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Cocaine Cowboys: Kings of Miami is the new true-crime documentary series on Netflix, dealing with the rise and fall of Miami-based drug kingpins Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta. Nearly two decades after their initial arrest, those who were once closest to them have come forward to help tell the mind-blowing tale, including Pedro 'Pegy' Rosello. Newsweek has everything you need to know about Pegy Rosello.
Who is Pegy Rosello?
Pedro 'Pegy' Rosello is a former drug kingpin from Cuba. He played a key role in helping Sal and Willy build and successfully run their drug empire.
Sal and Willy relied on their close network of family and friends including Jorge Valdes, Alina Rossique Falcon, Pegy Rosello, and Justo Jay, often paying them for their loyalty if they were not helping contribute to the growth of their drug empire over the years.
Pegy Rosello first met Willy and Sal through his sister, Gina Rosello, the wife of Willy's brother Gustavo 'Taby' Falcon, who also played a major role in Sal and Willy's drug ring.
As heard in Netflix's Cocaine Cowboys, Pegy explained how he never wanted a typical job after witnessing his father work incredibly hard for very little money. When his sister began dating Taby, Pegy, who was 14- or 15-years-old at the time, began to make some money for himself by washing all of Taby and his friend's cars.
As Taby, Willy, Sal, and friends began to make more of a name for themselves in the drug world, Pegy was called on to manage the cash they were making and manage the books.
Alongside Taby, Pegy went on to help set up connections in Los Angeles and began to oversee large cocaine shipments himself.
When Sal and Willy's empire came crashing down in 1991, Pegy was detained by the authorities. In a bid to avoid a long-term prison sentence, he agreed to co-operate with the authorities, giving them a tip on Sal's location that eventually led them to Willy.
Despite his cooperation, in 1992, he was convicted of smuggling cocaine and sentenced to 24 years in prison. However, he served just four and a half years of that sentence.
Ever since his release, Pegy has been in trouble numerous times with the law. In 2007, he was arrested for having sex with a minor and was sentenced to 12 years probation.He was then arrested five years later for violating his probation and returned to jail.
When Pegy was out on bail in 1992, Pegy and his girlfriend Alexia Echevarria married and welcomed their first child, Peter Jr. When Pegy was released in 1996, Echevarria fell pregnant for a second time and later gave birth to their second son, Frankie.
He and his wife divorced after he was released from prison in 1996. Echevarria is best known for appearing in the Real Housewives of Miami from 2011 to 2013.
Today, she is engaged to real estate investor and developer Todd Nepola, who proposed in December 2019.
Where is Pegy Rosello now?
In November 2017, Pegy sat down with Cocaine Cowboys director Billy Corben to give his account of the world of drugs in Miami in the 1970s and 1980s.
Shortly after he was interviewed for Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami, he was arrested for attempting to sell 5kg of cocaine. The man he was trying to sell cocaine to was actually an undercover DEA agent.
Pegy, who is now 56, was sentenced to time in prison on drug-related charges. He is set to be released in February 2022.
Today, he is believed to be incarcerated at the low-security Federal Correctional Institution, Miami.
Thankfully, the timings of Pegy being in and out of prison worked out in the end for director Billy Corben.
"This might be the fourth title in the franchise, but it's the first story we wanted to tell", Cocaine Cowboys director Billy Corben told Newsweek.
"Over 15 years ago, before the first Cocaine Cowboys documentary came out the story of Will and Sal, 'Los Muchachos,' was the one that we were pursuing. At the time when we were pulling up in Miami, it was the biggest drug trafficking case in history. We followed the case when we were in middle school when we were in high school when we were in college here at the University of Miami. So we pursued it but could not nail it down."
"The wounds were too fresh and people weren't willing to go on camera to discuss it," he said.
"Over the years people came out of the woodwork, they were released from prison or got out of the witness protection program and we began to kind of bank interviews and essentially build an archive of interviews of people involved in this over the course of many years, then we finally had enough material for the documentary."
Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami is streaming on Netflix now.
About the writer
Molli Mitchell is a Senior SEO TV and Film Newsweek Reporter based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on ... Read more