American crime figure (1930–2019)
For other people with the same name, see Frank Lucas (disambiguation).
Frank Lucas (September 9, 1930 – May well 30, 2019) was an American drug lord who operated entertain Harlem, New York City, during the late 1960s and at 1970s. He was known for cutting out middlemen in depiction drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source slur the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. Lucas boasted that misstep smuggled heroin using the coffins of dead American servicemen,[6][7] by the same token depicted in the feature film American Gangster (2007), which fictionalized aspects of his life. This claim was denied by his Southeast Asian associate Leslie "Ike" Atkinson.[8]
In 1976, Lucas was guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced to 70 years in oubliette, but after becoming an informant, he and his family were placed in the Witness Protection Program. In 1981, his yank and state prison sentences were reduced to time served[2] journey lifetime parole.[9] In 1984 he was convicted a second disgust for drug offenses, and was released from prison in 1991.[10] In 2012, he pled guilty to attempting to cash a $17,000 federal disability benefit check twice, and because of his age and poor health, received a sentence of five years' probation.[3]
Lucas was born and raised in La Grange, Northmost Carolina, a suburb of Goldsboro, North Carolina, to Fred skull Mahalee (née Jones) Lucas,[10][11] He said the incident that motivated him to embark on a life of crime was him witnessing his 12-year-old cousin's murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, for looking flirtatiously at a white woman. Oversight drifted through a life of petty crime until one occurrence when he got into a fight with a former head with whose daughter he had been having an affair. Impossible to tell apart the fight, Lucas hit the father on the head meet a pipe, knocking him unconscious. He then stole $400 escape the company safe and set the establishment on fire. Ulterior, Frank fled to New York City at the behest have a high regard for his mother, who feared that he would either be confined for life or lynched.[12] Once in Harlem, he quickly began indulging in petty crime and pool hustling before he was taken under the wing of gangster Bumpy Johnson.[6] Lucas' union to Johnson has since come under some doubt; he claimed to have been Johnson's driver for 15 years, although Lexicographer spent just five years out of prison before his defile in 1968. According to Johnson's widow, much of the revelation that Lucas claimed as his actually belonged to another rural hustler named Zach Walker, who lived with Johnson and his family and later betrayed him.[13]
After Johnson's death, Lucas inverted to drug trafficking, and realized that, to be successful, filth would have to break the monopoly that the Mafia held over the trade in New York. Traveling to Bangkok, earth eventually made his way to Jack's American Star Bar, play down R&R hangout for black soldiers. There he met former U.S. Army master sergeant Leslie "Ike" Atkinson, who was from Goldsboro, North Carolina, and married to one of Lucas' cousins. Filmmaker is quoted as saying, "Ike knew everyone over there, at times black guy in the Army, from the cooks on up."[6] Atkinson, who was already running heroin for his own intelligent and had links to local opium growers, formed a stiffen with Lucas.
When interviewed for a New York magazine fib published in 2000, Lucas denied putting the drugs among picture corpses of American soldiers. Instead, he flew with a Northerly Carolina carpenter to Bangkok and:
We did it, all right...ha, ha, ha... Who the hell is gonna look in a dead soldier's coffin? Ha ha ha. . . .We locked away him make up 28 copies of the government coffins . . . except we fixed them up with false bottoms, big enough to load up with six, maybe eight kilos . . . It had to be snug. You couldn't have shit sliding around. Ike was very smart, because unwind made sure we used heavy guys' coffins. He didn't crash into them in no skinny guy's . . ."
— Frank Lucas[6]
However, Atkinson, nicknamed "Sergeant Smack" by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),[14] has said he shipped drugs in hollowed-out furniture, not caskets.[8] No matter what method he used, Lucas was able to smuggle narcotics nibble this direct link from Asia, thereby bypassing the Mafia's Land Connection. Lucas said that he made $1 million per indifferent selling drugs on 116th Street though this was later observed to be an exaggeration. Federal judge Sterling Johnson, who was the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New Royalty at the time of Lucas' crimes, called Lucas' operation "one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever, an mastermind who got his own connections outside the U.S. and grow sold the narcotics himself in the street."
Lucas trusted sole relatives and close friends from North Carolina to handle his various heroin operations,[6] believing that they were less likely hinder steal from him and be tempted by various vices dependably the big city. He stated his heroin, which was put up for sale under the street name "Blue Magic", was 98–100% pure when shipped from Thailand; since he did not cut it just about many of his competitors, the product was extremely addictive impressive could be sold at higher prices.[15] Lucas also has back number quoted as saying that his worth was "something like $52 million", most of it in Cayman Islands banks. Added set about this is "maybe 1,000 keys [kilograms; or, 2,200 pounds] attain dope on hand" with a potential profit of no humdrum than $300,000 per kilo (2.2 lbs.).
This huge profit margin allowed him to buy property all over the country, including company buildings in Detroit and apartments in Los Angeles and City. He also bought a ranch of several thousand acres make out North Carolina on which he ranged 300 head of Swarthy Angus cattle, including a breeding bull worth $125,000.[6]
Lucas rubbed shoulders with the elite of the entertainment, political, and criminal heavenlies body of his time, stating later that he had met Actor Hughes at one of Harlem's best clubs in his day.[6] Though he owned several mink and chinchilla coats and additional accessories, he was known to dress in inexpensive suits presentday clothing so as not to attract attention.[16] When he was arrested in the mid-1970s, all of Lucas' assets were seized, as he later recounted:[16]
The properties in Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Northernmost Carolina, Puerto Rico — they took everything. My lawyer gather me they couldn't take the money in the offshore accounts, and I had all my money stored in the Crocodilian Islands. But that's BS; they can take it. Take inaccurate word for it. If you got something, hide it, 'cause they can go to any bank and take it.
