BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family (30 page)

“This is sly, insinuative music,” according to a flattering review in the
New York Times
. The newspaper later christened
Let’s Get It
the best album of the year.

With
Let’s Get It
, Jeezy made good on his promise to acquaint the
masses with the perils and poetry of street life. The album made frequent and unapologetic references to the drug game, and T-shirts emblazoned with Jeezy’s mascot, a menacing snowman, were selling like crazy—thanks in part by the publicity they generated when several school districts across the country banned them for being a blatant reference to cocaine.

That summer also saw the release of BMF Entertainment’s lifestyle magazine,
The Juice
, which hit the streets with far less hoopla. Though stylish, there was little substance to the publication, and virtually no advertising. The glossy, dual covers (Meech was featured on one side, Jeezy on the other) mostly served as a prop in photo shoots, promotional DVDs, and music videos, including the one for Jeezy’s hit single, “Soul Survivor.”

The song has a chilly, stoical quality. Over the backdrop of tinny synthesizers, Jeezy’s dark and breathless rasp is offset by the more ethereal flow of guest rapper Akon, the Senegalese MC who delivers a chorus that rivals the rawest of street anthems: “Everybody know the game don’t stop; tryin’ to make it to the top ’fore your ass gets popped.” The lyrics paint a grim and realistic picture of the drug game that Meech all but perfected. And as with virtually every other line of the track, it could just as well have been Meech speaking.

The video for the song follows a narrative in which Jeezy, earning a living at a dry-cleaning business, stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad. He snatches a backpack full of cash belonging to the gunned-down distributor. He then begins slinging full-time, only to end up the victim of a fate similar to the backpack’s original owner—the difference being that Jeezy survives the attack on his life.

Toward the end of the video, the camera pans over a crowd congregating on a bleakly lit street corner. All of a sudden, the camera pauses. It fixates on a man wearing a white T-shirt and white baseball cap, a telltale diamond cross swinging from his neck. As Big Meech turns slowly to face the camera, he seems to be gazing far beyond his
surroundings. His distant expression appears to be locked on what lies ahead—as if he knew, at that moment, that the spotlight would be shining on him for the last time.

Meech knew that, for years, investigators had been following him. And he always believed he was one step ahead of them. Stay off the phone. Don’t get caught with a package. Surround yourself with associates who would always remain loyal. Those were his rules. But they weren’t enough. By the fall of 2005, the FBI and IRS had joined the DEA in its investigation into the Black Mafia Family. And they were keeping a closer watch on Meech than ever. At that point, Meech knew he was putting on a show. He realized he was guilty of living too large. But he didn’t think it mattered. He still thought he was invincible.

As 2005 wore on and Jeezy began performing at larger and larger arenas, for crowds that began to number in the thousands, he paid frequent homage to one source of his inspiration. Before launching into the first verse of “Soul Survivor,” he’d press his lips to the mic and shout out a dedication to Big Meech. All the while, the song climbed higher and higher in the charts, debuting at a modest eighty-four before rising all the way to the top 10—including a number-one spot on
Billboard
’s Radio Monitor. And as Jeezy’s career began to soar, Meech’s started to implode.

The investigation into the Black Mafia Family didn’t hinge on a certain pivotal event. It wasn’t precipitated by one dramatic bust, or a single miscalculated move, or a particular lapse in judgment. Rather, it was brought on by years of painstaking surveillance, fastidious police work, and incremental victories. As the alphabet boys’ investigation neared its conclusion, the hunt was drawing to a close. But the game was far from over. Meech and Terry’s influence remained strong. And BMF’s myth was only just beginning.

In October 2005, a team of federal agents that included members of the DEA; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; and the U.S.
Marshals Service traveled from Atlanta to Texas on the trail of a wanted man. The agents had received a tip that their suspect was living in a $1.7 million home in a wealthy Dallas suburb. The 6,500-square-foot modernist mansion was a big blockish expanse of asymmetrical windows and angular rooflines—a home as ostentatious as its suspected occupant. Upon their arrival at the house, the agents set up surveillance outside. They didn’t have to wait long to see if their tip checked out. They watched as the man they were hunting arrived at the house and disappeared inside.

