Original subtitles

- Everybody knew Willie and Sal were the hub

for cocaine trafficking in Miami.

- The organization had trafficked in over $2 billion

of cocaine.

The DEA arrested Sal Magluta and Willie Falcon,

but they were acquitted on all counts.

The first part of the investigation

was the homicides and attempted homicides

of government witnesses.

The second part of the investigation,

the prosecutors suspect that there was some jury tampering

that went on in this case.

One of the jurors said the jury foreman, Miguel Moya,

was putting more and more pressure on everybody

for a not guilty verdict.

With Moya, we were able to trace around $350,000

in unexplained spending.

- We always suspected there were other jurors involved.

The plan was Gloria was gonna get $1 million

for a not guilty verdict,

but she gets like $260,000.

- Third part of the case was massive

money laundering operation.

Marilyn Bonachea had been distributing large amounts

of cash for the organization.

- She became Sal's bookkeeper,

and those books were confiscated.

- We sent those ledger books up to FBI headquarters

to have them deciphered.

And then the informant, Orlando, calls us

and says, "Sal Magluta is worried.

They want Marilyn out of Miami as quickly as possible."

- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze! - FBI.

- FBI! - Action!

- But they don't know the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking agent-to-agent.

This is "FBI True."

- We need to know, where is Willie and Sal?

They're gonna stash Marilyn.

We tell the informant, Orlando,

"Hey, we're gonna help you rent a Winnebago.

"Tell Marilyn, I'll help you get out of Miami

to wherever you need to go."

We had to scramble everybody.

All hands on deck.

Everybody get a bag and go.

We're gonna follow this Winnebago.

- We stayed at every hotel she stayed at along the way.

- Where did they end up taking Marilyn?

- Orlando and Marilyn stopped at a hotel

in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

And then the organization was to sit tight.

We're gonna send somebody to meet you

and take you to a safe house.

- We thought it wasn't gonna be long,

but it turned out to be a while.

- It ends up being three, four, five days,

and all the agents are getting antsy.

I'm on pins and needles.

My wife is having a baby any day now.

So there's a lot of pressure on me at this time.

I'm like, "Damn it, why doesn't this guy show up already

"so we can figure out, you know, who he is

and where the safe house is?"

So finally, probably seven or eight days in at this hotel,

we get word from the informant--

"Hey, Marilyn got a call.

The guy's coming."

So we called Newark SOG, and we're like,

"You guys, it's very important.

"We have to know where this safe house is.

"If they stash her, and you guys don't see where it is,

"we're out of luck.

We never find her again."

So this individual from the organization finally shows up.

The Newark SOG follow her back to almost like

a brownstone-type apartment in New Jersey.

Now we've identified the safe house.

It's time to take this Winnebago back to Miami

and start our investigation of Marilyn.

The Newark SOG, they're so focused on following Marilyn

that they lose the organization member.

So all we knew about this guy

was that his nickname was Culito, which means?

"Little ass."

- They call him Culito because he's a pain in the ass.

- Yeah, right.

He was doing money drops to Marilyn every few weeks.

He would bring her money and make sure she had her groceries

and stuff like that.

So we're scrambling to try and identify him.

He's a very difficult guy to follow.

But through Orlando, we finally get his cell phone number.

So we start tracking his cell phone.

And one night, they see him.

And he's got the phone on, and they're able to track him.

And then they arrest him.

And he's identified as Tony Garcia.

So we bring him to the Newark FBI office.

- Mm-hmm. - And we try and solicit

his cooperation.

And Culito tells us that every couple of months,

he's delivering illegal drug money for Willie and Sal.

He travels into Miami,

and he does big money pickups for the organization.

And they deliver cash to him in boxes.

And then he transports the cash from Miami

to New York City.

And he launders the money a variety of different ways

for the organization so that Willie and Sal

can pay their attorneys

and have some semblance of legitimate funds

to pay their expenses.

So initially, Culito starts moving the money

through one of his Jewish friends, Isaac.

