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Bonkers Crimes and Criminals In History

Khalid Elhassan February 7, 2020 32 min

Thomas Blood - Royal Academy of Arts — Colonel Blood Stealing the Crown Jewels. Royal Academy of Arts

29. The Heroin Kingpin

However he smuggled it, Frank Lucas smuggled plenty of heroin into the US. He claimed that he made $1 million a day at the height of his career. It was an exaggeration, but he did make a lot of money from heroin. He used the drug profits to buy real estate all over the country, including ranches in which he raised and bred Black Angus cattle, apartments in Miami and LA, and office buildings in Detroit.

His career ended in 1975 when his New Jersey home was raided by a joint DEA and NYPD task force, and authorities found $584,000 in cash. He was tried on federal and state drug charges, convicted, and sentenced in 1976 to 70 years in prison. Lucas got out by turning state’s evidence and testifying against his former colleagues.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.