January 11, 2021 – One-time Chicago street gang section boss Sam (Sammy O) Armstead had five years shaved off his federal prison term for drugs and racketeering via a motion for sentence reduction and will now be home in 2023, not 2028. The 53-year old Armstead ran the Westside of Chicago for the feared Gangster Disciples organization in the first part of the 2000s.

Last Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ruled to reduce Armstead’s 30-year sentence by five years. She noted that Armstead is the last remaining defendant from his case still incarcerated.

Armstead based his GD operations out of the Rockwell Gardens housing project on Western Avenue. His trigger-happy partner, Richard (Icky Red) Epps, urged him to stage a take over of the nearby St. Stephens Terrace Apartments, which they did in 2001. That same year, Epps was demoted from boss duties.

Armstead called a meeting of dozens of GDs at Horan Park at the corner of Van Buren and Albany Avenues on the afternoon of October 2, 2001 and announced he was in charge of the region. Per DEA records, Epps had his stripes pulled for good by the GD national office after a number of warnings regarding his erratic behavior and withholding tribute from a side-hustle drug business went unheeded.

A disgruntled Icky Red Epps flipped and joined Team USA. He helped the feds build the case that ultimately took down Sammy O and 33 other Chicago Westside GDs in a September 2002 bust.

Armstead benefited from the First Step Act, passed by Congress and signed into effect by embattled U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018 at the urging of rap auteur Kanye West and his wife, reality-television queen Kim Kardashian. The First Step Act allows for sweeping sentence reductions for non-violent criminals and drug offenders serving lengthy prison bids.

West was born and raised in Chicago and has advocated specifically for Gangster Disciples leaders. Many have since found sentence relief by way of the First Step Act.

In August 2019, William (Too Short) Edwards, who ran the city’s South Side, was released. Johnny (Crusher) Jackson, Edwards’ youth recruiting coordinator and “junior boss,” came home in November of that year. Last spring, James (King) Yates, the boss of GD affairs in the South suburbs in the early 1990s, got out of his life sentence and earned his freedom.

All those men and Sammy O worked for Larry Hoover, the legendary Gangster Disciple founder and Godfather, who has been in prison for the last 48 years. Hoover, 70, formed the Gangster Disciples in 1969 on the South Side of Chicago and still oversees the organization from the SUPERMAX correctional facility in Florence, Colorado, where he’s in 23-hour a day lockdown. GD Nation has tens of thousands of soldiers and maintains an imprint in multiple states around the country.

The post Federal Judge In Chicago Makes It So Gangster Disciples’ “Sammy O” Slated For Release In ’23 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 12, 2021 – The dramatic rise and fall of historic Latin Kings boss Rudy (King Kato) Rangel is still on peoples minds almost two decades later. Particularly, the feds and specifically Rangel’s fall, as in his June 4, 2003 slaying at the Nationwide Cutz barber shop in Chicago located in a converted trailer near the corner of Roosevelt and Sacramento on the Windy City’s Westside.

The Puerto Rican King Kato was one of, if not the, most notorious Hispanic crime lord in Chicago history, beloved by his men and given bi-coastal props, especially in the rap world where he maintained friendships with DMX and Fat Joe in New York and B-Real and the Cypress Hill crew out in California. DMX penned the song “A Yo Kato,” in Rangel’s honor following his killing.

Four Corner Hustlers gang boss LaBar (Bro Man) Spann will face charges in the King Kato hit for a second time this spring in a racketeering, drug and murder case out of federal court in Chicago. Spann beat the case in state court back in 2005.

Vice Lord gang members, Donnell (Squeaky) Simmons, Martise (Grim Reaper) Nunnery and Marcus (Lil’ Black) Ware, were found guilty. Simmons was the triggerman, gunning down 31-year old King Kato Rangel as he sat in the barber chair getting a haircut and watching the opening game of the 2003 NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the New Jersey Nets.

Federal prosecutors believe Spann hired Simmons on a Sinaloa Cartel-issued contract from Mexico for Rangel’s alleged stealing of 150 kilos of cocaine from cartel-supported dealers. Ware, who helped set up Rangel to be killed, claimed he thought he was just aiding in a robbery.

Early on in the investigation, it appeared Spann was trying to rob Rangel, a street rival of his, of a fancy Franck Muller designer watch worth more than $100,000. But later on, Squeaky Simmons told the FBI that Spann gave him the contract on the notion that the “lick” he was doing was related to a 150 kilo drug shipment that turned up empty and upset the Sinaloa people. Martise Nunnery middled between Spann and Simmons. Spann promised Simmons $30,000 payment for the hit. Lil’ Black Ware had a contact at the barber shop King Kato went to every week for a haircut and got the nod when he was in there on the evening of June 4, 2003.

Simmons told authorities that Spann gave him the gun used to murder King Kato and was in the car, a red-colored Ford Taurus, that drove him to the barber shop that night, ushering the executioner to his kill party. He’ll testify at Spann’s upcoming trial.

“Don’t miss, shorty. Come back when you’re done, we’ll be waiting for you,” said Simmons of his conversation with Bro Man before he assassinated Rangel in the barber’s chair alas New York Italian mafia don Albert (The Mad Hatter) Anastasia famously being bumped off getting a cut and a shave in the barber shop inside Manhattan’s Park Sheridan Hotel in the 1950s.

King Kato grew up on the city’s Southwest Side of Chicago. As a youngster, Rangel was friends with the Flores brothers (Pedro aka “Little Pete” & Margarito aka “Junior”). Hailing from the Little Village neighborhood, the Flores brothers rose to become the top American lieutenants of Narcos czar Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman himself.

Rangel benefited from this relationship in his own rise up the ranks in the Latin Kings. After King Kato’s murder, his wife Valerie, began a romance with Junior Flores and disappeared with him and his brother into the Witness Protection Program when the Flores boys decided to testify against the devil in the flesh, El Chapo Guzman.

The post The King Kato Killing: What Happened The Day Chicago Crime Lord Was Slain & Why appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 13, 2021 – Young, ambitious New York and Philadelphia mob associate Pete Tuccio took a plea deal this week and will do 10 years in federal prison for extortion. The 27-year old Tuccio is connected to the Lucchese and Gambino crime families in New York and close to Bruno-Scarfo crime family boss Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino in Philly.

Since 2017, Tuccio has been seen frequently in the company of the Merlino crew, chauffeuring Merlino to court appointments in the Big Apple and hanging out with Merlino lieutenants in Philly and New York. Skinny Joey, 58, relocated to Florida after serving a prison sentence for racketeering and runs is crime family via a series of buffers and street bosses.

Tuccio was charged in 2018 with extortion for torching a debtor’s car in Queens on behalf of Gambino captain Ignazio (Uncle Iggy) Alonga four years prior. He is the nephew of Lucchese captain Joseph (Joe Café) DeSena. With his plea, Tuccio is admitting he collected $5,000 worth of street tax from a Queens pizza parlor owner being shaken down by the now-deceased Uncle Iggy Alonga and set the victim’s Mercedes-Benz aflame when he neglected to make a $400 payment.

Alonga was once part of the famed Gotti crew in the Gambino clan and passed away from cancer in 2016. DeSena oversees Lucchese affairs in the Little Italy section of Manhattan.

While awaiting the resolution of his case, Tuccio was out on bond on home confinement. Photos of Tuccio smoking cigars in his backyard with Philly mob figures surfaced on social media this past summer.

