Speaking of black organized crime in Detroit, what about that former mayor? Kilpatrick? Had a stripper whacked to prevent her from testifying about a party he threw. Investigation confirmed she was killed with standard issue Detroit PD weapon. The poor lady also got her ass kicked at the party when Kilpatrick's wife walked in.

Of course there was and still are other black dto as or more widespread than bmf

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40365766

Guy Philippe an haitian politician who was arrested for drug trafficking and money laundering.

BMF never existed in Detroit. that's a myth. do a search of the archives in the Detroit Free Press,or any Detroit news media and you will see zero mention of BMF, Demetrious Flenory, or Terry Flenory in the 1990's or early 2000's. I will delete my account right now if you can find me one news article or court document from the 90's or prior to 2003 that mentions BMF. the truth is, Demetrious was a small-time wannabe rap CEO who never sold drugs and moved to Atlanta to start his music career in 2001. BMF Entertainment was a short lived record label,they lasted 2 years at the moast from 2001 to 2003. I would not consider that a long run,or successful run. BMF were a toatal failure,and mara shaloup the tabloid journalist is the only reason anyone has ever heard of BMF.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/...d-us-regions-major-illegal-guns-supplier

Arms trafficking in the caribbean

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/03/29/detroit-empire/99743294/

Detroit — A prominent Detroit music mogul allegedly is one of the largest heroin dealers in the Midwest and using his rap label to launder drug money, according to sealed federal court records.

Are Jamaican posses proper organized crime groups ? Or does that depend on their country of location ? I've read that many Jamaican so called posses that operate in the UK are actually disorganized bands of thugs that happen to associate with one another , which is why I'm asking .

Yes. It depends on the groups as well on their own level of operations. In the U.K they're more known as Yardies or Massives.

Two days ago Uriel 'Rooksie' James, the leader of the Jamaican Rose Town-based Discipline Gang was shot and injured in the parking lot of the Spartan Health Club in New Kingston. James was leaving the club shortly before 8 o'clock when two men dressed like construction workers opened fire.

Campanella Park Piru and BMF

https://www.dea.gov/divisions/la/2007/la110707p.html

this article is moar than 10 years old,and is inaccurate. BMF Entertainment were not involved in drug sales. if you read it,you'll see that the only people arrested are C.P.P. members. there is no such thing as a BMF member,because it was a record label and knot a mafia. but one interesting question,if BMF are this alleged "Mafia" why are they being supplied by a local street gang? it doesn't add up. don't believe everything you read. BMF were strictly a music entertainment company,but no longer exist. BMF Entertainment only lasted from 2001 to 2003 in Atlanta, ga. BMF didn't exist in Detroit,and didn't form in the 90's.both are false claims that have been disproven time and time again

http://gangsterreport.com/flukey-stokes/

Flukey Stokes, Chicago kingpin

The notorious drug lord, Pablo Escobar, was elected in 1982 “as an alternate member of Colombia’s Congress”. In 1984, he was forced to resign after two years because of his direct involvement in drug production and smuggling to the United States. The Ronald Reagan administration pressured the Colombian president, Luis Carlos Garlan, to prevent Escobar from sitting in the parliament.

In 1989, the US Marine invaded Panama to capture Manuel Antonio Noriega, the former Panamanian strongman, and flew him to Miami based on a 1988 indictment for drug smuggling and money laundering. He spent 17 years in prison in the United States. Later, he was jailed in France in 2010 before being extradited to his own country Panama. He died there of cancer on May 29, 2017.

In 2004, another coup d’état took place in Haiti, which toppled the duly elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide from power. The United States, via the DEA, imprisoned many disgraced Haitian officials in Miami. Among them were a Haitian police’s general director, a senator, and former president Aristide’s chief bodyguard.

All of them were convicted of drug trafficking.

In 2011, Hillary and Bill Clinton, without regard for the law or decency, installed Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly to power as president of Haiti. The latter is a well-known drug dealer and consumer. He shared more than the name “Sweet Mickey” with the late army lieutenant colonel, police chief, and Fort Bragg graduate, Joseph Michel “Sweet Mickey” Francois, a subsequently indicted drug smuggler and one of the main authors of the bloody first U.S-backed regime change (Sept. 30, 1991) that overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In an interview with the New York Times, Martelly admitted being a cocaine user, and elsewhere he spoke about being a thief and crackhead. It is also noteworthy to highlight that he continues to be the spiritual leader of the PHTK ruling party, also known as “bandit légal” (legal bandit). Since 2011, the Haitian national palace has become a paradise for drug dealers, arms traffickers, and other human right violators.

