[narrator] By following the playbook's opening lessons,
you've maneuvered your way from the ground floor
to the mob boss penthouse.
Now it's time to focus on your bottom line.
Vice is commerce.
It's not about morally, "Oh, it's wrong to deal drugs."
Morally, "It's wrong to run a brothel."
It's business. It's about grabbing money with both fists.
[narrator] Reaching your full earning potential
won't happen on its own.
It is absolutely critical that a mob boss has a business plan.
If there's no plan, the structure will fall.
[narrator] But by putting your intellect to work along with your muscle,
you can outfox your competition
and become the underworld CEO of your dreams.
Just like this guy.
Harlem's superfly heroin tycoon, Frank Lucas.
Lucas's revolutionary strategy upended New York's drug trade
creating his own supply chain
that banked more than a million dollars a day.
I used to sleep in the bed, in the cold.
And then I was in the big time, and I started rolling.
[narrator] Follow Frank's cutting-edge business plan,
and you, too, can make sure that your crimes do pay.
[funk bass playing]
[narrator] Frank Lucas built a multimillion-dollar
international heroin empire from the ground up.
All before his 40th birthday.
His goal was to make money selling heroin,
and so he made a lot of money selling heroin.
[narrator] But before you follow Frank's path to the C-suite,
here's what you can learn from his rise.
Frank Lucas was born
in rural North Carolina during the Great Depression.
We have no, no opportunity there in, uh, segregated North Carolina.
You won't make a good life for yourself and be able to take care of your family.
He did see his cousin murdered by a member of the KKK.
They came and blew his brains out.
They stuck the shotgun in his mouth, pulled the trigger.
[gunshot]
Sometimes certain things happen in your life, and it change it.
You know, it change it.
And he left, and he came to New York.
[Richie] Now, the problem was he was illiterate.
He couldn't get a job delivering a newspaper.
He couldn't do anything.
The only way he could survive
was to get into something illegal where he would be accepted.
So he started selling drugs.
[Ezell] Bumpy Johnson was the baddest Black gangster probably ever lived.
Bumpy was like a, um... like a dad to him.
[Frank] I worked with Bumpy for that many years.
Thirteen years, nine months and eight days.
And, uh, every dime I made, I credit him for it.
You know, I credit him for it.
[Richie] When Bumpy died, Frank got the drug business.
Frank wanted the drugs
because he thought that that was where he would make the most money.
Out of seven boys, Frank was the oldest. He was like my hero.
He'd ask us to do something, we would do it.
[Richie] He was able to maintain his control through his brothers.
He trusted his brothers and made them rich.
Always talks about family, you know. He just drills it in your head.
"You stick with your family."
[narrator] Frank had a promising career path
and a loyal inner circle to help him build his business.
But that didn't mean everyone respected his authority.
As you launch your enterprise, how do you prove you've got what it takes?
Nobody fools with a guy from Harlem, you dig?
[narrator] As a mob boss, the only way to ensure your operation's success
is to immediately show the consequences of getting in your way.
First, I'm gonna bash his head to a pulp.
You have to establish yourself as a killer.
It's a real tough industry
where reputation and street cred is critical.
Yeah!
If you show weakness as a mob boss, you're not gonna be alive very long.
[narrator] These guys knew how to flex their muscles right out of the gate.
Shortly after taking over Boston's Winter Hill Gang,
Whitey Bulger reportedly sent a message by killing Louis Litif,
a longtime associate who disobeyed Whitey's orders.
His body was found mutilated in the trunk of a car.
Albert Anastasia kicked off his reign
by allegedly ordering the murder of salesman Arnold Schuster,
who got on the boss's hit list
for helping police track down a known fugitive.
And when Griselda Blanco began ruling the Miami cocaine trade,
she invented a tactic to keep her adversaries in line,
enlisting motorcycle hit men called sicarios,
who would perform drive-by assassinations,
usually in broad daylight.
[indistinct chatter]
It wasn't long after Frank Lucas took over Harlem's heroin business
that his reign was tested.
When you're at the top, there's always eagles, okay?
There's always maybe somebody,
they start looking at you and figure,
"You know something? I could do this a little bit better than this person."
"Maybe I should be the leader."
[narrator] You can't afford to let that sort of insubordination go unanswered.
In 1960s Harlem, the baddest guy around is Tango.
[Ezell] Tango was a big bully. Six-foot-five, six-foot-six.
People in Harlem were kind of fearful of him.
[narrator] Tango is a freelance heroin dealer...
known for shortchanging his suppliers.
[grunting]
It's something new boss Frank Lucas can't allow.
Frank senses an opportunity
to show who's really in charge and cut the giant down to size.
