and then five more,

so each one could take a room.

And Sal would go from room to room.

Let's say Krieger was in one room,

Roy Black was in another.

As long as there's an attorney present

in the room,

you can bring anybody into the room.

Of course,

since it's attorney-client material,

you can't look in on 'em.

You can't listen in on 'em.

They have to have privacy.

Well, they had privacy all right.

[Marilyn] I was bringing in food.

I was bringing in Xanax.

There was one time I came,

and they wanted lobster.

And it smelled, and I put in a bunch

of perfume, and I could still smell it.

There were a lot of reports of, well,

let's just say that sometimes

the paralegals came out a little bit more

disheveled than when they went in.

Did we have sex in jail? Yes.

Yes, there were guards that were paid off

to kind of look the other way.

And then, there were those visiting rooms.

And there was a spot

where the camera couldn't hit.

You couldn't see what was going on.

It was right up against the wall.

The whole thing lasted

less than 30 seconds. [laughs]

[Pegy] Were they paralegals? Uh

I don't wanna say hookers. [laughs]

[Marilyn] Sal said,

"You know, Marilyn, while I was out,

I would give money to the missionaries

and the charities and the churches,

and I want you to do it for me,

because I can't do it from jail."

So Sal said, "Go pick up money

from one of the stash houses,

get some ledger paper,

and I'll show you how to do it."

He gave me two pages

of ministries and names,

and he put the amount.

He said, "Do this monthly."

I said, "Okay, you know,

it's not a big deal. I can do that."

The next thing was, "Well, could you pay

my commissary and Willy's commissary?"

I said, "That's not a problem."

"And while you're at it, pay this one."

And all the prisoners' names,

he would give me a list

and how much to put in their commissary.

And then other things

started being added to the ledger book.

Willy paid one guy to make his bed,

'cause he was too lazy to make his bed.

There were four guards that I paid,

I just gave 'em an envelope,

and it had 25,000 dollars.

And I just gave it to him.

Nobody knew what I was giving him.

From the small people all the way up

to the attorneys and everybody

who was involved in the case,

their family had to be supported.

I didn't think I was doing

anything ill*gal.

[Jim] Marilyn Bonachea paid

at least 7.7 million dollars in cash

to co-conspirators, prison guards,

inmates from 1991 to 1996,

even though a federal judge had ordered

all of Willy and Sal's assets frozen.

[Marilyn] A lot of people would say,

"Sal's crazy doing this."

You know? "This girl's gonna take him

for every penny that he's got!" [laughs]

I took some, but I didn't leave him broke.

I just took a few million. [laughs]

But that was through the years.

It was never my idea

to keep track of anybody's money

or where anything was going.

It was all Sal's idea.

The only idea I had was to make

the attorney-client stamp.

I told Sal that way they can't

go through it, so I had one made.

[laughs] And everything was stamped,

even my briefcase was stamped,

I stamped everything,

so they wouldn't be able to.

And if they did get it,

they wouldn't be able to use it.

[Jim] Marilyn Bonachea was the paymaster

for all the inmates that they had hired,

the movement of money

to support the organization

while they were incarcerated.

She knew it all.

[Marilyn] The business never stopped

running.

It was being run

just like if they were outside.

There's a breaking story

we're hearing about now,

another very public sh**ting

in Coral Gables.

[reporter] A woman is m*rder*d

in broad daylight.

The woman was coming

out of a beauty parlor

when two men tried to rob her.

And she died, police say, because

she simply wouldn't give up her purse.

[Marilyn] I was watching the news

when I saw Alina Falcon on the stretcher.

[reporter] The victim,

Alina Rossique-Falcon,

is alleged drug dealer

Willy Falcon's wife.

[Marilyn] Willy, he was watching TV,

and he saw it just like I did on the TV.

[reporter 2] 1913 Ponce de Leon

in a beauty shop, a woman walked outside,

got into the car, and at that point

was approached by three men.

She had, like,

80,000 dollars in the car.

A struggle ensued, one of the subjects

pulled out a weapon and shot the victim.

[audio recording playing]

[Jim] You know, right away,

every pager went off

for every law enforcement officer

in South Florida.

What the hell is going on here?

Was Alina about to cooperate?

Was she about to flip against her husband?

Is that what was happening here?

[reporter] Metro Dade Police emphasized

they have no reason

to believe Alina Falcon's m*rder

was in any way connected

to her husband's alleged drug dealing.

They say she was simply a victim

of a senseless street crime.

[Jim] The cops put the word out

on the street

that Willy had a one-million-dollar bounty

for whoever k*lled his wife.

