01x04 - Only in Miami

[bunniefuu]

[reporter] Why is this man,

a known drug dealer,

what authorities call a cocaine kingpin,

who was facing life in prison

just last week, free tonight?

["Let the Bass Kick In Miami b*tch"

by Chuckie & LMFAO playing]

Play all night ♪

Let's get it poppin' ♪

I'm in Miami, b*tch ♪

Tonight, acquitted drug smuggler

Willy Falcon is still in jail,

but his alleged partner in crime

Sal Magluta is a free man.

[Jim] Willy, they're holding

on an old g*n charge

and an old drug charge from years earlier.

So Willy's not going anywhere,

but Sal's relatively free.

This what I wanna do, girl ♪

Drink all day, play all night ♪

[reporter] Magluta is free

on the following terms.

He puts up a bond worth

about 400,000 dollars.

He wears an electronic

surveillance ankle bracelet.

He abides by a curfew, and he remains

in the supervision of his brother-in-law.

[Jim] He's got one charge now facing

against him on a forged passport.

But he's actually out on the street.

He's going to church.

He's become a new man.

He's found God.

Thank God and my family

and the support, my lawyers.

I just, everything. But without God,

it would have never been possible.

This is where Sal Magluta will be living.

This is his parents' home in Westchester.

Friends and family have been coming

all day long to welcome him home.

Suddenly there's

It isn't light at the end of the tunnel,

it's a bright and beautiful shiny day

that they can look forward to.

I'm in Miami, b*tch ♪

I simply cannot tell you

why the jury did not convict in this case.

Something was amiss here.

[phone dialing]

[phone ringing]

[mysterious music playing]

After the acquittal, one of the jurors,

who was a holdout

at least for a period of time,

called me to say that he felt

ashamed by what took place.

[Pat] One of the jurors came in

to see us in the U.S. Attorney's office.

And uh, he was just distraught.

He said there was something wrong

with one of the other jurors.

What actually happened

from when we started deliberating

to when the verdict was rendered

has never been public knowledge.

["Blood Sport" by Pitbull playing]

Woo!

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 ♪

[dramatic music playing]

[juror 2] During the trial, the atmosphere

in the jury room started to change.

A few of the Cuban jurors

started to socialize every day.

This is when I noticed

the change in Miguel Moya.

Prior to us leaving on Christmas break,

he was a very humbled individual.

You know, was very proud

of working at the airport.

He would always bring his lunch from home.

He would bring in photo albums

of his family.

And then upon return

from Christmas vacation,

I noticed he started becoming arrogant.

He no longer talked about his family.

He was just somebody different.

I noticed the spending habits,

inviting everyone

on a lunch cruise at Bayside,

wanting to buy himself

a leather jacket at Sharper Image.

Completely opposite of the behavior

he had displayed prior to vacation.

It was Mike Moya

that sent in the note to the judge

asking for the jury to be sequestered.

We were staying at the Everglades Hotel.

We were not allowed to go home.

It became an issue

for two of the female jurors.

because both of their fathers

were terminal.

They didn't know how much time they had.

I felt just the way

that everything went down,

Moya planned it out very carefully.

He knew that if we got sequestered

it would put the pressure on the jurors.

And once he learned about

the two fathers that were terminal,

the pressure was on.

Moya and four other ladies

continuously said

that Magluta and Falcon were not guilty.

His response to everything was,

the government did not prove their case.

[suspenseful music builds]

On day three, we were deadlocked.

It was very heated.

Moya refused to listen to testimony.

He just didn't want to hear it.

The jury room was divided.

There was seven of us

that were voting guilty.

The lady that led the guilty team,

her father was terminal.

And she could not continue

to stay sequestered.

She needed to be there for her father.

Moya said,

"I don't care. I can be here forever."

When she saw that Moya was not

going to change his mind no matter what,

she said, "I can't continue to do this."

"I need to get home to my father."

And when she gave up,

we all followed suit.

Those that wanted to find 'em guilty

was very somber.

And those that wanted

to find them not guilty,

they were ready to go to Disney World.

[Jim] After the verdict, one of the things

we wanted to do was talk to jurors.

We were able to track down

the jury foreman, Miguel Moya.

