FILE - This undated photo provided by Orange County Corrections shows Gustavo Falcon, the last of South Florida's "Cocaine Cowboys". Falcon was arrested Wednesday, April 12, 2017, some 26 years after... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This undated photo provided by Orange County Corrections shows Gustavo Falcon, the last of South Florida's "Cocaine Cowboys". Falcon was arrested Wednesday, April 12, 2017, some 26 years after he went on the lam, while on a 40-mile bike ride with his wife near the Orlando suburb where they apparently... (Associated Press) 
 
 MIAMI (AP) — A quarter-century after he vanished on the eve of a major drug indictment, the last of Miami's fabled "cocaine cowboys" was in custody Thursday, nabbed on a suburban bike ride with his wife near Disney World. 
 
 Prosecutors say the man living under an assumed name is Gustavo "Taby" Falcon, who was part of a homegrown drug gang that used super-fast speedboats to smuggle 75 tons of cocaine in the 1980s "Miami Vice" era. 
 
 Falcon, 55, had been on the lam since 1991, when his older brother Augusto "Willie" Falcon and fellow drug kingpin Salvador "Sal" Magluta were indicted by a federal grand jury. U.S. Marshals spokesman Barry Golden said investigators were surprised to find him living in a typical pink stucco home in a quiet, middle-class Kissimmee suburb. 
 
 "Nobody thought Gustavo Falcon was still in the United States," Golden said. 
 
 At his initial court hearing Thursday in Orlando, Gustavo Falcon agreed to be sent to South Florida to face charges of conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S. He was ordered held without bond, court records show. 
 
 Augusto Falcon and Magluta were small-time drug dealers when they dropped out of high school in the late 1970s to begin building their cocaine empire that would amass more than $2 billion, according to trial evidence. They eventually owned world-class ocean racing boats and lived like royalty. 
 
 Mickey Munday, who did prison time for flying cocaine loads for Colombia's Medellin Cartel, said the pair was known for their honesty in business deals — legal or otherwise — and the expertise of their boat-building operation. 
 
 They also drove flashy cars and lived in seaside mansions, even when murders and shootings linked to their organization brought police scrutiny. 
 
 "They were so flamboyant," Munday said. "Everybody in the world knew what they were doing. Why attract attention to yourself?" 
 
 Gustavo Falcon was not viewed as a top leader of the organization, and vanished just ahead of a 1991 indictment that charged him along with his brother, Magluta and others. He had not been seen since until Wednesday, when U.S. marshals surveilling his rented home in Kissimmee watched him and his wife leave their garage for a bike ride. 
 
 A neighbor, David Pera, said he frequently saw the couple riding their bikes and never saw them in a car. An older model pickup truck sitting in the driveway never moved, he said. 
 
 "I'd say hi, they would say hi, and that was about it," Pera said Thursday. 
 
 It took an exhaustive records search to bring the marshals there. Weeks earlier, they discovered a Florida driver's license issued to a Luis Reiss, traced back to a South Florida home that had been owned by Gustavo Falcon. Then they found 2013 car accident involving Reiss, which eventually led to the house he was sharing with his wife, Amelia. She also had fake identification, in the name of Maria Reiss. 
 
 Marshals followed as the couple got on their bikes and headed out Wednesday for what turned into a 40-mile ride. Because they were both wearing helmets and sunglasses, it took a while for investigators to make a positive identification, Golden said. Once they felt sure enough, marshals with guns drawn stopped the couple at an intersection a few blocks from their house. 
 
 "We had to be 100 percent certain this was the guy," Golden said. 
 
 After his arrest, Gustavo Falcon told authorities he had been living in the Orlando area since 2009 and in the rental house since 2012. It's not clear where he was during all the other years, but officials say it's believed he was living overseas for some of that time. Authorities said they did not know if Falcon had a job. His wife was not arrested. 
 
 His brother and Magluta were acquitted of all charges at their trial in 1996, leading to the resignation of then-Miami U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey. Despondent at the loss, Coffey and others went to a strip club where he got into an altercation involving the biting of a stripper. 
 
 Later, it turned out that Augusto Falcon and Magluta had bought off witnesses and at least one member of the jury, a foreman who did 17 years in prison after accepting $400,000. Magluta, now 62, was tried a second time, convicted of drug-related money laundering in 2002 and sentenced to 205 years in prison. That was reduced to 195 years in 2006. 
 