And that if they didn't wanna die

at Willy's hand,

they better turn themselves in

to the police as soon as possible.

And somehow, shortly after that word

got out, the case was solved.

[reporter] Today,

20-year-old Raymond Smith,

a laborer from Albany, Georgia,

who was down visiting friends,

remains behind bars, charged with m*rder.

According to police reports, he told

a friend he was the one who shot Falcon.

I I I couldn't believe it.

I mean, I was

She was one hell of a woman.

I loved her very, very much.

And what hurt me the most was

that everybody thought

that Willy put a hit on her.

That's what really I had a lot of fights

and a lot of argument over that.

But that was so far from the truth.

[Jim] After Willy's wife was k*lled,

Willy went dark.

I mean, all of the light that people

used to talk about that surrounded Willy,

his gregarious nature, he became sullen.

He became embittered.

He became obsessed with exercise,

trying to work through the pain

of losing his wife.

It fell to Sal to sorta pick up the pieces

and keep the organization running,

to keep Willy and Sal, Inc. moving.

[dramatic music plays]

[Jim] One of the things defense attorneys

never wanted to talk about

or prosecutors ever wanna admit to

was the behind-the-scenes negotiations.

Sal and Willy, they recognized

fighting the government

was probably not going to be

the best outcome for them.

I was hired by Sal

to be in charge of negotiating

a resolution before the trial.

Neil Taylor? Sal never, ever wanted

anybody in the room. Not even me.

He really didn't want anybody to know

that he was considering

some type of plea negotiation.

We didn't wanna demoralize the trial team.

I don't think the other lawyers

were aware of it in the beginning.

If I would have heard that there were

a plea negotiation of that sort,

I think it would have taken

about a month for me to stop

shouting, screaming, cursing,

having a temper tantrum

beyond all temper tantrums.

[Neil] Under the terms of our offer,

they would have had

Sal and Willy in prison

for a substantial period of time.

[music intensifies]

[Jim] The early version

of the deal was plead guilty,

get sentenced

to 40 years in prison, cooperate,

and Willy and Sal could knock

that time down to 20 years.

Also, as a sweetener,

Willy and Sal would agree agree

to turn over 40 million dollars in cash

and 4,000 kilos of cocaine

they were sitting on in Miami somewhere

that they could point them to, right now,

if you accept the deal,

4,000 kilos of cocaine.

[Ralph] For Willy and Sal,

that was nothing.

Sal was only gonna give up

a little bit of what he had.

He was gonna give up

a few stash houses, a little bit of money,

and he was gonna blame it on Pegy.

[laughs]

[Marilyn] Pegy was gonna take the heat

for what was about to happen.

I handled

what we referred to as a proffer.

A 30-something page typed document.

I had their secrets, all of them.

I don't think there was anything

that was held back.

A portion of this proffer contained

individuals who were culpable.

There was a substantial number of people,

private individuals, public individuals,

and law enforcement individuals.

People who were bought.

[dramatic music builds]

We paid off, literally,

at the state level, pretty much everybody

that had any position of authority

in anything that was related

or important to us.

All the detectives,

vice squad, homicide, everybody.

This went all the way up to the head

of the homicide department in Miami.

Judges were paid for.

High people all the way

in the United States government.

In our budget, a million dollars a month,

that's what we would pay off.

As a federal prosecutor,

when I would have opened that proffer

and seen those names,

I would have been impressed.

[Marilyn] Willy always wanted to plea out

from the very beginning.

But he didn't wanna plea out that way.

Willy didn't wanna be a snitch.

There was one copy and one copy only,

and it was handled

like a top secret document.

The government

thumbed through the proffer,

perhaps because of their confidence

in their case,

it was very casually dismissed.

[dramatic music fades out]

[Jim] The justice department

said no to the deal.

[Neil] Their fixation

on these two individuals

was precluding them

from making the smart decision.

"We're not making that deal.

We're not letting them buy

their way out of their prison sentence."

It really should have been resolved.

'Til this day, it's extremely distressing

to me that we did not succeed.

[Ralph] We had a meeting

at the FDC in downtown Miami.

Me, Willy, and Sal with all the attorneys.

They were going to plead not guilty.

But I said,

"You're really gonna go in there

and say 'We didn't do this'"? [laughs]

And they look at me like, "Yeah."

So, "Okay, I'm out." [laughs]

"I'm going to plead guilty."

And they said, "That's fine."

Willy and Sal and the whole muchachos,

we were like, brothers,

and we really loved each other.

And I'm a man. And I was not going to, uh,

say, after everything that we've done,

I'm not gonna turn against them.