The post Junior Wiseguy Pete Tuccio Cops Plea In Arson Shakedown, NYC, Philly Mob Pal Ready To Do 10 Piece appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 13, 2020 – Buffalo mob associate and con man Joe Bella was busted for pandemic profiteering by selling fraudulent COVID-19 test kits at the peak of last year’s Coronavirus lockdown. The Buffalo News first reported on the details of Bella’s case Tuesday.

Bella, 48, is connected to recently deceased Buffalo mafia capo Frank (Butchie Bifocals) Bifulco. He is facing drug and weapons charges stemming from an April 2020 raid at his home and office where the feds found guns, ammunition and a bank account for his sketchy on-line disaster prep business storing $115,000 in it.

Federal authorities are expected to indict him soon on fraud charges related to the bogus $29.99-priced “crisis kits” and more than $150,000 in COVID-19 relief he pilfered for himself in disaster loans and Pandemic Payroll Protection Plan payouts from the U.S. government. Bella has pleaded not guilty in his current case.

The FBI has investigated Bella for drug trafficking in Buffalo watering holes and ties to Butchie Bifocals and DEA agent Joe Bongiovanni. DEA agents and U.S. Border Patrol have surveilled Bella making trips between New York and Canada, some in a boat, ferrying narcotics. Authorities found pictures and videos of Bella with Bifulco on Bella’s cell phone in a detainment at the border five years ago.

“Renaissance Man” mobster Butchie Bifocals Bifulco died of natural causes back in October at 76 after decades of wowing the Western New York underworld with his trademark gangland innovation. Bongiovanni retired from the DEA in 2019 and quickly arrested for taking bribes from organized crime figures linked to the Buffalo mob and reputed boss Joseph (Big Joe) Todaro, Jr. , specifically Big Joe’s strip-club owner nephew Peter Gerace, Jr.

Bella moonlights as an actor. He has a rap sheet that includes the assault of a police officer.

The post The Great COVID Con Job: Buffalo Mafia Scamster Joe Bella Was Offering Fake COVID-19 Tests For $29.99 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 14, 2021 – Lil’ Meech is playing his pops and Avon Barksdale is on board, too. Starz announced this week that Demetrius (Lil’ Meech) Flenory, Jr. will play his father, storied drug kingpin Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, in the upcoming Black Mafia Family television show and Wood Harris, famous for playing fictional drug lord Avon Barksdale on HBO’s The Wire in the 2000s, will play his mentor in the dope game.

Flenory, Jr, is an aspiring rapper, but has never acted before. Big Meech is serving 30 years in prison for overseeing the biggest domestic narcotics organization in American history during the late 1990s and first half of the 2000s.

In other casting news released this week, Da’Vinchi is slated to play Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, Big Meech’s little brother and BMF co-founder. Da’Vinchi is known for roles in All-American (CW) and The Boys (Amazon).

Black Mafia Family tells the story of the notorious Flenory brothers, who rose from meager beginnings in Detroit to form “BMF” and stage a takeover of the American drug game coast-to-coast at the dawning of the New Millennium. They both pleaded guilty to charges in the epic Operation Motor City Mafia case in 2007. Southwest T walked out of prison early due to COVID-19 concerns back in the spring.

Harris will play “Pat,” the Flenory brothers first boss in the drug world. The character is said to be a composite of real-life BMF mentors Edrick (E.D.) Boyd and Harold (H-Town) Mills. Boyd led The 50 Boyz crew. Mills was the Flenorys’ first wholesale supplier.

Actors Russell Hornsby and Steve Harris and rapper Kash Doll all joined the production last month; Hornsby will play Charles “Pops” Flenory, the musician patriarch of a Midwest family struggling to make in a smoggy section of Motown in the decaying malaise of the early 1980s. Harris will play Detective Bryant a childhood friend of Big Meech’s who is assigned to breakup his burgeoning crack empire and Kash Doll will play Monique, a paralegal to a high-priced criminal defensive attorney in Detroit being romanced by Big Meech.

Rap superstar and actor 50 Cent helped create Power for Starz in 2014, which ran for six years and became the network’s signature scripted drama. Power told the fictional story of a New York drug lord named “Ghost” (played brilliantly by Omari Hardwick) and has been hailed as the “Black Sopranos.”

Producer Randall Emmett and writer Randy Huggins, who worked with 50 Cent on Power, have joined him in the BMF project. Huggins, who is from Detroit, is show-running the series.

The post BMF’s Prodigal Son To Play Big Meech In TV Show, Star Of The Wire Also Signs On To Starz Project appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 15, 2021 – Rappers Chief Keef and YBN Almighty Jay engaged in a minor tiff last week in an on-line video-game (GTA V) forum over the memory of slain Gangster Disciple Shondale (Tooka) Gregory, gunned down in Chicago ten years ago this week.

The YBN crew, which started as a gaming crew and then transitioned successfully into the world of hip hop, is from Alabama and on Atlantic Records’ roster of trap rap acts. Chief Keef hails from the South Side of Chicago and has pioneered the drill rap sound over the past decade. His Glo Gang label is an imprint of Interscope Records.

In a session of GTA V last Friday, YBN Almighty Jay jumped on-line and said, “Alright, alright, it’s Jay the young’n, Fuck Tooka, let me get in here.” Chief Keef, took exception and responded on his social media accounts by saying “Why you even saying shawty’s name, the shit old.”

Chief Keef and Tooka Gregory were in rival sets on the streets of the Windy City, with Chief Keef and Glow Gang repping the Black Disciples and Tooka Gregory being affiliated with the Gangster Disciples. The 15-year old Gregory was blown away at a Chicago bus stop on January 12, 2012.

Based on postmortem chatter on social media, Tooka was not well liked (GD Nation did tag a region of territory “Tookaville” in his honor). Mocking him and dancing on his grave have become commonplace in certain circles of the Midwest rap scene. “Smoking Tooka” is now slang for strong marijuana and well as alternatively used as a diss against someone you would want to “smoke,” or shoot to death.  

Recently-slain Chicago rapper King Von, a protégé of Lil’ Durk, name-checked Tooka in his and Lil’ Durk’s single, All These Niggas.

“Got Tooka in my lungs, I say that every time, ‘cause he got smoked,” King Von rapped in the single released in August, three months before he was shot to death in Atlanta this past fall.

King Von was a nephew of Black Disciples founder David Barksdale, who died of kidney failure in the 1970s. Barksdale had merged forces with Gangster Disciples boss Larry Hoover before he passed, but the group dynamic soon frayed with Barksdale no longer in the picture.

Tooka Gregory joined Hoover’s Gangster Disciples at a young age and made as many enemies as he did friends with his cocksure and shoot-first-ask-questions last demeanor on the street. Hoover runs GD nation from his prison cell.

Tooka Gregory’s murder was in retaliation for the murder of Black Disciples member Eddrick (Trigger Ty) Walker. The triggerman in the Tooka hit was allegedly Odee (O-Dawg) Perry, a Black Disciples enforcer. Less than a year later, Perry was killed in August 2011, allegedly by female Gangster Disciples lieutenant, Gakirah (Snoop) Barnes. Snoop Barnes, nicknamed after the female hit woman in the television show The Wire, was subsequently murdered herself in 2014.