And he kept explaining to me how

the government had done such a bad case

by putting on bad witnesses.

And he remembers vividly

that when they went into the courtroom

to announce the verdict,

and the verdict started being read,

Moya remembers

looking over at the prosecutors' table

and just seeing them seething,

looking at the jurors.

He said, "It was as if they were looking

at us like we were guilty."

[Chris] On paper,

Miguel Moya seemed to be a good juror.

He had military experience.

He was married, his wife worked

for the Herald, and he had children,

so he seemed like an upright citizen.

There was no reason

on paper to strike the man.

However, I offered to my colleagues, said,

"Miguel Moya reminds me of Sal Magluta."

[salsa music playing]

I still remember Chris Clark telling me

that we oughta exclude him.

He didn't like him,

and I said, "No, he's fine."

I was wrong. Chris was right.

[Chris] After the acquittal,

the jurors start calling to report that

these other jurors

were not deliberating in good faith.

[Pat] The impression was that

Miguel Moya badgered everyone.

People just kind of caved.

They didn't have any evidence

that there was anything improper,

but their conclusion

was that's the only thing

that could have resulted in what happened,

was that there was bribery involved.

Couldn't prove it,

but they were convinced of it.

In my mind, there really could have been

no explanation for this acquittal.

But for the fact

that this jury was bought.

[reporter] Despite last week's acquittal,

the government still considers

Magluta and Falcon a threat,

and there's evidence prosecutors

may challenge last week's verdict.

One assistant U.S. attorney

called a jury pool member

to his downtown office this morning

to talk about tampering.

This man,

who doesn't want to be identified,

didn't make the final jury cut.

Still, the prosecutor wanted to talk.

He says they're following

a few strong leads right now

that might lead them to believe

that somehow the jury was tainted

or was tampered or that people

may have approached the jury

when they went home at night.

[Jim] This is a taboo area.

This is as dangerous a minefield

as any prosecutor could wander into.

[reporter] Defense attorneys say

the feds are going too far.

It's now gone beyond the stage

of legitimacy into more of an obsession

and a personal battle.

There was definitely an aspect

of being concerned

that we were being vindictive.

You screwed up our case.

You voted against us,

so we're gonna come back at you.

We weren't, but, you know,

we had to be careful about that.

Today federal prosecutors

flat out deny they're talking to jurors

or anyone in that initial jury pool

about jury tampering.

[juror 2] Two agents showed up

at my house wanting to question me

about what happened in the jury room,

and wanting to know

how each juror had voted.

[Marilyn] As soon as Sal got out,

he just started getting on my case.

And I knew it was payback time for things

that I had done while he was in jail.

He comes at me with,

"You spent too much money,

you know, in those years."

"And what you did was you gave it away.

You didn't have to do that with my money."

And I said, "It wasn't your money.

It was drug money."

He would get pissed off,

because, you know, I would say that.

I said, "There's so much

of it that it means nothing to me."

"I work hard for that money."

I said, "No, you don't."

"You just bring in some drugs."

I said, "How hard do you work?"

And then he cut off my money.

He cut me down to, like, $5,000 a month.

If I needed money,

I had to go and ask him for it.

And then he'd, like, give me a couple

thousand dollars just to bust my ba*ls.

He was waiting for me to cry.

That was Sal's thinking.

"I'm gonna make her cry

and break down and go,

'I'm so sorry. I'll never do it again.'"

And then everything was gonna be okay.

I didn't feel like breaking down. I felt,

"I've done a lot for you, son of a b*tch."

[laughs] "I've done a lot for you.

I don't deserve this kind of treatment."

"So what, I spent

a few million extra dollars."

"What's the big deal?

What is the big deal about that?"

[salsa music playing]

Every day he's living it up.

[laughs] Back to the same lifestyle

that he was living,

except that he had to live

in his mom's house.

And his mom made his life miserable.

She would call me, she says,

"Come over here and talk to him."

She goes, "He came home

and I saw his nose was white."

Meaning he was doing cocaine.

"And it's party in my house every day."

He was going out to South Beach to all

the clubs with his entourage of people.

And I said, "It's time to get out now.

Look, now is the time, you know, to go."

And he said, "No."

His thinking was, "I beat the system.

