BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family

Mara Shalhoup

mar 2010 · Distribuido por St. Martin's Press

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In the early 1990s, Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory and his brother, Terry "Southwest T," rose up from the slums of Detroit to build one of the largest cocaine empires in American history: the Black Mafia Family. After a decade in the drug game, the Flenorys had it all—a fleet of Maybachs, Bentleys and Ferraris, a 500-man workforce operating in six states, and an estimated quarter of a billion in drug sales. They socialized with music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, did business with New York's king of bling Jacob "The Jeweler" Arabo, and built allegiances with rap superstars Young Jeezy and Fabolous. Yet even as BMF was attracting celebrity attention, its crew members created a cult of violence that struck fear in a city and threatened to spill beyond the boundaries of the drug underworld. Ruthlessness fueled BMF's rise to incredible power; greed and that same ruthlessness led to their downfall.

When the brothers began clashing in 2003, the flashy and beloved Big Meech risked it all on a shot at legitimacy in the music industry. At the same time, a team of investigators who had pursued BMF for years began to prey on the organization's weaknesses. Utilizing a high-stakes wiretap operation, the feds inched toward their goal of destroying the Flenory's empire and ending the reign of a crew suspected in the sale of thousands of kilos of cocaine — and a half-dozen unsolved murders.

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Mara Shalhoup is a decorated journalist and a senior editor with Creative Loafing, the preeminent alternative newsweekly serving the South. She started her writing career as a crime reporter at the Macon Telegraph, and has gone on to earn such honors as a Clarion Award, two nominations for a Livingston Award, and recognition from the Atlanta Press Club as the city's Journalist of the Year. BMF is her first book. She lives with her husband in Atlanta.