The Black Disciples renamed a section of the South Side O-Block in memory of Odee Perry. Chief Keef’s Glow Gang reps the O-Block and LAMRON crews in BD Nation.

The post The “Tooka” Gregory Hit: Gangster Disciples’ Murder 10 Years Ago Back In News Because Of GTA V Beef appeared first on The Gangster Report.

New York’s Gambino crime family kept a crew in Baltimore for many years. Longtime Gambino mob consigliere Joe N. Gallo was in charge of the organization’s affairs in Maryland from the 1950s into the 1980s. The Corbis, Louie Morici, Benjamin (Benny Trotta) Magliano and Thomas (Red) Aversa) ran the show in B-More in conjunction with Jewish mob leaders Julius (The Lord) Solsbury and the Cohen brothers.

THE TOP FIVE BALTIMORE MOB MURDERS OF ALL TIME:

1. June 18, 1952 – Baltimore mob figure Salvatore (Big Sam) Zannino disappears on his way to a meeting with mafia powers in New York. Zannino was a boxing promoter who ran the Squires Athletic Club. New York mob don Albert Anastasia is alleged to have ordered Zannino murdered and summoned him to his slaughter. Big Sam’s Cadillac was later found abandoned and bloodstained in Delaware.

2. June 23, 1952 – Baltimore mob enforcer Anthony (Nino) Messina, Big Sam Zannino’s bodyguard, is found shot to death and in the trunk of his car near the Squires Athletic Club. FBI informants told agents that Messina was murdered on Albert Anastasia’s orders to make sure he didn’t seek retribution for the hit on his boss Big Sam.

3. August 26, 1965 – Bricklayers union boss Kenny Hatfield is shot to death on his front doorstep by drug-addled mob associate Phil Fiorino over a labor dispute. Hatfield and Baltimore Building Trades Council boss Guido Iozzi began feuding when Hatfield had his men cross a picket line ordered by Iozzi. Fiorino was killed shortly thereafter.

4. July 15, 1961 – Baltimore mafia figure Edward (Eddie Burns) Castranda is shot to death behind the wheel of his station wagon outside the Dixie Diner. Baltimore Police records implicated the Perrera brothers and “Hitty” Wildstein as the culprits.

5. April 13, 1964 – Baltimore mob enforcer Gilbert Bowen is found strangled and overdosed to death in a vacant lot on the city’s Eastside.

The post The Maryland Mafia Hit List: Baltimore’s Top 5 Mob Murders appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 16, 2021 – Babyfaced east coast mob aspirant Pete (Peter Pan) Tuccio took a beating for disrespecting a Bonanno crime family crew in an angry text message exchange with crew members in 2015, around the same time he was torching an extortion victim’s vehicle on behalf of a dying Gambino crime family captain, according to Lucchese mob soldier turned star witness and blogger John Pennisi’s most recent Sitdownnews.com post titled “Peter Pan Headed To The Can.”

It was only a few years ago that the so-called 27-year old “Peter Pan” of the New York mafia, began seeing his picture begin popping up in the tabloids and his name bandied about as fodder for on-line mob-watching forums. The sudden notoriety was tied to his emergence as Philadelphia mafia boss Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino’s driver and bodyguard whenever the Skinny One, dubbed by some the Instagram Don for his social media presence and accessibility, was in the Big Apple.  

Tuccio, who has found his way into upper levels of power in multiple crime families lining the eastern seaboard at a very young age, pleaded guilty to the extortion count earlier this week and faces a 10-year prison term when sentenced in April. He set fire to a Queens pizza parlor owner’s Mercdes-Benz refusing to pay his monthly $500 tribute to Gambino skipper Ignazio (Uncle Iggy) Alonga, a one-time confidant of the Dapper Don, John Gotti (died of cancer in prison in 2002). Alonga died of natural causes in 2016.

Pennisi blogged this week in the wake of Tuccio’s plea deal being announced and wrote about meeting Tuccio through Tuccio’s uncle, Lucchese crime family capo Joseph (Joe Cafe) Desena just before Peter Pan got pounced by the Bonannos coming out of his Howard Beach home to check on his car. According to Pennisi, Tuccio engaged in a “texting war” with members of a Bonanno crew ran by Ronnie Giallanzo and Mike Padavona and Joe Cafe was calling on him to help squash the bad blood and take Tuccio under his wing for a while to keep an eye on him.

Pennisi, 51, met “Ronnie G” Giallanzo at house he was building in Howard Beach and instructed him to lay-off and call of the beating. Ronnie G told Pennisi the matter was out of his hands, saying he was inactive for the time being (fighting a case) and Mike Padavona was running the crew and had already green-lit things. Giallanzo called Tuccio a “punk” and a “mutt” and ended the chat by saying, “Fuck Joe Cafe, he’s a fucking errand boy.”

Days later, Tuccio was jumped and beaten by Padavona goons outside his house after the Bonnano thugs sent to harm him bumped his car with theirs’ to set off his alarm and draw him out into the open. The Luccheses believed the Bonnanos didn’t handle the situation right and should have gone to Joe Cafe first prior to putting an authorized beating into motion.

Pennisi began cooperating in 2016 out of fear that the Lucchese bosses were aiming to kill him. His job as a star witness has helped dismantle the crime family. In part of his testimony, Pennisi speaks of taking Tuccio with him to see Lucchese soldier Joseph (Little Joe) Perna in New Jersey. Little Joe Perna is close with Skinny Joey Merlino and federal authorities are of the opinion that it was through Perna that Tuccio was introduced to Merlino.

Earlier this month, Pennisi penned a blog post revealing what Perna told him about an infamous Philly mob murder; per Perna during a late-night drive back to New York after partying with Philly mobsters, Merlino’s former driver and bodyguard Anthony Nicodemo and Domenic (Baby Dom) Grande were the triggermen in the 2003 John (Johnny Gongs) Casasanto hit. Casasanto was a wiseguy rival of Skinny Joey’s and allegedly sleeping with Merlino’s wife while Merlino was away serving a prison bid. Merlino, 58, came out of the Big House and moved to Florida where he’s taken parole violation and gambling pinches.

Nicodemo is already doing 25-to-50 years for a 2012 mob hit (drug dealer Gino DiPietro) that Grande is also suspected of taking part in. Baby Dom Grande, 41, was indicted on drug and racketeering charges last November and is awaiting trial from home confinement. A photo of Grande and Tuccio smoking cigars on Tuccio’s backyard patio surfaced on social media last summer.

The post NY-PHIL Mafia’s “Peter Pan” Tuccio Got A Beat Down For Being Disrespectful To Bonannos In ’15 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 19, 2021 – Baltimore anti-violence activist Dante (Tater) Barksdale, a former member of the city’s notorious West Baltimore drug empire chronicled in the acclaimed HBO television show The Wire turned beloved community leader, was shot to death in the Douglass Homes projects over the weekend.

The 46-year old Barksdale has been the face of the city’s Safe Streets program since the 2000s. His uncle was legendary Baltimore gangland figure Nate (Bodie) Barksdale, who died of natural causes behind bars in 2016 at age 54.

Tater Barksdale was the Safe Streets program’s Outreach Coordinator. Safe Streets is a community-policing program and anti-violence and gang-intervention platform. He had worked for Safe Streets in one capacity or another since 2008. In 2019, he penned a memoir titled Growing Up Barksdale: A True Baltimore Story.