They're never gonna catch me now."

"If they couldn't catch me

with everything they had,

they'll never get me now."

[Jorge] After the acquittal I asked him,

I asked him one day in my house.

I said, "Make a deal."

"Please, Sal."

"Call these people, tell the attorneys,

and Chris Clark, and sit down,

hand them the money and the cocaine."

"You think that they're gonna go home

and wag their tail between their butt?"

I'll never forget his words.

"I f*cked them once,

I will f*ck 'em again."

I said, "Primo, all you won is one battle.

You're never gonna win this w*r."

[Marilyn]

The government was embarrassed by Sal.

I knew there was more to come.

[man] The FBI wasn't concerned

with the past drug activity

of the organization.

Our sole goal in this case

was to investigate

anything that we could prove up

that the organization

did to obstruct that case

to bring about the not guilty verdict.

[dramatic music playing]

This was hands down

the largest obstruction of justice case

the FBI had ever had at that time.

We could prove up

that they obstructed this original case.

And the federal charges

for the obstruction of justice

would carry the same sentence

that they would have originally got.

We formed a task force.

We easily had 40 people

working on it at the same time.

[Mario] We came up

with the name Operation RECOIL.

Racketeering.

Executions.

Corruption.

Obstruction of justice.

Intimidation of witnesses.

And laundering of money.

I think my brother

drew the logo of RECOIL.

[Mario] It was symbolic

of a snake recoiling back

and striking back

at the bad guys in the case.

[music intensifies]

If we allowed the Magluta organization

to corrupt the justice system,

then our country is just like

any other Third World country.

[Pat] The FBI agents

were very quickly able

to detect that Miguel Moya

was spending money way beyond his means.

[Mario] We had tracked

close to $500,000 in spending

by Miguel Moya since the trial.

He had a lifestyle

that he could not account for.

[Pat] He was an aircraft repairman

out at MIA.

He only made like $36,000 or so a year,

yet he was spending money like crazy.

[Mario] He gave a lot of money

to family members.

[Pat] He paid cash

for a $200,000 house in the Keys.

[Mario] Bought new cars, he had gone

on lavish trips, bought Rolex watches.

[Jim] He'd been taking

gambling cruises and junkets.

[reporter] The Moyas' Optima Card

went from showing lots of credit purchases

to showing only payments

in early '96. Cash payments.

A debt of nearly $7,000

disappeared in just a few months.

Same with the Moyas' Visa card,

a $4,100 debt

nearly erased by several months

of cash payments.

A funny thing we noticed

from that period of time,

he's a normal guy like anybody else

that goes to the ATM

and withdraws money

every couple of weeks.

After the trial, no more ATM withdrawals,

so obviously he had plenty of cash.

So the first big break that we got

was Mr. Moya being stupid.

But we needed

to connect it to Willy and Sal.

We were trying to get

an admission from him on tape.

We knew that Moya

had a weakness for the ladies.

["The Heat is On" by Glenn Frey playing]

He frequented many of the brothels

here in South Florida.

He also had a lot of high-priced escorts.

So we decided to send a few

female FBI agents over to his house

The heat is on ♪

to tell him that he'd won a contest.

We gave him some free tickets

to a Miami Heat game.

[reporter] The 8-4 Heat,

the 11-0 Los Angeles Lakers,

and here we go from South Florida.

I went to the Miami Heat game

along with another agent.

We sat next to him.

We started talking throughout the game.

[Mario] She was trying to engage him

in conversation, get to know him,

and see if he would open up

on the bribe payment.

We ended that night. I got his number.

[announcer] That puts an exclamation point

on a big Miami win tonight.

I tried to get a hold of him,

and he was non-responsive.

I'm like, "How am I gonna get

this guy to call me back?"

I dialed his beeper and I hit 69.

Boom.

The call came in.

[salsa music playing]

We set up a date to hook up at Mango's.

I came with a female agent.

He was pouring drinks and trying

to get us drunk, but that didn't happen.

He was, you know, bragging

about having a boat and his watch.

Mr. Suave, you know?

"I'm a big shot."

[Mario] The problem was that he started

getting aggressive with the female agent,

we figured he wasn't going to give her

the information that we were looking for

without going to the further stuff,

which obviously we couldn't allow.