When he hears Tango is looking for more product,
Frank supplies him with a kilo of heroin,
knowing Tango will ultimately try to stiff him too.
And when Frank comes to collect two weeks later,
Tango doesn't disappoint.
He refuses to pay Frank a dime and lashes out, challenging Frank's honor.
And his mother's.
[gasping]
[narrator] A crowd forms, just as Frank knew it would.
[tense music intensifies]
[gun cocking]
[crowd screaming]
[narrator] The message is clear.
Frank knew to let people know when you are the boss,
that not only is your finger on the trigger,
but you know how to pull it.
[narrator] That's the sort of reputation you need to succeed.
But as a mob boss, your brawn may kick open the door,
but it's your brain that'll bring in the cash.
Start with this mantra any wise businessman must follow,
never pay retail.
Kids dream of becoming athletes, astronauts, or movie stars.
No one ever aspires to become a middleman.
Too bad, because that's where the money is.
[Lewis] In the heroin business, the supply chain, it's international.
The middleman is making a tremendous amount of money
because he's going right to the source.
[narrator] And that's coming out of your profits.
Let me explain.
While Frank was getting started,
heroin came to the US
through what was called "The French Connection."
[bell dings]
It started with poppies grown in Turkey.
When the plants matured, they were harvested for opium sap.
The sap was boiled with lime to separate the morphine.
Then it was off to France,
where industrious chemists turned the morphine into heroin.
It's a precise and smelly process.
Next, it was up to the middlemen from the Corsican Mafia
to move the refined heroin across the Atlantic to America,
hiding it any way they could.
Now, that's an expensive toaster.
Once the heroin made landfall,
the American mob sold it at a markup of up to 400%.
Then it hit the streets,
courtesy of domestic dealers like Frank Lucas.
For the Mafia, this arrangement made them countless millions.
But for hustlers like Frank,
it was a painfully inefficient proposition.
Frank wanted to try to figure out, "How do I cut out the middleman
to maximize my profits?"
And also reduce the opportunity for law enforcement
to penetrate his organization.
[narrator] Lucas needed a big idea,
which he got from the same place
you're probably getting this essential content,
television.
[Frank] There used to be a news broadcast come on.
They used to tell you about those guys in Vietnam getting high.
[broadcaster] Washington now admits
there is a serious drug problem among its servicemen in Vietnam.
[narrator] And while some might only see a crisis,
Frank's mind went to a different place.
Frank saw an opportunity to bring the heroin in from Asia.
[narrator] Frank's master plan?
Bypass the French Connection
and create his own heroin pipeline from the Far East.
And luckily, he already had a hookup.
His cousin, a gentleman named Ike Atkinson,
was a retired Army sergeant in Asia
who was able to make contact with those who were growing the poppies.
[narrator] But when you're considering a new business venture,
you need to look before you leap.
[horns honking]
[narrator] Frank travels to Bangkok, Thailand,
to meet with cousin Ike who introduces him to his local supplier.
A man Frank dubs 007 for obvious reasons.
007 is willing to sell Frank over 200 kilos of heroin on the spot
for around a million dollars, one-tenth of what the Mafia would charge.
Frank eagerly agrees,
and finds a helpful service man to bring the haul stateside.
This could be the start of a beautiful relationship.
But Frank needs to make sure 007's operation is up to the challenge.
So he heads into the Thai jungle himself,
hiking for days in the sweltering heat...
until finally he reaches the Promised Land.
[mysterious music plays]
Frank is so impressed, he buys more product on the spot.
But the return trip hits a snag.
Bandits.
Frank fights alongside the guides.
When the smoke clears, the bandits are dead.
While Frank's goal of securing a direct heroin supply,
that's alive and well.
I went in. I got the load.
And came back, and the rest is history.
[narrator] But even if you secure a direct hookup for your product,
you won't become a top boss without mastering sales.
How do you keep your merchandise flying off the shelves?
Anytime your sales volume isn't up to your full market potential,
whatever the reason, you've got a problem.
[narrator] The playbook solution to this common dilemma?
Become the only game in town.
[woman] If you corner the market, you have control over the market.
You can charge whatever the hell you want.
[narrator] It certainly worked for these guys.
Crime boss Enoch "Nucky" Johnson used his political connections
to control all of Atlantic City's rackets during Prohibition,
making half a million dollars a year,
nine million today,
off of illegal booze, prostitution, and gambling.
Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo Scarfo cornered the methamphetamine market
by importing and distributing more than 100 gallons of P2P.
Enough of this key ingredient
to make half a ton of the highly addictive drug.
And Cheng Chui Ping, known as Sister Ping,
made $40 million over two decades
by becoming the go-to provider for smuggling migrants
from China to the United States,
earning her the nickname "The Mother of all Snakeheads."