Eventually, Isaac says,

"I can't handle this amount of money for you,

"but I got a guy, you know,

"who can launder the money for you.

"Nobody knows any names.

"I just know he's a Jewish guy.

He's one of those guys with the curls."

And I go, "He's a Hasidic Jewish guy?"

He goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a Hasidic Jewish guy."

"I think he's a rabbi, too." A rabbi?

- And we were thinking--

- So we were like, this is interesting.

- This is very interesting.

Willie and Sal's organization is connected to a rabbi--

- To a rabbi in New York City.

- Who's laundering his money?

And we're like, this can't get any crazier.

- But we're like, "Who do you pick up the money from?"

And again, Culito, he doesn't know his name.

both: Blondie.

- We know Blondie-- - Another nickname.

- From the DEA Investigation.

Yeah. - OK.

We knew Blondie was Richard Passapera.

- Yeah.

He's part of the organization.

Culito tells us that for each of these money drops,

he gets a letter from Sal in jail--

Telling him how much money needs to be put

into different accounts.

And some of the money needs to go to, like, a family member.

Some of the money needs to go to lawyers.

So we're like, "All right, perfect.

When's your next money pickup?"

So he says, "Next money pickup's in about three weeks."

So that gives us some time to get all our ducks in a row,

get the authority to, you know, launder this amount of money,

which is in excess of $1 million.

So for the money pickup, we have Culito wired up.

Blondie gives him a box.

We take the box back to the FBI office,

dust the box for fingerprints.

So we convinced the FBI, OK, we're gonna

let this money walk because we want to see

how it goes through. We want to identify everybody.

So we're eager to find out who this rabbi is.

So the initial meeting is at a restaurant

in Washington Heights with the rabbi.

So they do the money drop,

and the surveillance groups from New York

follow the rabbi into a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood

in Brooklyn.

And he goes to his apartment.

And they identify him as Harry Kozlik.

Harry ends up going to the Dime Savings Bank.

One guy sees that he's got a safety deposit box.

So we take note of that.

Like, we're sure there's some good evidence

in that safety deposit box.

So we decide to do another money drop.

So the second money drop was $950,000.

Culito explained Harry is getting Jewish students

to transport this money to Israel.

And then once he gets to Israel,

he's opening up accounts in Israel

under the name Leonard Friedman.

- They would write these fake checks out

under the name of Leonard Friedman.

Attached with the checks were letters for the attorney

saying, "On behalf of Sal,

I would like to pay for their defense,"

to make it look legit.

These attorneys are getting checks

from some Leonard Friedman out of the blue,

and they deposit them.

- In that Dime Savings Bank safety deposit box

were the Leonard Friedman checks

and the account opening documents.

So we were able to track over $30 million in payments

to attorneys and private investigators.

- So where do we sit with Sal at this point

in the investigation?

- So Sal Magluta had gone to trial on fraudulent passports

the DEA found during the search of their mansion

on La Gorce Island.

So Sal decides in the middle of the trial to flee.

- He was found guilty without being present.

- He is convicted.

He gets sentenced to nine years.

Because it's a bond jump,

Deputy US Marshals, they're trying to track him.

- A man once charged with being

one of South Florida's cocaine kingpins

has been missing since February.

That's when Sal Magluta simply vanished

while standing trial in a Miami federal court.

- And we're thinking, he's gone.

He's probably in South America or somewhere like that.

So we're a little bit skeptical that we'll be able to find him.

So we're able, through informants,

to get his cell phone.

They knew he's in the Palm Beach area.

So one day, literally,

the Marshals are just passing him by,

and they're tracking him.

And he drives by them.

And he has this ridiculous fake wig

to try and disguise himself, you know,

so nobody can recognize him.

But he decides to go to the Ritz Carlton in Palm Beach.

- He didn't go very far. - Yeah, he didn't go very far.

And they arrest him.

- So what are you doing with Marilyn at this point?

