A lot of rappers
spit bars about being drug lords and running the streets,
but most of the time it’s all cap.
That’s what makes the story of the Black Mafia Family so wild.
Most people thought
they were just flashy promoters
who partied with rappers and flexed a lot of cash.
But behind the crazy whips and mansions,
BMF was actually running one of the biggest drug rings in US history -
and today we’re breaking down how they reached the top
and came crashing down.
Demetrius and Terry Flenory, AKA Big Meech and Southwest T,
came up in Detroit.
While they were growing up,
they saw their parents constantly struggle with poverty.
They would get their power shut off
and relied on food stamps to feed the family,
and eventually
money issues caused Meech and Terry’s parents to divorce.
At the time
Meech and Terry were still in high school,
but they knew that their mom needed help with the bills.
They started selling a little weed to help get by,
but then everything changed
after they linked up with a dude named E.D. Boyd
who ran a crew called the 50 Boyz.
Boyd was one of the biggest dealers in Detroit back then,
and the crack epidemic that was tearing the city apart made him rich.
Meech and Terry started moving coke for Boyd
and saw how much money there really was in the drug game.
They were able to pay all of their bills by selling some weed,
but getting into coke was a totally different level.
But when you’re really grinding in the streets
there’s always gonna be issues with other hustlers.
Meech and Terry started beefing with another dealer
named Ladon Simon,
and the situation got so heated
that Ladon allegedly tried to take Meech out in a drive-by.
Even though he was almost killed,
Meech wasn’t backing down.
Terry and him ended up finding their own plug to bring coke into the city,
and that’s when their empire really started to take off.
Most big dealers either end up dead or in prison,
but E.D. Boyd actually retired from the game
and didn’t have any issues with Meech and Terry taking over.
He told DJ Vlad
that they’re all still friends to this day,
and that he just got out of the hustle when the time was right.
Terry and Meech were supplying weight to almost every dealer in the city,
and all of the success just made their issues with Ladon Simon even worse.
One night at a party,
their crews got into a fight
and someone started letting off shots.
Ladon says he grabbed Meech to use him as a shield,
and that’s when Ladon’s brother Elvis was shot and killed.
Ladon let go of Meech and ran over to his brother,
and the shooter caught him five times in the back.
His brother was killed, but Ladon survived the shooting -
and a few months later he took another shot at Meech.
Meech was partying with a bunch of people in Ladon’s area at a diner.
Ladon’s ten year old nephew
had just been beaten to death around the same time,
and he had just lost his brother so he was already on edge.
It’s not clear exactly what went down that night,
but Ladon allegedly pulled his gun and shot Meech several times.
Getting shot makes a lot of people switch up how they move
or leave the streets behind completely,
but Meech was back on his feet just a few days later
and went even harder into the drug game.
But taking over Detroit wasn’t enough for him,
and in 1990
he moved to Atlanta to expand the empire.
While Terry stayed back in Detroit,
Meech went to the east coast and started taking over.
Instead of rolling into Atlanta
and trying to push out all of the dealers in the city,
Meech went to all the clubs and started flexing tons of cash.
Everyone saw him stunting,
and that’s how Meech met all of the major players in Atlanta.
Meech didn't resort to violence to takeover a new city.
Instead,
he started supplying weight to the dealers who already ran Atlanta.
That way he avoided most of the street drama
while bringing in even more money.
Back then
Terry and Meech had a plug in Colombia,
and the weight was brought into the US on the east coast around Florida.
But after the cops started cracking down on the shipments coming in,
Meech moved to LA to find a new connect.
Meech found a new plug on the west coast,
and within a few years they expanded to Alabama, Florida, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and more.
Terry and Meech were already running one of the biggest drug rings in the country,
but in the early 2000s
the Black Mafia Family
went from just a crime organization to a full-on brand.
Terry and Meech were always hanging out with rappers,
and in the 2000s
Meech created BMF Entertainment as a label and promotion agency.
Having a legit company to launder your money through is a smart move,
but Meech’s lifestyle and the BMF brand
is what got the feds attention.
Terry and Meech had been in the drug game together for years
but they always had issues when it came to Meech’s partying.
Terry was more low-key
and knew that flexing all their money could get attention from the cops,
but that’s also how Meech brought in new business.
Whenever he went to a new city,
Meech would walk into the clubs
and drop $50-100K every night.
All of the hustlers would notice the new guy throwing around crazy money,
and that’s how Meech would link up with local dealers.
Back in the day it wasn’t that big of a deal,
but when Meech started BMF Entertainment
he put the spotlight on the whole organization.
The BMF brand popped off in the rap industry,
but nobody knew where all the cash came from.
