May 5, 2020 – The United States Attorneys Office in Detroit is objecting to the early release of revered drug baron Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory from his 30-year prison term. Flenory, 51 years old and ubiquitous in hip-hop culture, is seeking a compassionate release because of the COVID-19 health crisis like his little brother and co-defendant, Terry, was granted last week. The Flenorys controlled large swaths of the American wholesale cocaine market in the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s.
Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, 50, walked out of a federal correctional facility in Kentucky Tuesday morning and will serve out the remainder of his sentence on home confinement. Big Meech’s attempt to do the same has received push back from the feds. U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Matthew Schneider, filed a response brief to Flenory’s bid for compassionate release last Friday with U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson, arguing, in part, that Big Meech has a “pending murder charge,” out of Atlanta.
Lawson will rule on Flenory’s release on May 17. He took over the case from retired U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn, who presided over the 50-person Operation Motor City Mafia indictment from when it dropped in the fall of 2005 until he stepped down from the bench back in December. Flenory is locked up in Oregon and his scheduled release date is in October 2031 .
The high-profile Big Meech and the low-key Southwest T were convicted in 2007 of leading the Black Mafia Family, the biggest urban cocaine empire in American history. During their nearly-unfathomable 15-year run atop the dope game, they made hundreds of millions of dollars and established franchises all around the country, embedding themselves in hip-hop culture and underworld lore alike for defining what a New Millennium drug kingpin is.
Both Flenorys pleaded guilty in the landmark Operation Motor City Mafia case. Big Meech is name-checked in hip-hop lyrics from a variety of chart-topping MCs and was the inspiration for the birth of “trap rap.” The genre’s pioneer Young Jeezy was close to Big Meech at the height of his power.
The ambitious, well-connected Flenory brothers started BMF in Detroit in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, Big Meech was living in Atlanta and Southwest T was located in Los Angeles. Together, they oversaw 23 strategically-placed satellite crews in different city centers coast-to-coast and took over a sizable chunk of the nation’s coke market with diplomacy and acumen instead of brute force.
In 2003, Big Meech was charged with the murder of Anthony (Wolf) Jones and Lamont (Riz) Girdy outside an Atlanta nightclub, but had the charges dropped after claiming self-defense. Presumably, the Jones-Girdy homicide is what the U.S. Attorney’s Office is referencing in its response brief relating to Flenory’s compassionate release request. Wolf Jones was Puff Daddy’s bodyguard.
The Flenory brothers were a picture in contrast: Big Meech was the charming and decadent face of the organization, hobnobbing with celebrities, rappers and pro athletes, leaning into the role of new-era drug don, in contrast to his baby bro Southwest T who was more understated and deliberate in his movements on the west coast. Southwest T ran the BMF homebase in Detroit remotely from his mansion in California through a cadre of “capos” and childhood friends back in Motown.
The feds finally brought the Flenorys and their highly-structured drug kingdom down in October 2005, charging 50 BMF leaders and associates with running a continual criminal enterprise the likes and scope of which the DEA had never seen before. Everyone from the landmark case, besides Big Meech and his third-in-command Fleming (ILL) Daniels, have been released. Daniels, 47, is serving time for a separate murder case in a Georgia state prison.
Rapper and actor 50 Cent is producing a television series on the rise and fall of BMF for Starz, where 50 Cent was behind the hit show Power for the last five years. Power scribe Randy Huggins, a native Detroiter, will be the showrunner for the upcoming BMF show.
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