May 26, 2020 – Montreal mob associate Gregory (Picasso) Woolley was denied his request for parole and the opportunity to walk free more than a year early from a drug-dealing conviction because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Woolley was busted for possession of methamphetamine and marijuana inside the Montreal Detention Center two years ago.

The 48-year old Woolley is affiliated with both the Italian mafia and the Hells Angels biker gang in Quebec. He was arrested as part of a narcotics conspiracy case in 2015 and sentenced to eight years behind bars.

With his current sentence, he could still be released to a halfway house by December. Before his 2015 pinch, he had served two previous prison stints, one connected to a series of attempted murders tied to the Quebec Biker War.

In the 1990s, Woolley was close to notorious Hells Angel boss Maurice (Mom) Boucher and given leadership of a Hells Angel support club known as “The Rockers.” Woolley fought on the frontlines of the Quebec Biker War that engulfed the Canadian underworld between 1994 and 2002. The war pitted the Hells Angels against the Rock Machine and the Banditos for drug turf in Montreal. Today, Boucher is serving a life prison sentence for ordering the murders of two prison guards.

While in prison in the early 2000s, Woolley became close to vaunted Montreal mob don Vito Rizzuto. When Rizzuto’s mafia empire came under siege in 2009, Woolley brokered an alliance with the Hells Angels to aid the Rizzuto organization in fending off an insurrection. Rizzuto had helped mediate the end of the Quebec Biker War years earlier.

Rizzuto died of cancer in 2013 at 67 years old, allegedly turning over power in his crime family to his son, Leonardo. A police wiretapped conversation between Leonardo Rizzuto and Woolley in the summer of 2005, just weeks before Woolley was jailed, showed Rizzuto fawning over the influence Woolley wielded across multiple Montreal gangland factions.

Woolley is of Haitian descent. He headed the Master B crew, a Haitian street crew, as a teenager in the 1980s.

The post Infamous Canadian Gangland Figure Won’t Be Released From Prison Early appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 27, 2020 – Beloved Detroit rapper DaJuan (Street Lord Juan) Wren is trying to fight his way out of prison early on the crest of the Coronavirus pandemic many non-violent offenders in his same situation are successfully leveraging for their freedom. Wren, 43, was found guilty at a federal drug and weapons trial in 2011. He’s currently scheduled to be released in May 2025.

Attorneys for Wren are reportedly preparing to file a compassionate release request and supporters of his recently started a Change.org page petitioning for mercy from the courts or the White House. U.S. President Donald Trump’s First-Step Act, signed into law last year, has freed droves of non-violent drug offenders.

Old-school Detroit drug boss Felix (The Cat) Walls, 78, maintained a Change.org page and walked free last month on a compassionate release from a life sentence after 26 years behind bars. Black Mafia Family co-founder Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, 50, got out the same way earlier this month, six years prior to his scheduled release. “BMF” started in Motown in the 1990s and rose to rule the American drug trade of the 2000s, establishing franchises in 24 major cities around the country while becoming firmly embedded in the pop-culture ether.

Wren was a founding member of the seminal Street Lordz rap crew, legends of the Detroit underground hip-hop movement. Their 1998 debut album, Platinum Roleez Don’t Tic Toc, is considered a classic and featured appearances by Too Short, Spice One and E-40. In 2004, Street Lord Juan released his solo debut, The Real Me. Blade Icewood (aka Darnell Lindsay), the de-facto leader of the Street Lordz group, was slain in April 2005, killed outside a car wash behind the wheel of his Range Rover in a feud with a rival rap crew.

By the end of the decade, the DEA had begun investigating Street Lord Juan for dealing heroin, cocaine and marijuana. He was being supplied by Antonio (Pancho) Simmons, the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel’s main distributor in Michigan. Two of the men in the Simmons drug network, Michael (Moe Green) Cathey and David (Razor Blade) Wynn, were star witnesses at Wren’s trial.

Simmons, 47, pleaded guilty in the case and has a summer 2024 out-date. Wren was convicted of heroin and marijuana charges and for possessing an unregistered handgun DEA agents found in a raid of his Royal Oak, Michigan home in March 2009.  

The post Street Lord Juan Looking For Compassionate Release, Motor City Rap God Hopes To Continue Trend appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 28, 2020 – Roland (The Hainanese Kid) Tan, one of the world’s most wanted gangsters, died of a heart attack this spring in Denmark while hosting a dinner party at his Copenhagen estate. The 72-year old Tan had been on the run from authorities in Singapore since the 1960s for a gangland murder he allegedly committed 51 years ago.

While living in Holland, Tan build a multi-million dollar drug empire that spanned several countries in Europe and had outposts as far away as Australia and his native Asia. He co-founded the Ah Kong crime syndicate in the Netherlands in the 1970s and won a war with the 14K Hong Kong Triad for control of the European heroin market.

In 1984, Tan moved to Copenhagen and opened his Bali restaurant and nightclub, which became a staple of the Denmark dining and social scene. Breaking away from the Ah Kong organization, he went on his own, expanding into untapped markets around the globe and diversifying himself with robust stock and real estate investment portfolios. Known for his loud, garish wardrobe and chatty banter with the Denmark press, Tan’s infamy grew to massive heights in Europe.

Tan avoided an assassination attempt in January 2009 when a former Vietnamese bodyguard of his shot him in the shoulder on the day of his annual lavish birthday party at Bali’s. After surviving the attempt on his life, he retired to the Cambodian countryside until returning to Denmark last year. His April funeral in Copenhagen drew mourners from the upper echelons of both the business sector and underworld, including convoys representing Swiss and Tokyo banking firms, the Sicilian mafia, the Triads, the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) and the Hells Angels and Banditos biker gangs.

Coming up on the streets of Singapore in the 1960s, Tan gained an early reputation as someone not to trifle with. When he was just a teenager, he was already working as a hit man for the city’s Triads (Chinese crime families) and leading a fearsome youth gang that acted as a Triad pipeline. On October 24, 1969, prosecutors in Singapore contend, that Tan shot and killed rival gangland figure Lam Chew Siew on the orders of a local Triad boss.

Tan was considered No. 1 on Singapore’s Most Wanted List from 1970 until his death last month. The Singapore government came close to getting the Hainanese Kid extradited back home for trial on the Lam Chew Siew hit in 1973, but Tan’s lawyers got a judge in Amsterdam to rule there was insufficient evidence in the case and blocked Singapore officials from coming to arrest him.

The post European Drug Lord, The Hainanese Kid, Dead At 72, Was Fugitive From Justice For Half-Century appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 28, 2020 — The feds are saying not-so-fast to famous DEA informant Margarito (Junior) Flores. Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman rejected Flores’ bid for a compassionate release on grounds of him being susceptible to the COVID-19 virus due to a recent a blood infection contracted during oral surgery. He’s scheduled to be sprung for good this November.

Flores and his twin brother Pedro (Little Pete) Flores are hailed as the two most important informants in DEA history for their help in taking down the world’s most dangerous and powerful drug boss, Joaquin (El Chapo), Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. The 38-year olds were the top American distributors for Guzman’s goliath Sinaloa narcotics empire, working out of their hometown of Chicago. After recording 75 phone conversations with Guzman and pleading guilty in a narcotics conspiracy, the Flores brothers were given 14-year prison sentences.

Little Pete Flores testified at Guzman’s 2019 trial in New York City. Guzman, 63, was found guilty and is serving a life sentence at the Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado. Junior Flores met face-to-face with Guzman in October 2008 at a mountainside hideaway in northwestern Mexico and was wired-for-sound.

The U.S. Attorneys Office in Illinois questions if the Flores brothers have turned over all their money. Their sentencing judge echoed these sentiments at a 2015 court hearing.

The Flores brothers forfeited more than $4,000,000 after they cut their deal with prosecutors, but Little Pete Flores gifting his wife a $200,000 Bentley automobile in the days before he reported to prison raised eyebrows. In its response brief to Judge Coleman in trying to block Flores from walking early, prosecutors claim they concluded the Flores are hiding assets and not being forthright with the government about their finances, per their cooperation deal, back in March.

The post Junior Flores Will Have To Wait Until Fall To See Freedom, Compassionate Release Motion Denied appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 30, 2020 — Narcos princess Jessica (La Negra) Oseguero will go to trial in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. in December for five counts of money laundering related to her father, notorious Mexican drug kingpin Nemesio (El Mencho) Oseguera’s Jalisco “New Generation” Cartel. Per her indictment filed in February, the 33-year old La Negra provided financial support to a series of real-estate investments in the U.S. and legitimate businesses in Mexico, including a pair of sushi restaurants and a tequila company, that her father’s organization used to funnel drug proceeds. She’s pleaded not guilty in the case and is being held without bond while awaiting trial.