And plus, I'm good friends

with the undercover agent's husband,

so that would have been a problem.

We decided to scratch that

and move on to the next idea.

[Marilyn] Sal called me. It was about

a couple of months after he was out.

And he said to me, "We have a problem."

And I'm thinking,

"I don't have any problems anymore."

I said, "You have a problem."

'Cause I was so tired, I was exhausted.

This is years and years, you know?

I said, "What happened?" He says,

"The juror is spending too much money."

And he wanted more money. And Sal told me,

"I'm not giving him a f*cking dime."

I was like, "Man, he saved your butt.

If I were you, I'd give him that dime."

But my opinion never counted, you know?

[laughs]

I says,

"What are you gonna do with this guy?"

And he says, "I'm gonna send

somebody to talk to him."

[dramatic music playing]

[Jim] Moya gets off work one day,

heading to the employee parking lot,

and all of a sudden

this hulking figure steps out

from the shadows

[dramatic music builds]

and goes,

"Oye, Miguel, I need to talk to you."

[man in Spanish] You are Miguel, right?

My name is Manny.

We have mutual friends.

Do you know me? No?

Well, I know you.

The problem is, the friends we have,

they advised me

that I should come talk with you.

Because now there is a serious situation.

This is something our people

have obtained via the FBI office.

[Raquel in English] Well,

that wasn't Sal's guy.

This guy was our undercover agent.

The government, they decide to play off

the fears of the Falcon and Magluta case,

the fact that witnesses die,

that people get blown up,

that people get stabbed associated

with the Falcon and Magluta case.

They go out

and they find the biggest, scariest,

meanest-looking FBI Cuban

that they can find,

Jack Garcia.

[salsa music playing]

[Jim] He is probably the top

undercover agent the FBI has ever had.

[reporter] Joaquin "Jack" Garcia may be

the most unlikely law enforcement figure

in history, all 390 pounds of him.

And I was able to be the type of guy

that never in a million years

would somebody suspect I was an agent.

[in Spanish] The thing is the IRS

and the FBI are investigating you.

[Mario in English] We were in a van parked

two cars down from Miguel Moya's vehicle

in the parking lot

outside of the Miami Airport.

And also Agent Garcia

had several body recorders on him

to record the conversation.

[Mario] At first Miguel Moya

was denying that he knew anything,

but Jack Garcia's

a very skilled undercover agent.

And he says, "Have you seen Pulp Fiction?"

[g*nsh*t]

Oh! The f*ck's happening?

Aw, sh*t, Vinnie!

I'm Mr. Wolf. I solve problems.

- [man] Good. We got one.

- So I heard.

"That's me. I'm Wolf."

[Jack] Did you see

the movie Pulp Fiction?

- No.

- [Jack] Then go get it tonight.

Watch Pulp Fiction.

There's a guy the call "The Wolf," okay?

You know what his job?

To fix things. That's what I do.

Jack was just, like, lost.

He said, "I had this line all worked out

that I was gonna convey to scare the guy,

and then it turns out

he hadn't even seen the movie."

[Jack] I'm here to help you.

Because if I help you, I help them.

And don't take this personally.

I don't give a f*ck about you.

I care about them.

And slowly but surely Miguel gives it up.

[Jack in Spanish] It's possible

they might come back to the jurors.

Do you think some of them

might know something?

[Miguel] They don't know anything.

[in English] He went

into a lengthy conversation

about how he had spent the money

and how everything

was in his parents' name.

[in Spanish] You already spent it all?

Damn, what a son of a b*tch you are.

[Miguel] No, brother,

I gave it all to my family.

[Jack in English]

You should've f*cking kept some, bro.

[indistinct]

You helped us, we are now helping you.

Jack goes, "That's okay.

We'll take care of things."

[in Spanish] I'll get you an accountant

who'll sit with you and go "ba."

- This is how we'll justify all the money.

- [Miguel] I see.

[in English ] "The boys are worried

you'll talk, you'll cooperate.

[Miguel in Spanish] No.

If they gave me 20 years,

I'll take the 20 years.

- [Jack] The secret is between us?

- Yeah, bro.

[in English] We were in the van

two cars down, obviously with big smiles

on our face.