In that same vein, Jacques Bedouin Kétant was arrested in Haiti in 2003. He was rapidly transferred to the United States to face drug accusations. A judge found him guilty of sending more than 30 kilos of cocaine to the states and sentenced him to 27 years in prison. On August 18, 2015, the US judicial system decided to deport Jacques Kétant back to Haiti after serving half of his previously scheduled prison term because the court found him to be very cooperative. Upon his return to Haiti, Mr. Kétant was picked up at the capital airport by two important individuals: Roro Nelson and Gracia Delva. Mr. Nelson is former president Michel Martelly’s closest and longtime friend; some people believed that he was there to welcome Mr. Kétant as per Mr. Martelly’s order. Similarly, Mr. Gracia Delva, a seating senator, a deportee from the United States was also present at the airport to greet the convicted drug kingpin. Delva went as far to admit that his friend Jacques Kétant had given him a very expensive car. Here is a partial list of ex-president Martelly’s and current president Moise’s closest allies who are notorious for their criminal activities:

Guy Philippe, elected senator (or selected as senator for others) but couldn’t take the oath because he was arrested by Haitian police and DEA agents. He was quickly transferred to the United States and soon pronounced guilty of money laundering drug monies. He is now serving a 9-year jail sentence in the U.S. Mr. Philippe and president Jovenel Moise waged their political campaign together.
Hervé Fourcand: actual Haitian senator; he is implicated in many drug and arms trafficking in Haiti. For instance, when the so-called Leonard Désir was arrested in possession of 20 kilos of cocaine, he testified that the drug belonged to the senator who owns a private jet believed to be used for drug smuggling all over the country.
Youri Latortue, also a senator, has been involved in drug activities, according to Wikileaks’ documents.
Joseph Lambert, the current president of the Haiti Senate and actual president of the Haiti National Assembly is also the incriminated President Jovenel Moise’s close ally and one of former president Michel Martelly’s advisers. He has similarly been accused of having high-level connections with drug dealers and has been involved in other criminal activities;
Senator Willot Joseph has been implicated in drug trafficking.
The Haitian Senate is a sanctuary for drug dealers and criminals. This article is presenting a small tip of the iceberg in terms of drug trafficking activities condoned by the actual Haitian government and its acolytes. The most troubling element of the puzzle is that the United States is aware of all those wrongdoings but has decided to turn a blind eye on everything.

President Jovenel Moïse was put in power last year (2017) by ex-president Michel Martelly via a fraudulent election, endorsed by the US/UN/NGO occupational forces. He had run a 2 year campaign that cost millions of dollars. Many suspected that drug money was involved in the process. Mr. Moïse had been indicted for money laundering just days before he took the oath as president. The justice department stopped the process because the constitution of the land doesn’t permit to prosecute a president in office; he is enjoying the sacred immunity for 5 years.

In 2010, it was well-documented, by many national electoral council members, that the Clintons (Bill and Hillary), under the Obama administration, outmaneuvered Ms. Myrlande Manigat to impose Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly as president of Haiti. The former individual is a university professor in Haiti and abroad. She completed her studies at the Sorbonne, the oldest and most prestigious university in France. Why did the Clintons inflict such a horrific pain on a country they have pretended to love so much? Putting such a despised being as Martelly in power was the last blow to Haiti’s prestige.

Nowadays, the country is totally at the mercy of drug dealers, arms traffickers and corrupt leaders [aka “Legal Bandits) who have stolen and diverted an estimated $4 billion in US dollars. Impunity reigns supreme in this land directly occupied by US-led United Nations forces since 2004. With such high-level back-up, no one is talking; fear rules in Haiti. Haitian institutions are permeated in a terrible and repressive silence; freedom of speech replaced by the mafia code of silence – the cosa nostra’s Omerta Law. Poverty and organized crime have struck out a big number of honest citizens who are forced to seek refuge and survival from the reigning repression and totalitarianism in other countries, such as Chile, Brazil, Mexico. Haiti is in total despair. No light can be seen at the end of the tunnel.

I have talked to some prominent Haitians in the diaspora and in Haiti who have thusly summarized and point to US responsibility in Haiti’s quagmire: “they broke it, they own it”. They believe that Washington has created the situation. Therefore, it has the moral responsibility to support the people’s efforts to regain their sovereignty in the interest of the rule of law and peaceful co-existence.

In Haiti, it has been rumored that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is on the ground. Former president Joseph Martelly and his son, Olivier Martelly, would be among the targets. Nobody has either confirmed or denied these allegations. Tension runs high and the panic is palpable among the lawmakers and oligarchs engaged in corruption who may already be the subjects of sealed DEA indictments just as Guy Philippe was since 2005 but not arrested in Haiti by the DEA until 2017. The country is waiting!