The team kept an eye on the house late into the night and early the next morning, staking it out from several angles. Sometime before 10
A.M.
, they noticed the suspect emerge from the back door and step into the yard. Standing next to the shimmering pool, he lit up a blunt and took a few deep, morning drags.

Minutes later, the team made its move.

Agents burst through the front door of the house and announced their presence in a rapid-fire series of exclamations. “Police!” “Don’t move!” “Search warrant!” “You’re under arrest!” They swept through the home, footsteps pounding from room to room. There wasn’t much chance for the three occupants to run. Two of them didn’t need to. The agents were interested in only one person inside the house: Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory.

Meech had been arrested several times before, and for the most part, he didn’t give up easily. When police went looking for him after the Chaos killings, they caught up with him only because he was stuck at the hospital, being treated for a bullet wound to the buttock. When he’d been snared in a roadblock outside the strip club Pin Ups, he gave a fake name to throw the police off his trail—and, after he was detained, took a piss on the interrogation room’s wall. Another time, when he and J-Bo were pulled over in his Bentley in the parking lot of his club, Babylon, J-Bo was asked to step out of the vehicle, and Meech jumped into the driver’s seat and hit the gas.

But this arrest was different. This time, Meech submitted quietly,
and he let the tide take him. As a team of agents swarmed the house—a sure sign that the feds meant business—Meech kept his composure intact and his mouth shut. He would soon have other battles to fight.

After Meech was cuffed, more investigators were called to the house to help conduct a search. The mansion had been equipped for a battle that never happened. Guns were strategically placed in several locations: a loaded .40-caliber in the kitchen cabinet next to the stove, tucked alongside a stack of business cards with Meech’s name; a semiautomatic with bullets that could breach a Kevlar vest, secured in a safe in the master bedroom closet; two more pistols stashed in the attic, which would have been a decent hiding place had Meech decided to secret himself away.

The two dozen law enforcement agents also uncovered bags of weed in the upstairs closet and in the kitchen, a heap of diamond jewelry on the kitchen counter (four necklaces, two watches, two pairs of diamond earrings, and a bracelet), ten thousand dollars in cash and a handful of ecstasy pills in the nightstand drawer of the master bedroom, and Meech’s silver Bentley in the garage.

Meech ostensibly was arrested on a warrant filed a week earlier in Atlanta. The warrant charged him with possession of a firearm and possession of marijuana—offenses stemming from the year-old search of Space Mountain. It seemed doubtful, however, that a team of federal agents would track him to his Texas retreat on such low-key allegations—especially ones that investigators sat around and waited a year to file.

No, there definitely was something bigger at play. And Meech would have to sit in a Texas county jail for eight days before he learned what was really going on.

A week after Meech’s takedown, a team of DEA agents and U.S. marshals descended on a quiet middle-class suburb ten miles north of
St. Louis. They approached an unpretentious home at the end of a curving driveway on Jamestown Farm Road. The house sat in the middle of a clearing bordered by dense woods on one side and a sprawling wheat field on the other. The homeowner was Danny “Dog Man” Jones, a suspected BMF drug distributor in St. Louis.

Even from outside the house, the federal agents could smell the weed. They knocked on the front door—and heard what sounded like a crowd of people scurrying from room to room, yelling that the police were outside. The agents didn’t wait for an answer. They busted through the door, interrupting what appeared to be a party. A table to the right of the door was strewn with playing cards and cash, evidence of a gambling game rudely interrupted. In the bedroom, the agents found even more money: $600,000 stacked in neat piles.

In addition to Dog Man, who was hosting the gathering, the agents caught up with fifteen other BMF members: Terry’s childhood friend and trusted Detroit manager, Benjamin “Blank” Johnson; another of Terry’s top managers, Derrick “Chipped Tooth” Pegeuse; his girlfriend’s grown son, Marlon “Lil Dog” Welch, whom Terry treated as one of his own; three of the organization’s drivers and drug couriers; and nine other associates.

