Gustavo Falcon, younger brother of 1980s offshore racing champion and cocaine kingpin Willy Falcon, has broken his public silence. Offshore powerboat racing is a thread running through everything he is now saying.
Gustavo started posting on Facebook in February 2025, initially, he says, as a private record for family and close friends. By the end of the year it had grown into something considerably more public. On December 30, 2025, he acknowledged the platform had allowed him to address parts of his life most people never knew about, including offshore racing.
The timing is not coincidental. On June 5, 2025, Deadline Hollywood reported that Entertainment A.R.E.U., the production company founded by Ozzie Areu following his departure as president of Tyler Perry Studios, had acquired the exclusive life rights and cooperation of Willy Falcon. Areu also acquired rights to TJ English’s book The Last Kilo: Willy Falcon and the Cocaine Empire That Seduced America. Gustavo confirmed the deal publicly on his own Facebook page on September 28, 2025, naming Areu directly and describing the moment he met with him. The package, according to Deadline, is worth seven figures if the film gets made. A feature film, television series, docuseries, and podcast are all in development. English will host the podcast.
The Racing Credentials
The powerboat racing component of the Falcon-Magluta story is not background colour. It is central to who they were and how they operated.
Willy Falcon, racing as Team Cougar, won the 1986 Offshore Challenge off the Florida Keys. His partner Sal Magluta, racing as Team Seahawk, won three national APBA championships and served as a member of the APBA commission. Both men appeared regularly on ESPN telecasts during their racing peak in the early-to-mid 1980s. Their engine operation, KS&W Offshore Engineering based in St Augustine, was described by a fellow racer as state-of-the-art. Federal authorities seized it in 1990 as part of money laundering proceedings.
According to Gustavo’s own account, the Los Muchachos organisation was founded in 1976-1977. Seahawk Boats, building high-performance offshore vessels, launched in 1978-1979. The same boats were used to transport cocaine from the Bahamas to Miami. The racing programme ran in parallel with the trafficking operation throughout the 1980s, with both Willy and Magluta operating entirely in the open, sponsored, televised, and celebrated on the circuit.
Key figures: Willy Falcon (Team Cougar) won the 1986 Offshore Challenge, Florida Keys. Sal Magluta (Team Seahawk) won three national APBA championships and served on the APBA commission.
Art Imitating Life
Gustavo has been direct on how he views the cultural legacy of that era. In a January 15, 2026 post, he described prison officials reading his file and asking whether he had wanted to be like Tony Montana or Miami Vice. His answer, he wrote, was always the same: they were trying to be like him. His argument is straightforward. Scarface reached cinemas in 1983. Miami Vice aired from 1984. The Muchachos organisation, by his account, was already six or seven years old by the time either production appeared. The high-performance offshore boats, the waterfront lifestyle, the Cuban-American cocaine network, all of it pre-dated the fictional versions.
That claim sits at the heart of what Entertainment A.R.E.U. is developing. Ozzie Areu told Deadline he is already in talks with top-level writers, describing the project as covering anti-Castro alliances through to dealings with Noriega, Escobar, and the CIA. Willy Falcon stated he wanted to tell the whole truth after decades of silence. TJ English called it a historically explosive saga about how cocaine transformed a nation.
Gustavo’s Own Journey
Gustavo Falcon’s path to this point is distinct from his brother’s. He was indicted alongside Willy, Magluta and others in 1991, but unlike them he bonded out and disappeared. For 26 years, federal authorities believed he was in Mexico or Colombia. He had, in fact, been living in the Orlando area since 1999 under the alias Luis Reiss, with his wife and two children.
US Marshals arrested him on April 12, 2017 in Kissimmee, Florida, while he was on a bicycle ride with his wife. He pleaded guilty on February 1, 2018 to a single count of cocaine distribution conspiracy. US District Judge Federico Moreno sentenced him on April 25, 2018 to 135 months in federal prison.
In a letter to the judge before sentencing, Gustavo wrote that he had fled because he did not want to lose his family. “I was afraid that if I went to prison for a long time, my wife would move on, and my children would grow up without a father.” He told Moreno he had no grudge against the government. “I did wrong and there is a price to pay.”
On December 26, 2025, he posted a photograph taken at the Mutiny Hotel in Miami, the legendary Coconut Grove venue where the cocaine trade and the powerboat racing world mixed throughout the 1980s. He described it as his first return in more than 40 years. The photograph in his post dates from that era and shows a young Gustavo at what appears to be a Mutiny Hotel event.
Where the Others Stand
Willy Falcon was released from federal custody in June 2017 after serving most of a 20-year sentence. He was immediately taken into ICE custody and subsequently deported. After a period in the Dominican Republic, his whereabouts became unknown. Sal Magluta is serving a 195-year sentence at ADX Florence supermax prison in Colorado.
The Deadline report noted that Willy Falcon’s whereabouts remain unknown following his departure from the Dominican Republic. His cooperation with Entertainment A.R.E.U. suggests ongoing contact with Areu’s team, though the nature and location of that contact has not been disclosed.
Production status: Entertainment A.R.E.U. has acquired Willy Falcon’s life rights and the rights to TJ English’s book The Last Kilo. A feature film, TV series, docuseries and podcast are all in development. No director, broadcaster or streaming platform has been announced.
A Racing World Coming Back to Screen
The Falcon-Magluta project joins a growing queue of productions drawing on the same 1980s Miami offshore racing world. The Miami Vice reboot, directed by Joseph Kosinski with Austin Butler and Michael B. Jordan confirmed as Crockett and Tubbs, is set in 1985 and filming later in 2026. Any production telling the Falcon-Magluta story with authenticity will face the same question Kosinski’s film faces: which boats, which builders, and which people from that world will be involved.
Gustavo, for his part, is already back at the circuit having attended the RWO Key West event last year.
Forty years on from the era he helped create, he is reconnecting with the sport his brother and Magluta made famous, and helping to bring the story to a screen near you.
John Moore is the editor of Powerboat News, an independent investigative journalism platform recognised by Google News and documented on Grokipedia for comprehensive powerboat racing coverage.
His involvement in powerboat racing began in 1981 when he competed in his first offshore powerboat race. After a career as a Financial Futures broker in the City of London, specialising in UK interest rate markets, he became actively involved in event organisation and powerboat racing journalism.
He served as Event Director for the Cowes–Torquay–Cowes races between 2010 and 2013. In 2016, he launched Powerboat Racing World, a digital platform providing global powerboat racing news and insights. The following year, he co-founded UKOPRA, helping to rejuvenate offshore racing in the United Kingdom. He sold Powerboat Racing World in late 2021 and remained actively involved with UKOPRA until 2025.
In September 2025, he established Powerboat News, returning to independent journalism with a focus on neutral and comprehensive coverage of the sport.