And we'd finally gotten the admission

from Miguel Moya that we were looking for.

He would do 20.

He wasn't going to say anything.

We had a mini celebration that night.

[dramatic music builds]

[Jim] But like the guy

in the movie Pulp Fiction said

Well, let's not start sucking

each other's dicks quite yet.

[juror 2] I was called by a friend of mine

and she said, "Oh my God!"

"You don't know

what came out in the news."

And then she read me the article.

My heart stopped.

There was, to our shock

and our horror, jury tampering.

No lawyer worth his salt

wants to win a fixed case.

He wants to win a case

because he did a good job.

We didn't win, someone cheated.

We didn't cheat, but someone cheated.

Someone deflated the football.

[reporter] The indictment accuses

Miguel Moya,

the foreman of the drug trafficking trial

of Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta,

with accepting a 500,000-dollar bribe

to acquit the accused

in their 1996 federal case.

[man] It was earth-shattering,

because when that case was won

everybody thought,

Willy and Sal

pulled off the win of the century.

How the hell did they do it?

[reporter] At the time, prosecutors

thought their case was infallible.

Now they say they know what happened.

[Paul] I went to the meeting

with the United States Attorneys.

The tension in the air

was, like, off the charts.

And there was sort of this sizzling anger

that was permeating the atmosphere.

[man] This case presents

one of the most reprehensible crimes

ever prosecuted in this district,

and perhaps our nation.

The prosecutor comes up to me and says,

"Paul, this is a slam dunk for us."

"We've got

overwhelming financial evidence."

"We have an undercover agent that did

a recording of him where he confessed."

"In addition to that, bad news,

his wife's testifying against him."

"The idiot showed her the cash

and confessed to her."

Virginia Perez,

who used to be Virginia Moya,

told jurors here that after some

mysterious phone contact

with a caller named Eddie,

her husband came home with a paper sack

stuffed with wads of twenties

and 100 dollar bills

and told her it was for his work

in persuading fellow jurors

in the infamous Willy and Sal

drug case to vote for acquittal.

"Paul, it's overwhelming."

[Tom] The action of this juror

and his co-conspirators was a fraud.

A fraud on the United States court system,

and a fraud

on the people of the United States.

If he got convicted of taking a bribe

in the Willy and Sal biggest

drug dealer case in the history of Miami,

he was going down hard.

Hello! We were in trouble.

I went to the federal detention center

to see Mike Moya.

I said,

"This is really serious, you know."

I said, "The evidence

looks strong against you."

"Do you want to cooperate?"

He cut me off.

[dramatic music playing]

And said, "It's not gonna happen.

You don't have to talk about it again."

I said, "But Mike, if you cooperate

against Willy and Sal

you may not even go to jail."

"You really have to carefully

consider what you're doing."

He said,

"Nope, just do the best you can for me."

My impression was, he was afraid.

He was afraid that if they didn't get

to him, they'd get to his children

or they'd get to somebody close to him.

And he didn't want to take that chance.

So we'd have

these defense meetings at my office.

I said,

"How are we gonna explain the money?"

"How do you explain how you bought

a $198,000 home for cash in the Keys?"

"How do you explain

that you bought a boat for cash?"

"How do you explain

that you stopped using your ATM machine?"

"We could say he went

to Las Vegas once and won it there."

I said, "No, forget gambling."

They kept coming up with these ideas,

how we could legitimize the money.

I said, "Stop. None of that's gonna work."

"We're gonna have to go zen."

[chimes, gongs playing]

That was an expression

that we liked to use back in the 90s

for when the evidence was overwhelming.

Instead of, like, fighting the evidence,

you basically went,

like a bullfighter, olé.

[Spanish music playing]

"We don't care. Yes, there's

financial evidence up the ying-yang."

"But, you know, we don't care."

And I was like,

"It sounds like we might have a defense."

I can't stop thanking God.

I just can't stop.

[reporter] The feds thank along with God,

Magluta should have thanked Miguel Moya,

jury foreman.

Moya listened today

as prosecutor Ed Nucci called him

a traitor to justice who got

hundreds of thousands of dollars

from the drug runners funneling the money

to his parents, Rafaela and Jose.

