Michael “Mickey” Munday, pilot of the late Colombian capo Pablo Escobar, was found in Miami today guilty of mail fraud as part of a network of smuggling and theft of about 150 vehicles.
Munday, 72, was charged with five counts of mail fraud and one conspiracy to commit this crime, which caused losses to banks of more than $ 1.7 million, the US Attorney’s Office said.
During the trial, the prosecution presented videos and publications on social networks that showed Munday boasting of his past experience as a drug dealer and selling himself as a teacher when it came to evading the law.
Munday, who spent a decade in prison on charges related to the transportation of cocaine, was in 2006 one of the central characters in the documentary “Cocaine Cowboys,” by filmmakers Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman, about the wars against drug trafficking in Miami during the 70s and 80s.
The condemned and nine accomplices, who pleaded guilty to similar charges, fraudulently appropriated the vehicles and defrauded by mail their owners and the banks that own the loans.
The sentence of Munday, who faces more than 20 years for each of the charges, is scheduled for next March 29, said the Prosecutor’s Office of the Southern District of Florida in a statement.
He noted that Munday convinced owners who were behind in their payments to deliver their vehicles for sums of cash, made illegal foreclosures, and performed undercover transportation of stolen cars through towing companies.
While the vehicles were hidden, another of the accomplices mailed false and fraudulent tax notices claiming thousands of dollars in towing services nonexistent to the owners of the vehicles and real holders of the loans.
After fictitious auctions, the accomplices “cleaned” the respective titles of automobiles, by fraudulently removing the legitimate holders.
The cars were then sold to another accomplice in the automotive wholesale business at prices below market value.