Bodie Barksdale inspired two characters on The Wire (2002-2008), an under-the-radar smash and critical darling that dove into the world of narcotics trafficking and police and political corruption in Baltimore. He was a suspect in multiple drug-related homicides while working as West Baltimore kingpin “Little Melvin” Williams’ No. 1 enforcer in the 1980s.

The Wire’s “bad guy” for the first three seasons was slick and ruthless drug boss Avon Barksdale, a composite of Little Melvin Williams and Bodie Barksdale. One of Avon Barksdale’s fictional lieutenants was a character named Preston (Bodie) Broatus in honor of Bodie Barksdale.

According to DEA records, Barksdale murdered his mentor and Williams’ rival, Frank Harper, before joining forces with Little Melvin and going on to takeover the city’s dope trade. Barksdale was acquitted at trial of killing Harper in 1982.

Barksdale’s reign of terror in West Baltimore finally came to a conclusion in 1986 when he was convicted of torturing three enemies (two men and woman he thought were sent to kill him) in an apartment at the Murphy Homes projects and received a 15-year state-prison sentence. Barksdale’s partner in crime and sidekick, Roland (Ronnie Mo) Bell, also had a character inspired by him appear on The Wire.

Bodie Barksdale came out of prison in 2000 and became an anti-gang counselor in his old neighborhood. An addiction to drugs eventually led him back to the streets though and in 2014 he was ensnared in a federal drug probe involving members of the Black Guerilla Family prion gang and sent back to the pen. Little Melvin Williams died of cancer in 2015 after getting the chance to appear in The Wire as “Deacon.”

The post Nephew Of Baltimore Street Legend, Beloved Community Activist, Tater Barksdale, Slain In Douglass Projects appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 20, 2021 – HBO’s critically acclaimed cop drama, The Wire, was inspired by the Baltimore Police Department’s quest to dismantle the “Little Melvin” Williams drug empire on the city’s Westside in the 1990s as seen firsthand by newspaper crime reporter turned Hollywood scribe David Simon.

Premiering in 2002, the setting of the show was pushed up into modern day and Little Melvin was reimagined as fictional drug lord Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris). The Barksdale story line ran for the first three seasons of the show, which ended in 2008 and appeared on several Best of the Decade lists for prestige TV.

Avon Barksdale might be a fictional character, but the Barksdale family name is as real as it gets on the streets of Baltimore. Dante (Tater) Barksdale, 46, a one-time Barksdale crew member who had crafted a successful post D-boy career as a community activist in the city’s Safe Streets program, was murdered last weekend in a southeast Baltimore housing project.

Nate (Bodie) Barksdale was a street legend with few equals in the annals of the Baltimore underworld. Bodie Barksdale’s was Tater’s uncle and Little Melvin Williams’ top enforcer. The character of Preston “Bodie” Broadus (J.D. Williams) in The Wire is partially based on Bodie Barksdale   

Simon’s brilliant, exquisitely researched five-part investigative series on the Little Melvin phenomenon in West Baltimore, Easy Money: Anatomy of a Drug Empire, ran in the Baltimore Sun in 1987 and eventually served as the source material for The Wire.

Simon’s writing partner is Ed Burns, a former Baltimore Police Department detective responsible for finally bringing the Little Melvin Williams heroin kingdom tumbling down to the ground in 1984. Long retired from his life as a dope boss, Williams had a recurring role on the series as a community religious leader known as “The Deacon.”

Little Melvin Williams died of cancer in December 2015. Bodie Barksdale joined him in gangster heaven a year later.

The mythology of Little Melvin and Bodie Barksdale will never die though. On the streets of West Baltimore, they are revered and their memories hailed and cherished.

The legend of Little Melvin Williams began in the 1960s, with Williams emerging on “The Block,” as a flamboyant pimp, pool hustler and policy lottery lieutenant working for the city of Baltimore’s Jewish mob boss Julius (The Lord) Salisbury. Through Salisbury, Little Melvin met Meyer Lansky and members of the Gambino crime family in New York and saw how the Italians – by way of employing the Jewish Lansky’s blueprint – structured their organization through buffers and secret codes. Little Melvin was used by Salisbury as a messenger and courier to Gambinos in Brooklyn, according to FBI documents.

Salisbury also introduced Little Melvin to the city’s Black racket bosses, men like Joseph (Proposition Joe) Johnson and Charles (Cherry Red) Franklin. The character “Prop Joe” Stewart, played by Robert Chew, on The Wire was based on “Prop Joe” Johnson, the Eastside boss always quick to lay out a proposition to resolve a dispute.

Little Melvin branched off on his own in the 1970s. He teamed up with Lamont (Chin) Farmer in 1979 and the rest was history. Chin Farmer is the real-life “Stringer Bell,” the deliberate, cool-headed and studious right-hand man of Avon Barksdale played by Idris Elba in The Wire. Farmer took college business courses and to build out Little Melvin’s infrastructure and set protocol.

With Farmer masterminding an intricate communication system using pagers and punch-code sequences on payphones as a means of counteracting police surveillance methods and Bodie Barksdale and his partner in crime, Roland (Ronnie Mo) Bell, providing the muscle. Little Melvin took over the whole Westside of Baltimore. The base of operations for Little Melvin’s crew was in the Lexington Terrace housing projects, where he would show up driving his Maserati and wearing a fur coat.

The Baltimore PD and the DEA suspected the Little Melvin Williams drug empire was clearing $1,000,000 in profits per week in 1982 and 1983. Per police surveillance records, he spent most of his days at his hangout, The Underground Club, a seedy drug den and go-go bar.

The beginning of the end for Little Melvin and his crew were a string of revenge slayings, including the headline grabbing murder of a girlfriend of Little Melvin lieutenant Louis (Cookie) Savage, a man who robbed Cookie Savage, the Club Chandelier killings and the Frank Harper hit. Ed Burns and his BPD drug unit, undertaking a painstaking process of analytics and informant development, finally broke Chin Farmer’s communication code after nearly four years. The case dropped in 1984.

Frank Harper was Bodie Barksdale’s mentor in the drug game. Prop Joe Johnson was gunned down in the Club Chandelier double homicide that also took the life of the club’s owner. Club Chandelier was Prop Joe’s headquarters.

Besides just Prop Joe, Bodie Barksdale, Chin Farmer and Little Melvin, other characters in The Wire universe were inspired by the colorful rogue’s gallery of underworld figures that filled the Williams organization from top to bottom.

“Ronnie Mo” became a character. Little Melvin’s close friends, El Dorado Strip Club owner, Kenny (Bird) Jackson and messenger James (Big Head Brother) Carter, got The Wire name checks as well.

Ed Burns’ role in the Williams investigation was portrayed in the series by actor Dominic West as hard-charging Baltimore PD drug-unit cop Jimmy McNulty. The 1999 movie Liberty Heights features a character named Little Melvin played by Orlando Jones based on Williams at the start of his career as a young Baltimore hoodlum pimping and running numbers.

Little Melvin Williams was found guilty at trial in 1985. He was paroled in the 1990s and would go on to do another four-year term in prison for pistol-whipping a debtor. Bodie Barksdale came out of prison in the late 1990s and eventually found his way back to the drug game and ended up returning to the penitentiary to live out his final years.