In recent weeks, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell denied Oseguera’s second motion for bond (she sought permission to prepare for trial from a family member’s home in California due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and set a trial date for December 14, 2020. Oseguera was taken into custody in February when she attempted to attend a court hearing for her little brother, 30-year old, Ruben (El Menchito) Oseguera, just extradited from Mexico to face drug-trafficking charges on U.S. soil weeks earlier.

El Mencho, 53, is the most wanted drug lord in the world today. He’s been on the run since 2012. The U.S. government is offering a $10,000,000 reward for information that leads to his capture. Both of his kids, La Negra and El Menchito, are U.S. citizens, having been born in San Francisco.

Beginning his career in the Northern California drug trade of the 1980s, El Mencho made his way back home to Mexico in the 1990s and joined the now-defunct Milenio Cartel, going to work as an enforcer for the cartel’s bosses, the Valencia brothers. He became the Valencia brothers’ liaison to the Sinaloa Cartel and his predecessor as the globe’s most infamous drug kingpin, Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman. El Mencho ran the Valencias’ operations in the Guadalajara region of the country.

When the Valencias went to prison and the Milenio Cartel fell apart at the start of the 2010s, El Mencho founded his New Generation Cartel, moving his headquarters from Guadalajara to Jalisco. El Chapo Guzman is serving life in prison in the U.S. Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado and New Generation has since surpassed the Sinaloa Cartel in terms of power, influence and territory

The post Trial Date Set For Cartel Boss El Mencho’s Daughter, “La Negra”, Judge Still Won’t Grant Bond appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 1, 2020 – The Illinois State Supreme Court has declined to overturn a 2010 Lake County jury verdict of first-degree murder against Four Corner Hustlers gang member Donnell (D-Light) Green on the grounds of conflict of interest related to his defense. Green’s attorney, Robert Ritacca, had once served as legal counsel to Green’s intended target in the murder he was convicted of and sentenced to 35 years in prison for.

The high court’s ruling was issued last week in an order written by Illinois Supreme Court Judge Michael J. Burke. Green’s trial took place 10 years ago this month.

Green was in a car with three other Four Corner Hustlers on October 18, 2007, in Waukegan, Illinois, when they spotted Black P-Stone Nation gang members, Jimmy (Bernie Mac) Lewis and Danny (Keeko) Williams, driving in a Cadillac SUV and opened fire. Lewis, who was in the passenger seat, died in the shooting. Williams, who was driving the vehicle, survived the attack. A group of Four Corner Hustlers in Waukegan had gotten into a physical altercation with Williams weeks earlier.

Ritacca had once defended Keeko Williams in a drug case. Waukegan is located 35 miles north of Chicago, where the Four Corner Hustlers and Black P-Stone Nation are both based and fight for territory. The Four Corner Hustlers is a subset of the Vice Lords, one the city’s most notorious street gangs along with the “P-Stones” and the Gangster Disciples.

The Illinois State Appellate Court affirmed the trial court’s decision in 2012. Green was defended by Lucas Walker in his appeal.

Several high-ranking Four Corner Hustlers pleaded guilty to drug and racketeering counts in 2019. Forty-year old LaBar (Bro Man) Spann, the reputed boss of the Four Corner Hustlers, will go to trial later this year on drug and murder charges. Spann is accused of being responsible for six gang-related slayings.

The post Four Corner Hustlers Take Another Hit, Chicago Gang Member Can’t Get His Murder Conviction Reversed appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Black Mafia Family (BMF) was a movement on the street unparalleled in American history. The “BMF era” in the dope game was defined by previously unheard of wealth and influence. Drug lords and BMF co-founders Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory and Terry (Southwest T) Flenory became the definitions of what a New Millennium crime boss looks like. They were bi-coastal, transcontinental. And they were pop-culture staples and hip-hop icons of the highest order. In 2007, they copped pleas in federal court to drug conspiracy charges and accepted 30-year prison sentences.

The Flenorys are back in the news headlines this spring: Southwest T walked out of prison last month on a compassionate release due to the Coronavirus pandemic and U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson is set to rule on Big Meech’s motion for early-release on the same grounds this week. Terry Flenory is 50 and was locked up for 15 years. Big Meech, 51, is currently doing his time in a Oregon federal correctional facility.

The Black Mafia Family Timeline (1985–2018)

1985–1988 – As teenagers, Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory and Terry (Southwest T) Flenory start selling $500 packages of cocaine and soon grow to command a small network of pushers scattered throughout Detroit’s near Southwest side and a cluster of factory-town suburbs like River Rouge, Ecorse, Inkster and Willow Run.

1989 – Big Meech leaves the Motor City and relocates to Atlanta. Word on the street at the time was that Flenory had bolted from town after butting heads with Southwest Detroit drug boss Layton (The Beast) Simon.

1990 – Big Meech begins building what eventually becomes BMF, cultivating valuable contacts in multiple major cities and developing the early-stages of the organization’s groundbreaking infrastructure.

1995 – Big Meech hooks up with Wayne (Maniac Wayniac) Joyner, who has a supply connection with a Mexican cartel he was introduced through intermediaries in California and starts expanding his BMF business model.

*Joyner, a Kansas City native, is BMF’s “supply lieutenant” and Big Meech’s personal proxy on the west coast,

1996 – Southwest T Flenory, who had been running the shop in Detroit, relocates to Los Angeles. Benjamin (Blank) Johnson, a childhood friend of the Flenorys, is left in charge of the BMF “mother chapter” in Motown.

October 31, 1997 – Drug boss-turned-informant Dennis (The Duke) Kingsley-Walker is gunned down behind the wheel of his Nissan Maxima as he drove onto the exit ramp of a downtown Atlanta expressway near trendy Buckhead. The hit went down just hours after Kingsley-Walker was released from a three-year prison term and he had stopped for drinks at Atlanta’s Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel to celebrate his homecoming.

*Kingsley-Walker was the first Detroiter to plant a flag in the “Hotlanta” dope game in the early 1980s. To a reduce a prison sentence from a 1994 federal drug case, he testified against his partner Tony Valentine, who was a close friend of Big Meech’s. Per an unsubstantiated claim by a federal informant, Big Meech was the shooter in the Kingsley-Walker hit. Nobody has ever been arrested for the Kingsley-Walker homicide.

Spring 2001 – The DEA in Detroit and Atlanta begin receiving rush of tips on the ever-expanding BMF organization and its charismatic leader Big Meech Flenory.

November 5, 2001 – Shirley Franklin is elected Mayor of Atlanta. Franklin’s son in law was BMF member Tremayne (Kiki) Graham.

Winter 2003 – Big Meech launches the BMF music label, placing a series of Scarface-themed billboards up along the I-75 highway running from his hometown of Detroit to his adopted hometown of Atlanta, declaring “The world is BMF’s.” The label has one, uninspiring artist in rapper Barima (Bleu DaVinci) McKnight, but maintains a cozy affiliation with rising rap superstar Young Jeezy.

June 22, 2003 – Hip-hop mogul Sean (Puffy) Combs throws Big Meech a lavish 36th birthday bash at Justin’s, his upscale soul-food eatery in Buckhead named in honor of his son.

*DEA agents are on hand snapping photos at an after party at Big Meech’s suburban Lithonia residence, known in BMF circles as the “White House” that lasted into the early morning hours of the next day and was attended by all BMF brass and a boatload of celebrities from the music and entertainment world. More than one DEA informant claims Combs got some of the start-up cash for his 1990s hit-factory Bad Boy Records label from the BMF crew.

September 7, 2003 – BMF “CFO” lieutenant, William (Doc) Marshall kills an assailant in a home invasion of his pricey townhouse located in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood. Marshall kept the books for BMF and owned a luxury car dealership. He was the only member of BMF that spoke and did business on behalf of both Big Meech and Southwest T.

October 28, 2003 – The DEA officially starts an investigation into BMF and dubs it Operation Motor City Mafia. A file on Big Meech had first been opened by the agency in 1990.

November 11, 2003 – After an altercation with the BMF entourage inside the Atlanta club Chaos, Anthony (Wolf) Jones and Lamont (Riz) Girdy are killed in a shootout with Big Meech and his bodyguard Ameen (Bull) Hight. in the parking lot. Wolf Jones was Puffy Combs’ personal bodyguard. Big Meech is wounded in the exchange of gunfire and avoids getting brought to trial on Jones and Girdy’s murders on the grounds of self-defense.

November 17, 2003 – Securing a search warrant in the aftermath of the Chaos shootout, the DEA raids the White House and finds a machine gun, a money counter, BMF ledgers and paperwork for custom-designed vehicles made with secret compartments for couriering drugs cross country.