 Augusto Falcon, now 61, then accepted a plea deal in 2003 on similar charges. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and is scheduled for release from a Kentucky facility on June 17. 
 
 Their mansions, boats, cars, planes, bank accounts and other ill-gotten gains are long gone, seized and sold by the government. 
 
 Munday, the former cartel pilot, said Augusto Falcon and Magluta should have disappeared as well, after their initial not-guilty verdicts. 
 
 "They were guys who went from nothing to having just about anything they could imagine that they wanted," he said. "As soon as they got the innocent verdict, they should have hauled out of here to Argentina." 
 
 _____ 
 
 Associated Press contributors include John Raoux. Follow Curt Anderson at http://twitter.com/miamicurt ||||| The arrest warrant for Gustavo Falcon, one of the infamous "Cocaine Cowboys," was first issued on April 10, 1991. Twenty-six years and two days later, Falcon was finally in custody. 
 
 Falcon, now 55, was nabbed while riding his bike Wednesday in Kissimmee, Florida, according to the U.S. Marshals for the Southern District of Florida. 
 
 Falcon — whose brother, kingpin Augusto “Willie” Falcon, is in prison after smuggling 75 tons of cocaine into South Florida with his partner Salvador Magluta — was last spotted in Miami. He had evaded U.S. law enforcement, who suspected Falcon was living in Mexico or Colombia, according to the Miami Herald. 
 
 This Wednesday April 12, 2017 mugshot shows Gustavo Falcon after he was captured by U.S. Marshals in Kissimmee, Florida. Orange County Jail 
 
 The case finally turned after a group of U.S. Marshals traveled from Miami to the Orlando-Kissimmee area, according to U.S. Marshals in Southern District of Florida Spokesman Barry Golden. 
 
 There, the U.S. Marshals performed surveillance on a rental property, Golden said. It is unclear how long the U.S. Marshals monitored Falcon before confirming his identity on Wednesday. 
 
 When the man the U.S. Marshals suspected of being Falcon and his wife went for a bike ride, the officers followed. Golden said the U.S. Marshals were able to confirm the man was Falcon, and stopped him at a traffic light before taking him in to custody. 
 
 Officers discovered fraudulent driver’s licenses, which were dated back to 1997, according to Golden. 
 
 The driver’s licenses, some of which were for Falcon’s wife and adult children, were listed under Miami addresses. 
 
 Golden said although Falcon tried to maintain the name on his license, he eventually confirmed his identity before being booked without resistance in the Orange County Jail. ||||| Griselda Blanco, the drug kingpin known for her blood-soaked style of street vengeance during Miami’s “cocaine cowboys” era of the ’70s and ’80s, was shot to death in Medellin by a motorcycle-riding assassin Monday. 
 
 Blanco, 69, spent nearly two decades behind bars in the United States for drug trafficking and three murders, including the 1982 slaying of a 2-year-old boy in Miami. 
 
 Called the “Godmother of Cocaine,” she was deported in 2004 to Colombia, where she maintained a low profile. 
 
 Colombia’s national police confirmed her slaying late Monday. According to Colombian press reports, two gunmen on motorcycles pulled up to Blanco as she walked out of a butcher shop in Medellin, her hometown. One man pumped two bullets into her head, according to El Colombiano newspaper. It was the sort of death many had predicted for her: Blanco has been credited with inventing the idea of the “motorcycle assassin” who rode by victims and sprayed them with bullets. 
 
 “It’s surprising to all of us that she had not been killed sooner because she made a lot of enemies,” former Miami homicide detective Nelson Andreu, who investigated her, said late Monday. “When you kill so many and hurt so many people like she did, it’s only a matter of time before they find you and try to even the score.” 
 
 The former kingpin was with a pregnant daughter-in-law, who was uninjured. According to El Colombiano, the woman told police that Blanco was no longer involved in organized crime and that she was hoping to live off the sales of several properties she owned. 
 
 Blanco came to epitomize the “cocaine cowboy” bloodshed of the 1980s, when rival drug dealers brazenly ambushed rivals in public. 
 