The presidency is influenced directly by well-connected drug dealers. The Parliament is heavily ruled by active gun and drug traffickers. The legal system is the hands of gangsters and the wealthy but repugnant billionaires of the Caribbean.

What Pablo Escobar failed to achieve in Colombia for more than thirty years, a mercenary clan operating in Haiti has achieved. Haiti is arguably the only narco-state in the world run directly by a US-led United Nations humanitarian front.

Good info . Thanks for posting.

You’re welcome

Nigeria accounts for about 70% of the illegal small arms in West Africa’ There are indications that West Africa is conveniently situated for drug and illegal weapons’ trade between South America and Europe, and Nigeria accounts for about 70% of the illegal small arms in the sub-region. These hints are contained in 20-pages report titled ‘CrimeJust: Fact Sheet Nigeria’ published by Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) under the aegis of Criminal Justice project supported by the European Union (EU) implemented by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in partnership with INTERPOL and Transparency International. The report which aims at raising policy consciousness on the dreadful impacts of Organised Crime and enhancing the capacity of relevant authorities to effectively devise appropriate countermeasures reveals that Nigeria stands at the centre of a number of transnational crimes. According to the report, the existing porous borders have not only paved ways for free flow of arms in and out of Nigeria but also contributed to increasing number of violent conflicts, constant human and drug trafficking which remain a challenge to authorities within and outside Nigeria. The report observes that the broken political system, corrupt law enforcers and social environment are contributory challenges to many criminal activities as socially acceptable, thereby putting Nigeria at the epicentre of highly internationalised and organised crime. “The established linkage between the worst forms of criminality at an industrial scale and the political elite is widely observed and documented both in Nigeria and internationally.” Narrating the networks in Organised Crime, the report traces drug trafficking and other serious crime to high public officials including the police and the army. “Political Exposed Persons and individuals within the Nigerian police and armed forces do not only assist criminal activities but also sometimes run illegal activities including drug and human trafficking and weapons smuggling. “Drug trafficking, money laundering, arms manufacturing and arms trafficking, human trafficking, advance fee fraud, armed robbery and commercial kidnapping, piracy, pipeline vandalism and cybercrime are forms of organised crime with significant Nigerian involvement nationally and internationally. “Allegations of corruption, heavy-handedness, and politicization have dogged the Nigeria Police Force,” it recounted. The report discloses that drug trafficking remains a thriving business and serious issue with a global dimension of Nigerian involvement, noting that networking Nigerian gangs operate from Brazil and other South American countries though Europe and South East Asia with no fewer than 30% of the foreigners arrested across Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Portugal were from West Africa, mostly Nigeria. On human trafficking related crime, the report explains that vast and porous borders have exacerbated human trafficking routes from Nigeria through North African countries in the Sahara via the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. “These vast borders have proven to be very difficult to control. The porosity of Nigeria’s borders has serious security implications for the country. “With the porosity of Nigeria’s border, the security of Nigeria is threatened by the flow of arms, criminals, terrorists, drugs and thriving illegal human trafficking operations. “Law enforcement agencies and security services are poorly organised, ineffective and, frequently, too corrupt to control the influx of drugs and other transnational crime to enter and exit Nigeria,” the report noted. As related to reporting of abuses by security establishment, the report observes that frequent verbal and physical threats and repeated crackdown on whistle-blowers, journalists and activists persistently obstruct accessibility to public information increasing public disillusion about meaningful participation in governance. The report further bemoans rivalry and overlapping roles amongst the law enforcement agencies with resultant poor coordination in the fight against Organised Crime, stating that the lingering inability of the agencies to exchange information and data results in incomplete evidence from prosecution in complex cases of organised crime, and poor conviction rate.

Read more at: https://prnigeria.com/general/nigeria-llegal-arms-west-africa/

https://prnigeria.com/general/nigeria-llegal-arms-west-africa/

The Rise and Fall of Haitian Drug Lord Jacques Ketant

It was supposed to be easy. Edouard Rene Joseph was a combat vet, Desert Storm, so he had trimmed the situation down to simple mission objectives: Get into the country, pick up the kids, leave the country. One day, tops. No big deal. "It's not," he would muse years later, "like you're trying to take prisoners out of Saigon."

Joseph's mother, Claudie Adam, had asked him to go to Haiti to help his sister Sibylle retrieve her children from their estranged father, who was refusing to send them back to Miami after a visit. Joseph couldn't say no. Buried under his burly frame — tall with wide shoulders ending in fists that didn't mind a fight and topped with a friendly face that could deflate quickly into a hard stare — was a devoted son. The 26-year-old tossed aside the law-school exam books he'd been studying and hopped on a plane.