Meech was flexing his cars, mansions,
and even put up billboards advertising the company.
Terry wasn’t feeling how Meech was moving though,
and that’s when their relationship started to fall apart.
But before BMF went down,
Meech got caught up in a double homicide in 2003.
In November 2003,
Meech was at a spot called Club Chaos in Atlanta.
He got into an argument with a dude named Anthony “Wolf” Jones,
who used to be Diddy’s bodyguard,
and at some point shots started going off.
It’s not clear who started shooting first,
but Jones and his homie Lamont Girdy were both killed
and Meech got shot in the ass.
Meech was booked for double homicide,
but the judge let him out on house arrest
since the case against him was so weak.
By this point
Terry and him were barely even talking to each other,
and Meech getting arrested hurt their relationship even more.
While Meech was locked up in Atlanta,
Terry was still running his business on the west coast.
And during his 34th birthday,
a bunch of Meech’s goons came through wearing shirts that said
“Free Big Meech.”
They brought in a monitor so Meech could address the party,
and by the time he was done talking
the situation allegedly got so heated
that both sides had their guns out.
Luckily nothing too serious went down at the party,
but the end of BMF was getting close.
The cops had been trying to investigate BMF since the 90s,
but they didn’t have a major break in the case until 2004.
The first cracks in the organization opened up
when wiretaps led the cops to a dude named Decarlo Hoskins.
Hoskins was a pretty small-time dealer in Atlanta,
but he flipped on two brothers named Omari McCree
and Jeffrey Leahr, who were both in BMF.
And when the cops put a wiretap on them,
they discovered that Omari was a high-ranking member of BMF
and that Meech really liked him.
The cops used the wiretaps to pick up Jeffrey
while he was transporting ten kilos of coke.
They let him go that day
so they could gather more evidence from him,
and that’s when Jeffrey and Omari tried to do the race.
Eventually the cops found both of them,
and that was the beginning of the downfall.
People all up and down the organization started to flip,
and then the cops got their biggest piece of evidence yet -
a wiretap on Terry’s phone.
Terry and Meech were always fighting about Meech drawing attention to BMF,
but there’s a chance they would still be free today
if Terry didn’t do business over the phone.
The cops had him bugged for five months,
and by the end of the investigation
they had 900 pages of evidence
just from his phone conversations.
The DEA spent two years gathering evidence on them.
By October 2005
they had already arrested 17 members of BMF
and seized millions in cash, drugs, and other assets.
Then they booked 30 more members of the crew,
including Meech and Terry.
According to the cops,
BMF was moving an insane 2,500 kilos of coke every month.
It was one of the biggest drug rings in the world,
it was alleged that Meech and Terry
had over 500 people working for them at the height of BMF.
Around 150 people were arrested during the investigation.
Meech and Terry both pleaded guilty
and were sentenced to 30 years each,
and with all of the high-ranking members behind bars -
BMF was dead and gone.
Terry and Meech started out selling baggies of weed on the streets of Detroit
and worked up to running a criminal empire
that brought in hundreds of millions of dollars.
They were able to dodge the cops for a while,
but when you’re moving that much weight
it’s only a matter of time before something goes wrong.
Back in 2020,
Terry was released on house arrest to serve out the rest of his sentence.
During the coronavirus pandemic
a lot of prisoners got out early to help slow the spread,
but Meech wasn’t as lucky.
His lawyer tried to get him an early release too,
but the plan got shut down and a US attorney said
“During his time in prison,
Flenory continues to promote himself,
and through others,
his legacy as a highly successful professional drug dealer.
Nothing in that promotion
suggests that Flenory has changed.”
Even though he didn’t get released at the same time as Terry,
Meech still scored a big win in 2020.
He was originally scheduled to get out in 2031,
but sentencing guidelines have changed over the years
and Meech’s legal team was able to get a few years knocked off of his time.
Big Meech will probably be out in 2028 now.
That’s still a long time to sit behind bars,
but Meech and Terry knew that was always a possibility.
Like a lot of kids who grow up in inner cities surrounded by crime and poverty,
Meech and Terry just adapted to their surroundings
and did whatever it took to survive.
But while most dudes just make a few racks in the street
so they can flex nicer clothes and cars,
Meech and Terry took it way further
and created one of the most famous empires out of Detroit.
Their story is beyond wild,
and that’s why everyone is still talking about them
almost two decades after they were arrested.
They made it out of the trenches
to become two of the richest drug dealers in the world,
but in the end
all of their money and power
still couldn’t keep the feds off of their backs.
Nobody knows what’s gonna happen when they finish their sentences,
but hopefully they stay out of the streets
and move on from BMF.