*Agents reported seeing framed posters of slain rap icons Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., actor Al Pacino in his signature Michael Corleone (The Godfather) and Tony Montana (Scarface) characters and New York mob don John Gotti hanging on the walls of Big Meech’s master suite.

November 20, 2003 – Motown crime lords Reggie (The Dude) Dancy and Damonne (Slim) Brantley, BMF affiliates and the leaders of Detroit’s notorious PA Boys gang, are indicted on federal drug-trafficking and money laundering charges. Dancy ran Detroit’s flagship PA set on the city’s westside, while Brantley handled affairs down south in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina for the crew known out-of-state as simply the “Detroit Boys.”.

April 5, 2004 – Detroit BMF soldiers Calvin (Playboy) Sparks and Chris (Pig) Triplett are pulled over in St. Louis by Missouri State Police driving an SUV with nine kilos of cocaine inside.

April 11, 2004 – BMF courier Jabari Hayes is pulled over in Phelps County, Missouri by highway patrolmen driving a motor home containing 100 kilos of cocaine and more than a pound of marijuana.

July 25, 2004 – Atlanta resident Rashannibal (Prince) Drummond is killed by BMF’s pint-sized and trigger-happy third-in-command, Fleming (ILL) Daniels, in the parking lot of The Velvet Room club in Atlanta when the two got into an argument over Daniels nearly hitting Drummond backing out of a parking spot in his Porsche SUV. Drummond was beaten down by several BMF members for slapping his palms on Daniel’s vehicle in anger and then Daniels exited the car and shot a slumped and helpless Drummond at point-blank range.

September 5, 2004 – BMF member Ulysses (Hatchet Man) Hackett and his girlfriend Misty Carter are executed as they slept in Carter’s high-rise Atlanta apartment.

*Hackett and Carter are killed over the belief that Hackett was about to flip and give up Kiki Graham and his BMF satellite outpost in Greenville, South Carolina.

November 5, 2004 – BMF courier Jeff Leahr is pulled over in his car by police in Atlanta where they discover a duffle bag with 10 kilos of cocaine. Leahr worked for BMF lieutenant Omari (O-Dawg) McCree.

November 23, 2004 – DEA agents raid a BMF stash spot known as “Space Mountain,” an ultra-modern mansion in a posh Northwest Atlanta neighborhood and find a machine gun, electric money counters, triple-beam scales and drug residue, but no actual narcotics.

November 28, 2004 – Big Meech leaves Atlanta and relocates to Miami. He rents a mansion on South Beach and starting in January 2005, he begins hosting a weekly “BMF Night” at a club called Crobar in Miami Beach.

*By the end of 2004, Big Meech and Southwest T are no longer on speaking terms, having fallen out over Terry’s belief that his big bro’s in-your-face behavior and jet-setting antics were bringing too much heat on them. The final straw was allegedly a dust-up between the brothers’ respective crews at Southwest T’s birthday party in Las Vegas that summer.

May 10, 2005 – Rapper Henry (Pookie Loc) Clark is killed when he tries robbing rival rap star Gucci Mane inside a house in Decatur, Georgia, just outside Atlanta.

*Clark was best friends with “trap rap” maven and BMF affiliate Young Jeezy, who was feuding with Gucci Mane at the time of the robbery-gone-wrong ending in Gucci Mane shooting Pookie Loc to death in self-defense. Prosecutors stated in future court briefs the attack on Gucci Mane had been ordered by BMF.

May 11, 2005 – A shootout erupts during the arrest of St. Louis BMF crew chief Deron (Wonnie) Gatling on drug and racketeering charges out of Missouri at Gatling’s fiancé s house in suburban Atlanta.

*With Gatling hiding in the attic and DEA agents and U.S. Marshals storming the pricy, neatly-manicured residence, seven gun shots aimed at law enforcement ripped through the front yard. The agents returned fire and quiet Chamblee, Georgia was turned into a makeshift war zone for a few minutes on a Wednesday morning in the spring of 2005. Cell phone records show Gatling called Sin City Mafia boss Jerry (J-Rock) Davis from the attic and authorities believe Davis dispatched a team of goons to go shoot it out with the feds. The Sin City Mafia was an offshoot of BMF in Tennessee and the Carolinas.

May 23, 2005 – R&B luminary Bobby Brown’s nephews Shane and Kelsey are stabbed in an altercation with a BMF entourage at Justin’s in Atlanta, the same restaurant that hosted Big Meech’s star-studded 36th birthday bash two years before. BMF soldier Marque (Baby Bleu) Dixson is arrested for the attack three months later.

* Dixson, the little brother of Bleu DaVinci, is shot to death by a girlfriend after an argument at a club in March 2006.

May 26, 2005 – Big Meech leaves Miami for Dallas, renting a mansion in Frisco, Texas.

June 8, 2005 – BMF lieutenant Omari (O-Dawg) McCree signs a cooperation agreement.

*McCree becomes the first ranking member of the BMF empire to jump ship to the government.

July 11, 2005 – Southwest T and his right-hand man Eric (Slim) Bivens are pulled over in eastern Illinois with $5,000,000 of jewelry (22 pieces) on their way back from a Young Jeezy video shoot in St. Louis.

*Flenory gets music producer Damon Thomas, once married to Kim Kardashian, and jeweler to the stars, Jacob (The Jeweler) Arabo, to falsify a trail of ownership to the purchases.

August 9, 2005 – O-Dawg McCree pleads guilty to federal drug charges in Atlanta, marking the first of many convictions of BMF members.

October 19, 2005 – Louisville BMF boss Toree (Pink Suit T) Sims is indicted on federal drug and money laundering charges out of Kentucky.

*Sims reported to Southwest T’s regime in L.A.

October 21, 2005 – Big Meech is taken into custody in Texas, arrested without incident at the mansion he was renting outside Dallas.

*The DEA seized Flenory’s Bentley, $700,000 in cash, a pound of weed, a cabinet-full of ecstasy pills and three guns.

October 27, 2005 – The DEA raids BMF St. Louis boss Danny (Dog Man) Jones’ house and arrests Southwest T, Slim Bivens, Blank Johnson, Derrick (Chipped Tooth D) Pegeuse, & Marlon (Lil’ Dog) Welch. Pegeuse was Southwest T’s man on the ground in Atlanta. Welch was his step son. Agents confiscated $600,000 in cash during the raid.

October 28, 2005 – Operation Motor City Mafia is filed out of Detroit, Michigan. The indictment is 11 counts, names 41 people and boasts 500 kilos of cocaine and $7,000,000 in cash seized. Authorities placed the net worth of the organization at approximately $300,000,000.

November 14, 2005 – BMF Detroit underboss Arnold (A.R.) Boyd flips.

*Boyd is Blank Johnson’s brother and becomes the first of the Flenorys inner circle to Uncle Sam’s assault on the BMF kingdom. Johnson and Slim Bivens soon follow Boyd over to the comfy confines of government protection.

March 7, 2006 – BMF CFO Doc Marshall flips and gives the U.S. Attorney’s Office, DEA and IRS access to all of BMF’s books and financial records.

June 15, 2006 – The DEA in New York raids Jacob the Jeweler’s Manhattan flagship store Jacob & Co off Park Avenue on the Upper East Side.

July 21, 2006 – A superseding indictment in Operation Motor City Mafia drops, ensnaring BMF underboss Chad (J-Bo) Brown and the syndicate’s supply chief ,Wayne (The Maniac Wayniac) Joyner, among 18 others.

January 22, 2007 – BMF’s No. 3 man ILL Daniels is charged with Prince Drummond’s murder from 2004 in the parking lot of the Velvet Room, along with drug and weapons offenses.

February 5, 2007 – Out on bond, J-Bo Brown is pulled over in his native St. Louis with a loaded 9 millimeter pistol, $5,000 and a pound of marijuana. J-Bo is taken into custody and his bail is revoked.

April 3, 2007 – J-Bo Brown pleads guilty to his charges in Operation Motor City Mafia, serving as the government’s first conviction of a top-tier BMF administrator.

May 4, 2007 – Jerry (J-Rock) Davis and his Sin City Mafia BMF branch are indicted in an offshoot investigation from Operation Motor City Mafia in a case filed in Georgia.

November 7, 2007 – Operation Crimson Vex is filed in L.A. and takes down Big Meech’s right-hand man Martez (Tito) Byrth and Big Meech’s bodyguard Ameen (Bull) Hight.

November 12, 2007 – Lawyers for Big Meech and Southwest T arrange for their clients to have a summit in the back of the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit to iron out their differences in lieu of a joint plea deal. The sit-down goes bad right off the bat and quickly evolves into a shouting match.

*Nonetheless, both Flenorys come to plea agreements over the next few days.

November 13, 2007 – Southwest T Flenory pleads guilty in Detroit in front of U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohen.

November 19, 2007 – Big Meech pleads guilty in Detroit.

