Adam Pollack

Frank Lucas said he was taking in $1 million a day selling heroin in Harlem. In 1975 agents raided his house in New Jersey and found more than $584,000 in cash. At the peak, by his own account, he had $52 million stashed in Cayman Islands banks and $300 million in stockpiled heroin. He owned office buildings in Detroit and a cattle ranch in North Carolina. He said he bribed personnel in Vietnam to set up a heroin connection. He hobnobbed with Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, James Brown and Diana Ross, and spent lavishly on cars, clothing, jewelry and entertainment. The raid on his house in Teaneck ended it. He was convicted and sentenced to 70 years in prison. Then he turned informant, and he was released in 1982, after seven years. In 2007 Denzel Washington played him in "American Gangster." In the video below, Lucas talks about what was taken from him: "Two million dollars a month for me. Sometimes two million dollars a week." Then he says: "I got 70 years." He died in New Jersey in 2019, at 88. $1 million a day and out in seven years: a deal or a joke?