American Gangster : Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas (born September 9, 1930 in La Grange, North Carolina) was a heroin dealer and organized crime boss in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was particularly known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in Southeast Asia. He organized the smuggling of heroin from Vietnam to the U.S. by using the coffins of dead American servicemen.

Career
He claims to have grossed US$1 million a day selling drugs on 116th Street. Federal judge Sterling Johnson, who was special narcotics prosecutor in New York at the time of Lucas' crimes, called Lucas' operation "one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever, an innovator who got his own connections outside the U.S. and then sold the narcotics himself in the street." He had connections with the Sicilian and Mexican mobs, holding an enormous monopoly on the heroin market in Manhattan. In an interview with Lucas (75 years old) he said, "I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be Donald Trump rich, and so help me God, I made it."

According to an interview dated August 14, 2000 with New York Magazine, Lucas relied on a tightly controlled crew called "The Country Boys". He preferred using relatives and men from his hometown in North Carolina because they were less likely to steal from him and were not used to city living. His heroin "Blue Magic" was 98% pure when shipped from Asia and sold at 2% purity on the street; In this direct quote from the article, Lucas was worth "something like $52 million," most of it in Cayman Islands banks. Added to this is "maybe 1,000 keys (kilograms), (2205 pounds), of dope on hand" with a potential profit of no less than $300,000 per kilo. Also in his portfolio were office buildings in Detroit, apartments in Los Angeles and Miami. There was also "Frank Lucas's Paradise Valley," a several-thousand-acre spread back in North Carolina on which ranged 300 head of Black Angus cows, including a breeding bull worth $125,000.

Lucas rubbed shoulders with the elite in entertainment, politics, and crime, even meeting Howard Hughes at one of Harlem's best clubs in his day. He wore mink and chinchilla and dressed his wife in the best. He fathered 7 children.

When he was arrested in the mid-70's, all of Lucas' assets were seized by the government.

Arrest and release
In 1975, Frank Lucas was arrested in New Jersey by detective Richie Roberts and was convicted of both federal and New Jersey state drug violations. In 1976, he was sentenced to 70 years in prison. Once convicted, Lucas provided evidence that led to more than 100 drug-related convictions of law enforcement officers. His sentence was reduced and changed to parole, so that he was released from prison in 1981. In 1984 he was arrested again and convicted for new drug violations and a parole violation. He received a sentence of seven years and was released from prison in 1991.