June 16, 2008 – ILL Daniels is convicted in his drug case. At his trial, BMF turncoat Ralphie Simms implicated Young Jeezy in BMF’s drug-trafficking activities.

September 12, 2008 – Big Meech and Southwest T are sentenced to 30 years in prison apiece by Judge Avern Cohen.

August 9, 2009 – Detroit resident Robert Alexander is killed in a fight with a BMF entourage led by reputed “Junior BMF’ers,” Darnell (C-Bird) Cooley, Eiland (Golden Child) Johnson & Deandre (Boo Dollar) Woolfolk at a suburban nightclub called Arturo’s in Southfield, Michigan.

*The only witness willing to testify, Alexander’s best friend, Anthony Alls, was shot gunned to death outside the barber shop he worked at in the hours before he was scheduled to take the stand in a grand jury proceeding. Cooley, Johnson and Woolfolk all pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges and did five years of prison time.

August 18, 2014 – Detroit BMF soldier Pig Triplett is pulled over in Ohio with two pounds of heroin in the air filter of his car. Triplett was convicted in Operation Motor City Mafia in the 2000s.

July 31, 2015 – Detroit BMF lieutenant Chauncey (C-Bear) Johnson is released from prison from the Motor City Mafia bust and declares that BMF intends to rebrand and become a community and youth empowerment organization and eventually a luxury lifestyle brand.

August 2016 — Rap mogul 50 Cent announces that he will produce a television series based on BMF’s rise and fall.

December 20, 2016 – Detroit BMF soldier Ricky (Slick Rick) McFarlin, who was convicted in the Motor City Mafia case, is killed along with ex-NFL defensive end Robert Eddins in a drug deal gone wrong on Detroit’s westside.

*McFarlin had just been released from prison weeks earlier.

May 4, 2018 – J-Bo Brown is released from prison and returns to St. Louis

August 7, 2018 – Wayne Joyner is released from prison and is said to be living in L.A.

April 2020 — 50 Cent gets the green light from the Starz Network to go into pre- production on the BMF scripted TV show and hires Detroit-born scribe Randy Huggins as the showrunner. Rumors fly of Big Meech’s son, aspiring rap artist “Lil’ Meech” being cast in the starring role as his dad.

May 6, 2020 — Southwest T is released from prison on a compassionate release due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is ordered to serve the remainder of his sentence on home-confinement in Detroit.

The post Once Upon A Time In The D: The BMF History Book & Big Meech Timeline (1985-2020) appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Chicago mob’s Wild Bunch, a sub-unit of the Outfit’s historic Cicero crew, ran roughshod over the Windy City underworld in the 1970s and early 1980s. Cicero capo Joe Ferriola put the crew together as a special personal enforcement team that would be assigned the crew’s toughest murder assignments. Ferriola’s nephew Harry (The Hook) Aleman called shots for the Wild Bunch which also consisted of Jerry (The Hand) Scalise, William (Butch) Petrocelli, Anthony (Little Tony) Borsellino, Jimmy (The Ice Pick) Inendino and Gerry Scarpelli.

Dubbed the Wild Bunch after the 1969 Sam Peckinpah-helmed movie about a ragtag gang of bandits in the Old West, authorities peg the Wild Bunch with responsibility for nearly 50 gangland homicides in a ten-year period. By the end of their reign, the crew self-destructed and turned on each other, All of the Wild Bunch crew ended up either dead or in prison.

The Wild Bunch Hit List (1971-1981):

Oct. 19, 1971: Chicago soldier Salvatore (Sambo) Cesario, 53, is hit over the head with a blunt object and shot to death by two masked men as he sat with his wife in lawn chairs in front of his home smoking a cigar. Cesario had been caught carrying on a love affair with the wife of an imprisoned Outfit power.

Sept. 27, 1972: Chicago mob associate, Billy Logan, 37, a Teamsters steward and ex-husband of Aleman’s cousin, is shotgunned to death in front of his home.

Dec. 20, 1973: Chicago cop and “made” man, Richard Cain, 49, tied to Illinois mafia boss Sam Giancana, is shotgunned to death at point-blank range by two masked men in Rose’s Sandwich Shop on the westside of Chicago

Feb. 24, 1974: Chicago mob associate Socrates (Sammy Paper) Rantis, 43 years old and known as one of the Outfit’s premier counterfeit money men, is found with his throat slashed and with puncture wounds in his chest in the trunk of his wife’s car at O’Hare airport parking terminal.

April 21, 1974: Chicago mob associate Billy Simone, 29, is found dead in the back seat of his own car with his hands and feet bound and a gunshot wound in the back of his head. Simone was a partner and protege of Sammy Paper Rantis in the funny money game.

July 13, 1974: Chicago mob associate Orion Williams, 38, a suspected confidential informant, is found shotgunned to death in the trunk of his girlfriend’s car.

Sept. 28, 1974: Chicago mob associate Bobby Harder, 39, a jewel thief and burglar who was believed to have become an informant, is found shot in the face in a bean field near Dwight, Ill. Previously, Harder had escaped a hit attempt by Aleman and, “Jimmy I.”

Jan. 16, 1975: Chicago mob associate Carlo Divivo, 46, is killed by two masked men who opened fire with a shotgun and a pistol as he walked out of his house. Divivo worked as an enforcer and collector for the Cicero crew.

May 12, 1975: Chicago mob associate Ronnie Magliano, 43, an Outfit fence, is found blindfolded and shot behind the left ear in his set-ablaze residence,

June 19, 1975: Chicago cop and Outfit loanshark Chris Cardi, 43, is shot eight times in the back and once in the face by two masked men as his wife and children looked on inside Jim’s Beef Stand in Melrose Park. Cardi’s uncle was Elmwood Park crew enforcer Willie (The Beast) Messino.

Aug. 28, 1975: Chicago mob associate Frank (The Greek) Goulakos, 47, a federal informant, is shot six times by a masked man near DiLeo’s Restaurant, where he worked as a cook.

Aug. 30, 1975: Chicago mob associate and bookie Nick (Keggie) Galanos, 48, is found shot nine times in the head in the basement of his home

Oct. 31, 1975: Chicago mob associate and bookie Anthony Reitinger, 34, is shot to death in Mama Luna’s restaurant by two masked men.

Jan. 31, 1976: Chicago mob associate Louie DeBartolo, 29, a heavy gambler deeply in debt to Outfit bookmakers, is found shot in the head and with his neck punctured four times with a broken mop handle in the rear of the store where he was employed.

May 1, 1976: Chicago mob associate Jimmy Erwin, 28, an ex-convict who was suspected in the murders of two other reputed mobsters, is killed by two masked men with a shotgun and a .45 caliber pistol. He was shot 13 times as he stepped out of his car.

July 22, 1976: Kansas City mafia soldier David Bonadonna, 61, is fatally shot and found in his car trunk in Missouri. His murder was one of several unsolved gangland slayings connected to a local mob war in Kansas City stemming from the fight to control KC’s then-trendy River Quay entertainment district.

March 29, 1977: Chicago mafia soldier Chuckie (the Typewriter) Nicoletti, 60, is shot three times in the back of the head while sitting in his car parked in front of the Golden Horns Restaurant in a suburban Northlake. Nicoletti was a longtime Outfit hit man.

June 15, 1977: Chicago mob associate Joey Theo, 33, a burglar involved in stolen auto parts, is found with two shotgun wounds to the head in the back seat of a car parked on the city’s southside.

July 25, 1977 – Chicago mobster Sam (The Mule) Annerino is gunned down in front of his Mirabelli’s Furniture Store in Oak Lawn, blown away with five shotgun blasts to the chest and neck. Annerino got caught in the crosshairs of the Chop Shop Wars.

January 15, 1978 – Outfit burglar John Mendell disappears 11 days after leading a break-in of Accardo’s house as payback for Accardo ordering Mendell and his crew to return a giant score from the robbery of a jewelry store they had pulled off in the days before Christmas 1977. The owner of the jewelry store was a friend of Accardo’s and requested the Big Tuna’s aid in retrieving the stolen merchandise. Mendell’s body wasn’t found until February 20, discovered in the trunk of his car on a southside street corner, naked, hogtied, stabbed and strangled to death.

January 20, 1978 – Outfit burglar Bernard (Buddy) Ryan, second-in-command in the Mendell burglary ring, is found behind the wheel of his Lincoln Continental sitting on the side of a west-suburban street with four bullets lodged in the back of his head and his throat slit.

February 2, 1978 – Outfit burglar Stevie Garcia, Ryan’s right-hand man, is found slain in the trunk of his car in a Sheraton Hotel parking lot by O’Hare Airport, stabbed to death with his throat slit.