- So we were tracking Marilyn at her safe house

in New Jersey.

- We were getting information from Orlando,

and it was getting very stressful for Marilyn.

She was addicted to Xanax,

and she would get really angry.

- She hated Culito.

And he didn't like her either.

- She was very demanding.

She would yell at him.

And then he started making advances at her,

and she wanted nothing to do with him.

So that became a problem

because she was constantly telling Orlando,

"I got to get out of here.

"I got to get away from this guy.

I want to leave."

She was losing her mind there.

- One day, we got a call from Orlando

informing us that she wants to move out of that safe house.

And she wants to go upstate New York into the mountains.

We weren't exactly sure where they were gonna go,

but we had Orlando with her.

So there was a short period of time

where we actually lost track of her.

And then we patiently waited for a few days,

and then Orlando was able to contact us and tell us

that she had gotten a cabin in Lake George, upstate New York.

We do a financial analysis of her bank accounts,

pull her tax returns,

and we learn that aside from being a paralegal

for Sal Magluta, she really didn't

have any legitimate income.

And during the period of the trial,

we tracked $1 million

in unexplained deposits into her accounts.

She liked to live the good life.

She would spend a lot of money.

And it was just an easy financial analysis case

because all her deposits

were less than $10,000. - Right.

- That's even more suspicious-- - More--yeah, of course.

- Than inputting large cash deposits.

She's not paying any taxes on this income,

so we had a tax case on her.

And then we had an extensive money laundering case on her,

and also obstruction of justice charges.

So we hit her with, like, every type of charge

you could imagine through this financial analysis

and through our evidence from other witnesses.

So we reached the point where we now have enough evidence

to go arrest Marilyn.

- We show up at the house in Lake George

to go arrest Marilyn.

She's got these two big Siberian husky dogs.

And we know she loves these dogs.

So there's talk amongst the team members,

"Hey, listen, if these dogs try and attack anybody,

we're gonna have to kill these dogs."

- We knew that if something had happened to those dogs

during that arrest,

that we probably wouldn't get any cooperation.

- We decided, since she's not a dangerous person,

to just call her up on the megaphone

and tell her to lock up the dogs,

come out of the residence.

So she did come out.

And it took us maybe 15 minutes--

- Not even. - I think,

to get her to cooperate.

We didn't have to show her the evidence.

She knew everything-- - She--

- You know. - Looked relieved.

And she goes, "OK, you got me."

And she tells Mario,

I got to take my pills with me.

And Mario is like, "Oh, no, you cannot."

So he wouldn't let her take her Xanax.

Those prescription drugs were illegal.

- We didn't want to start interviewing her

until she was off the drugs.

We had to check her into a rehab center temporarily

because she's of no value to us

unless she's thinking clearly.

- No one from the organization knew that she was in custody.

So we had to take care of her 24/7.

She was a very sweet girl.

She wanted to just hang out with us, you know?

Like, she felt like she was now part of this family,

and I'm gonna help you guys now.

She embraced it.

- At this time, we gotta continue the money drops

that she--she was getting money from Colombian couriers

every couple of months.

They would come to upstate New York and drop her money.

So she goes, " got to go back to Albany

and get my money drop, or they're gonna know, you know"--

- That something's-- she's not showing up.

- Yeah, she's not showing.

And that's when it gets a little bit more dangerous

because now these are cartel, you know, couriers,

and we're not quite sure who they are,

not having identified them.

So we made sure for this money drop, we go,

"It's gotta be a public--

we gotta be able to be around you."

So she insisted on meeting at the Amtrak station

in Albany for this money drop.

And we were able to cover that money drop.

With Marilyn, it was weeks of debriefings.

And we had to go through all the entries in the ledger book,

all her knowledge, from growing up to the present,

with Magluta.

We had sent those ledger books up to FBI headquarters

to have them deciphered.

And some of the ledger books had real names and addresses,

but a lot of it was just nicknames,

like check marks and dates

that didn't really make a lot of sense.

