Frank Lucas

Lucas was born and raised in La Grange, North Carolina, a suburb of Goldsboro, North Carolina, to Fred and Mahalee (née Jones) Lucas,[10][11] He said the incident that motivated him to embark on a life of crime was him witnessing his 12-year-old cousin's murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, for looking flirtatiously at a white woman. He drifted through a life of petty crime until one occasion when he got into a fight with a former employer with whose daughter he had been having an affair. In the fight, Lucas hit the father on the head with a pipe, knocking him unconscious. He then stole $400 from the company safe and set the establishment on fire. Later, Frank fled to New York City at the behest of his mother, who feared that he would either be imprisoned for life or lynched.[12] Once in Harlem, he quickly began indulging in petty crime and pool hustling before he was taken under the wing of gangster Bumpy Johnson.[6] Lucas' connection to Johnson has since come under some doubt; he claimed to have been Johnson's driver for 15 years, although Johnson spent just five years out of prison before his death in 1968. According to Johnson's widow, much of the narrative that Lucas claimed as his actually belonged to another young hustler named Zach Walker, who lived with Johnson and his family and later betrayed him.[13]

After Johnson's death, Lucas traveled around and came to the realization that, to be successful, he would have to break the monopoly that the Mafia held in New York. Traveling to Bangkok, Thailand, he eventually made his way to Jack's American Star Bar, an R&R hangout for black soldiers. Here that he met former U.S. Army sergeant Leslie "Ike" Atkinson, who was from Goldsboro, North Carolina, and married to one of Lucas' cousins. Lucas is quoted as saying, "Ike knew everyone over there, every black guy in the Army, from the cooks on up."[6]

When interviewed for a New York magazine article published in 2000, Lucas denied putting the drugs among the corpses of American soldiers. Instead, he flew with a North Carolina carpenter to Bangkok and:

We did it, all right...ha, ha, ha... Who the hell is gonna look in a dead soldier's coffin? Ha ha ha. . . .We had him make up 28 copies of the government coffins . . . except we fixed them up with false bottoms, big enough to load up with six, maybe eight kilos . . . It had to be snug. You couldn't have shit sliding around. Ike was very smart, because he made sure we used heavy guys' coffins. He didn't put them in no skinny guy's . . ."

— Frank Lucas[6]

However, Atkinson, nicknamed "Sergeant Smack" by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),[14] has said he shipped drugs in furniture, not caskets.[8] Whatever method he used, Lucas smuggled the drugs into the United States with this direct link from Asia. Lucas said that he made $1 million per day selling drugs on 116th Street though this was later discovered to be an exaggeration. Federal judge Sterling Johnson, who was the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York at the time of Lucas' crimes, called Lucas' operation "one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever, an innovator who got his own connections outside the U.S. and then sold the narcotics himself in the street."

Lucas trusted only relatives and close friends from North Carolina to handle his various heroin operations.[6] Lucas thought they were less likely to steal from him and be tempted by various vices in the big city. He stated his heroin, "Blue Magic", was 98–100% pure when shipped from Thailand.[15] Lucas has been quoted as saying that his worth was "something like $52 million", most of it in Cayman Islands banks. Added to this is "maybe 1,000 keys [kilograms; or, 2,200 pounds] of dope on hand" with a potential profit of no less than $300,000 per kilo (2.2 lbs.).

This huge profit margin allowed him to buy property all over the country, including office buildings in Detroit and apartments in Los Angeles and Miami. He also bought a ranch of several thousand acres in North Carolina on which he ranged 300 head of Black Angus cattle, including a breeding bull worth $125,000.[6]

Lucas rubbed shoulders with the elite of the entertainment, political, and criminal worlds, stating later that he had met Howard Hughes at one of Harlem's best clubs in his day.[6] Though he owned several mink and chinchilla coats and other accessories, Lucas much preferred to dress casually and corporately so as not to attract attention to himself.[16] When he was arrested in the mid-1970s, all of Lucas' assets were seized.[16]

The properties in Chicago, Detroit, Miami, North Carolina, Puerto Rico — they took everything. My lawyer told me they couldn't take the money in the offshore accounts, and I had all my money stored in the Cayman Islands. But that's BS; they can take it. Take my word for it. If you got something, hide it, 'cause they can go to any bank and take it.

— Frank Lucas[16]

In January 1975, Lucas' house in Teaneck, New Jersey, was raided by a task force consisting of 10 agents from Group 22 of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and 10 New York Police Department detectives attached to the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB).[17] In his house authorities found $584,683 in cash,[17] though Lucas contended that the officers executing the search departed with the full eleven million dollars temporarily stored in his attic, and documented only 5% of the currency seized.[18] He was later convicted of both federal and New Jersey state drug violations. Thanks to nearly two years of detective work by the "Z-Team" (Eddie Jones, Al Spearman, and Benny Abruzzo) Frank Lucas was sentenced to 70 years in prison.[1] Once convicted, Lucas provided evidence that led to more than 100 further drug-related convictions. For his safety in 1977, Lucas and his family were placed in the witness protection program.[19][20] In 1981, after five years in custody, his 40-year federal term and 30-year state term were reduced to time served[2] plus lifetime parole.[1][9] In 1984, he was caught and convicted of trying to exchange one ounce of heroin and $13,000 for one kilogram of cocaine.[4] He received a sentence of seven years and was released from prison in 1991.[5][10] In 2012, while living in Newark, he pleaded guilty to attempting to cash a $17,000 federal disability benefit check twice. Due to his advanced age and his poor health, which included his restriction to a wheelchair, prosecutors agreed to a sentence of five years' probation.[3]

Lucas at the Big Apple Comic Con in 2008

Lucas' wife, Julie Farrait, was also convicted for her role in her husband's criminal enterprise and spent five years in prison. After she was released, the couple lived separately for some years, and Farrait moved back to Puerto Rico. After several years, however, they reconciled, and according to a December 2007 Village Voice article, had been married for 40 years at the time.[5]

Lucas fathered seven children.[5][28] Lucas-Sinclair entered the witness protection program with Lucas in 1977. He started a website, Yellow Brick Road, containing resources for the children of imprisoned parents.[19][20]

Lucas was known to be eclectic in his religious preferences, having converted to the Catholic faith while at prison in Elmira, which he stated he did because the prison chaplain assisted inmates being released on parole. He had Baptist affiliations as well.[29]

In his last years, Lucas was confined to a wheelchair due to a car accident that broke his legs.[5]

Lucas died at the age of 88 on May 30, 2019, in Cedar Grove, New Jersey.[10][30]

• Frank Matthews (drug trafficker)
• Louis Diaz

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frank Lucas.

• Mayme Hatcher Johnson (2008). Harlem Godfather: The Rap on my Husband, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson (when ed.). Oshun Publishing Company, Inc.; First edition (February 29, 2008). p. 248. ISBN 978-0-9676028-3-7.
• Dateline NBC Producer describes sitting down for breakfast with Frank Lucas
• Susannah Cahalan, "Ganging up on movie's lies", New York Post, November 4, 2007
• American Gangster movie site