Infamous America - MIAMI DRUG WARS Ep. 6 | “The Informants”

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

The mid 1980s begins the downfall of the first generation of drug lords. U.S. agencies and the Colombia government battle the Medellin Cartel. The federal task force uses well-placed informants to target Jon Robert and Mickey Munday. The DEA uses hitman Rivi Ayala to build a case against The Godmother, Griselda Blanco. And the Miami task force, CENTAC 26, uses an insider to bring down the Cocaine Cops. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials : blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1975, Mickey Monday opened a custom boat shop called Ultimate Boats. As Mickey and John Roberts escalated their cocaine smuggling operation to a crazy degree in the early 1980s, Mickey created what they called radio rooms. These rooms were stocked with equipment that allowed the smugglers to tap into the radio frequencies that were used by U.S. agencies. The smugglers could now hear the operations of law enforcement. Mickey and John used the information to avoid seizures, and at least in John's case, for entertainment. John hung out in the radio rooms for hours at a time and listened to federal agents try and fail to find his shipments. Every time he won around against the feds, it was like an injection of a drug.

Winning became as addictive as cocaine, and it helped fuel John's need to keep going, even as the government made slow progress overall in the war on drugs. In the fall of 1986, John was in the radio room at Ultimate Boats. It was 4 a.m., and a smuggling plane was flying into Florida. John was monitoring the plane on the radios, when suddenly it felt like a bomb went off. The radio room shook. The entire building shook.

The police were raiding the shop, and they weren't coming in through the doors. They were making their own. They slammed an armored car into the building and smashed in the doors. Officers in SWAT gear, which John called Darth Vader suits, ran into the shop and raced up the stairs to the radio room on the second floor. They threw John to the ground and handcuffed him. Through the shouting and the chaos, John heard chatter on the radios of the officers.

shouting and chaos was happening somewhere else at the same time. John quickly realized that cops and federal agents were raiding his other properties as well. He heard references to the farm, the piece of land up by Yehaw Junction that was central to his operation. Reports were blaring from the radios that something on the farm blew up. He heard something about fires and shootouts and helicopters. And finally, there was a road. report that someone was getting away. Someone had escaped from the farm. And in the middle of the chaos, John started laughing. From Black Barrel Media, this is infamous America. I'm your host,

Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling a six-part story about the Miami drug wars of the 1970s and 1980s. This is episode six, The Informants. Barry Seals' days were numbered. After getting busted on a quailude smuggling job back in 1983, Barry started working for the U.S. government. He set up Pablo Escobar and provided evidence of Escobar's direct involvement in the cocaine trade to the United States. Barry also helped expose some of the inner workings of the Medelline cartel. John had traveled with Max Murmolstein to Louisiana to kill Barry, but Max panicked. Then in the summer of 1985, Max was arrested.

Now, in February 1986, almost exactly seven months before John was arrested, he figured he could finally help take care of the Barry Seal problem. John believed the United States government wanted Barry dead almost as much as the Colombians did. He said, the government did everything but put a bullseye on Barry's back. After Barry publicly offered up evidence, he didn't go into witness protection. Instead, he stood trial for the Kualoud case, was put on probation, and sent to live at a Salvation Army Halfway House in Baton Rouge. Federal attorneys said later that Barry refused to go into witness protection, and that's why he was so easy to find. In February of 86, three Colombians arrived in Miami to get their orders.

Mickey Monday compared them to the three stooges and said they weren't hitmen. They were gophers with guns. But the job didn't require a lot of thinking. John told them where they'd most likely find Barry and the type of car he was driving. They were given Mack 10s and sent on their way. The Colombians flew to Baton Rouge and quickly located Barry Seal. On February 19th, they ambushed him near the halfway house, and gunned him down. One of the federal government's major informants against the Medellin

cartel was allowed to die out in the open with no protection in sight. After his death, Barry's story took on an air of mystery. Some people who worked closely with him started to think his connection with the CIA might have gone deeper than they imagined. It was rumored, but never verified, that the briefcase he was carrying when he died contained a piece of paper, with George H.W. Bush's direct phone number on it. Whatever the truth was, the rumors were the stuff of Hollywood. Three decades after Barry's death, Tom Cruise played him in the 2017 movie American Made

that put Barry front and center in the cocaine wars. In his time as an informant, Barry never routed out John or Mickey, but he caused lots of problems for the cartel. Operations in Columbia and Miami, slowed down when Barry was giving away their secrets. Once Barry was dead, work picked back up again. The arrests of Griselda Blanco and Max Murmolstein caused some smugglers to get out of the business for good. But John and Mickey weren't ready to do that. John loved the thrill, and he saw that there was still a lot of money to be made.