[Jim] Ed Nucci, the prosecutor, stands up,

lays it out. "Use your common sense."

"Where else could the money

have come from?"

Moya's attorney stands up.

"I'm here to tell you

what really happened."

[Paul] "Look, folks, we had

an explanation for all this spending."

"The cash was ill*gal,

but it wasn't from a bribe."

Their alternative explanation of where

the money came from was basically

that he'd committed earlier crimes

back in the 80s

with his cousin Ray Perez.

[funky music playing]

[Paul] His cousin Ray

was a convicted ex-Miami river cop.

And I had prosecuted Ray Perez in a series

of corrupt police prosecutions.

[reporter] Summer of '85,

three bodies floating in the Miami River.

Seven police officers were arrested,

some accused of causing the drownings

on the river, ripping off drug dealers,

plotting to k*ll or intimidate witnesses

to their alleged crimes.

He had made hundreds of thousands

of dollars in the drug trade.

And he had provided this money

to Miguel Moya,

and this was the money

that he had been utilizing.

"That's where it came from."

"This is not bribe cash."

"This is old drug money

that they got back in the day."

"Didn't spend it then so as to not attract

attention, and then spent it later."

"And boom. The government jumps

to the wrong conclusion,

that it's bribery money."

The government was just stunned.

Ray Perez

actually testified at that trial.

[reporter] Ray Perez, four years

a Miami cop, then a drug smuggler

who was busted

and plea bargained to a brief sentence.

Now Perez comes back to federal court

hoping his testimony will keep his aunt

and uncle, Rafaela and Jose Moya,

and his cousin Miguel out of prison.

Ray Perez claims that Moya

shared in his drug profits for years,

helping transport

drug cash for him in the 80s.

That's where all the money came from,

and Miguel had his share.

He sat on it. He didn't spend it

until the statute of limitations had run.

[Jim] Only in Miami could you walk

into a courtroom and say,

"My client is not guilty

of taking bribe money."

"My client is guilty of money laundering

for his crooked cop cousin."

[Paul] The government tried

to poke holes in Ray.

They said,

"You're a liar, you're not to be believed,

you've committed perjury."

And cousin Ray said,

"There's a safe."

[reporter] Ray Perez claims

they tucked thousands of dollars

into a floor safe

in the Moyas' West Dade home.

The safe is in the old home

that the Moyas had.

And before they moved out, they retiled

over it so nobody would ever find it.

So the FBI, lawyers, investigators,

all go out to the old house

with a court order.

Their floor is drilled

in the spot where Ray says it is.

[salsa music playing]

Sure enough, there it was,

the safe that they used

to hide their money in.

[laughing] We loved that.

We wheel out the safe. This is where

the dark little secret money was held.

[Jim] You sort of saw the jurors nodding

and go, "That makes sense."

"I could see that."

"That this ill*gal money came

from a crooked city of Miami cop

who was involved in drug deals?"

"And he was hiding it with his cousin,

Miguel Moya? Okay. That makes sense."

[Paul] And instead of

quickly readjusting or recalibrating,

the government kept sticking with this

pounding of the financial evidence.

And Judge King finally just said,

"Don't you understand?

They've admitted the cash."

"Get off of that. Get to the bribe.

How do you prove he took a bribe?"

[music intensifies]

[reporter] A Miami jury is deliberating

the fate of Miguel Moya

and both of his parents this midday.

[Jim] That courtroom was packed

with prosecutors, federal agents,

the U.S. attorney

personally sat in on the case.

They said to themselves,

"We are not going to allow ourselves

to be beat with a corrupt juror."

And then they waited.

[repeating] And waited.

[dramatic music playing]

[Paul] This jury sent us a note somewhere

in their deliberations which said,

"Help!" With an exclamation point.

Which means they're at each other's

throats. There's huge disagreement.

The disagreements are so deep

that they're not gonna be overcome.

[reporter] A mistrial is declared

in the case of a jury foreman

accused of taking a bribe.

A juror laughs leaving the courthouse,

perhaps relieved to end

five long days of deliberations.

Other jurors did not want to comment

on what they've been through.

[man] No, thank you.

Well, after that, uh, we knew

we had to go back to the drawing board.