So we needed Marilyn to decipher those ledger books.

- Marilyn knew a lot about the organization,

so she was able to give us information

as to who the individuals were in the ledger books.

She created her own nicknames for them

because they reminded her of something,

or she met them, and they had dogs,

so she named him Perros, you know, or stuff like that.

She talked about money deliveries

to the murder suspects and hitmen.

And she also talked about a confession

that Sal confessed about the murders and why he did it.

Then she said he was the one

that was responsible for ordering these murders.

He knew they were going on.

So that was our only evidence of an admission,

was from Marilyn saying that

they were together romantically.

Then Sal confessed.

- So in mid 1999,

we've been in this investigative stage,

you know, since January of 1997.

So now the US Attorney's office is ready

to bring the indictments.

And there's gonna be two sets of indictments that come out.

Number one is the indictment for the obstruction

and money laundering.

And at that same time,

we're also gonna bring the indictment on the murders

part of the case as well.

So between these two indictments,

now, we're indicting over 20 subjects

who were involved in the obstruction

of the original case,

whether it be murders, whether it be money laundering,

whatever your role was.

We tried our best to hold everybody accountable.

One of the individuals that was part of the big takedown

in 1999 had information that Luis Valverde

had money stored at his house,

millions of dollars stored at his house.

As we did an investigation of him,

we learned that he was employed as an air conditioning

maintenance worker for Dade County Schools,

making a very modest salary.

But he's living in a luxury home in South Florida.

So when the agents executed the search warrant at his house,

he was initially very confident

and denying he has any knowledge

of any money in the house.

And as the agent started to go up into the attic,

they could notice him getting a little bit nervous,

getting maybe a little sweaty.

And they ended up finding $6.2 million in cash.

- So was Willie Falcon part of that final indictment?

- Yes, yes. - Yes.

- So Willie Falcon was locked up for weapons violation.

He was indicted on money laundering

and obstruction of justice charges.

Sal was indicted in the homicides conspiracy

part of the case.

And Willie, there was no evidence that he had anything

to do with the homicide.

So he was not indicted on the homicides.

So we had to sever the two of them.

We couldn't try them together.

They had to have separate trials.

In 2002, we go to trial against Sal Magluta,

but this time, we're not gonna make the same mistakes

like last time.

All our witnesses are in the witness security program.

And the jury this time is gonna be an anonymous jury.

So nobody knows the names of these jurors,

and it's gonna be a sequestered jury.

- Jurors enter the courthouse underground in a Marshals van,

kept under guard in a hotel somewhere in South Florida,

sequestered as they will be

for this three- to six-month trial.

- We were still very confident that we were gonna get,

you know, a guilty verdict in the case.

But as the deliberations went on longer and longer,

we start to get a little bit nervous.

So the jury comes out,

and it's a mixed verdict.

He was convicted on 12 of the 29 counts.

- Right, sure.

- He was acquitted on all the homicide counts.

He's been convicted on all the money laundering charges

and some of the obstruction of justice.

And the judge sentenced him to 205 years.

- How did it feel to finally bring Sal Magluta

and Willie Falcon to justice?

- I was proud to be part of it.

As a police officer, I saw the beginning of it all,

and then I joined the FBI and shut them down.

It was very rewarding.

A lot of the people, they're like,

"Oh, they were just drug traffickers."

And I'm like, he didn't get 205 years

for just being a drug trafficker.

He brought in tons of cocaine.

He was responsible for our crack epidemic

that occurred in Miami,

the crime wave, addiction,

suicides, overdoses.

So 205 years is a little light for me.

He's right where he needs to be.

- In my 30-year career in the FBI,

this was the most significant case that I worked on

because this really was, you know, an attack on the whole,

you know, justice system, you know,

what they did by bribing jurors,

murdering witnesses,

laundering millions of dollars in drug money.

So our team needed to show the community that,

you know, drug organization is not gonna get away

with this type of conduct

in the Southern District of Florida

or anywhere else in the United States.