February 4, 1978 – The Strangers In The Night Murders: Outfit burglar and fence Vince Moretti and his friend Don Renno are beaten to death, their throats slashed, in a Cicero bar in what became known in Chicago mob circles as the “Strangers in the Night Murders,” due to the fact that the song was playing on the bar’s jukebox as Moretti and Renno were being killed. Moretti was an ex-cop and seen wearing Accardo’s monogramed gold, diamond-encrusted cuff links around town in the days after the high-profile heist. While Moretti was a high-ranking member of Mendell’s crew, Renno, a small-time crook, wasn’t and just happened to be with Moretti when he was summoned to be clipped.

April 6, 1978 – Outfit burglar Robert (Bobby Toggs) Hertogs is found in the trunk of his car in a grocery store parking lot on Grand Avenue, shot in the back of the head and his throat slashed. Hertogs was connected to the Mendell crew and had fallen behind on a juice loan.

April 14, 1978 – Outfit burglar Johnny McDonald, the final Mendell crew member to get bumped off, is found lying dead in a westside alley, shot in the back of the head and his throat cut. McDonald allegedly was forced to set Buddy Ryan up to be killed.

October 5, 1978 – The Accardo residence’s Sicilian caretaker Michael Volpe vanishes on his way to work in the days after testifying too candidly in front of a federal grand jury investigating the string of slayings linked to the break-in.

November 15, 1978 –– Chicago mob associate Billy Wright is murdered by Wild Bunch triggerman Tony Borsellino on the Northside for a slight at a bar.

March 11, 1979 –– Chicago mob associate George Christofalos is gunned down outside his gambling club. At the time of Christofalos’s murder, he and Wild Bunch triggerman Tony Borsellino were feuding over gambling turf. Christofalos ran a back door casino out a roadhouse club in North Chicago.

May 22, 1979 – Wild Bunch lieutenant Anthony (Little Tony) Borsellino is found in a Will County cornfield shot in the back of the head. One of the theories behind the Borsellino hit is that Little Tony upset his bosses by being spotted by eye-witnesses in carrying out the Christofalos contract.

September 18, 1979 – Chicago mob soldier Gerald (Jerry the Dinger) Carusiello is shot in the back of the head and left on the concrete an in Addison, Illinois apartment complex parking lot. Carusiello was a driver and bodyguard for Accardo’s acting boss Joseph (Joey Doves) Aiuppa and suspected in at least one of the fallout slayings.

July 2, 1980 – Windy City mobster William (Billy Choppers) Dauber & his wife Charlotte are killed as they drove home from a court hearing. Dauber was an enforcer for the Outfit’s Chicago Heights crew and had been in charge of the Chop Shop War on behalf of area mob brass. Word had spread on the street that Dauber was cooperating after taking a drug pinch.

March 13, 1981 – Chicago mob soldier William (Butch) Petrocelli is tortured and killed for skimming proceeds earmarked for delivering to imprisoned bosses relatives on the outside. Petrocelli was as infamous as they came in terms of Outfit enforcers in his day.

June 24, 1981 – Outfit associate Mike Cagnoni is blown up in his Mercedes-Benz as he drove on to the Tri-State Tollway at Ogden Avenue. Cagnoni looked after Chicago mob activity in the produce business.

The Wild Bunch 2020: Where are they now?

Joe Ferriola became boss of the Chicago mob in 1986 before dying during a heart transplant three years later on March 11, 1989.

Harry (The Hook) Aleman went to federal prison in 1978 for racketeering and then was convicted in the 1990s in state court for killing Billy Logan in September 1972 and sentenced to life in prison. He died of lung cancer in 2010 at a Galesburg, Illinois state correctional facility.

Anthony (Little Tony) Borsellino was killed on May 22, 1979.

William (Butch) Petrocelli was killed on March 13, 1981.

Jerry (The Hand) Scalise went to prison in Great Britain in the 1980s for stealing the Marlborough Diamond in a London heist. He took a drug dealing pinch in the 1990s and just recently got out of federal prison for planning a string of robberies in the early 2010s. Between his stints behind bars, the 83-year old Scalise acted as a technical consultant for Chicago-born film director Michael Mann on movies like Collateral and Public Enemies.

Jimmy (The Ice Pick) Inendino got out of a federal prison sentence for racketeering in 2008 and is reputed to be capo of the Cicero crew today. The 77-year old Inendino was heard telling an associate on a federal wiretap in 1999 his intention of “breaking” a debtor’s head.

Gerry Scarpelli committed suicide on May 2, 1989 awaiting trial on robbery charges and having become an informant for the FBI after his 1988 arrest in Northwest Indiana. Scarpelli, 51, was found hanging in the shower in downtown Chicago’s Metropolitan Corrections Center 48 hours before he was set to see the judge in his case about entering the Witness Protection Program.

The post Living On The Wild Side: The Chicago Outfit’s “Wild Bunch” Murder Timeline (1971-1981) appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 4, 2020 – Gregarious Chicago mobster Michael (Mickey the Gorilla) Gurgone died recently at 82 surrounded by his loved ones. Gurgone was a noted thief and collector for the Outfit’s Southside crew also referred to as the 26^th Street or Chinatown crew. He was known for his big personality, brute strength and skill as a safecracker.

During much of his life, Gurgone, a veteran of the U.S. military, worked for the City of Chicago as a truck driver in the Streets and Sanitation Department. His name got mentioned in press coverage of 2004’s Hired Truck Program Scandal, but he was never charged with any wrongdoing.

Mickey the Gorilla and his family lived in the Southside’s Mount Greenwood neighborhood. Gurgone did six years in prison for participating in a famously failed 1983 heist at the Balmoral Park Race Track in Will County, Illinois. The FBI estimated his burglary ring netted $4,000,000 in cash and stolen goods over an eight-year period. He got out of prison in June 1993 and never went back.

On the streets of Chicago in the 1970s and 80s, Gurgone was a renowned safecracker working for high-end robbery rings led by legendary Windy City thieves Paul (Sticky Fingers) DiCaro and Paul (Peanuts) Panczko. It was eventually Peanuts Panczko’s cooperation that helped send Mickey the Gorilla to the joint for the botched Balmoral Park job.

“Mickey was a giant teddy bear, a real sweetheart of a human being” recalled one former gangland acquaintance. “Remember the character on The Sopranos, Bobby Bacala, that was Mickey the Gorilla……but with a better sense of humor….. The guy was like Hercules… You were proud to call him your friend. Stand up guy all the way.”

The post Colorful Windy City Mob Soldier, “Mickey The Gorilla” Gone At 82, Hailed For Safecracking Ability appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 4, 2020 — Former Bad Boy Records security chief Paul (P.J.) Buford is seeking a get-out-of-jail free card from a federal judge in Detroit based on his contracting the Coronavirus in prison serving a 15-year prison term for narcotics trafficking activity with the notorious Black Mafia Family. Buford, 50, is one of the last remaining members of “BMF” still behind bars from the landmark 2005 Operation Motor City Mafia bust. Lawyers for Buford filed a motion for compassionate release this week in U.S. District Court out of Michigan.

BMF co-founder, Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, 50, walked out of his Ashland, Kentucky prison cell this spring six years early via a compassionate release granted by U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson. His brother, the more high-profile Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, who became the face of the culturally-transcendent BMF at its peak of power in the 2000s, is currently awaiting a ruling from Lawson on his identical motion. The story of the Flenorys and BMF will soon be coming to cable television as a scripted series on the Starz network, produced by rapper 50 Cent.

The Flenorys started BMF in Detroit in 1990 and soon expanded around the country, setting up BMF satellite crews in 24 different states by the time they were indicted a decade and a half later. At the time of their arrests, authorities declared BMF the biggest domestic drug organization in American history. DEA records show informants telling the government that Bad Boy Records founder and hip-hop mogul Sean (Puff Daddy) Combs received his seed financing for the label from BMF in 1993.

P.J. Buford was Bad Boy’s Head of Security when the label dominated the charts in the mid-to-late 1990s in addition to being an early lieutenant of the Flenory brothers’ in their drug affairs. New York Police Department intelligence files denote Buford’s underworld connections and the fact that he would often act as Puff Daddy’s personal bodyguard and hand-picked the security detail assigned to Bad Boy’s most popular acts like Notorious B.I.G., Mase and Lil’ Kim.

Combs’ first cousin, Darryl (Poppa D) Taylor, was a BMF soldier as well. Buford and Taylor were both nailed in the Operation Motor City Mafia case. Buford went on the run for the next four years making his way on to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list until he was finally apprehended during a routine traffic stop in 2009 in Mississippi.

Besides Buford and Big Meech, only BMF “consigliere” Fleming (ILL) Daniels, remains in prison from the core BMF crew. Daniels is doing 20 years for drug dealing and life for a state murder conviction out of Georgia stemming from an altercation at an Atlanta nightclub parking lot in 2004 where Daniels shot a man execution style for touching his car. Without judicial intervention, Buford is looking at a 2025 release date.