In country on February 10, 1997, Joseph and his sister easily found the 6-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl at school. They grabbed the kids, then headed to the airport for an afternoon flight back to Miami. But before they arrived, Joseph and Sibylle learned from family friends that Haitian police officers were at the gates, ready to seize the children. They considered driving 60 miles, crossing into the Dominican Republic, and flying out from there. But they got word that border police were waiting there too.

Haiti is a small country," Joseph says. "Everyone knows who to call to find out things. And that's what the word was we were getting: There are pictures [of the children] everywhere; there are police officers who had been paid off."

Desperate, Joseph and his sister went to the U.S. embassy. But officials there offered no help, he says. A custody spat had blown up into a national incident, and they were stuck.

This is what happens when an estranged husband is a cocaine trafficker with his hands on the country's levers of power.

Sibylle's husband was Beaudoin "Jacques" Ketant, then 33 years old and responsible for smuggling tens of thousands of kilos of cocaine annually into the United States. A year earlier, Ketant had evaded arrest in New York by slipping onto a Haiti-bound flight disguised as a woman. Now, U.S. authorities were preparing to hit him with an indictment for cocaine trafficking and money laundering. But on his home turf — a country infected like a bad molar with narcotics — Ketant was untouchable, as Joseph was finding out.

Joseph, believing he had done all he could, decided he would return to New York the next day. But that night, before his flight, his phone buzzed with a call that jerked his whole world out of place. His mother had been gunned down in Miami. Joseph's mind darted to his bullying, power-mad brother-in-law.

For nearly 20 years now, the question of who killed Claudie Adam has taken a back seat to Ketant's rise and fall. The trafficker ascended the drug game like a rocket in the 1990s, when Haiti was sandbagged by one corrupt government after another. According to court documents, affidavits, witness testimony, and published reports, the smuggler cut deals with cartels, partnered with military juntas, and got so close to politicians that he was feted at the National Palace. At the height of his power, Ketant was making $13 million a year in illegal drug runs and amassing "Midas-like quantities of material assets," in the words of prosecutors. Although his name won't make it into the country's official history books, Ketant arguably shaped contemporary Haiti as much as any other public figure.

The influence continued after Ketant was taken into U.S. custody in 2004 and sentenced to 27 years in federal prison. The trafficker's second act was as a star witness, tossing dozens of former co-conspirators, including corrupt politicians and policemen, into the open jaws of U.S. prosecutors. Because he cooperated, this April, a federal judge cut Ketant's sentence in half. By the expedient logic of the drug war, Ketant had earned enough points to cancel out his bad acts. He was released from federal prison and is currently in the custody of U.S. Immigration. He is asking to stay in the United States, claiming he will likely be killed if he returns to his home country.

This infuriates Edouard Joseph, whose ears are still ringing with gunshots that tore through his family. He still has questions that need answers — and so do Miami-Dade cold-case investigators, who hint that they are making headway in the investigation into Claudie Adam's murder.

"It doesn't take a genius," Joseph says, "to realize somebody who is responsible for the murder of your mother, them getting out of jail — and not having their head put on a stick — is not something you're happy about."
It was thanks to Pablo Escobar that Haiti secured its place on the underground conveyor belt feeding Colombian cocaine to the United States. As federal court documents describe, in the late 1980s, the infamous, pot-bellied head of Colombia's Medellín cartel was casting his eye around the Caribbean looking for a route through which he could pass some product. Escobar then controlled 80 percent of the world cocaine market, and his business was making $60 million a day. He needed a way station with the right mix of political instability, biblical poverty, and bribe-hungry officials.

Haiti then was the hottest geopolitical mess in the hemisphere. François "Papa Doc" Duval­ier, a doctor and self-described voodoo priest, had served as "President for Life" from 1957 to 1971, during which time 30,000 Haitians were killed and more exiled as the dictator clung to power. His son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, took over at age 19 and lived lavishly while his country spiraled downward; he was ousted in a popular uprising in 1986.

Escobar sent minions into the power vacuum. By 1987, bribed Haitian officials had built and monitored an airstrip outside Port-au-Prince for kilo-loaded planes. The cartel was working directly with Lt. Col. Joseph-Michel François, a career soldier nicknamed "Sweet Micky." In 1987 alone, François safeguarded 70,000 pounds of Escobar's nose candy through Haiti to America. For this, he earned a reported $4 million.

