Frank Matthews Went on the Lam, Taking His Girlfriend and $20 Million in Cash
A far bigger and wealthier drug dealer than the better known Nicky Barnes and more famous Frank Lucas, Frank Matthews (born 1944) was in a league of his own. He was America’s biggest narcotics trafficker when he jumped bail in 1973 and disappeared with $20 million. Despite their best efforts, authorities caught neither hide nor hair of him, and he has been at large ever since.
He was born in Durham, North Carolina, and after his mother’s death, he was raised by an aunt and her police lieutenant husband. Being raised in a police household did not stop Matthews from becoming a delinquent, however. He dropped out of school in 7th grade, and soon thereafter did a year in a juvenile reformatory for assault. He moved to Philadelphia after his release and became a numbers runner, before moving to NYC in a deal to avoid prosecution.
A big and muscular man, Matthews became a collector and enforcer in NYC, before getting into the drug trade upon discovering that there was far more money in that. The Italian mafia controlled the heroin trade at the time, but when Matthews tried doing business with them, they rejected him. From then on, he had an antipathy towards the Italian mafia, and avoided working with whenever possible. In lieu of Italian mobsters, he partnered up with a Cuban drug dealer. His partner was forced to flee the US soon thereafter to avoid an indictment, and set Matthews up with his South American contacts and suppliers.
Within a year, Frank Matthews had become one of NYC’s biggest drug dealers, and by the early 1970s, he was the East Coast’s biggest narcotics trafficker. At the peak of his career, he was supplying major drug dealers throughout the US, and had operations in 21 states, from Boston to Alabama, and as far west as Missouri. In 1971, he held a “summit” meeting in Atlanta of the country’s biggest African-American drug dealers, to discuss new supply pipelines to break the Italians’ stranglehold on heroin importation. Reportedly, it was this gathering of black crime bosses that got Nicky Barnes thinking about setting up “The Council” to coordinate the activity of a black mafia.
Matthews savored his success to the fullest, enjoying the high life and living it up with luxury cars, huge fur coats, and trips to Las Vegas where he was treated like a king. His visits to Sin City were not just for pleasure, however. Over the years, Matthews had made frequent trips to Las Vegas, carrying suitcases full of cash to secretly launder at the casinos for a fee.
In early January of 1973, on one of those trips, he was picked up at the airport by DEA agents on an arrest warrant for conspiracy to sell 40 pounds of cocaine. The feds, who suspected Matthews of having millions in cash stashed away, wanted him held without bail as a severe flight risk. A US magistrate however set bail at $5 million bail – the highest bail amount in US history at the time.
Matthews, who was also told by the IRS that he owed taxes on the estimated $100 million he earned in 1971, knew he was in serious trouble. Even if he beat the drug charges, the feds would almost certainly get him on tax evasion, just like they got Al Capone. When his bail was reduced to $325,000, he paid it, got out of jail, then disappeared with his girlfriend and about $20 million in cash.
Over four decades later, Frank Matthews’ fate remains a complete mystery. According to Mike Pizzi, a US Marshall who spent years involved in a futile hunt for the fugitive, it is as if Matthews simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Frank Lucas opined on the disappearance: “Some say he’s dead, but I know he’s living in Africa, like a king, with all the fucking money in the world“.