The post BMF Soldier & Puff Daddy Bodyguard P.J. Buford Wants Out Of Prison After COVID-19 Diagnosis appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 4, 2020 – The Philadelphia mob’s leadership feared veteran button man Raymond (Long John) Martorano was loading up for war and importing “zip” shooters from Sicily when they decided to kill him, according to an interview with Long John’s son on the most-recent episode of the Philly Prime podcast.

Long John Martorano, 75, was ambushed by gunmen on his way to a doctor’s appointment behind the wheel of his Lincoln Town Car on January 17, 2002 in the city’s Washington Square West neighborhood. He died from his injuries on February 5. Nobody has ever been charged in his homicide and the investigation into the murder remains an open and active case in the Philly FBI office.

At the time of his dad’s murder 18 years ago, George (Cowboy) Martorano, was in prison serving a life sentence under a federal drug kingpin statute. Cowboy Martorano, who was the undisputed marijuana mob prince of South Philly in the early 1980s, was granted clemency from outgoing U.S. President Barak Obama in 2015. Today, he runs a successful CBD and hemp-products business based out of the Hip Hemp Café on S. 7th Street.

Both Martoranos were well-known narcotics traffickers in the Philly mob of the 1980s under erratic, bloodthirsty don Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo. While Cowboy was the handsome, well-spoken wholesale weed connect for most of the city in that era, his pops, Long John was the maestro of meth, helping the city earn a reputation for being the PCP capital of America.

Long John’s roots in the South Philly drug and numbers game dated all the way back to the 1950s. The consummate mob politician, he was the Bruno-Scarfo crime family’s liaison to the city’s African-American, Greek and Irish mob factions, as well as the biker gangs operating in the region, until he was nailed by the feds in a 1982 drug case and then indicted for the murder of a labor-union boss.   

The elder Martorano was paroled from federal prison in November 1999. His subsequent return to the Philadelphia underworld did not go smoothly.

Upon hitting the streets and trying to reestablish his rackets, Long John reportedly clashed with new acting Bruno-Scarfo mob boss Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi. Adding fuel to the flames of discontent was the fact that Martorano was already on bad terms with Ligambi’s consigliere, Joe (The Crutch) Curro, related to a 1981 gangland murder Martorano and his son are alleged to have participated in (no charges were ever filed against either) where a female relative of Curro’s was accidentally caught in the crossfire of a mob hit and killed.

Philly Greek mob boss Stevie Bouras and his girlfriend Jeanette Curro were slain in a hail of bullets inside a local diner having dinner with Long John and his wife on May 27, 1981. Little Nicky Scarfo had just taken power in the weeks before and was staging a consolidation effort, according to federal records detailing the Bouras murder conspiracy. “Joe Crutch” Curro died of cancer in 2004.

It appears the Philly mafia braintrust of the early 2000s, headed by Ligambi and Curro, feared Long John was taking aim at a consolidation effort of his own. Scarfo was long gone, serving life in prison for murder and racketeering, and Martorano lacked the standing in the crime family he had once enjoyed. He bristled at taking orders from Ligambi and Curro, who had been significantly beneath him on the local mob pecking order in his heyday, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Ligambi was named acting boss in the summer of 1999, two years removed from beating a murder rap on retrial and just four months prior to Long John walking free. Long John Martorano had difficulty finding his place in Ligambi’s regime and was blocked from earning in his old stomping grounds, per federal informants, breeding resentment between the pair.

Cowboy Martorano, 70, revealed to Philly Prime podcast creator and mafia expert Dave Schratwieser (Fox29 TV) in their interview, that his father had taken two trips to Sicily in the months before he was slain in the winter of 2002 for the purpose of securing contracts for a construction business he was trying to get off the ground and those trips were misconstrued by the sitting Philly mob hierarchy of the time as preparations for a revolt. Just a decade earlier, Sicilian-born Philly mob boss John Stanfa had gone overseas to recruit muscle in his attempt to quell an insurrection by the crime family’s younger generation and the bosses interpreted Long John’s excursions to the motherland as history repeating itself, Cowboy Martorano pointed out on the podcast.

The 80-year old Uncle Joe Ligambi retired from his acting boss duties last summer and serves in an advisory capacity to Philly mafia brass these days, per sources. The FBI considers the stately, unassuming Ligambi a suspect in ordering at least three gangland murders, including the Long John Martorano hit, and possibly more, in his two-decade reign spent stabilizing a crime family rocked by infighting in the 1980s and 90s.

The post The Italian Job: New Motive For Unsolved Philly Mob Murder Emerges From Podcast Interview appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 5, 2020 – As his older brother waits for a federal judge to rule on a motion for compassionate release, Black Mafia Family co-founder Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, fresh out of the joint after a 15-year stay as a guest of the government, is basking in the warm glow of love being showered upon him by rapper and hip-hop mogul 50 Cent. First, it was adulation on social media. Now, a luxury vehicle, the definitive status symbol of bosses in every industry.

The age-old hip-hop baller conundrum, Beamer, Benz or Bentley, was answered in the latter, as 50 Cent sent Southwest T a Bentley as a welcome home present. Flenory, 50, was released from prison last month – six years early due to the COVID-19 pandemic – and is on home confinement in Ecorse, Michigan, just outside the Detroit city limits where Flenory, his brother, “Big Meech” and a close-knit crew of childhood friends, started their drug empire 30 years ago. Flenory showed off his new ride on the Instagram account he created for himself the day he walked free.

By the dawning of the New Millennium in 2000, the “BMF” drug dynasty was in full bloom, with the Flenory brothers establishing BMF franchise in 24 different states, including Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Louisville, Memphis and St. Louis. Hip-hop luminaries like Puffy Combs, Jermaine Dupri and Irv Gotti feted the Flenorys and their lieutenants at industry parties and BMF, in turn, according to DEA informants, helped finance some of the music world’s most influential rap labels of the era.     

This week, 50 Cent had a Bentley delivered to Flenory’s doorstep. Flenory is staying at his mother’s house in the smoggy Detroit suburb and has been reportedly entertaining a seemingly endless stream of visitors coming to pay their respects. The only problem with 50 Cent gifting Southwest T the expensive whip is that the slimmed-down drug don can’t drive it anywhere because of his release-restrictions.

U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson is currently mulling Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory’s compassionate release request. The 51-year old Big Meech is considerably more infamous than his baby bro, Southwest T, getting frequent shout-outs and name-checks in rap tracks coast-to-coast. Lawson granted Terry Flenory a compassionate release on May 2. Big Meech is requesting to serve his home confinement in Miami.  

50 Cent is producing a scripted television series for the Starz network on the rise and fall of the Flenory brothers and the “BMF” organization, the biggest domestic drug-trafficking group in American history. BMF was dismantled in 2005 courtesy of the historic Operation Motor City Mafia case.

According to sources, BMF “underboss” Chad (J-Bo) Brown, was in Detroit in the days after Terry Flenory was released. Brown, the No. 2 defendant in the Operation Motor City Mafia indictment behind the Flenory brothers, was released from prison in the summer of 2018 and lives in St. Louis.

The post Beamer, Benz Or Bentley? BMF Boss Southwest T Receives Coming Home Present From 50 Cent appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 5, 2020 – As his older brother waits for a federal judge to rule on a motion for compassionate release, Black Mafia Family co-founder Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, fresh out of the joint after a 15-year stay as a guest of the government, is basking in the warm glow of love being showered upon him by rapper and hip-hop mogul 50 Cent. First, it was adulation on social media. Now, a luxury vehicle, the definitive status symbol of bosses in every industry.

50 Cent sent Southwest T a Bentley a silver drop-top Rolls Royce as a welcome home present. Flenory, 50, was released from prison last month – six years early due to the COVID-19 pandemic – and is on home confinement in Ecorse, Michigan, just outside the Detroit city limits where Flenory, his brother, “Big Meech” and a close-knit crew of childhood friends, started their drug empire 30 years ago. Flenory showed off his new ride on the Instagram account (bmfboss_swt_623) he created for himself the day he walked free.

By the dawning of the New Millennium in 2000, the “BMF” drug dynasty was in full bloom, with the Flenory brothers establishing BMF franchise in 24 different states, including Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Louisville, Memphis and St. Louis. Hip-hop luminaries like Puffy Combs, Jermaine Dupri and Irv Gotti feted the Flenorys and their lieutenants at industry parties and BMF, in turn, according to DEA informants, helped finance some of the music world’s most influential rap labels of the era.     

