Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami (2021) s01e04 Episode Script
Only in Miami
[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 Bitch"
by Chuckie & LMFAO playing]
Play all night ♪
Let's get it poppin' ♪
I'm in Miami, bitch ♪
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 gun 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, bitch ♪
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, kill, kill ♪
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 balls.
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 bitch."
[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 fucked them once,
I will fuck 'em again."
I said, "Primo, all you won is one battle.
You're never gonna win this war."
[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 fucking 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?"
[gunshot]
Oh! The fuck's happening?
Aw, shit, 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 fuck 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 bitch you are.
[Miguel] No, brother,
I gave it all to my family.
[Jack in English]
You should've fucking 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 illegal,
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 kill 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 illegal 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,
illegal 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 killed,
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 bitch 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]
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 Bitch"
by Chuckie & LMFAO playing]
Play all night ♪
Let's get it poppin' ♪
I'm in Miami, bitch ♪
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 gun 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, bitch ♪
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, kill, kill ♪
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 balls.
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 bitch."
[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 fucked them once,
I will fuck 'em again."
I said, "Primo, all you won is one battle.
You're never gonna win this war."
[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 fucking 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?"
[gunshot]
Oh! The fuck's happening?
Aw, shit, 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 fuck 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 bitch you are.
[Miguel] No, brother,
I gave it all to my family.
[Jack in English]
You should've fucking 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 illegal,
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 kill 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 illegal 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,
illegal 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 killed,
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 bitch 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]