The post The Real Story Of The Wire: How The Baltimore PD Brought Down “Little Melvin’s” Heroin Crew appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 21, 2021 — No more false starts. On Wednesday, as U.S. President Donald Trump left office, he freed infamous West Coast crime boss Michael (Harry O) Harris in a last-minute pardon spree. A prior sentence reduction got derailed at the eleventh hour.

“Harry O” ran a giant cocaine ring in Los Angeles in the 1980s and financed the historic Death Row Records rap music label from behind bars. Harris has been in prison for the last 31 years.

Former Death Row artist Snoop Dogg heavily campaigned for Harry O’s pardon. Death Row Records spearheaded the gangster rap explosion of the 1990s.

It appeared Harris was being released via a sentence reduction in the summer of 2019. The sentence reduction was cancelled before Harry O made it past the prison gates.

Per DEA records, the 59-year old Harris gave Death Row Records founder Marion (Suge) Knight, a gangbanger and former college football player at UNLV, a $2,000,000 investment for his fledgling label in 1991. The label launched Snoop Dogg and the G-Funk era of hip hop. At the time of his investment, Harris was serving a life sentence for drugs, racketeering, kidnapping and attempted murder, stemming from a pair of busts in 1987 and 1988, respectively.

When an employee of Harry O’s was caught stealing, he was taken into the mountains of Antelope Valley and shot several times. The employee miraculously survived the attack and went on to testify at Harry O’s trial.

Harris produced a play on Broadway starring a then little-known Denzel Washington called Checkmates, becoming the first African-American to ever produce a Broadway play. He also owned large amounts of real estate, s successful limo and luxury car rental company and a number of Beverly Hills hair salons.

His kingdom of cocaine stretched from South Central, where Harris grew up, to the suburbs of the Valley and beyond. Once he conquered the L.A. market, Harry O expanded into other states around the country, creating distribution outposts in Michigan, Illinois, Maryland and Louisiana.

Suge Knight knew Harry O from their mutual affiliation with the Bloods street gang. Harris dove into the rap and promotion game by creating Godfather Entertainment. Informants told the FBI that Harris gave Knight two million dollars to start Death Row Records, named the label as well as commissioned the label’s iconic logo. Even though he was incarcerated, Harry O still exerted a tremendous amount of influence at the label using phone calls and visits to voice his opinion.

Knight toasted Harry O at a glitzy Beverly Hills launch party for the Death Row label attended by the hip-hop industry elite. The party itself and Suge Knight’s speech praising and toasting his benefactor was caught on tape by the FBI.

Knight, 56, is currently in prison for manslaughter related to a vehicular homicide from 2015 tied to a beef over the use of Knight’s likeness in the film Straight Outta Compton. Harry O and his ex-wife fell out with Knight over unpaid Death Row Records royalties.

Death Row Records was put to rest in 2005 when Harry O’s ex wife won a crippling federal law suit for retroactive proceeds from the $18,000,000 albums sold by the label the Harris’ financed. The groundbreaking label was shut down shortly thereafter.

During the 2010s, Harris helped start Second Chance Ministries in San Antonio. Back in 2019 when it looked like he was getting out of prison, he told BOP officials he intended to move to Texas and work as a prison rights activist upon his release.

The post Trump Pardons “Harry O,” Storied L.A. Drug Lord, Death Row Records Backer, Comes Home To Be Prison Rights Activist appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The murder of a revenge-minded girlfriend was the beginning of the end for the legendary “Little Melvin” Williams drug empire in West Baltimore and was used as a storyline in the first season of the HBO television show The Wire, based on a fictionalization of the Williams organization.

On the night of July 21, 1983, Deserra Press was killed by Williams’ enforcers after issuing threats to go to the police. Press, 27, was the girlfriend of Little Melvin’s lieutenant Louis (Cookie) Savage and when she found out about Savage’s dalliances with a series of other women, she told him she intended to turn him and the Little Melvin crew into authorities.

Williams ruled the Baltimore heroin trade in the 1980s. The Wire was on the air from 2002 until 2008 and hailed as a masterpiece by critics.

In the show, the Williams character is rechristened Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) and the plot is moved into modern times. The murder of Barksdale’s girlfriend Deirdre Kresson was a two-episode plot-point during the show’s first season. Kresson was shot to death through her kitchen window for threatening to inform on Barksdale in retaliation for Barksdale being unfaithful.

Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) taps into the Barksdale infrastructure and begins to dismantle it on the heels of cracking the Kresson case in The Wire. McNulty finds out that Kresson was called to the kitchen window of her apartment by Avon Barksdale’s nephew D’Angelo (Larry Gilliard) with a package of cocaine and shot to death by a hit man of Barksdale’s named Wee Bey (Hassan Johnson).

This is almost exactly what happened to Deserra Press in the summer of 1983. Cookie Savage is alleged to have brought the package of coke to her window and Nate (Bodie) Barksdale and his running buddy Roland (Ronnie Mo) Bell, blew her away. The only difference between the real-life slaying and the one that appeared on The Wire, is that in The Wire, D’Angelo didn’t know he was setting Kresson up to be murdered and Cookie Savage clearly did, per DEA documents.

Avon Barksdale had elements of the real-life Bodie Barksdale in his character makeup. The character Bodie Broadus (J.D. Williams) was named in Bodie’s honor. Ronnie Mo was made into a character on The Wire as well.

Just like in the show with the solving of the Kresson hit jumpstarting the investigation into Avon Barksdale’s drug kingdom, the Deserra Press murder and the attention it garnered in the media, propelled the Baltimore Police Narcotics Unit, led by hard-charging detective Ed Burns, to busting Little Melvin Williams and dismantling his organization in 1984. Burns helped David Simon, a Baltimore Sun crime reporter, create The Wire and was the inspiration for the Jimmy McNulty character.

Little Melvin, who had a recurring role in the show as a West Baltimore church worker, died of cancer in 2015. Bodie Barksdale was nailed for drug dealing again and died behind bars of a liver disorder a year later.

The post Loosening The Wiring: Slaying Of Scorned Girlfriend Led To Downfall Of Little Melvin’s Heroin Kingdom In Baltimore appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 22, 2021 – Colombo crime family capo Dominic (Donnie Shacks) Montemarano, a Brooklyn transplant living in Southern California the past 25 years, died recently of the COVID-19 virus. Gangland News was the first outlet to report on Donnie Shacks’ passing.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Donnie Shacks Montemarano was moving and shaking in LaLa Land, dating actress Elizabeth Hurley, paling around with actor James Caan and going on family trips with singer-turned-U.S. Congressman Sonny Bono. He was also spending a lot of time with the UCLA football team, resulting in the FBI opening an investigation into Donnie Shacks and some of the Bruins players for point shaving. No files were ever charged.

For decades, the 81-year old Montemarano was closely aligned with longtime Colombo boss Carmine (The Snake) Persico, representing Persico’s interests on the west coast. Persico ran the Colombos from behind bars, but died of natural causes in March 2019. There were unconfirmed rumors of Donnie Shacks being promoted to underboss at some point in his latter years.

The always-on-the-make Montemarano was busted for racketeering in New York in the 1980s. After serving a 10-year federal prison sentence, he reemerged in Los Angeles and settled in Beverly Hills. His wining and dining of UCLA All-American quarterback Cade McNown and some of his Bruins teammates throughout 1998 and the first half of 1999 drew the attention of the FBI. Informants told FBI agents that Donnie Shacks was having the players manipulate point spreads for him.