So I took responsibility for what I did.

I pleaded guilty. It was for 15 years,

and we brought it down to 12.

And I took it like a man.

Conspiracies inherently have informers.

Have somebody who has rolled over,

as the common phrase is.

Is no longer a friend,

but is now really quite an enemy.

[Pegy] Willy's mom, she told my dad,

may God protect me.

"Be careful,

'cause you know, you might get k*lled."

I mean, that's how I took it, you know?

I was waiting for Sal or Willy to call me,

and it came from their mom, you know?

Which is cool, you know?

I mean, it's a family business, you know?

[clock ticking]

By all accounts,

the government's drug case

against Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta

is one of the biggest in U.S. history.

It's also one of the most interesting.

The story involves

two billion dollars' worth of cocaine,

two champion powerboat racers,

and a magazine ad

that has touched off an ethical debate

at the highest levels

of the legal community.

[Jim] In preparation for the trial,

the government had turned over a possible

witness list of more than 80 individuals

who were gonna be cooperating witnesses

against Falcon and Magluta, Willy and Sal.

Most of 'em were currently in prison

or had been recently convicted

on other crimes,

and they were testifying

against Willy and Sal

as a way of knocking off

some time from their own sentences.

[salsa version of Grieg's "In the Hall

of the Mountain King" playing]

Now, what happened

was the defense team created,

I guess, for lack of a better term,

an advertisement.

[reporter] Willy and Sal's lawyers

took out an ad in a national publication.

[Jim] The defense team placed

an ad in Champion magazine,

which is a magazine

for defense attorneys across the country,

listing the names

of all these individuals.

[reporter] "Information wanted," it read,

and listed the names of 31 people

who were expected

to testify against Willy and Sal.

When we put an advertisement

in the Champion seeking information,

we're asking our 25,000 members

and associate members around the country

to please share

information if you have it.

What's wrong with that?

[reporter] Well, you didn't just run

the ad in the Champion?

Correct.

[Jim] They placed the exact same ad

in Prison Life magazine,

which is distributed to federal

and state prisons across the country.

[reporter] Prison Life is just

what it sounds like,

a magazine for inmates.

The ad in Prison Life

was meant to be circulated in prison

where many

of the potential witnesses are being held.

It was almost like a bounty poster.

According to the government,

the minute those names were published,

- the witnesses were in danger.

- [music intensifies]

[reporter 2] After the ad first appeared,

one of the people on the list,

the witness in the case,

was gunned down in his driveway.

[Jim] Were you trying

to get the witnesses k*lled?

The defense attorneys, of course, said,

"No, no."

"We're just trying

to look for information."

I have a right to make my inquiries,

and I don't have to explain

why I'm making the inquiry to anybody.

I don't have to justify it.

- Would you run this ad again?

- Sure.

Police say it appears to be reminiscent

of "cocaine cowboy" days.

That's when the drug gangs

shot it out all over South Florida.

[reporter] One of the men who is wounded

may have a tie-in with drug traffickers

Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta.

Unbelievable. Four of the people planning

to testify against Falcon are gunned down.

A well-financed plot

to destroy the government's case

against the drug group or just a simple

string of bad luck for those guys.

[music rises dramatically]

[reporter] This is is one

of the biggest drug cases in U.S. history

and federal officials say

they can make the case

against Falcon and Magluta

using other witnesses.

The problem is keeping them alive

until the October trial.

[dramatic music ends]

["Blood Sport" by Pitbull playing]

- Cow- ♪

- Everybody sold a little yay ♪

- Co-, -caine ♪

- But now I shall become the cocaine ♪

Woo! ♪

I've been processed, packaged,

Delivered in bricks ♪

I've been cut, cooked, chopped

And whipped ♪

I've been called all types of names ♪

Like Perico, Yeyo, Snow, Blow

And Cane ♪

I'm the reason

That the Cubans took over Miami ♪

I'm the reason they extorted Escobar

By extraditing his family ♪

I'm protected by K*llers,

I'm handled by dealers ♪

Well-connected with greed,

I'm all white, but I produce green ♪

Woo!

Sniff, co- ♪

Snort, -caine ♪

Deal, cow- ♪

Extort, -boys ♪

Will, will, k*ll, k*ll ♪

For the love of the blood sport ♪

Sniff, co-

Snort, -caine ♪

Deal, cow-

Extort, -boys ♪

Will, will, k*ll, k*ll ♪

For the love of the blood sport ♪

They'll do 25 to life

For the love of the blood sport ♪

All in the name of that white ♪

For the love of the blood sport ♪

[music fades out]