But Frank Lucas was looking to serve
an even larger and faster-growing consumer base.
About 50% of the heroin addicts live in New York City,
and an estimated 80% of the known addicts in New York City live here, in Harlem.
[narrator] Demand was clearly not a problem,
but how do you make sure customers come to you to get their fix?
It starts with marketing.
Like most organizations,
you have a product, you give it a brand name.
So you want people to look for your brand. You have to make sure your brand is good.
[narrator] And that its name grabs people's attention.
Here's some of Frank's competition.
Some of these I recognize. You want me to read all of them?
Okay.
Mean Machine.
Could Be Fatal.
Taster's Choice.
Harlem Hijack. Joint.
Fuck Me, Fuck You.
Dick Down.
Oh, Can't Get Enough of That Funky Stuff.
- Payback. - Tragic Magic.
Nice To Be Nice.
Ding Dong.
OD Correct. Official Correct.
Past Due.
Payback Revenge.
Green Tape. Red Tape. Rush.
They didn't lack for imagination. [chuckles]
[narrator] But clever branding only goes so far.
It's what's in the package that counts.
Frank stamped his "Blue Magic,"
and it was the best dope you could buy.
[narrator] Frank's secret sauce?
Most heroin that dealers sold at the time
had purity levels of just one to three percent.
But Lucas put his customers first,
upping the purity level to five to seven percent.
They got a better high.
I mean, you know, you can buy a Ford or you can buy a Cadillac.
I'd rather buy the Cadillac,
and that's what Frank was selling these people.
[narrator] And when you're selling a premium and potentially deadly product,
quality control is essential.
Frank made sure his production line was in the hands of a true expert.
The manufacturing genius he called Red Top.
Each time Frank receives a heroin shipment from Asia,
he delivers it to Red Top
who cuts the heroin with additional substances
to get it street ready.
As demand increases, Frank hires more staff
and makes these new employees wear a specific uniform for transparency.
To avoid detection,
Lucas has Red Top frequently shift the operation around the city.
Sometimes he even reportedly pays off cops to do the work inside their homes.
But to truly corner the market, Frank needed something else.
A solid retail strategy.
Studying police behavior, Frank notices a key pattern.
At 4:00 p.m. daily, cops on the early shift leave their posts.
But the night shift doesn't take over until 5:00.
Frank instructs his lieutenants to hit the streets hard
during this golden hour.
While Frank monitors his crew's customer service
by cruising through Harlem undercover.
If anybody slips up, there's hell to pay.
[gasping]
[narrator] But when your product sells this well,
sometimes all you have to do is sit back and enjoy.
By creating a premium product and mastering distribution,
Frank had Harlem's heroin market in the palm of his hand.
At this point, who wouldn't want to enjoy the fruits of their labors?
But before you start throwing your money around,
pay close attention to the playbook's next lesson.
When you're pushing drugs on the street,
you don't exactly get paid with direct deposit.
Cash money is preferred when you're dealing in illegal activity
because there's no record.
[narrator] But being flush with cash can create some problems.
They were making so much money in the street, it was crazy.
[Lewis] Guys like Frank Lucas,
they had hundreds of thousands of dollars of twenties and fifties
and tens and fives.
It's bulky to carry. It's difficult to count.
And you know,
the bank will be a little suspicious about why do you have all this cash money
when most people get paid in checks?
[narrator] Those aren't the only issues.
Ultimately, everybody, including mobsters,
have to give some accounting of their money,
and if you're living in a mansion in Howard Beach, and you've got a Porsche,
and then when it comes time for your income taxes
you claim that you make $12,000 a year as a mailman,
it's not gonna add up.
[narrator] This is why the crime gods invented...
money laundering.
Ready to turn dirty money into clean cash?
While techniques vary, they mostly follow the same basic steps.
Step one. Placement.
Create a legitimate business
with a bank account where you can park your illicit profits,
like a car wash or a strip club.
Step two. Layering.
Use complex transactions to separate the money from its illegal source.
For example, buy gold.
Cash it in.
Then send that money
from one international bank account to another
to make it even harder to trace.
Or sink the proceeds into assets like luxury cars, jewelry, or real estate.
Then sell them again. Bringing us to step three. Integration.
Invest your freshly-laundered dough into the legitimate financial system
to keep the taxman off your trail.
Voilà! Your dirty drug money is now clean as a whistle.
Sounds easy,
but the tricky thing about money laundering,
you can't do it alone.
[Ezell] In New York, Frank knew everybody,
so he had a nice connection cleaning the money up for him.
[Lewis] He had a connection at Chemical Bank at the executive level.
