Keys man, with history of creative grifts, faked forms to steal a private jet, feds say. Gets 3 years in prison

A Florida Keys man with a history of pulling off elaborate cyber crimes, forgeries and counterfeit schemes 10 years ago was sentenced this week to three years in federal prison, after pleading guilty to faking documents used to create a bogus pilot’s license to steal a private jet.

Cole Peacock, 30, has a storied criminal career of clever crimes straight out of a Hollywood script.

These include defrauding a Tennessee tech company out of $3 million in computer equipment in 2016, impersonating a Monroe County Fire Rescue lieutenant in 2019, and sending a bomb threat to the sheriff’s office after hacking into the agency’s computer system, making it appear as if the treat came from within the department back in 2013.

This time, federal prosecutors say Peacock, a student pilot, created fraudulent and counterfeit endorsements that made it look like a flight instructor qualified him to fly solo in airspace surrounding the nation’s busiest airports in 2020.

That year, he also flew a single-engine Cessna airplane with a passenger onboard from Homestead General Aviation Airport to Orlando International Airport, according to a plea agreement he signed in U.S. Southern District Court in June. Prosecutors say he falsified his flight logbook stating he was a qualified solo pilot, when in reality he was a student pilot.

Then, in February 2021, Fort Lauderdale police received a call from a man at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport reporting that his Venezuelan-registered 1981 Learjet, valued at $150,000, was stolen.

Police found the plane at the nearby Florida Jet Center. Peacock was able to steal the jet by forging a bill of sale and creating a counterfeit Florida Notary stamp. He also created an alias, Cole Watson, and a registered company called Watson Aircraft Salvage Corporation, according to court documents.

“Moreover, an identical signature purportedly from the victim, appeared on multiple sales and transfer documents, indicating it was computer generated and had been copied and pasted from one document to the next,” U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecutors said in the plea agreement.

Past crimes

The 2013 bomb threat was aimed at a Monroe County detective investigating a fraudulent check scheme Peacock pulled off to pay off to pay $22,000 in credit card debt he racked up on a recently-obtained account.

In total, Peacock sent 78 emails from the hacked sheriff’s office computer system, four of which read: “DEATH DEATH DOOM DOOM YOU HAVE A BOMB AT ONE OF YOU SUBSTATIONS BETTER FIND IT SOON.” Another 10 messages said, “death death you will die soon.”

When deputies went to Peacock’s then address at Azalea Street to arrest him on the fraudulent checks charges in June 2013, he reportedly threatened them with a syringe. When the deputies told him to drop the needle, he instead jabbed himself in the neck.

The deputies and detectives knocked away the syringe, but Peacock struggled with them as they tried to cuff him. During the scuffle, police say he grabbed a detective’s sidearm holster.

A check of Monroe County Clerk of the Court records shows Peacock never served more than a year in county jail for any of these offenses following a series of negotiated pleas.

He also has a pending felony case against him in the Keys from March, when detectives say he tampered with the sewage transfer station at a resort in the Village of Islamorada. Investigators say he damaged a valve, causing a sewage backup in the municipal wastewater system.

His motive, detectives say, was so his family-owned company that repairs wastewater-transfer systems would get the job to fix the problem.