Per FBI records, Montemarano hosted lavish weekly Monday Night Football parties at his swank Beverly Hills home and McNown and other Bruins starters would attend. Then UCLA head football coach Rick Neuheisel and retired NFL quarterback and UCLA gridiron legend Troy Aikman (3 Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys) were also present, according to federal surveillance logs.

According to FBI records, chatter on court-authorized wiretaps in L.A. was that the “fix was in” for the November 7, 1998 game between UCLA and Oregon State. Undefeated UCLA, ranked No. 3 in the nation, was favored by 12 points, but failed to cover the spread, winning by seven, 41-34.

FBI agents tailed Donnie Shacks to New York on December 13, 1998 and followed him as he dined with McNown and McNown’s parents that evening and accompanied them to the Heisman Trophy Award ceremony at the New York Athletic Club the next day. McNown lost the award to Texas running back Ricky Williams.

In April 1999, the feds followed Mantemarano as part of the McNown entourage to the NFL Draft where he was selected in the first round, 12th overall, by the Chicago Bears and signed to a $22,000,000 contract. Gangland News reported that Donnie Shacks had a meeting with McNown in the spring of 1999, right after the draft, and told him they couldn’t be friends any longer and that it was best for him and his career if McNown kept his distance from him from that point forward.

Montemarano had been visited by the FBI on his return to L.A. after the trip out east to New York for the draft. McNown was dating Playboy Playmate Brande Roderick at the time.

McNown’s pro career flamed out fast he was out of the NFL within five years. UCLA went 10-2 and won the PAC-10 championship in the 1998-99 season, losing in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day to Wisconsin 38-31. The Associated Press and Coaches Poll voted them No. 8 in American at the end of the campaign.

Montemarano had to return to prison in 2004 for a parole violation connected to a domestic abuse incident. He was released in 2007 and lived out his final years in California.

Per NYPD documents, Montemarano got his start in the mob in 1960s under the infamous Gallo brothers (“Crazy Joey,” Larry and “Kid Blast”) and fought for the Gallos in the first Colombo Family War. Donnie Shacks was nicknamed at a young age due to his reputation as a world-class ladies man and “shacking up” with lots of beautiful women.

The post LA-By-NY Mob Capo Donnie Shacks Dead At 81, FBI Probed Point Shaving Claims Linking UCLA Football & Colombos appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 23, 2021 – Before he funded the birth of Death Row Records, former L.A. drug lord Michael (Harry O) Harris provided the seed money for Houston hip-hop impresario James (Lil’ J) Prince to start the groundbreaking Rap-A-Lot Records that went on to launch the Southern Rap sound, per DEA informants and exclusive GR sources.

For the first time since the late 1980s, Harry O is a finally a free man again. According to what he has told the BOP in recent sentence reduction requests, he plans on moving to Texas and working as a prison rights activist with a ministry he has ownership of in San Antonio.

Harris, one of the most infamous West Coast crime bosses of the past half-century, was released from prison earlier this week after 32 years behind bars on drug trafficking, racketeering and attempted murder convictions on a commutation from departing U.S. President Donald Trump. The 59-year Harry O is a legend in the L.A. dope game and produced a Broadway play in New York starring Denzel Washington (Checkmates) before he was locked up.

Lil’ J Prince founded Rap-A-Lot Records in 1987. Per DEA records, less than a year earlier in October 1986, informants told the government that Harry O gave Prince $200,000 in startup capital for a rap label. Harry O admitted to the L.A. Times that he gave Prince cash on a handshake deal and didn’t expect Prince to have the success he did with Rap-A-Lot Records.

The number he’s alleged to have given to a business-minded L.A. gangbanger named Marion (Suge) Knight in 1991 to start transformational Death Row Records, clears the million-dollar mark. Death Row was based around NWA castoff Dr. Dre and a protégé of Dr. Dre’s they called Snoop Doggy Dog. Add in a little Tupac in the years to come and the rest was history.

Death Row defined the Gangster Rap era in hip hop and merged hardcore rap and mainstream music for the first time. Snoop Dogg reportedly lobbied aggressively with the Trump White House for Harris’ commutation.

Per DEA documents, Harry O “called shots” in the early days of Death Row, choosing the name of the label, commissioning the designing of the iconic electric-chair logo and giving notes and advice in the production of the Dr. Dre all-time classic album The Chronic that put Death Row Records on the map. DEA agents followed Knight on visits to Harry O in prison on two dozen different occasions between February 1991 and November 1992.

On February 22, 1992, at the lavish Death Row Records launch party hosted at Chasen’s in Beverly Hills, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg performed and Suge Knight toasted Harry O, per an FBI report. Harry O footed the bill for the party through his Godfather Entertainment company. The FBI and DEA were on hand as well, snapping photos and taking video of the event.

Harris could only oversee so much from his prison cell. Knight soon cut Harry O out of the business and left Harris’ Godfather Entertainment for splashier Interscope Records. Death Row generated more than $300,000,000 in sales revenue in its 15-year existence.

Harry O ran a cocaine empire that stretched from California all the way east to Michigan, Maryland and Massachusetts. In the 2000s, Harris and his ex-wife successfully sued Knight for back payment of royalties and effectively shut down the label with their lawsuit. Knight, famous for his thuggish tactics in the music industry, is currently in prison for killing a man with his car over a dispute related to the money Knight felt he was entitled to for being portrayed in the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton.

Lil’ J Prince, 56, denies ever taking any money from Harry O in his founding of Rap-A-Lot Records. Prince called Harry O a “lying snitch” to the L.A. Times in 1998 when the allegation first surfaced as part of an FBI and DEA investigation into Death Row Records in the wake of Tupac’s murder in Las Vegas. Harry O told the times that he and Prince had fallen out in the mid-1990s over the management of New York rapper Dana Dane.

Rap-A-Lot Records came out of the box with The Geto Boys as its signature act. The group became known as the “Godfathers of Southern Rap.” Geto boy “frontman” Scarface is considered a Hip-Hop legend and rap genius by his peers. The 1991 song My Mind Is Playing Tricks On Me went to No. 1 on the hip-hop chart and finally crossed Southern Rap over to the mainstream.

The post Harry O Invested In Rap-A-Lot Records, Per Sources, Will Settle In Texas On Heels Of Presidential Pardon appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 25, 2021 – It was way more than just Death Row Records.

From behind bars, L.A. drug kingpin Michael (Harry O) Harris, was wheeling and dealing in the music industry, making deals for himself, his label and his wife with major record companies through most of the 1990s, according to DEA records. The scope of Harris’ vast connections in the industry far exceeded simply bankrolling the birth of the gangster rap genre.

Harry O is well known to have supplied the financing for gangster rap goliath Death Row Records in 1991, some three years after being put in prison for narcotics trafficking and attempted murder. Harris, 59, was released from federal prison last week seven years early on a pardon from departing U.S. President Donald Trump.

In the 1980s, Harry O ran the dope game in L.A. The consummate street politician, Harris maintained strong relationships with both the Bloods and the Crips, using the rival gangs to sell his cocaine in crack form in L.A.’s South Central neighborhood. He looked to diversify and invested $200,000 in what became the trailblazing Houston hip-hop label Rap-A-Lot Records headed by James (Lil’J) Prince and a Broadway play starring a barely-known Denzel Washington called Checkmates.

