The more things change, the more they stay the same. That’s the old adage, right? Well, it appears to be ringing true when it comes to the Black Mafia Family in recent times. Original Black Mafia Family members Christopher (Pig) Triplett and Chauncey (C-Bear) Johnson have had their names bandied about over the last year in regards to their place in the syndicate‘s attempted resurgence. Pig is back in the can, C-Bear is on the verge of getting out and taking over, per sources.
“C-Bear has the juice,” said one Black Mafia Family insider. “Everybody likes him, if anybody can put it all back together, he can.”
The first incarnation of the Black Mafia Family was toppled 10 years ago. Triplett and Johnson were a part of that bust. In the years following roughly 150 gang members and associates around the country being imprisoned for various roles in an epic nationwide drug conspiracy distributing up to 3,000 kilos of cocaine a month, a second generation of syndicate leadership began to emerge, consisting of younger lieutenants untouched by the titanic Operation Motor City Mafia indictment in 2005 (and the several more forthcoming) and original gang rank-and-file given shorter terms behind bars.
“We’re aware of the continued existence of the Black Mafia Family,” said one DEA source. “Although their existence is marginal compared to where they once were, they’re functioning with a reassembled pecking order and in multiple states.”
The goliath Black Mafia Family (known on the streets as simply, “BMF”) was the biggest urban dope-dealing conglomerate in United States history, reining as the nation’s premiere African-American criminal organization of the last portion of the Twentieth Century and the first five years of the New Millennium. Founded on the southwestern side of Detroit in 1990 by the Flenory brothers, Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory and Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, but was fast to expand to outposts around the country, soon establishing additional BMF base of operations in geographically strategic locales like Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas and St. Louis.
Native Detroiters, Pig Triplett and C-Bear Johnson have both been there at the Flenory boys’ sides since the start. Operating out of the region’s West Downriver area – a cluster of factory towns inhabited by a significant African-American population –, they were each indicted and subsequently convicted in the 2005 case responsible for bringing down the entire BMF leadership. They are also said to be integral cogs in the “new era” BMF along with the others. Pig Triplett, 43, came out from behind bars in 2012 and reemerged eager to dive back into the world of narcotics trafficking.
Triplett was arrested for possession with intent to distribute over $125,000 worth of drugs last summer in Ohio. His car was pulled over driving southbound on I-75 in the early morning hours of August 18, 2014 and uncovered two pounds of heroin in the vehicle’s air filter. He was sentenced to four years in prison in May and id scheduled for a 2018 out date.
If the past has showed us anything in relation to Pig Triplett, it’s that he’s a standup guy, someone willing to do time instead of turnover on his co-conspirators in court. He was one of the first to fall in the initial 2005 BMF case. Triplett and his then-partner in crime on the street, fellow Detroit BMF lieutenant Calvin (Playboy) Sparks were pulled over in St. Louis in April 2004 with nine bricks of cocaine concealed in the SUV they were driving in.
“Pig” Triplett
In conversations intercepted by court-authorized wiretaps, Southwest T was heard trying ease concerns from members of Sparks’ family that Triplett was about to turn witness and give up Playboy and the Flenorys to the government in exchange for his freedom. Southwest T, responsible for looking after BMF activity in Michigan even though he resided in L.A., proved accurate in his assessment of the situation and Pig Triplett stood strong, refusing to fold.
Running point in Detroit for the Southern California headquartered Terry Flenory were Benjamin (Blank) Johnson and Johnson’s right-hand man, Eric (Slim) Bivens. Both Johnson and Bivens flipped after being indicted in Operation Motor City Mafia. Blank Johnson is C-Bear Johnson’s half-brother. Convicted BMF member Derrick (Chipped-Tooth D) Peguese is his other half-brother and in the syndicate’s heyday was Southwest T’s representative in the Atlanta area, where his older brother Big Meech set up shop.
Big Meech is suspected of carrying out at least two murders in his tenure living large in the Dirty South. Federal informants tag Meech as the shooter in the October 1997 slaying of turncoat Dennis Walker, a Detroit drug dealer who had testified against BMF associate Tony Valentine, and Flenory was charged but never put on trial for the November 2003 double-homicide of Anthony (Wolf) Jones and Lamont (Riz) Girdy which took place outside an Atlanta nightclub.
Walker was gunned down with automatic weapon fire from a passing vehicle while he was in his own car driving onto an Atlanta expressway off-ramp after leaving a party at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel celebrating his release from a three-year prison stint earlier in the day. Jones and Girdy, close friends of hip-hop and pop culture impresario Sean (Puffy) Combs, tussled with Big Meech and his bodyguard inside Chaos nightclub and minutes later were shot dead in the parking lot.
The Flenory brothers both pled guilty in the Motor City Mafia bust in 2007 and each got 30-year sentences. Per a BMF insider, Big Meech still keeps in frequent communication with members of the organization on the street.
Southwest T (far left) & Big Meech (bottom right) in ’03
While Triplett is just getting comfortable in his new jailhouse digs, C-Bear is days away from trading his prison blues for some fresh new gear on the “outside.” And maybe a new job to boot. Johnson is slated for release from his decade stint in federal lock-up on August 2 and according to sources will immediately assume the role of boss over the existing BMF power structure, a job he was personally appointed by Big Meech and one he’s been eagerly preparing for on the “inside” for years. Currently, the 44-year old C-Bear is in a Texas halfway house waiting for his walking papers in just two and a half weeks. When the 2005 indictment struck in October 2005. Big Meech was spending the week at his mansion in Texas and taken into custody near Dallas. Exactly where Johnson will headquarter his affairs out of is unknown.
Another reputed new era BMF kingpin, Darnell (Cuckoo) Cooley, was released from prison last summer on a manslaughter conviction and according to exclusive Gangster Report sources, is one of those in charge of BMF activity in Michigan today. Cooley and his two bodyguards beat a man to death in a fight at a suburban Detroit jazz club in the summer of 2009. At the outset of the case, Cooley was charged with murder, however the only available witness to the vicious assault (a very public stomping & strangling) was killed himself in the hours before he was scheduled to testify at a grand jury proceeding – possibly on orders from Cooley, per DEA informants – and state prosecutors agreed to a plea deal with him resulting in only five years of prison time.
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