Frank Lucas was an American drug trafficker who operated in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1976, Lucas was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 70 years in prison; however, after becoming an informant, his sentence was reduced to five years. In 1984, he was sentenced to seven years in jail; he died in 2019. He was played by Denzel Washington in the feature film American Gangster.
About Frank Lucas in brief
Frank Lucas was an American drug trafficker who operated in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and 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, but this claim is denied by his Southeast Asian associate, Leslie \”Ike\” Atkinson. In 1976, Lucas was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 70 years in prison; however, after becoming an informant, his sentence was reduced to five years. In 1984, he was sentenced to seven years in jail; he died in 2019. He said that the incident that sparked his motivation to embark on a life of crime was having witnessed his 12-year-old cousin’s murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan in Greensboro, North Carolina. He claimed to have been Bumpy 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.
Lucas said that he made US$1 million per day selling drugs on 116 Street, though this was later discovered to be an exaggeration, according to Federal judge Sterling Johnson who was the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City at the time of Lucas’ operation. Lucas only trusted relatives and close friends from North Carolina to handle his various heroin operations; he thought they were less likely to be tempted to steal from him and then sold himself in the street. In an interview, Lucas said, “I wanted to be rich, so help me God, I made it.’” He was played by Denzel Washington in the feature film American Gangster, although the film fictionalized elements of Lucas’ life for dramatic effect. Lucas’ connection to Johnson has since come under some doubt; he claimed to be Johnson’s driver, but according to his widow, Zach Walker was the one who actually lived with the gangster and lived with his family. Lucas is quoted as saying, ‘Ike knew everyone over there, every black guy in the Army, from the cooks on up…. . except we fixed them up with false bottoms, big enough to load up with six, maybe eight kilos. %.’
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This page is based on the article Frank Lucas published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 24, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
