Do you wonder what turned this once-ordinary man into a powerful gangster?
Frank Lucas was a successful heroin dealer in New York in the 1970s, competing with the mob and making up to $1 million in one day.
Lucas was known as a good liar and exaggerator, so it's often difficult to confirm anything about his life. An example is the 2007 Denzel Washington movie American Gangster, based on real-life criminal Frank Lucas; however, many people who knew him in real life said that the movie significantly changed reality.
We know he's risen to power as the heroin king of Harlem, but the details of his rise, including the tools he used, have remained buried in mystery and urban legend.
Frank Lucas was born on September 9, 1930, in a small town in rural North Carolina. Raised in a poor family in South America, he was asked to take care of his younger siblings and faced discrimination because of his race. It is possible that he had financial difficulties as a teenager due to the Great Depression and resorted to illegal means such as theft.
Lucas has repeatedly said that the murder of his cousin was a turning point in his life and started his criminal career. Lucas alleged that five members of the Ku Klux Klan came to his home in Greensboro one night when he was six, wearing sheets and hoods. Then, they shot and killed his 13-year-old cousin, who allegedly sexually assaulted a white woman.
However, no available evidence shows that this is true.
From that moment on, Lucas was the eldest son of the family and the breadwinner of his family. As he matured, he began robbing the area bar for food and extorting customers who were too drunk to pay for their drinks.
Lucas started working as a truck driver when he was a teenager. He managed to get himself roasted by working for a pipe company for a while, but eventually, it was revealed that he was having an affair with his boss's daughter. When Lucas was caught stealing from his employer, he got into an argument with his boss, hit him in the head with a heavy pipe, started a fire, and ran away with the $400.
After this incident, his mother begged him to flee to New York, fearing that he would be arrested and imprisoned. Lucas went to Harlem as a 16-year-old in the summer of 1946. He soon realized that he could become rich by dealing illegal drugs and gambling.
He started off with a bar robbery and later headed to a jewelry store, where he robbed them both at gunpoint. Rumor has it that Lucas robbed a high-stakes craps game with all its participants and then started selling drugs to the lower echelons of the gang.
In the summer of 1966, Lucas came to the attention of a major Harlem criminal named Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson after he murdered a person who had given up on heroin shopping. Johnson patiently taught Lucas how the city's illegal gambling and racketeering gang worked and said he himself was its leader.
After Johnson's death in 1968, there was a void in Harlem that Lucas hoped to fill. This prompted him to expand his organization by annexing more territory.
After solidifying his position as the gang leader, Lucas began making secret plans. He said he would regularly lock up in hotel rooms, review his gang, and learn from his mistakes.
During the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, rumors circulated that American soldiers serving overseas were experimenting with various illicit substances, including heroin. After returning to the United States, many suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and new addictions, and heroin (drug) use spread rapidly across the country. Other names were used for various products, such as "Harlem Hijack" and "Mean Machine".
Lucas wanted to get straight to the heroin source, so he went to Southeast Asia to do it. Upon his arrival in Thailand, he met Leslie "Ike" Atkinson, owner of Jack's American Bar, frequented by African-American soldiers. Moreover, Atkinson was from Lucas' hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, and was married to his cousin, so he was immediately considered a trustworthy person.
They set out on an adventure through the jungles of Thailand to find the Chinese-Thai man named Luetchi Rubiwat, who was Atkinson's source. In the middle of the dense jungle between Burma and Laos, he planted acres of poppies on his land and then turned them into heroin in hidden mountain caves. Instead of the $50,000 he would have paid to the mob in the United States, Lucas was able to buy more than 100kg for just $4,200 a kilogram.
The distribution network consisted of both officers and privates. These individuals ranged from ordinary soldiers to high-ranking commanders. There were also reports of Lucas using the coffins to smuggle cocaine into the United States, probably because they thought the U.S. Army wouldn't investigate them for smuggling, but this turned out to be false.
Rather, they used military planes to smuggle the drugs into the country and dropped packages at army facilities before sending them to their partners for distribution.
At his peak, he often boasted of making millions of dollars every day. To hide his illicit gains, he used a Bronx bank to turn his dirty money into clean money. He kept some of it in the Cayman Islands, made major acquisitions like laundries and gas stations, and built a nationwide real estate portfolio.
He liked to dress casually so as not to attract attention. But there is one mistake he knows he has made. In 1971, he made the mistake of what he would later describe as "a great idiocy" and bought a full-length chinchilla fur for $100,000 and went to Muhammad Ali's boxing match.
He later said that he was surprised that the seats the police sat in were so good. Better than Frank Sinatra and Diana Ross. As a matter of fact, this unknown person who had amassed so much wealth would raise questions and he said he left that boxing match as a stigmatized man.
He enjoyed hanging out with famous people like James Brown, Diana Ross, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali in Manhattan's trendiest nightclubs. He also contributed $100,000 in cash for the 1970s New York gangster movie The Rip Off. However, the production of the film stopped before it could be finished.
On January 28, 1975, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a search warrant for Frank Lucas' home in Teaneck, New Jersey. Although his wife Julie threw bags of money out the window in a panic, authorities managed to get $584,000 back. They also found the keys to many of the Cayman Islands safe deposit boxes in the building.
Although 10 people were caught in the narcotics raid, Lucas was released as there was no evidence linking him to the operation.
However, Lucas' nephew was resolved during interrogation. He identified the individuals, directed the detectives to the drug outlets, and detailed the locations of all the pay phones used in the operation. In light of this information, Lucas was brought to court and an indictment was prepared against 43 more people.
The facts about the heroin trade emerged during the trial. It was stated that the high degree of purity of the drug had disastrous effects on humans and that many drug overdoses were used in the African-American community.
According to prosecutor Richard Roberts, Blue Magic is responsible for more killings of African Americans than the Ku Klux Klan. After a lengthy trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
But after Lucas went to jail, he took everything, including the millions of dollars he rumoredly owned. But the FBI never confirmed that he really had that much money. However, he soon began collaborating with the authorities, revealing the identities of his accomplices and the corrupt NYPD officers who assisted him. He even named it after his long-time Thai partner, Atkinson.
As a result of Lucas' denunciations, 150 people were arrested, including 30 members of his family and numerous New York DEA agents. He was given an award because the information he gave was very important. He was released from prison in 1981 after serving only 15 years of his original 25-year sentence, as a result of his sentence reduced.
Although he was re-arrested in 1984 for other drug dealings, he was released in 1991 and kept in touch with his prosecutor, Roberts, so he could get his life back on track. Later, Roberts even became the godfather of Lucas' son.
His life was described in the movie American Gangster, in which Denzel Washington played a major role. Lucas visited the set frequently to provide advice and direction on his eccentricities. While some real events are used in the movie, many other events are embellished for dramatic effect, as even Lucas admits.
In his final years, Lucas was confined to a wheelchair and lived in Newark. He wrote a biography about his time as a drug lord in Harlem and promised to donate all of his income to the advancement of education.
Frank Lucas died of natural causes on May 30, 2019, at the age of 88, in a nursing facility in Cedar Grove, New Jersey.