Prince has repeatedly denied taking any money from Harris to start Rap-A-Lot Records. Harris claims him and Prince feuded in a business dispute involving an east coast rapper in 1995 and stopped speaking. Rap-A-Lot produced the seminal Southern Rap trio The Geto Boys.

After he got locked up, Harry O was determined to continue pursuing interests in the music business. He formed Godfather Entertainment and had his attorney David Kenner (counsel to a series of New York mob figures) arrange a meeting with gangbanging aspiring music-label boss Marion (Suge) Knight. At a sit down held in a prison visiting room in the summer of 1991, Harris agreed to fund Death Row Records with a $1.5 million dollar investment and through his ties in the entertainment world helped broker the deal that got Dr. Dre to sign as the new label’s featured artist.

Death Row Records went on to spawn Dr. Dre’s transcendent rap record The Chronic and soon more iconic classics from the era in Dr. Dre-produced Snoop Dogg and Tupac albums. But Harry O and Suge Knight had a falling out and Harris and his ex-wife Lydia had to sue Knight for back royalties on the million-five he pumped into the label to get it off the ground. Snoop Dogg campaigned for Harry O’s release with the Trump White House.

No longer involved in Death Row, Harry O immediately pivoted to his then wife Lydia’s “Lifestyle” hip hop label. Per a trove of DEA documents related to drugs and the rap world, in 1993, he helped arrange for Lifestyle to get a $150,000 production deal with Motown Records for an artist named Beefy Johnson. That same year, the documents allege, he got her a $250,00 deal from Relativity Records (Sony) for the signing of Lifestyle rapper Blak Czer and a half-million in an artist development deal with Interscope for New York rapper Dana Dane. Between 1994 and 1996, Lifestyle got DJ Battlecat a $200,000 publishing deal with Viacom’s Famous Music label and inked a $2,000,000 recording deal with Madonna’s Maverick Records label for Dana Dane to record his first album.

The post The Life & Times Of Harry O In The Music Business: L.A. Coke Baron Helped Launch Multiple Hip Hop Careers appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 25, 2021 – The boss of the Gangster Disciples in Alabama is going away for 40 years of fed time. Shauntay (Shake & Bake) Craig was nailed in a sweeping 2016 drug, racketeering and murder case targeting GD activity in the south, specifically, Atlanta, Memphis and Birmingham. Authorities point the finger at him for ordering the slaying of a government witness hiding out in Colorado.

Craig, 42, pleaded guilty to the charges in the summer of 2019 and was finally sentenced late last week. He went on the run following his indictment and spent almost three years on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

Georgia-based Gangster Disciple soldier Donnie (Smurf) Glass, 30, was hit with a life sentence last week from the same case. Glass organized a teenage enforcement crew known as “The H.A.T.E. Committee,” dispatched by GD leaders across the south for muscle work and murder contracts.

The Gangster Disciples were founded in Chicago in the late 1960s. Today, they are the biggest, most powerful street gang in the Midwest, with more than 25,000 members and outlets spread as far south as Florida and as far east as New York.

The post The Shake Up Down South: Alabama’s Gangster Disciple Boss, “Shake & Bake” Craig, Gets 40 Years Behind Bars appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 27, 2021 – Gangster Disciples boss Larry (The Chief) Hoover dispatched the GD’s H.A.T.E Committee enforcement wing to extort Miami rapper Rick Ross in 2012, according to DEA records and federal court documents. Per DEA informants, Hoover and GD brass around the country were offended by Ross (real name William Roberts) claiming GD affiliation and leveraging Hoover’s name in his lyrics for his own credibility in the rap game.

H.A.T.E Committee crew leader Donnie (Smurf) Glass, 30, was sentenced to life in prison this week. Smurf Glass was part of a 2016 bust that put away GDs from Memphis, Birmingham and Atlanta. The H.A.T.E Committee was founded in 2010 out of Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, and created by GD’s in the American south to handle the most high-priority hits and muscle jobs.  

Ross, 44, is a titan of the hip-hop world, a self-made mogul who went from prison guard to best-selling rapper and music industry power. His well-crafted rap persona co-opts the images and reputations of a series of real-life historic drug bosses. The stage name Rick Ross is a reference to legendary L.A. drug lord Rick (Freeway Ricky) Ross, a crack kingpin who slang his drugs from a house located underneath the Harbor Freeway (I-110) in South Central L.A. and was unknowingly in bed with the CIA in a controversial covert operation where the Company secretly invested in drug businesses to fund foreign military operations.

The 70-year old Hoover runs GD Nation from his prison cell in Florence, Colorado, the SUPERMAX facility that houses the country’s most dangerous criminals. The Gangster Disciples are headquartered out of Hoover’s hometown of Chicago, but has satellite crews spread across the country and a rank-and-file membership numbering close to 30,000.

Rick Ross released the song “Blowing Money Fast,” in 2010 on the album Teflon Dom. The chorus of the song proclaims “I think I’m Big Meech, Larry Hoover,” referencing the Gangster Disciples Godfather and Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, the also-imprisoned Black Mafia Family drug crew boss.

Hoover was bothered by the name-check and the fact that Rick Ross was glomming on to the GD Nation brand without permission, per DEA informants and decided to send the H.A.T.E Committee to see him in South Florida and explain to him the situation. Word of the assignment reached Smurf Glass in Georgia via an intermediary from Chicago, according to an internal DEA office memo.

On evening of November 17, 2012, Smurf Glass and other “Down South” GDs, Shauntay (Shake & Bake) Craig, Alonzo (Spike) Walton and Kevin (K.K.) Clayton approached Rick Ross at The Loews Hotel in Miami Beach, according to DEA records, and demanded tribute cash if he was going to continue to boast of connections to GD Nation and threatened physical harm if he didn’t comply. Craig, 42, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for drugs, racketeering and murder last week in federal court out of Birmingham.

Craig and Walton were GD regional bosses of Alabama and Georgia, respectively. Clayton was a co-founder of the H.A.T.E. Committee and a GD enforcer.

The post DEA Records: Rick Ross Upset Gangster Disciples, Larry Hoover Sent Word To Pay Or Shut Up Thru H.A.T.E Committee appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 27, 2021 – The upcoming Starz scripted drama Black Mafia Family added Michole Briana White, Eric Kofi-Abrefa, Ajiona Alexus and Myles Truitt to the show that began shooting this week. The production is scheduled to run through the summer and will be shooting in Detroit and Atlanta.

Black Mafia Family is hip-hop mogul 50 Cent’s follow up to his Starz hit Power and tells the true story of twins Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory and Terry (Southwest T) Flenory and their rise from the streets of Detroit in the 1980s to bi-coastal drug bosses running the fabled “BMF” crew with satellite operations in nearly half of the 50 states by the mid-2000s. The Flenorys went down in 2005’s Operation Motor City Mafia Bust and were both sentenced to 30-year prisons sentences after guilty pleas in 2007.

White (Songbird) plays the Flenory brothers’ mother, Lucille, described as “strong-willed and dignified.” Lucile Flenory was the God-fearing matriarch of the Flenory clan trying to navigate her commitment to the church and the commitment to her sons.

