MIAMI - The son of a onetime cocaine kingpin received a five-year prison sentence Friday and his father got three months for following his instructions from jail to move frozen drug profits.
Christian Magluta, 29, pleaded guilty to laundering $5-million to $10-million of his father Sal's drug bounty, which made Miami the cocaine capital of the world in the 1980s. Manuel Magluta, 81, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for his money moves.
"The system works because people obey the law and they obey court orders," said U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz.
Partners Sal Magluta and Willy Falcon were cleared of drug charges by a corrupted jury in 1996 but have since been convicted and imprisoned on other charges. Forty-one convictions have flowed from the original drug investigation.
"The question to me has been how the patriarch of the family tolerated the insidious effect" of his son's crimes, the judge said. "That's the question I've never heard answered."
"This case has been such an overwhelming family debacle," said Michael Rosen, attorney for Manuel Magluta. Inlaws, attorneys and dozens of others have been convicted.
Manuel and Christian Magluta tearfully told the judge they accepted responsibility for their crimes.
"I have suffered deeply for years," said Manuel Magluta, a Cuban-born baker who listened through a Spanish interpreter. "I don't know whether there is an end to this in the near future. I don't know whether I will be able to see my son."
Sal Magluta is appealing his life sentence for jury bribery and money laundering from solitary confinement at a prison in Marion, Ill.
Alan Ross, Christian Magluta's attorney, said prison officials have blackballed everyone on Sal Magluta's visitors' list and he is not allowed to call home.
Sal Magluta and his boyhood pal Falcon were known as "the Boys" to Colombian traffickers. Falcon was sentenced in July to 20 years for money laundering under a plea bargain.
Their drug trial foreman is serving a 17-year sentence for taking a bribe of more than $500,000. Two women on the jury were charged last month with taking bribes as well.
