American Ganster drug trafficker, & kingpin, Frank Lucas
- mobtalk247
- May 30
- 4 min read
On May 30, 2019, American drug trafficker, & kingpin, Frank Lucas, died of natural causes, at age 88. He operated in Harlem during the late 1960s & early 1970s. He was known for cutting out middlemen, in the drug trade & buying heroin directly from his source, in the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. Lucas boasted that he smuggled heroin using the coffins of dead American servicemen, as depicted in the feature film American Gangster, which fictionalized aspects of his life. This claim is denied by his Southeast Asian associate, Leslie "Ike" Atkinson. After “Bumpy” Johnson's death, Lucas traveled around & came to the realization that, to be successful, he would have to break the monopoly that the Italian 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. It was here that he met former U.S. Army sergeant Leslie "Ike" Atkinson, who was from Goldsboro, North Carolina, & married to 1 of Lucas' cousins. Lucas is quoted as saying, "Ike knew everyone over there, every black guy in the Army, from the cooks on up." 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 6, maybe 8 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 . . .,” said Lucas.
But Atkinson, nicknamed "Sergeant Smack" by the DEA, has said he shipped drugs in furniture, not caskets. 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 "1 of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever, an innovator, who got his own connections outside the U.S. & then sold the narcotics himself, in the street." In an interview, Lucas said, "I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be Donald Trump rich, & so help me God, I made it." Lucas only trusted relatives & close friends from North Carolina to handle his various heroin operations. Lucas thought they were less likely to steal from him & be tempted by various vices in the big city. He stated his heroin, "Blue Magic", was 98–100% pure when shipped from Thailand. 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 of dope on hand" with a potential profit of no less than $300k per kilo.
This huge profit margin allowed him to buy property all over the country, including office buildings in Detroit & apartments in Los Angeles & 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 $125k. Lucas rubbed shoulders with the elite of the entertainment, political, & criminal worlds, stating later that he had met Howard Hughes at 1 of Harlem's best clubs in his day. Though he owned several mink & chinchilla coats & other accessories, Lucas much preferred to dress casually & corporately so as not to attract attention to himself. When he was arrested in the mid-1970s, all of Lucas' assets were seized. “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 & take it,” said Lucas.
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. DEA & 10 New York Police Department detectives attached to the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB). In his house authorities found $584,683 in cash. He was later convicted of both federal & New Jersey state drug violations. The following year he was sentenced to 70 years in prison. Once convicted, he became an informant, & he & his family were placed in the Witness Protection Program for his safety. Lucas provided evidence that led to more than 100 further drug-related convictions. In 1981, after 5 years in custody, his 40-year Federal term & 30-year state term were reduced to time served plus lifetime parole. In 1984, he was caught & convicted of trying to exchange 1 ounce of heroin & $13k for 1 kilogram of cocaine. He received a sentence of 7 years & was released from prison in 1991. In his last years, Lucas was confined to a wheelchair, due to a car accident which broke his legs. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to attempting to cash a $17,000 federal disability benefit check twice, and because of his age and poor health, received a sentence of five years' probation.
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