Mickey had his own unique reasons for pushing forward. He said later, I never thought about quitting. I still wanted to run the ideal mission. John made a trip to Columbia to meet a new group that was helping the cartel move Coke into the states. The heat coming from the U.S. government hadn't stopped the trade, but it forced the cartel to make some changes. After a successful trip, John was back in Miami, and he and Mickey picked up where they left off. As far as they could tell, everything was running smoothly again. John would later admit that he and Mickey had become overly confident. He said, we should have stopped.

I guess we just loved our work too much. Soon, they wouldn't have a choice. When Max Murmolstein was arrested in the summer of 1985, John and Mickey thought Max would be too terrified of the cartel to turn into an informant. Max was technically John and Mickey's boss. He was one of the top Americans in the Medellin cartel, but John and Mickey had been doing most of the work for several years now. Max reaped all the rewards while putting in relatively little effort.

He got rich and gained status in the industry. And in return, he largely stayed out of the way of John and Mickey, which was exactly what the two smugglers wanted. In the fall of 1986, John and Mickey learned that Max was not scared of giving evidence against the cartel. It turned out, Max was talking to everyone about everything. Even though Max had all the perks of being in charge without many of the hassles, he was still tired of being disrespected by people who were technically his employees and his subordinates.

John and Mickey basically ran the show. And yeah, they genuinely disrespected Max. So they never let Max in on the secrets of their smuggling operation. Because of that, and probably too much constant. confidence in their own abilities, they still brought in more than a dozen shipments after they heard that Max was actually talking to the authorities. John admitted later that he underestimated Max. Max had learned much more about their operation, on his own, than John and Mickey ever dreamed was possible. With Max's help, the DEA developed a plan to infiltrate the organization.

They sent an undercover agent to a machine shop where Mickey spent a lot of time. Mickey and the undercover agent became fast friends. Over the course of a year, the agent gathered a mountain of information. The agent became such a trusted person in Mickey's orbit that Mickey flew the man to the farm that served as a landing spot and central hub for the smuggling operation. That was the final piece of the puzzle. The DEA was ready.

The agents coordinated a huge raid with the police. In the early morning hours of September 21st, 1986, they hit multiple locations at the same time. At 4 a.m., they smashed in the doors of Mickey's custom boat shop in Miami, ultimate boats. They raced upstairs to the radio room where John was monitoring a smuggling run. At the same time, a strike force raided the farm up by Yehaw Junction. Mickey was at the farm that night. As helicopters circled overhead and cops fanned out to arrest the ground crew, Mickey made a run for it.

He tipped over a tank of gasoline, hurried away from it, and then fired a flare gun at the gas. The gas roared into flames and sent the cops scrambling. That bought Mickey some time and he disappeared into the surrounding swamp. Law enforcement tried to track him down, but he was gone. Down in Miami, John heard a chaotic play-by-play of the action over the radios of the officers who were arresting him, and he started laughing. Mickey had outfoxed the cops again. John Roberts was now in custody, but he wouldn't be for long. He had no intention of helping the feds find Mickey, but he made them believe he would.

Under FBI surveillance, John was released. He was supposed to be working as an informant to reel a him. his partner. John acted the part. He made phone calls and seemed to leave coded messages for Mickey. He met up with Mickey's brother on multiple occasions, but the whole time John was plotting his escape. He secretly unearthed millions of dollars from various hiding places. He paid a friend to fly him to Columbia on a small plane, leaving the FBI trying to figure out what was going wrong. John escaped the FBI, but he really wasn't safe in Colombia. Some of John's closest friends from the cartel had already been killed down there. A significant number of the Ochoa

family had gone into hiding, and Pablo Escobar was essentially waging war against the Colombian government. John needed a more secure, long-term hideout. He chose a house outside Mazatlan, Mexico, and settled into life as a fugitive. While Mickey Monday was on the run and John Roberts was hiding in Mexico, the cocaine cops faced justice. Their stories were far different from the ones being consumed by millions of Americans every week on TV. In the mid-1980s, the TV industry cashed in on the cocaine wars. Miami Vice took off, and Americans couldn't get enough of watching Crockett and Tubbs making drug bus while driving Ferraris and wearing white suits with pastel colored t-shirts.

The show glamorized the lives of Miami cops who were on the trail of drug lords. The reality, of course, bore little resemblance to the show. If cops sped through Miami in high-end Italian sports cars, chances were they were crooked. And the detectives who cracked the case of the Miami River cops looked and acted nothing like crockett and tubs. For the second half of 1985 and the first half of 1986, the revitalized Sintac-26 task force investigated corruption in the Miami Police Department. After a group of cops who called themselves the Enterprise robbed drug-smuggling boats on the Miami River in the summer of 85, and then killed a Colombian middleman to hide their tracks, detectives in Sintac-26 turned their attention away from drug dealers and toward their own department.