This week, 50 Cent had a Rolls delivered to Flenory’s doorstep. Flenory is staying at his mother’s house in the smoggy Detroit suburb and has been reportedly entertaining a seemingly endless stream of visitors coming to pay their respects. The only problem with 50 Cent gifting Southwest T the expensive whip is that the slimmed-down drug don can’t drive it anywhere because of his release-restrictions.

U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson is currently mulling Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory’s compassionate release request. The 51-year old Big Meech is considerably more infamous than his baby bro, Southwest T, getting frequent shout-outs and name-checks in rap tracks coast-to-coast. Lawson granted Terry Flenory a compassionate release on May 2. Big Meech is requesting to serve his home confinement in Miami.  

50 Cent is producing a scripted television series for the Starz network on the rise and fall of the Flenory brothers and the “BMF” organization, the biggest domestic drug-trafficking group in American history. BMF was dismantled in 2005 courtesy of the historic Operation Motor City Mafia case.

According to sources, BMF “underboss” Chad (J-Bo) Brown, was in Detroit in the days after Terry Flenory was released. Brown, the No. 2 defendant in the Operation Motor City Mafia indictment behind the Flenory brothers, was released from prison in the summer of 2018 and lives in St. Louis.

The post Picture Him Roll’in: BMF Boss Southwest T Receives Homecoming Gift From 50 Cent appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 6, 2020 – Reputed Chicago mobster Nino Cisternino died of natural causes earlier this year at 77. An alleged former member of the old-time Chicago Heights crew, Cisternino was laid to rest on Belmont Avenue back in the winter.

According to FBI records from the 1970s and 80s, Cisternino was a top lieutenant of Chicago Heights skipper Albert (Caesar the Fox) Tocco and fought on the frontlines of the Chop Shop Wars, the Outfit’s bloody takeover of the stolen-car racket. Tocco died of a stroke in 2005 serving a federal prison sentence for extortion.

Chicago Crime Commission files note Cisternino’s close friendship with Chicago cop and reputed Outfit enforcer Renato (Ray Ray) DiSilvestro. When the Chicago Heights crew, responsible for Outfit affairs in the South suburbs and Northwest Indiana, disbanded, Cisternino was allegedly moved into the Elmwood Park crew and then finally transferred to the Cicero crew.

The post Chitown Wiseguy Cashed In His Chips In Winter Of ’20, Made Bones In Chicago Heights Regime appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 6, 2020 – Philadelphia mob soldier Charles (Charlie White) Iannece died of natural causes this week at 85, having lived his final years on the street quietly in semi-retirement.

Iannace was a bookie and a shooter during the “Wild West” days of the Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo mob in the 1980s. He served 24 years in prison and was released in May 2011. Him and his then partner-in-crime, Nick (Nicky Crow) Caramandi, ran the Capac Street Clubhouse in South Philly during that era, a veritable beehive of underworld activity that acted as a home-base for South Philly LCN street operations with Scarfo living and headquartering in Atlantic City.

The burly, ox-strong Iannece made his bones in the Bruno-Scarfo crime family by killing his close friend and button man, Pasquale (Pat the Cat) Spirito, on April 29, 1983. Spirito angered Little Nicky Scarfo by dragging his feet in carrying out murder contracts and was shot to death by Charlie White behind the wheel of his car after they had just attended a wedding. According to FBI records, Iannece was inducted into the mafia by Scarfo the following year, in a 1984 ceremony held in Montgomery County.

That same year, he helped dispose of the body of Philly mob capo Salvie Testa, Scarfo’s godson who he grew jealous of and feared might lead a palace coup based on his rising popularity and high profile in the press. Testa was shot dead inside a South Philly candy store on September 14, 1984 and then dumped in a ditch in Gloucester Township, New Jersey.

The post The White Knight Of The Philly Mafia Passes, Charlie Iannece Dead At 85 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 8, 2020 – Black Mafia Family are intending to re-brand in an effort to change the historic drug empire’s image. According to sources close to the situation, “BMF” boss Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory and other BMF luminaries want to evolve the narrative from bling and blow to “Building More Families,” creating a new acronym and socially-conscious direction for the hip-hop culture staple once famous for its trap-house chic decadence and shaping the dope-boy standard of today.

The iconic 51-year old Flenory, described by some as the black Al Capone of the New Millennium, at least in terms of social relevance, is awaiting word from U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson in Detroit on his request for compassionate release related to the COVID-19 health crisis. His younger brother, lesser-known BMF co-founder Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, 50, was released on a compassionate release last month. The pair of siblings, their vision, ambition and hustle, inspired the trap-rap sound that emerged in the southern music scene of the 2000s.

The Flenorys built BMF from an eight-ball crew operating in Detroit’s Monterey neighborhood – resting in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge separating the U.S. from Canada – during the late 1980s and early 1990s into a massive narcotics conglomerate that had franchise outlets around the country and controlled wholesale cocaine trafficking in two dozen different states.  By the 2000s, Big Meech was posted up full-time in Atlanta (immersed in the bubbling Southern hip-hop movement through his affiliation to trap rap pioneer Young Jeezy) and Southwest T was running the clique’s homebase of Detroit through a series of intermediaries while living in Los Angeles.  

Big Meech, Southwest T and their entire highly-structured, bi-coastal BMF troop was toppled by the DEA’s landmark Operation Motor City Mafia bust in October 2005. Big Meech and Southwest T both pleaded guilty to heading a continuing criminal enterprise two years later and accepted 30-year prison sentences instead of rolling the dice at trial. Rapper and actor 50 Cent is producing an upcoming scripted television show surrounding the story of the Flenory brothers and BMF for the Starz cable network.

Talks of a paradigm shift regarding BMF and its image aren’t completely new. As BMF soldiers and crew leaders began shuffling out of prison in the past decade, chatter of taking BMF in a different direction within the organization abounded, per sources.

Last fall, Big Meech hosted a going-back-to-school drive in the parking lot of a Dearborn, Michigan clothier from his Oregon federal prison cell, sending his son, aspiring rapper “Lil’ Meech” with free school-supplies and backpacks for the students who attended. Lil’ Meech, 20, is reportedly in talks to play his dad in the 50 Cent show on Starz, which was green-lit back in the spring and boasts Detroiter Randy Huggins, a writer on 50 Cent’s hit Starz show Power, the last several years, as its showrunner.

Upon being released from his decade-long prison sentence in the summer of 2015, BMF lieutenant Chauncey (C-Bear) Johnson openly discussed his intent to remold the crew and BMF name — with Big Meech’s blessing — into a luxury lifestyle brand and community outreach group. Johnson, 49, was one of the Flenorys’ childhood friends and main shot callers in Detroit at the peak of their reign.

Original BMF members Dexter (Sosa) Hussey and Harold (Halloween) Mills own separate versions of the registered-trademark copyright and licensing for the term Black Mafia Family and the shortened phrase BMF. Mills owns the term and phrasing for merchandising. The 54-year old Hussey has the term for film and television rights.

Hussey was the Flenorys’ chief logistics officer; he engineered the groundwork and infrastructure for expansion in the late 1990s by carving out difficult-to-track distribution routes for the crew and crafting protocol for courier methods. He got out of prison in 2015 as well. Last year, he released a book titled Blueprint To Conspiracy – The Untold Story of The Black Mafia Family.

The post Reinventing The Wheel: Big Meech & BMF Look To Flip The Script On Dope Boy Fresh Legacy appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 10, 2020 – Thanks to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club member Mark (Porch Chop) Polchan will be resentenced in his extortion and arson case in the coming months. The 52-year old Polchan, who was known as the club’s point-man in business relations with the Chicago mafia, is scheduled to be resentenced on November 12 in front of U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman – he was in the midst of a 60-year term after a jury found him guilty at a 2010 trial. His arson conviction, linked to the 2003 bombing of a Berwyn, Illinois video-poker machine company, was vacated late last year.

Polchan ran a Cicero, Illinois jewelry store and pawn shop that acted as a major fencing depot for the Chicagoland underworld’s south and west suburbs. He was indicted in 2008 alongside the Chicago mob’s acting boss Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno. Guzman sentenced Sarno to 25 years in prison following his conviction.

Sarno, 62, is doing his time in a federal correctional facility in Virginia. It was allegedly on Sarno’s orders, per their indictment, Polchan and Chicago Outfit explosive expert Sam (The Blaster) Volpendesto, set off a store-front pipe bomb targeting a business competing with Sarno in the joker-poker racket.

According to FBI records, Sarno, as a young-pup wiseguy in the 1980s representing the Cicero mob crew, was tasked with cultivating the Outfit’s ties to the motorcycle world. The relationship has benefited both parties in the years since. Polchan’s place of business, Goldberg’s Jewelry, in Cicero, was a frequent hangout spot for Sarno and other Outfit figures in the 1990s and 2000s. The Outlaws, the nation’s preeminent Midwest biker gang, were founded in Illinois and have their international headquarters in Chicago.