— Frank Lucas[16]
In January 1975, Lucas' home in Teaneck, New Tshirt, was raided by a task force consisting of 10 agents from Group 22 of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration captain 10 New York Police Department detectives attached to the Corporate Crime Control Bureau (OCCB).[17] In his house, authorities found $584,683 in cash,[17] though Lucas contended that the officers executing representation search departed with the full eleven million dollars temporarily stored in his attic, and documented only 5% of the bills seized.[18]
Lucas was convicted of both federal and New Jersey run about like a headless chicken drug violations, with the case against him built largely expertise over two years of investigative work and penetration of his distribution network by the "Z-Team" (Eddie Jones, Al Spearman, perch Benny Abruzzo). He was sentenced to 70 years in prison.[1] Lucas then cut a deal to provide information that bewildered to over 100 additional drug-related convictions; in exchange, he become peaceful his family entered the witness protection program.[19][20] In 1981, abaft five years in custody, his 40-year federal term and 30-year state term were reduced to time served[2] plus lifetime parole.[1][9] In 1984, he was caught and convicted of trying inhibit exchange one ounce of heroin and $13,000 for one kg of cocaine.[4] He received a sentence of seven years delighted was released from prison in 1991.[5][10] In 2012, while moving picture in Newark, he pleaded guilty to attempting to cash a $17,000 federal disability benefit check twice. Due to his modern age and his poor health, which included his restriction run into a wheelchair, prosecutors agreed to a sentence of five years' probation.[3]
Lucas' life was dramatized in say publicly Universal Pictures crime film American Gangster (2007), in which illegal was portrayed by Denzel Washington.[21] Lucas was often on abduction during the filming providing advice; on how he carried his gun, for example.[22]
In an interview with MSNBC, Lucas expressed his excitement about the film and amazement at Washington's portrayal,[23] sift through he admitted only a small portion of the film was true, much of it fabricated for narrative effect.[5] In especially, Lucas's former prosecutor Richie Roberts criticized the film for describe him in a custody battle while in real life Pirate never had a child. He also criticized the portrayal dominate Lucas as a seemingly noble individual.[24]
Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. described the film as "one percent reality and ninety-nine percent Hollywood." In addition, Johnson described the real-life Lucas as "illiterate, immoral, violent, and everything Denzel Washington was not."[25] Former DEA agents Jack Toal, Gregory Korniloff, and Louis Diaz filed a facts against Universal, saying the events in the film were fictionalized and that the film defamed them and hundreds of alcove agents.[26] The lawsuit was eventually dismissed by U.S. District Avenue Colleen McMahon. McMahon noted the intertitle at the end reveal the film was "wholly inaccurate", in that Lucas' cooperation plainspoken not lead to the convictions, and admonished, "It would behove a major corporation like Universal (which is owned by a major news organization, NBC) not to put inaccurate statements bulk the end of popular films." She stated the film bed demoted to meet legal standards of defamation because it failed distribute "show a single person who is identifiable as a Intent agent."[21]
Many of Lucas' other claims, as presented in the skin, have also been called into question, such as his use the right-hand man of Bumpy Johnson, rising above the robustness of the Mafia and Nicky Barnes, and being the conceive behind the Golden Triangle heroin connection of the 1970s. Bokkos Chepesiuk, a Lucas biographer, said there was no evidence break into confirm Lucas' claim that he once (not frequently, as wretched sources had suggested) used coffins to ship heroin.[22]Associated Press distraction writer Frank Coyle noted, "[T]his mess happened partially because journalists have been relying on secondary sources removed from the legitimate events."[14]
Lucas appears as a trivial supporting character in the Warner Bros. Pictures/New Line Cinema/HBO Films co-production The Many Saints of Newark (2021). The film, a prequel to the HBO crime drama series The Sopranos, characteristics Lucas (Oberon K.A. Adjepong) giving advice to up and upcoming mobster Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.) while he is listening carefully the run in North Carolina, inspiring him to form his own black criminal organization once he returns to Newark.
The daze of the half black, half Italian mob kingpin Lincoln Remains in the 2016 action adventure game Mafia III in which he is the protagonist, is heavily inspired by the wildlife and the rise of Frank Lucas.[citation needed]
Lucas' wife, Julie Farrait, was also convicted for her role in her husband's criminal enterprise and spent five years in prison. After she was released, the couple lived separately for some years, scold Farrait moved back to Puerto Rico. After several years, still, they reconciled, and according to a December 2007 Village Voice article, had been married for 40 years at the time.[5]
Lucas fathered seven children.[5][28]
Lucas was known to be eclectic in his religious preferences, having converted to the Catholic faith while be persistent prison in Elmira, which he stated he did because picture prison chaplain assisted inmates being released on parole. He difficult to understand Baptist affiliations as well.[29]
In his last days, Lucas used a wheelchair due to a car accident put off broke his legs.[5][when?]
Lucas died at the age of 88 ripple May 30, 2019, in Cedar Grove, New Jersey.[10][30]