The agents also came face-to-face with Terry “Southwest T” Flenory.

The day after Terry’s arrest, on October 28, 2005, a twenty-eight-page, eleven-count indictment was unsealed in federal court in Detroit. The case had been filed in Detroit partly for symbolic reasons. Though Meech and Terry had moved the heart of their operation to L.A. and Atlanta, Detroit was the birthplace of their Black Mafia Family. It was the brothers’ childhood home.

Meech was charged with seven counts and Terry with nine. The most serious of them was the allegation that the Flenory brothers ran a continuing criminal enterprise. Like the more commonly used
RICO statute (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations), the CCE law was created to tackle organized crime. Both RICO and CCE charges are used to target long-term, elaborate criminal enterprises that operate like businesses. The difference is that a RICO case is brought against leaders of organizations who oversee a number of activities, including gambling, prostitution, bribery, and counterfeiting. A CCE case, on the other hand, can be brought only against drug traffickers. And the charge is reserved for the most serious of them. Of all the drug cases the feds investigate, only 1 percent ends up being a CCE prosecution. To get a CCE conviction, prosecutors must prove that the defendant was the boss of at least five subordinates, that he oversaw at least three related drug offenses, and that he earned a “substantial” amount of money from the organization.

The other major difference between a RICO and CCE charge is that while a RICO conviction is typically punishable by a maximum twenty-year sentence, a CCE conviction guarantees twenty years to life.

In addition to the Flenory brothers, twenty-three of their associates were indicted on lesser chargers—most of them on Terry’s side. Eleven distributors and ten drivers were charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, as was Terry’s longtime girlfriend, Tonesa Welch. Many of the defendants also were charged with money-laundering. Among the indicted were Chipped Tooth Peguese and Blank Johnson; Blank’s brother, Arnold “A.R.” Boyd, who had replaced Blank as Terry’s Detroit manager; Calvin “Playboy” Sparks, who’d been caught on a wiretap in early 2004 talking with Terry about his recent roadside arrest on nine kilos of cocaine; Christopher “Pig” Triplett, who’d been arrested along with Playboy, and whom Playboy had complained about during the wiretapped call; and Jabari Hayes, who’d been pulled over days after Pig and Playboy in an RV loaded with more than 100 kilos of cocaine, worth an estimated $2 million wholesale and $10 million on the street.

Because investigators were able to get a wire up on several of Terry’s phones, he was charged with three counts of using a cell phone in violation of the U.S. Controlled Substance Act. Meech mistakenly was charged in one of those counts, too. When Terry and Playboy had talked on the phone that day in May 2004, Terry had pretended to hand the phone over to Meech. (In fact, he’d handed it to his right-hand man, Slim, who did his best Meech impersonation.) The feds, who were listening in on the call, believed that it was actually Meech on the phone. That charge was soon dropped.

Surprisingly, Slim wasn’t charged in the indictment. William “Doc” Marshall, BMF’s chief financial officer and one of the few employees who continued to have contact with both Meech and Terry, was mentioned only in passing. And despite their lofty positions, none of Meech’s top associates were indicted, either. There was no mention in the indictment of Chad “J-Bo” Brown, Meech’s second-in-command; Fleming “Ill” Daniels and Martez “Tito” Byrth, who were directly below J-Bo; or the rapper Barima “Bleu DaVinci” McKnight, one of Meech’s most trusted confidants and cocaine distributors. Nor was there any indication that the feds thought Jeezy might be involved in Meech’s criminal enterprise.

The evidence laid out in the indictment was enough to provide a glimpse of the organization. But it did not provide the full picture. The document describes eight cocaine busts that took place over the course of six years. A collective 500 kilos were seized. But one of those busts—the 250 kilos discovered inside the house on California’s Oso Avenue, where Tremayne “Kiki” Graham had been arrested—didn’t have anything to do with BMF. Though the coke likely came from the same supplier, that shipment belonged to Jerry “J-Rock” Davis’s Sin City Mafia. The feds later struck that information from the indictment. That reduced the amount of cocaine mentioned in the indictment by half.