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June 10, 2020 – The cooperation of Chicago Outfit lieutenant Anthony (Tony Valpo) Leone in 1988 decimated the crime family’s historic Chicago Heights crew and paved the way for its eventual extinction just a few years later. By the end of the next decade, the Chicago Heights crew had been folded into the Chinatown crew located on the Windy City’s Southside.

The downfall of the Chicago Heights mob dynasty was rooted in Indiana. Valparaiso to be specific.

Leone, who died of natural causes a free man last year at 79, was the nephew of the Outfit’s Northwest Indiana boss Bernard (Snooky) Morgano and ran the region’s rackets on a day-to-day basis in the late 1980s. The domino effect of Leone’s deal with the feds and his testimony in court brought down his uncle Snooky and his uncle’s boss, Dominick (Tootsie) Palermo, the last of the Chicago Heights capos, responsible for overseeing the south suburbs and the Hoosier State from the days before Al Capone to Palermo’s being taken off the streets by the feds in the early 1990s.

Palermo died in prison in April 2005 at 88. Northwest Indiana had always fallen under the purview of the Chicago Heights crew and acted as a subunit of the regime. Snooky Morgano’s dad, Tommy Morgano, ran Northwest Indiana back in the day and then Frank (Frankie Cease) Zizzo through Snooky. When Zizzo died of cancer in 1986, Snooky Morgano took power, but battling illness himself, delegated his authority through his nephew Tony Valpo and top enforcer Peter (Cadillac Pete) Petros.

Leone joined the Morgano crew on a permanent basis in 1983 after being laid off from his job as a foreman at U.S. Steel in Gary, Indiana, the sprawling factory town just outside the Chicago border. Morgano assigned him to the numbers racket, bookmaking and collecting from sports gambling businesses and policy banks. According to his FBI file, Leone lived in a mansion in Valparaiso, Indiana and made weekly visits to Tootsie Palermo at the Taste of Italy restaurant in Calumet City, Illinois, to deliver tribute payments and relay him messages.

After he was nailed for numbers running in 1988, Tony Valpo flipped and agreed to testify against his uncle Snooky Morgano and Chicago Heights capo Tootise Palermo. He entered the Witness Protection Program, however, only lasted a short time and returned to Valparaiso. Morgano died behind bars in 2003.

Chicago Heights had a reputation for working-class wiseguys and rugged mob toughs and the crew’s succession of bosses, from Jimmy Emery and Dominick Roberto to Frankie LaPorte and Al Pilotto, all the way to Albert (Caesar the Fox) Tocco and Palermo. Pilotto survived an assassination attempt on the golf course in 1981. Tocco killed James (Jimmy the Bomber) Catuara in 1978 to take control of the lucrative stolen car and chop-shop racket.

Nino Cisternino, one of Tocco’s most trusted aides, died earlier this year. Tocco passed from a stroke in prison in 2005, just five months after Palermo timed out in a Minnesota prison hospital only weeks away from finally being eligible for parole.

Frank Zizzo’s son, Anthony (Little Tony) Zizzo, went missing on August 31, 2006, on his way to a lunch meeting with Outfit administrators on Rush Street in Chicago. Little Tony Zizzo is presumed murdered and his hit the last confirmed gangland slaying in the Outfit ranks. The Zizzos were busted together for selling hijacked television sets in 1970s.

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June 10, 2020 – The blueprint for what Black Mafia Family became was inspired by a number of people in the Flenory brothers’ past, as well as another pair of equally visionary crews from their hometown. “BMF” rose from humble beginnings in Detroit in the late 1980s and early 1990s to dominate the American cocaine trade in the New Millennium with satellite outfits set up in nearly half of the 50 states and by sheer will and ingenuity force it’s way to the forefront of hip-hop culture and the drug game simultaneously nationwide.

Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, 51, is awaiting word from U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson if he will be granted a compassionate release amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. His younger brother, Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, 50, was sprung six years early via a compassionate release last month and is on home confinement in Michigan.

The Flenorys were busted and their groundbreaking drug organization dismantled courtesy of the DEA’s epic Operation Motor City Mafia case in October 2005. They both pleaded guilty two years later and received 30-year prison sentences. At the time of their arrests, Big Meech was living in Atlanta and Southwest T was based out of California, keeping tabs on affairs in BMF’s central transit hub back home in Detroit through buffers.

Southwest T got six years shaved off his sentence in 2018. If Judge Lawson doesn’t let Big Meech out on his current motion, he won’t be slated for release until late 2031.

Several rap stars, L.L. Cool J, T.I., Fabulous and 50 Cent, among them, have campaigned for Big Meech’s release for years, citing his status as a non-violent offender despite his enormous notoriety as an iconic crime lord, name-checked in countless tracks trending on streaming platforms. 50 Cent is producing a scripted television show on the rise and fall of the Flenorys and their BMF empire for the Starz cable network.

In 1986, Big Meech and Southwest T joined the 50 Boys gang and were mentored by 50 Boys boss, Edrick (E.D.) Boyd, who claimed territory on the near southwest side of Detroit. Per DEA records, the Flenorys set up and ran 50 Boys blocks in the area and helped Boyd establish new turf in the hardscrabble, assembly-line suburbs of Ecorse, Willow Run, River Rouge and Inkster.

Boyd was schooled in the dope game by former Young Boys, Incorporated lieutenant Norman (Sneed) Johnson, according to his DEA file. “YBI” controlled the Motown heroin industry of the late 1970s and early 1980s from the city’s Westside, using elementary school-aged kids and their playgrounds to peddle their exquisitely marketed dope. Johnson was slain in February 1984 as fissures in the YBI leadership structure broke into violence.

When Big Meech and Southwest T went off on their own in 1990 to form what eventually turned into BMF, they locked down a “plug” with Southwest Detroit drug boss Rodolfo (Bolo) Moreno-Ponce, per DEA records. Most of Southwest Detroit is run by Latino gangs and Moreno-Ponce and his Bolo Boys crew had raken over much of the city’s cocaine economy in the early 1990s.

The Flenorys were also taking counsel from the old Davis Family Gang, which had a reign from 1974 until 1984 and touched four different continents around the world, per sources. The DEA called the DFG the most sophisticated and internationally-connected drug ring in American history. Big Meech communicated with DFG bosses Reggie (Doc) Davis and Duane (Skinny D) Davis in prison and picked their brains for inspiration.

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June 11, 2020 — The fallout from a deadly fight following a West Virginia Pagan’s Motorcycle club St. Patrick’s Day bash back in March ended in Pagan’s MC member Norm (Sixer) Bradford being charged in a double-homicide conspiracy this week. U.S. Marshals and Jefferson County Sheriffs Department Deputies took Bradford into custody Wednesday in Harpers Ferry without incident.

The Pagan’s are the most powerful biker gang on the east coast and rapidly expanding up the eastern seaboard. The club maintains two chapters in West Virginia: one in Charleston and the other in Fairmont.

Authorities claim Bradford, 49 and known in the club as “Sixer” or “Six-Three,” provided the murder weapon and watched as Heather Grogg, 33 of Carroll County, West Virginia, was killed on the morning of April 7, gunned down as she got out of her car. The night before, 18-year old Danielle Tyler, was suffocated to death in a Berkeley County trailer on property in Falling Waters owned by a pair of Pagan’s associates. The two biker club associates were made responsible for hiding Grogg and Tyler from local police, but soon found out they were being set up to be murdered, the indictment alleges.

According to court records, weeks earlier, Grogg and Tyler had both been eye witnesses to the stabbing murder of 33-year old Jonny Riddle in a Jefferson County residence and were sought by police for questioning. Investigators described the situation surrounding the Riddle homicide on March 17 as a drug rip-off gone wrong after a group of people returned to an apartment from the Pagan’s annual St. Patrick’s Day party and caught him dabbling in their narcotics without permission.

Grogg had not attended the St. Patrick’s Day party and was just at the residence babysitting the owner’s kids. Riddle was at the apartment visiting Grogg when the group of partiers showed up and accused him of taking their drugs. After the stabbing, a near-dead Riddle was bound and placed into the trunk of a car, driven to Rippon, West Virginia field and set on fire.

Per his indictment, “Six-Three” Bradford gave co-defendant Jeff Smith, 22, the gun he used to kill Grogg with. Bradford is being held without bond and is due back in court on June 17 for a preliminary hearing.

Just last year, three Pagan’s from the Fairmont chapter were charged with attempted murder in a coordinated attack on a rival Hells Angels biker from New York staged outside a White Hall, West Virginia supermarket. Former West Virginia Pagan’s powerhouse Floyd (Diamond Jesse) Moore died of natural causes in the spring at 75, a decade removed from being the club’s national vice president.

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