We just have to regroup

and get a little bit more evidence

to show the jury,

and then we'll convict him.

I said,

"You know what? I've done my duty."

And I faded away into the sunset.

The attorney that represented Moya

after that, they changed the defense

to the money came from, um,

ill*gal gambling.

And it's a lame defense.

I've seen it used before. Never works.

[dramatic music playing]

- [reporter] Miguel Moya.

- Miguel Moya.

Miguel Moya,

the first federal juror in Florida

to be convicted of taking a bribe.

[in Spanish] A federal judge declared him

guilty for having accepted

half a million dollars as a bribe

to absolve the accused drug

traffickers Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta.

[in English] So now Miguel Moya

is facing sentencing on bribery charges.

[Mario] Moya could have easily

cooperated against the boys

and served very little time in jail.

But he had told the undercover agent

Jack Garcia that he would do 20 years,

and he'd never cooperate.

[Jack in Spanish] If they give me

20 years, I'll take the 20 years.

[Jim in English] So when it came time

for Moya to be sentenced

the judge remembered that and said,

"Okay, you said you could do 20 years."

"You got it, 20 years."

Bam.

It's always sad when a man goes to jail

for almost 20 years, but the case

required it was this individual,

because he had corrupted

the jury system.

Uh, and that can't be tolerated

in a system like this.

It was a collective effort that

finally resulted in justice being done.

But we didn't know at the time that

there were other jurors involved in this.

[dramatic music playing]

I was paid a bribeto vote not guilty.

Sal had mentioned at one point that,

you know, you can bribe jurors.

I think it was Gotti who did it,

but they knew it was hard to do.

How are you gonna get to the jurors?

[juror 2] I was 23 years old.

I had just moved out to my own house.

I had a daughter

that was about six months old.

My mother called to notify me

that I had received a manila envelope

from a federal judge.

I went over to her condo.

We ran into Raul Sarraff.

He was a neighbor.

He was in real estate on the beach.

He was the president

of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce.

He came downstairs to have coffee.

I opened up the envelope.

It was a jury summons,

it said United States of America

vs Augusto Falcon and Salvador Magluta.

We discussed it with Sarraff.

For as big as Miami is perceived,

it really is a small town.

[Mario] The six degrees

of Kevin Bacon in Miami,

the six degrees of Sal Magluta

and Willy Falcon stretched very far.

[Jim] Forget six degrees of Sal.

You just had one degree of Sal.

Dumb luck

for Sal Magluta and Willy Falcon,

one of their associates,

a fella named Jose Fernandez,

he was a real estate agent

who knew another real estate agent

who lived in the same

apartment complex as the juror.

- [juror 2] Soon after that

- [phone ringing]

it was Raul on the other end

calling to say that he wanted

to come over Saturday morning.

He showed up to my home.

He had some small talk.

He said, "I have been asked

by the family of Falcon and Magluta

to come and speak to you."

It was kind of surreal.

He said that they wanted to offer us

10,000 dollars for me

to show up to jury selection,

another 10,000 dollars

if I was chosen as a juror,

and a million dollars

if there was a full acquittal.

[music intensifies]

I was shocked.

I just couldn't get out

of this bad situation,

no matter what happened.

My only choices were say "no"

and be k*lled,

or go along with it.

[Marilyn] Jose Fernandez

came into the jail with the big news.

You know, "We got her."

[suspenseful music playing]

[juror 2] From October of 1995

through August of 1998,

Sarraff delivered approximately $265,000.

The payments continued

'til right before Moya got arrested.

- Jury foreman

- Miguel Moya

took cash in exchange

for his influence as a jury foreman, but

[juror 2] I had no clue what was going on.

Every bad thought crossed through my head.

If they caught him, maybe they knew

what had happened with me.

Maybe they're waiting

for me when I get home.

I never lived in peace.

I always lived looking over my shoulder.

[music builds]

It was years that we had not had

any communication with Sarraff.

- One day Sarraff called my cell phone

- [phone ringing]

and said that he needed

to see my husband and I.

He said that they wanted to make sure

that I kept my mouth shut,

that they wanted to keep me happy,

so they were gonna finish paying me,

which was over 700,000 dollars.

My husband and I had separated.

We were going through

very difficult financial hardships.

