Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami

What Is the Series About?

Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami is a six-part Netflix documentary series that chronicles the rise and catastrophic fall of Augusto Guillermo "Willy" Falcon and Salvador "Sal" Magluta — two Cuban exiles who grew from high-school dropouts on the streets of Miami into the masterminds behind one of the most audacious cocaine-smuggling operations in American history. Directed by Billy Corben and released on August 4, 2021, the series revisits a case that prosecutors described at the time as one of the largest drug prosecutions in U.S. history, involving allegations that the two men smuggled approximately 75 tons of cocaine into the United States over the course of roughly two decades.

The series spans the full arc of Falcon and Magluta's criminal saga — from their earliest days building a distribution network in South Florida, through years of lavish living while somehow evading federal law enforcement, to a prolonged and deeply complicated legal battle marked by jury tampering, alleged corruption, and multiple trials stretching from the early 1990s into the 2000s.

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The Case

Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta were childhood friends who grew up together in Miami's Cuban exile community. By the late 1970s, they had leveraged their connections and ambition to build what investigators would eventually describe as one of the largest cocaine-smuggling organizations ever operated on the U.S. East Coast. Working in close partnership with Colombian supply networks, the two men moved enormous quantities of cocaine into South Florida and beyond, accumulating vast wealth and significant influence within Miami's social and business circles.

Despite the massive scale of their operation, Falcon and Magluta managed to evade serious law enforcement scrutiny for years — a fact the documentary examines with considerable attention. Their lifestyle during this period was conspicuous: powerboat racing, luxury real estate, and deep roots in Miami's nightlife and social scene made them local celebrities even as federal investigators attempted to build a case against them.

On October 14, 1991, a federal grand jury indicted Falcon and Magluta on 17 drug-trafficking charges, marking the beginning of a legal saga that would span more than a decade. The indictment accused the pair of smuggling approximately 75 tons of cocaine into the United States — a figure that placed the case in an extraordinary category of federal narcotics prosecutions.

What followed was one of the most legally tortured proceedings in the history of U.S. drug enforcement. Their first major trial in 1996 resulted in an acquittal — a verdict that was later revealed to have been achieved through systematic jury tampering. Several jurors were bribed, a revelation that led to further prosecutions and cast a long shadow over Miami's justice system. A subsequent round of proceedings, aided by the cooperation of a key insider witness, ultimately produced convictions.

Salvador Magluta was sentenced to 205 years in prison, a term later reduced to 195 years. According to Newsweek, he is currently serving his sentence at ADX Florence, the federal supermax facility in Colorado. Willy Falcon was reported to be serving time at a federal maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois, though more recent updates on his precise status would require confirmation from current court or Bureau of Prisons records.

This case is not defined by a single named homicide victim. It is, at its core, a massive narcotics trafficking and conspiracy prosecution — though the scale of cocaine introduced into American communities over two decades carries its own profound human toll.

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Production

The series was directed by Billy Corben, a Miami-based filmmaker who has built a substantial career documenting the darker corners of South Florida's history. Corben previously directed the original Cocaine Cowboys (2006) and its sequel, establishing himself as one of the foremost chroniclers of Miami's drug war era. His familiarity with the city, its culture, and its cast of characters gives The Kings of Miami a texture and specificity that distinguishes it from more generic true-crime productions.

The six-episode format allows Corben to move methodically through the full arc of the Falcon-Magluta story: their origins, their ascent, their years of impunity, the indictment, the compromised first trial, the jury-tampering scandal, and the eventual convictions. The series draws on interviews, archival footage, and documentary evidence to reconstruct events that unfolded over more than two decades.

The official Netflix page positions the series as a bingeable six-part deep dive into one of Miami's most notorious criminal sagas, with a tone that sits squarely within the prestige true-crime documentary tradition.

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Reception

Critical reception to Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami was broadly positive. RogerEbert.com called the series "riveting," with particular praise for its detailed reconstruction of the legal proceedings and the serpentine path of the prosecution. Reviewers noted that the jury-tampering subplot — the revelation that Falcon and Magluta effectively bought their way out of a 1996 conviction — added a layer of institutional corruption to what might otherwise have been a straightforward rise-and-fall narrative.

Major outlets including Newsweek, The Guardian, and Esquire framed the series as a compelling and dramatically rich portrait of two men whose story encapsulates an entire era in Miami's history — the cocaine boom of the 1980s and its long, violent, legally complicated aftermath.

The series carries an IMDb ID of tt15049206, though a verified aggregate rating was not available at the time of publication. Viewer response on social platforms was enthusiastic, with many commenters expressing both fascination and disbelief at the audacity of the jury-tampering scheme and the length of time the pair managed to operate before facing serious consequences.

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The Case Today

Salvador Magluta remains incarcerated at ADX Florence in Colorado, one of the most secure federal penitentiaries in the United States, serving what effectively amounts to a life sentence under his 195-year term. Willy Falcon was last confirmed in reporting to be held at a federal maximum-security facility in Marion, Illinois; his precise current status would require verification against current Bureau of Prisons records.

The Falcon-Magluta case continues to draw attention as a defining episode in the history of American drug enforcement — a story that illustrates not only the scale of the cocaine trade that reshaped Miami in the 1980s, but also the vulnerabilities of the legal system when confronted with defendants of enormous financial resources and deep community connections. The jury-tampering scandal, in particular, left lasting questions about the integrity of the proceedings and the reach of organized criminal influence in South Florida's courts.

Billy Corben's documentary ensures that the case remains accessible to new audiences, placing it within the broader cultural history of a city that was, for a generation, the undisputed capital of the American cocaine trade.