They arrested more than 15 officers, including Rudy Arias, the former standout football player who showed promise early in his career, only to fall victim to the fast money of the drug game. The first trial of the officers ended in a hung jury. It was a huge, unwieldy case with lots of moving pieces, but then the prosecutors caught a break. Before the next trial, Rudy Arias became an informant and agreed to testify. against the other officers. His former colleagues accused him of being a judas, but he said, my friends are all criminals,

so to hell with my friends. In court, Rudy laid out details of the organization, and he implicated others who were involved. He talked about how easy it was to shake down drug dealers when you wore a badge. He said, there was money everywhere. He also admitted that he and the others

had made plans while in custody to have multiple people killed. In return for his help, Rudy received a reduced sentence. He ended up serving about three and a half years for his crimes. Most of the other Miami River cops served only portions of their sentences and were released in the 1990s. A couple of them had gone on the run before they could be brought to justice with the others. They lived as fugitives for years, but the law eventually caught up with them. At least one Miami River cop went back to prison after his release. He gave up the cocaine business, but he got into the bank robbing business instead. When Rudy Arias was released from prison, he went into witness protection in Louisiana,

but he eventually returned to Miami and became a chef. And as Rudy was finishing his sentence and about to get out of prison, Riviyayayala, one of the most prolific killer, in the Miami drug wars, was about to go in. At Rivey's house in Miami, Rivey's brother told him the police were downstairs. Rivey went to the window and saw that his cars were being loaded onto a flatbed truck. He yelled outside to the cop who was overseeing the job. He wanted to know what they were doing to his property. The man turned and Rivey saw the back of his jacket.

He wasn't from the local police. He was a DEA agent. They'd arrested Griselda Blanco several years earlier in 1984, and now it was Rivi's turn. Time had finally run out for one of Griselda's top hitmen. Or so he thought. Rivey and his brother waited, but no one came to the door. That night, they went downstairs and jumped into the only car that the DEA left behind. They drove to the airport.

When they got there, a car pulled up behind them. An officer shouted at Rivi that he was under arrest. Rivi said he made a run for it, but that the police dogs were just too fast. The dogs took him down and the cops moved in, and it was Rivey's last moment of freedom. Rivey's capture was important on its own, but it also factored heavily into the future of his employer, Griselda Blanco. It's probably safe to say that everyone in law enforcement wanted Griselda to pay for what she'd done. Members of the agencies that chased her for years believed she deserved the death penalty. It was impossible to know the exact number of murders she was involved in,

but estimates ranged as low as 40 and as high as 200. There were claims that Miami's murder rate noticeably decreased when Griselda fled to California. Getting Rivie was the key to making sure Griselda never saw the outside world again. One Cintac 26 detective compared going after them to going after a powerful mafia family. He said, Griselda was our John Gotti, and Rivi was our Sammy the Bull Gravano. Rivi was suspected of 35 murders in Florida and California.

He was also linked to a bank robbery in Chicago. And that didn't count the 11 people he would later say he killed in New York during his hunt for rival drug lord Papo Mahia. In the end, he pled guilty to three murders and was given life in prison with a chance of parole after 25 years. And then Rivey became a prominent informant in the hope that it would help him decrease his sentence. He gave the government information on a number of players in the drug trade.

But Griselda was the big prize. She'd been transferred to Florida, and with Rivey's help, prosecutors believed they'd have no problem sending Griselda to death row. Rivey connected Griselda directly to three murders. Two of the victims were drug dealers who owed Griselda money. The other was the young boy Rivey accidentally killed when he missed his target, the boy's father.

Griselda knew Rivey's testimony would bury her. She supposedly tried to hatch several plans to escape from prison. The most bizarre idea involved kidnapping John F. Kennedy Jr. and exchanging his freedom for hers. As it turned out, Griselda didn't need to use any of her crazy plans to get out of prison. Rivey took care of it for her, though that probably wasn't his intention. It was discovered that while Rivey was in jail, he was engaging in phone sex with multiple secretaries from the Miami-Dade State's Attorney's Office. Three women in the office were also said to have exchanged photographs with Rivey and accepted money and gifts from him.

They were fired and the case against Griselda was now tainted. If it went all the way to trial, the situation with Rivi and the secretaries would be made public. It would be humiliating and worse, legally damaging. Special prosecutors were brought in from Orlando to take over for the Miami-Dade State's Attorney's Office. Grizelda now had a little leverage and she used it to make a plea deal. For all her crimes, she would receive just 20 years in prison. When it was all said and done, she only served seven.