He would direct the tellers to take care of Frank when he came in.
[narrator] And take care of him they did.
[Lewis] They would count hundreds of thousands of dollars
in fives, tens, ones, and twenties.
And the bank person he was working with would ask no questions
and just change that money into $100 bills.
[narrator] Like a true boss, Lucas invested his clean cash
in legitimate tax-generating businesses.
He practically controlled an entire block in Harlem.
He had a club there. He had a couple of stores.
He had office buildings in places like Detroit
and other parts of New York City.
A ranch in North Carolina.
[mooing]
He bought 4,000 acres of land. Three hundred heads of cattle.
He had, like, a $100,000 prize bull down there.
It was a big-ass bull.
[mooing]
This sucker was huge.
[narrator] Frank's diversified portfolio paved his way into high society.
Frank knew the celebrities of the day. Boxers, Joe Louis. Entertainers.
He was a celebrity of his day
even though he was, you know, doing something very illegal and wrong.
[Ezell] One time I'm sitting in the bar,
he's like, "Boy, you like James Brown?" I'm like, "Yeah."
And then the music started playing, and James Brown came over,
grabbed my hand and tried to get me to dance, and I'm like, "Whoa!" [laughs]
[narrator] Thanks to Frank's money laundering expertise,
he and his brothers were able to live it up as Harlem royalty.
Everything's money. This is America. [chuckles]
Everything's money.
[narrator] But when your core product is high-grade heroin,
the happy days probably won't last forever.
[siren wailing]
A lot of people started dying, and the government started waking up.
America's Public Enemy Number One in the United States is drug abuse.
[narrator] At times like these,
how do you keep your business plan on course?
The company has suffered serious damage both to productivity and human relations.
Both must be repaired as quickly and completely as possible.
[narrator] If you want to build your business to last,
you need a strategy that can adapt to all market conditions.
In 1971, President Nixon coined the term "War on Drugs,"
and in New York City, this war was raging,
and so it was critical for New York City Police Department
to show that they could get things done by taking on these guys.
[narrator] Frank used a multipronged approach
to address this problem.
Starting with a PR campaign.
He thought doing things for the community
would be an effective way of protecting himself and his enterprise.
Loaning money to people.
Not worrying about if you got it paid back.
Taking care of people.
So he kept a community on his side.
[narrator] He also made sure to take care of an even more important demographic.
Cops.
Frank spent a lot of money paying off police.
Having the police on the take means
being able to walk down the street and not worry about being locked up.
It means knowing that you're gonna have a supply of drugs coming in safely
without being interdicted by the police.
[narrator] But as many mob bosses discover,
acts of generosity can leave some men in blue wanting more.
By the early '70s,
Frank Lucas has moved his family to a quiet house in the suburbs.
But when you inhabit the criminal life, business has a way of following you home.
[horn honks]
Today, Frank is met by an unwanted visitor,
a corrupt NYPD detective he comes to call Babyface.
He orders Frank to pay him 10,000 cash a month.
Or he'll shut down Frank's operation for good.
Frank doesn't see any real options.
So he pays up.
But while Frank scrambles to keep Babyface off his back,
an even greater threat is amassing against him from the DEA.
Agents have been working around the clock to gather intel on Frank's operation.
And when a mob informant steps forward...
[siren wailing]
...they hit hard.
[Lewis] I can tell you
when the agents and the police officers came to arrest him,
his wife threw several gym bags out of the window.
And there was over $500,000 in cash, small bills.
And this was money that he was collecting
to go to Thailand to buy 100 kilos of heroin.
[narrator] Sadly, he'd never make that trip.
Frank goes to trial on both federal and state drug trafficking charges.
He's found guilty and sentenced to 70 years in prison.
But then Harlem's top drug boss makes one last transaction.
[Lewis] Frank joined America's team and made a business decision
to cooperate to reduce that jail time.
As a businessperson looking out for himself,
he made the right decision for himself.
[narrator] Even if it meant turning on his own brother.
You never tell.
And he flipped!
That type of betrayal is... it's hard to deal with sometimes.
It is. You know, somebody else,
you can deal with a little better, but your brother, your own family members?
Cuts you to the core.
Still hurts to today. Still hurts.
[narrator] What can I say? It's just business.
Frank Lucas's profit-maximizing genius earned him millions,
but his time on top lasted just seven years.
If you want your flame to burn both bright and long,
you need to dig deeper into the playbook
and follow our next criminal titan,
Sicilian boss of bosses, Salvatore "The Beast" Riina.
The secret to his legendary run of underworld domination,
total disregard for human life.
Are you ready to unleash the beast inside of you?
[theme music playing]