ORLANDO, Fla. — An accused major cocaine trafficker who spent more than two decades on the run was arrested Wednesday in Central Florida, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
Gustavo "Taby" Falcon, 55, was arrested shortly after 6 p.m. Wednesday and booked into the Orange County Jail.
He faced a judge in federal court Thursday and was appointed a public defender.
U.S. marshals said Falcon was the last of the Cocaine Cowboys, a group known for drug trafficking in South Florida during the late 1980s.
Prosecutors said in an indictment that Falcon had been on the run for 26 years, using "Luis Andre Reiss" as his alias since at least 1997.
"He was doing something right staying under the radar of law enforcement all that time," said Barry Golden, with the U.S. Marshal's Office.
Marshals said they arrested Falcon and his wife, Amelia Falcon, at the intersection of Funie Street Road and Lindfields Boulevard in Kissimmee after they took a 40-mile bicycle ride.
Marshals saw Falcon and his wife leave a rental home on Cavendish Drive in Kissimmee before the bike ride, investigators said. The Falcons have been living in the home since 2012, investigators said.
Neighbors said the Falcons would bike everywhere and didn't have a car.
Investigators said they started to track Falcon after they received a break in 2013 when Falcon was involved in a car crash in Orlando and provided fraudulent identification listing a Miami address.
Amelia Falcon had also obtained a fraudulent driver's license under the fake name Maria Reiss, U.S. marshals said. She and her husband used fake Social Security cards to conceal their identities. She was not arrested.
Falcon is expected to be extradited to Miami after Thursday’s court appearance on charges of conspiracy of trafficking cocaine from a 1991 indictment.
#BREAKING 'Cocaine Cowboy' Gustavo Falcon not denying identity, @USMarshalsGov to transport him to Miami soon #WFTV pic.twitter.com/fz0zsn5d2L
— Janine Reyes (@JReyesinTexas) April 13, 2017
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