Grand jury indicts Florida Keys charter fishing captain on cocaine charges

David Goodhue, Miami Herald on Aug 13, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

MIAMI — The same week a Florida Keys racing boat team owner was sent to prison for selling cocaine, most of it lost smuggling shipments he found at sea, a grand jury indicted a charter fishing captain accused of acquiring and selling drugs the same way.

Bradford Todd Picariello, 66, who owns Outlaw Fishing Charters in the Middle Keys city of Marathon, sold a kilogram of cocaine for $10,000 to an undercover federal agent working with Monroe County Sheriff’s Office detectives in January.

After he was arrested, sheriff’s office detectives along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents seized 23 kilos of cocaine, $8,000 in cash and Picariello’s 38-foot boat, according to his arrest report.

The Jan. 19 drug deal happened at Picariello’s dock at Burdines Waterfront, located at 1200 Ocean Breeze Ave.

Picariello told the undercover agent in a phone call to bring a cooler to his boat to make it look like he was going to pick up fish, the arrest report states. He also told the agent that he had another 100 pounds of cocaine if he was in the market for more, according to the report.

The agent came, picked up the cocaine and placed it in his cooler.

The captain asked the agent to bring the money for the drugs back to the boat. That’s when deputies and agents rushed in and arrested Picariello.

He told cops that the rest of the cocaine was at his storage unit on 42nd Street and gave them permission to search it, according to the report. The deputies and agents found the kilos, which were all marked with a stamp that said “332,” according to the report.

Though the sheriff’s office led the investigation, the case was always expected to be prosecuted in federal court. A grand jury Tuesday indicted Picariello on one count of distribution of a controlled substance and two counts of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance.

If convicted, he faces life in prison. Information on his legal counsel was not immediately available. He’s being held in Monroe County’s main jail on Stock Island.

Not an uncommon tale

The case joins other high-profile Keys dope tales where the source of the contraband was found at sea, pieces of shipments lost from smugglers’ boats as they transited the island chain.

A judge Monday sentenced John Robert Strama, Jr, 44, to 10 years in prison for leading a Keys-wide cocaine distribution ring from Marathon. And federal prosecutors say he used his knowledge of boating and Keys waterways to sell to buyers and other co-conspirators between 2020 and 2023, adding a lot of the drugs were wrapped loads he found floating on the ocean.

Strama, the former owner of the JS-Racing S-7 powerboat team, was arrested in September 2024, along with 26 other people, including a senior staffer at the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority, the utility that provides fresh water to the island chain.

A bundle of floating cocaine was also the root of one of the Keys’ most notorious murders in recent years.

In that case, charter boat mate Jeremy Macauley and his friends were selling off multiple kilos he found in the ocean while fishing with customers in the summer of 2015. One of his co-conspirators in the deal, Carlos Ortiz, threatened to tell the cops about the operation unless Macauley paid him more money from the profits.

On Oct. 15, 2015, Macauley and another man drove to the Tavernier home where Ortiz was living with his girlfriend and her three young children. He fatally shot Ortiz, 30, and his girlfriend, 26-year-old Tara Rosado. A neighbor found the bodies the next day after he worried about seeing the children in the front yard.

A judge sentenced Macauly, 43, to two life prison sentences for first-degree murder in June 2024.

During trial, it was revealed that Macauley and his boss paid off their fishing customers the day they found the cocaine with several kilos of the contraband in exchange for their silence.

By the time Monroe detectives arrested Macauley in March 2016, the cocaine was sold off, so no other member of the boat’s crew, including the captain, was ever hit with drug charges.