When her prison time was done, she was deported to Columbia. Rivi wasn't so lucky. He remained in prison, but his attorneys continued to fight to secure his release based on the amount of help he provided to the government. And then he became an international sensation of sorts. He appeared in filmmaker Billy Corbin's documentaries, Cocaine Cowboys, Cocaine Cowboys 2, and Cocaine Cowboys Reloaded. Rivey was so appealing to audiences that Corbyn and another writer turned his story into a stage play.

Confessions of a Cocaine Cowboy opened in Miami in 2019. And like Rivey, John Roberts and Mickey Monday had their time in the spotlight, thanks to the documentaries, and so did Griselda Blanco. They stayed around far longer than many of their friends and colleagues. For about two years, John enjoyed his house outside Mazatlan, Mexico. Then he claimed that one of the women who lived at his hideout saw his picture on America's Most Wanted and turned him in. He was arrested and eventually transferred to the U.S.

Then he spent almost 11 years in prison before being paroled. After his parole, he was required to stay in Miami, and he started a new life. He got married and had his son, and then the documentaries came calling. John was such a captivating personality in the Cocaine Cowboys films that he became a celebrity in Miami. He wrote a book about his life called American Desperado. In it, one of his many, many stories was about going to a Miami Heat NBA game and seeing himself on the Jumbotron. The game announcer told everyone in the arena

that one of the original cocaine cowboys was in the audience, and the crowd cheered. Around the same time John was starting a new life after prison, Mickey Monday was doing the same thing. After the DEA raided the drug smuggling farm in 1986, Mickey went on the run for six years. John was able to provide him with documents that allowed Mickey to avoid capture, but they didn't work forever.

Mickey was caught and given a 10-year sentence. He served a portion of it and then was released back into the Miami population. Like John and Rivey, he found some fame with the Cocaine Cowboys documentaries. Then he had success in a second career, public speaking and writing. He had a knack for storytelling, and he'd seen things most people couldn't imagine. He created a small park with sculptures and signs promoting the concept of love. It's a little something to feel good about, Mickey said. But apparently, Mickey still needed a challenge.

He hadn't been a drug smuggler for the money. He loved the thrill of outsmarting the U.S. government. In the 2000s, he fell back into the world of crime. In 2018, he was arrested as a part of an elaborate automobile fraud scheme that brought in more than $1.8 million. Mickey was 72 years old at the time. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, where he remains as of now.

John Roberts didn't live to see his friend and former partner go to prison a second time. He passed away of cancer in 2011 at the age of 63. John and Mickey both outlived their former boss, Max Murmolstein. Max turned out to be one of the great, greatest government witnesses in the history of America's war on drugs. He provided evidence against Kingpins, Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers, and he testified at the trial of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. And those are just the biggest names. Max testified against, or gave evidence

against, a laundry list of others in the drug business. He became so important to the government that he went into the witness protection program and was given an unprecedented level of security until he passed away in 2008 at the age of 64. And then there was one. Rizelda Blanco lived a quiet life for years in her hometown of Medellín, Colombia. Then one day in 2012, she walked into a butcher shop. She bought what she needed and walked back outside. A man pulled up on a motorcycle, calmly approached her, and shot her at close range.

When police arrived, the man sped off, and Griselda was dead on the pavement at the age of 69. She's been credited with introducing the motorcycle hit to the cocaine wars in Miami. It's unclear if the method of her murder was a final touch of poetic justice from whoever had her killed, or just a coincidence. The style of the hit she helped pioneer had become popular among gangs all over the world. Lastly, there's the city of Miami. The drug wars of the 1970s and 1980s permanently changed the city in more ways than we have time to describe. Luckily, the level of violence dropped

as the U.S. government methodically took down the kingpins, but the city would never again be the sleepy vacation spot for northerners who wanted to escape the cold weather. As the battlefield of Miami slowly quieted, Tourism returned, and the city became a favored destination for travelers from all over the world. South Beach attracted the rich and famous, and it has a thriving arts and music scene, and it remains a cultural center for much of the country's Cuban population. And at the base of more than a little of it is the cocaine business.

Historians and experts and officials have tried for years to estimate how much of the modern city of Miami was built with drug money. It's impossible to put a number on it, but the percentage is not small. Thanks for listening to the story of the Miami Drug Wars here on Infamous America. And even with a six-part series, it feels like we've barely scratched the surface of the story. There's a lot more out there if you're interested. I highly recommend reading John Roberts' book, American Desperado, or at the very least watching the Cocaine Cowboys documentaries.

Their eye-opening at a minimum. Next time on the show, we're going back to the founding of the nation to tell the story of one of the most infamous men in American history, Benedict Arnold. That series begins May 26, 2021 for the general public. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive early access and the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, BlackBarrul. Barrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month.

This season was co-executive produced by Stephen Walters in association with ritual productions. Research and writing by Michael Federico. Original music by Rob Valier. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels.

We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Beryl Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. Thanks for listening.