Salvador Magluta (born 5 November 1954) was a Cuban-American drug kingpin and co-leader of the Los Muchachos crime syndicate, alongside his friend Willy Falcon. He and Falcon rose to the top of the Miami criminal underworld during the 1980s following the arrest of their mentor Jorge Valdes, and they inflicted a major defeat on the government by securing acquittals for their drug trafficking charges in a 1996 trial through bribing the jury. However, their case was retried after the FBI discovered their role in bribing jurors and assassinating potential witnesses, and, in 2002, Magluta was sentenced to 205 years in prison.
Biography[]
Salvador Magluta was born in Cuba in 1954, and he was raised in Miami, Florida, where his parents ran a bakery in Little Havana. Magluta became a small-time marijuana dealer while at high school, and he frequently skipped classes and told his mother that the "F" grades on his report card stood for felicidad, meaning "happiness." Magluta and his friend Willy Falcon started off as pot pushers before dropping out of school, with Magluta serving as the brains of the operation and Falcon serving as the brawn. In 1979, he was caught in a governmental wiretap during Operation Video Canary, putting himself and Falcon on the police's radar. The two men were arrested and charged on state drug trafficking charges, and they were given a probationary sentence of five years and a sentence of fourteen months in prison, only to get out of prison on bail, while their case was kept on appeal for years. The two men went back to the streets to continue selling cocaine, effectively ignoring their sentences. They became successful money-makers for Medellin Cartel trafficker Jorge Valdes, taking advantage of America's insatiable demand for cocaine during the 1980s.
In 1980, Valdes was arrested and sentenced to 25–10 years in prison, but, while he was let out on bail, he left the handling of his operations to Magluta and Falcon, who met Valdes' contacts in California and the Medellin Cartel. By 1981, the two men were major players in the Miami drug scene, and the mid-1980s saw them make tens of millions of dollars, using it to invest in properties, make their fathers presidents of construction companies, party at nightclubs like the Mutiny, and even support their old high school's basketball team. Because Magluta and Falcon were non-violent drug dealers, they stayed under the radar as the FBI focused its efforts on taking down the violent Cuban and Colombian cartels as the Miami drug wars escalated in the mid-1980s. In 1984, the Muchachos were rearrested under state trafficking charges, but they were released on bail under fake names. They repeatedly changed names and drivers' licenses and skipped bail, enabling them to escape arrest in Los Angeles and return to Miami. However, a Los Angeles sheriff recognized them after seeing them boat-race on ESPN, forcing the two men to keep a low profile by ceasing their races and renting new apartments by 1987.
On 30 March 1988, Magluta was arrested by the FBI while buying a ledger at a store; while he produced a fake identification card, a former classmate-turned-detective identified him. Magluta offered to lead the FBI to a house with thousands of kilos of cocaine (worth over $25 million) in exchange for his release, but the FBI declined his offer. He was jailed without bond, but he was let out of jail on 4 April 1988 after the paperwork at the jail was altered by a corrupt official to show that Magluta had already served 14 months in jail. He rented a Miami Beach apartment for $5,800 a month as Willy lived in a mansion in Fort Lauderdale, and, while Willy did not want to go to jail, Sal lived a daredevil lifestyle of continuing to appear in public while enjoying the cat-and-mouse game. In 1989, a grand jury investigated Juan Acosta, resulting in the 18 September 1989 assassination of Magluta's former lawyer-turned-witness Juan Acosta by a Colombian hitman.
In 1991, the law cracked down on the cartel, arresting several of its lieutenants. Pedro Rosello, Willy Falcon's brother-in-law, was arrested and persuaded to cooperate against Magluta, informing the US Marshals of Magluta's address on La Gorce island; Magluta was arrested on 15 October 1991. He agreed to cooperate against Falcon, who was also arrested. Magluta and Falcon continued to run their operations from prison while hiring the best criminal defense lawyers and having their associates become paralegals or private investigators in order to gain daily visitation rights. His girlfriend Marilyn Bonachea even registered as a paralegal to bring him food, to serve as his paymaster, and even to make conjugal visits to his visitation room as bribed guards looked the other way. On 6 August 1992, Falcon's wife Alina was murdered in a robbery in Coral Gables, demoralizing Magluta's partner, although his depressed mood never shook his loyalty to Magluta, even as he was offered plea deals. Valdes paid $1 million a month to judges and other officials in a bid to help the Muchachos buy their way out of a prison sentence; at the same time, Magluta's defense team publicized the names of several expected witnesses, ostensibly with the goal of collecting information on them, but several of those witnesses were targeted for assassinations to prevent them from testifying, with hitmen using the publicized names as a hit list.
In 1996, as jury deliberations took place, the Muchachos' lawyers persuaded the jury that they could not trust the witnesses, as many of them had been forced to admit to perjury. The jury surprised the world by delivering "not guilty" verdicts on every charge, having been bribed by the Muchachos, and Magluta was let out of jail, while Falcon remained imprisoned on an earlier drug charge. Magluta put up a bond of $400,000, wore an ankle bracelet, abided by a curfew, and remained under the supervision of a brother-in-law. However, Magluta continued to frequent nightclubs and rejected his girlfriend's advice to flee and Valdes' advice to give up his drugs to the FBI, growing overconfident after his victory against the government. The FBI launched "Operation Recoil" to investigate the Muchachos' role in fixing the verdict, and they discovered that jury foreman Miguel Moya had suddenly started to live an extravagant lifestyle despite making only $36,000 a year as an aircraft repairman. The FBI sent undercover agents to approach Moya and learn about his spending habits, but, after Moya aggressively flirted with the female agents, they were forced to change tactics.
Not long after, Moya made the mistake of demanding more money from Magluta, who decided to send a man to talk to him. The FBI got to Moya first, sending the hulking, 390-pound FBI special agent Joaquin "Jack" Garcia to intimidate Moya while posing as one of Magluta's henchmen. On 19 August 1998, Moya was arrested after Garcia caught him in a wiretap admitting to taking part in jury tampering, but his case resulted in mistrial after he claimed that his wealth had come from laundering money for his cousin, a corrupt policeman. In 1999, however, a federal judge concluded that he had accepted $500,000 in bribes, and, as Moya had refused to cooperate, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Marilyn Bonachea, Magluta's girlfriend (whom he had since cut off from her allowance due to her perceived overspending while he was in prison), was dismayed to see how Magluta had allowed for the lives of two young mothers on the jury to be ruined by bribing them and therefore causing their imprisonments, and she ultimately decided to help take down her boyfriend after she was pulled over by police while hiding Magluta's incriminating ledger in her trunk. Magluta decided to jump bail on a passport fraud case rather than face trial, fleeing in his vehicle; his girlfriend also went into hiding. Rather than flee to a non-extradition country such as Venezuela aboard his private jet, he stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Palm Beach, arrogant in his ability to stay in the Miami area. Magluta wore a wig, hoping that it would conceal his identity, but he was rearrested and charged with bond-jumping. He was sentenced to 9 years for passport fraud and bond-jumping, keeping him in jail long enough for him to be re-indicted for serious crimes. On 19 August 1999, his case was re-tried after Bonachea revealed that Magluta had ordered lawyer Juan Acosta's murder and those of several other government witnesses. However, Bonachea was discredited by Magluta's lawyers, who revealed that she only knew all of the murder details from the Miami Herald. In 2002, Magluta was found guilty for money laundering, while he was found "not guilty" for bribing jurors, money laundering, and the obstruction of justice (through killing witnesses), and he was sentenced to the maximum of 205 years in prison. Falcon responded by taking a plea deal and accepting 14 years in prison.