 Raised in the slums of Medellin, she began her criminal career as a pickpocket, eventually commanding an empire that reportedly shipped 3,400 pounds of cocaine per month, by boat and plane. She was considered a Colombian pioneer in drug smuggling to the United States, a precursor to the larger cartels that dominated in the 1980s. She even had a Medellin lingerie shop custom design bras and girdles with special pockets to hold cocaine, a tool used by her drug mules flying to Miami. 
 
 She ran the organization with her three of her four sons, two of whom were later assassinated in Colombia. 
 
 Blanco was known for her flamboyant lifestyle — one of her sons was named Michael Corleone, an homage to The Godfather movies. Three of her husbands also died in drug-related violence. 
 
 But it was her nasty temper and penchant for unyielding violence that drew the attention of law enforcement and the public. 
 
 Investigators linked her to the daytime 1979 submachine gun attack at Dadeland Mall that shocked Miami. Detectives conservatively estimated that she was behind about 40 homicides. 
 
 She was only convicted of three murders. 
 
 Two of them: Blanco arranged the slayings drug dealers Alfredo and Grizel Lorenzo in their South Miami house, as their three children watched television in another room. They had failed to pay $250,000 for five kilos of cocaine that Blanco had allegedly delivered to them. 
 
 She was also convicted of ordering a shooting that resulted in the death of 2-year-old Johnny Castro, shot twice in the head as he drove in a car with his father, Jesus “Chucho” Castro. Blanco was targeting Jesus Castro, a former enforcer for Blanco’s organization. 
 
 Detectives learned the intimate details of the hit from Jorge Ayala, the charismatic hitman who later testified against Blanco. He told police that Blanco wanted Castro killed because he kicked her son in the buttocks. 
 
 “At first she was real mad ’cause we missed the father,” Ayala told police. “But when she heard we had gotten the son by accident, she said she was glad, that they were even.” 
 
 She had been arrested in 1985 in a cocaine trafficking case in New York. Ultimately, she served 13 years in federal custody before she was handed over to Florida authorities. 
 
 Blanco seemed destined for Florida’s Death Row — but the prosecution’s murders case was dealt a severe blow. 
 
 The reason: Ayala — the case’s chief witness — engaged in phone sex with secretaries from the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. After an investigation, three secretaries were fired and a veteran prosecutor resigned. 
 
 Special prosecutors from Orlando took over the case, and Blanco cut a plea deal in 1998. 
 
 Blanco was sentenced to three concurrent 20-year sentences, of which she had to serve only about one-third because of guidelines in effect at the time of the murders. Even on her return to Colombia, she was believed to have held onto immense wealth. 
 
 In recent years, younger Miamians were introduced to Blanco via two “Cocaine Cowboys” documentaries made by filmmakers Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman. 
 
 “This is classic live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword,” Corben said Monday. “Or in this case, live-by-the-motorcycle-assassin, die-by-the-motorcycle assassin.” 
 
 Miami Herald staff writer Jim Wyss contributed to this report.
– The "last of the Cocaine Cowboys"—on the lam for almost exactly 26 years—was finally arrested Wednesday while on a 40-mile bike ride with his wife, the Miami Herald reports. During South Florida's "Miami Vice era," Gustavo Falcon allegedly helped his brother, kingpin Augusto Falcon, smuggle tons of cocaine into the US via speedboat, according to the AP. The so-called Cocaine Cowboys, apparently unworried about drawing attention to themselves, lived large in fast cars and oceanfront mansions. Gustavo Falcon disappeared in 1991, just before indictments that would land his brother in prison. A warrant was issued for his arrest on April 10 of that year, NBC News reports. Twenty-six years and two days later, Falcon and his wife were stopped at an intersection on their bikes when they were confronted by a gaggle of armed US marshals. Falcon, 55, was arrested without incident. "Nobody thought he was in the United States," says Barry Golden, a spokesperson for the US Marshals Service, which believed Falcon was living out his days in Mexico or Colombia. Instead, he was renting a forgettable home in a suburb near Disney World. Authorities were tipped off by a fake driver's license used by Falcon during a 2013 car accident. "We figured this all out a month ago," Golden says. Falcon is facing charges of conspiracy to import cocaine. His brother, the former kingpin, is scheduled to be released from prison in June.