Kofi-Abrefa (Blue Story) plays a character named, Lamar, set to be the show’s first season’s antagonist, a rival drug boss from the Flenorys neighborhood who returns to town eager to reclaim his turf. Truitt (Kin) plays “B-Mickie,” the Flenorys’ childhood friend and BMF lieutenant starting to to chafe under the Flenorys leadership style. Alexus (Empire) will play “Kato,” a female BMF crew member who endears herself to the Flenory family.

The Lamar character is described by show producers as a “cross between a serial killer and a court jester, a hood legend with a backstory filled of gangland conquests embedded in local street lore.” Lamar is based on real-life Southwest Detroit street legend Layton (The Beast) Simon, famous for feuding with the Flenorys in the late 1980s.

B-Mickie, a character the producers tab a “philosophizing stoner type” is said to be based on Dexter (Sosa) Hussey, the BMF strategist and chief logistics officer currently on the outs with the Flenorys. Hussey penned a book about his time in BMF called “Blueprint To Conspiracy.”

Earlier this month, it was announced that Big Meech’s son, aspiring rapper Demetrius (Lil’ Meech) will play his dad in the show. Da’Vinchi (All-American, The Boys) is slated to play Terry Flenory aka “Southwest T.” The real Southwest T walked out of prison early last spring due to the COVID-19 outbreak and is finishing out his time under home confinement back in Detroit.

Starz was fast to announce that acclaimed character actor Wood Harris (The Wire) joined the production to play “Black Pat,” the Flenory brothers’ first boss in the drug world. Harris’ character is said to be a composite of real-life BMF mentors Edrick (E.D.) Boyd and Harold (H-Town) Mills. Boyd led The 50 Boyz crew. Mills was the Flenorys’ first wholesale supplier.

Actors Russell Hornsby and Steve Harris and rapper Kash Doll were also cast; Hornsby will play Charles “Pops” Flenory, the musician patriarch of a Midwest family struggling to make it in a smoggy section of Motown in the decaying malaise of the early 1980s. Harris will play Detective Bryant a childhood friend of Big Meech’s who is assigned to breakup his burgeoning crack empire and Kash Doll will play Monique, a paralegal to a high-priced criminal defensive attorney in Detroit being romanced by Big Meech.

Steve Harris and Wood Harris are brothers. Steve got an Emmy nomination for his work on ABC’s legal drama, The Practice. Wood Harris has a place in the Hall of Fame of fictional bad guys for his work as Baltimore drug lord Avon Barksdale on The Wire, part of HBO’s first wave of prestige programming.

50 Cent helped create Power for Starz in 2014, which ran for six years and became the cable network’s signature scripted drama. Power told the fictional story of a New York drug lord named “Ghost” (played brilliantly by Omari Hardwick) and has been hailed by critics and television historians as the “Black Sopranos.” Producer Randall Emmett and writer Randy Huggins, who worked with 50 Cent on Power, are on-board with the Black Mafia Family series. Huggins, a native Detroiter, is showrunning the project.

The post BMF TV Series Begins Shooting, 50 Cent’s Starz Project Brings Actors Aboard To Play Big Meech’s Mom & Rival appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 28, 2021 – From his prison cell, Gangster Disciples boss Larry Hoover tapped Anthony (Crazy Tony) Dobbins and Warren (Big Head G) Griffin as GD ruling panel members, per a new federal drug, racketeering and murder indictment out of the U.S. District Court in Southern Illinois dropped Monday against Dobbins, Griffin and five others.

The Gangster Disciples are based in Chicago. If found guilty on all counts, the men would face life prison sentences. Crazy Tony Dobbins, 53, became the first GD from East St. Louis, Illinois (“The E.I”) to be named to a “Board Member” spot when in the fall of 2014, Hoover named a new regime on the street via word delivered from behind prison walls. Per court filings, Hoover through an intermediary gave Dobbins, Kentucky-based GD Big Head G Griffin and Chicago GD Frank (Little Red Beard) Smith the power in the gang on a daily basis at a Labor Day picnic on September 1, 2014.

Hoover, 70, has ran the Gangster Disciples street gang, the biggest black-mafia style organization in the country, since the 1970s. A majority of his time at the helm of the gang he helped found on Chicago’s South Side has been spent behind bars for the 1973 slaying of William (Pookie) Young over a missing stash of drug money.

Little Red Beard Smith, 47, hosted a party in honor of Hoover’s birthday on November 25, 2017 at a downtown Chicago nightclub attended by GD brass from around the country. The DEA estimates there are more than 25,000 Gangster Disciples in the United States.

Dobbins and Griffin are suspected of ordering a half-dozen murders after taking power in ’14, according to sources in law enforcement, in an effort to get everybody in GD Nation “in line.” Monday’s indictment charges two homicides: the April 28, 2018 murder of Leroy Allen and the May 18, 2018 gangland assassination of GD Board Member Ernest “Don Smokey” Wilson.

The post U.S. Attorneys In Illinois: Hoover Keeps Calling Shots, Installed New Gangster Disciples Street Bosses In ’14 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

January 28, 2021 – Philadelphia wiseguy Kenny Arabia, who was under indictment by the feds in a drug and racketeering case, died of natural causes earlier this month. He had been made responsible for overseeing a Philly mob shakedown campaign launched in Atlantic City in the mid-2010s, per his indictment.

As a youngster in the 1970s and early 1980s, Arabia was a driver and bodyguard for his uncle, local mafia figure Dominick (Mickey Diamond) DeVito. More recently, the 67-year old Arabia was directly under Philly mafia underboss Steven (Handsome Stevie) Mazzone, according to Arabia’s own words caught on an FBI wire. “I’m with Stevie direct,” he told an informant recording their conversation.

The case Arabia was swept up in last November included Mazzone and Mazzone’s nephew, reputed capo, Domenic (Baby Dom) Grande. Mazzone and Grande, per court filings, used Arabia and his partner-in-crime, Daniel (Cozzy) Castelli, as their point men to extort gambling, loan sharking and drug businesses in Atlantic City. They all pleaded not guilty.

In October 2015, Mazzone issued a mandate at a celebratory dinner following an induction ceremony to reestablish power and influence in the Boardwalk resort town the Philly mob once ruled unfettered. The next month, Grande is alleged to have met with Arabia and Castelli and tasked them with getting their hooks into A.C., for him and Mazzone, per the indictment.

Arabia’s uncle, “Mickey Diamond” DeVito disappeared on February 22, 1982 on his way to a meeting at a mobbed-up New Jersey pizza parlor. His dead, battered and trussed body was found in the trunk of Arabia’s silver-colored Cadillac three days later. DeVito was on the wrong side of a regime change in the Bruno-Scarfo crime family.

According to sources, Arabia dodged a murder contract placed on his head by Bruno-Scarfo crime family soldier Joe (Joey Electric) Servidio over Servidio’s belief that Arabia was stealing from him and bad mouthing him around town. Servidio, who came from the organization’s North Jersey crew, is serving 12 years behind bars on his own racketeering case. Servidio’s desire to kill someone he felt betrayed him is made reference to in his 2018 indictment.

Before he was arrested in the case, Servidio was told to stand down in his attempts to whack Arabia by his capo, North Jersey skipper Joe (Scoops) Licata, per sources. Licata told Joey Electric the order was coming from Mazzone, one of the sources said.

The post Handsome Stevie’s Man In Atlantic City, Philly Goodfella, Kenny Arabia, Dies Before He Sees Trial appeared first on The Gangster Report.