20. Frank Lucas in the Big Apple
In NYC, Lucas met and became the protege of Bumpy Johnson, Harlem’s then-reigning crime boss. When Bumpy Johnson died in 1968, he left Harlem up for grabs, and Lucas grabbed as much turf as he could. He then took to traveling, and in Thailand, an Army sergeant who turned out be a distant cousin put Lucas in touch with local heroin dealers.
The cousins worked out a plan to import heroin from its source in Southeast Asia, bypassing the Italian mafia which had a near-total monopoly at the time. The saving were huge: buying heroin at source cost Lucas $4200 a kilo. Buying the same kilo in Harlem from the mafia would have cost him $50,000.