I was desperate. So, my husband

and I agreed to accept the money.

[Mario]

Raul Sarraff was cooperating with the FBI.

He helped us set up the sting operation.

[juror 2] He was very persistent

that both my husband and I be present

at the meeting.

We met up with him for lunch.

She was very brazen on the recording.

We were surprised.

He said he had another 25,000 in his car.

That doesn't even come close.

- [Raul] I understand.

- Doesn't even come close.

She's owed that money, and she wants

the money as soon as possible.

She didn't appear to be afraid.

She wanted more money.

Yeah.

[juror 2] Once we finished lunch,

he asked us to go outside to his car.

And he handed me an envelope

with $25,000 in it.

[Raul in Spanish] I told them

that you told me that you didn't want

a "payment plan."

That you wanted to get the balance.

And said, "As soon as possible."

[juror 2 in English] I did everything

that I had to do and did it right.

[Raul in Spanish]

You did everything right.

You did everything you were supposed to.

You voted "Not Guilty."

We have to be careful

because look what happened to Moya.

[juror 2 in English] Then,

he quickly wanted to leave.

We were walking to my car.

[music intensifies]

The government just jumped out

and arrested us.

The person that stood out

right away was Pat Sullivan.

I couldn't believe that

the prosecutor for this big trial

was there while I was being arrested.

We were taken to FBI headquarters.

They just played a videotape

of what they had recorded

of our conversations with Sarraff.

And I just looked at the agent

and I said, "You don't have to do that."

She, like others in this case,

was extremely remorseful

once she had handcuffs on her hands.

We told her, "Give us information on other

jurors that were bribed in the case."

The only one she had specific information

on was Maria Penalver.

Falcon and Magluta

paid off three of the jurors.

[Mario] When she confessed, it was almost

like a weight off of her shoulders.

In retrospect she knew she made

a big mistake because she was only paid

around $20,000, when Juror 2

was paid over $300,000,

and Miguel Moya,

in excess of half a million dollars.

Prosecutors say the jurors' mission

was to assure acquittals

for the so-called cocaine cowboys

Sal Magluta and Willy Falcon.

[reporter] Maria del Carmen Penalver

and [bleep],

jurors in the 1996

Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta drug trial,

as well as [bleep]'s husband,

all turned themselves in today.

I was sentenced to 60 months in prison.

I sat with my oldest daughter,

who was about to turn nine.

And I explained to her

what had happened to us.

I tried to tell her at her level,

and I was amazed

of how much she comprehended.

[crying] I had her, in front of me,

explain it to my youngest daughter

[gasps]

and it was heartbreaking.

[sniffs]

To this day, my youngest daughter

is affected by what happened,

having had her parents taken away.

[Jim] Both her and Maria were young,

early twenties.

[Marilyn] People were ruining

their lives because of Sal.

I don't think he cared.

Money will corrupt anything

and money corrupted the police.

It corrupted attorneys.

It corrupted bankers. It corrupted judges,

it corrupted Everybody got corrupted

by the drug money in Miami

in the 80s and 90s.

But the one place that it never really

was even thought of was the jury.

I don't think there is another case

in history where three jurors

in a trial of this magnitude

was bribed for an acquittal.

[Jim] This investigation

had started in the 80s.

The original indictment against

Falcon and Magluta was '91.

The federal prosecutors

then spent the rest of the 90s

just getting their asses kicked

by Roy Black and Al Krieger,

McKenna in the Moya case.

Every time they turned around,

they were losing something.

But then in '99 they finally won one.

That was the turning point.

They wanted to make an example out of him,

and show others

you don't mess with juries

and get away with it.

But the real thing

that they wanted to make sure

was that Falcon and Magluta

weren't gonna get away with it.

[reporter] There is more legal trouble

ahead for two notorious cocaine kingpins.

Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta bribed a jury

in one of the largest drug trials

in South Florida history.

Well, now the government

has come up with Plan B.

[dramatic music playing]

[Marilyn] Sal said, "Marilyn Bonachea,

that b*tch will turn all of yous in."

"But she'll never turn me in."

And I was like, "Okay."

And I'm thinking,

"Boy are you wrong, Sal."

[laughing]

[music fades out]