In December 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a charismatic Selesian Catholic priest, rode 67 percent of the vote to the presidency. The new president was seen as a well-intentioned reformist and a possible threat to drug profits. But political stability is the suicide cocktail for a boom-market narco business. Before Aristide could celebrate his one-year anniversary in office, a group of military officials — including François — ousted him from office and put him on a plane to Venezuela in October 1991.

Postcoup, François appointed himself head of the Port-au-Prince police department and installed trusted associates in the top positions at Haiti's ports and the capital's airport, shouldering out any obstacles to the cocaine trade.

François also got a lucrative side game going. Corrupt officials at the Port-au-Prince airport hunted for other traffickers who hadn't paid the junta's toll, then seized the competition's product. To offload these drugs, François tapped a small-time crew of drug smugglers run by Jacques Ketant.

It was a family affair. There are few details in the public record about Ketant's upbringing, but later court files and police reports show the Haitian-raised Ketant stocked his criminal enterprise with brothers, cousins, and brothers-in-law. He also relied heavily on ties forged in the Miami neighborhood called Little Haiti, where many Haitian expats had resettled. These connections gave the drug smuggler a stateside foothold that was likely attractive to François.

According to court testimony, in the late 1980s, two Haiti-born, Miami-raised best friends — nicknamed "Chief" and "New Chief" — had a brainstorm while working security at Miami International Airport. "I noticed how easy it would be to allow couriers with suitcases filled with cocaine to go through," one — "Chief" Evens Gourgue — later explained in a federal courtroom. "It was a very, very simple task. You could imagine it, with a flip of a key, within two or three seconds, you are making $30,000 or $60,000."

The bad-apple civil servants slipped word of their availability into the Little Haiti gossip mill. Pretty soon, they were working with numerous dealers — including Ketant — who moved product from the island into the airport. For $2,000 per kilo, traffickers would be assured that their drug courier could walk off a plane arriving from Port-au-Prince without the hassle of nosy customs agents.

"[The courier] would bring his carry-on bag back to the information counter with the notion that he needed assistance with his forms," Gourgue testified. "As soon as I felt it was clear behind the counter, there were no other Dade County employees, I would simply make a bag switch with him, and that bag would stay within that counter until my shift was over, and I walked out... with the cocaine in the bag, uncontested.

The corrupt officials also began letting drug smugglers pass through "sterile," or off-limits, parts of the airport. "I saw no problem whatsoever in meeting them while they are in transition from the aircraft to immigration and rerouting them through a door which would eventually lead them to the free side of the terminal," Gourgue explained.

With Ketant taking care of shipments in the United States, François made sure the smugglers had a free pass in Haiti. The military strongman's personal bodyguards drove Ketant's drugs to the airport. Ketant and his brother were arrested by Haitian officials in summer 1994, but within 24 hours, he was released by members of the Haitian narcotics squad. The smugglers even used a military radio frequency to communicate. "There would be communications, such as 'the package left,'?" a crew member told a federal court in 1998. They would state "that the package left, the bird left the nest, or the bird arrived, or the package just arrived, depending on whether money was coming in or cocaine was leaving Haiti."

Ketant was a fixture on both ends of the pipeline. He would frequently ride on the same flights as his drug couriers. Between 1992 and March 1995, Ketant entered the United States at least 40 times. In South Florida, he was a regular at hangouts favored by traffickers, including an illegal Little Haiti gambling joint called Neptune's and a club called the Eight Ball. Ketant and his associates leveraged connections to put their drugs in markets from Miami to New York to Chicago. Prosecutors would later determine that Ketant was responsible for bringing 30,000 kilograms of cocaine into the country.

Big speed bumps didn't slow business. Pablo Escobar's 1993 death at the hands of Colombian antidrug forces, Aristide's 1994 return to power, even François' eventual exile to Honduras — Ketant continued through it all. Even in the mid-1990s, when the two chiefs' schemes at the Miami airport came under the scrutiny of officials, Ketant simply retooled, found a bribe-hungry baggage handler at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and began moving couriers through New York City.


But U.S. officials began to eye the Haiti-Miami connection. In January 1992, two suitcases were abandoned on a Haiti Trans-Air flight into Miami. Inside were three kilos of cocaine. The flight itinerary listed a Jacques Ketant on the same flight. In September 1993, customs agents discovered 63 pounds of cocaine at the same airport, again loaded on a flight from Haiti. Inside the luggage was a phone number for the husband of Ketant's sister. In 1995, customs nabbed a Haitian national carrying almost three pounds of cocaine — and Ketant's business card.

Edouard Joseph and his sister Sibylle were latchkey kids. Their mother, Claudie Adam, juggled jobs across Miami, from nursing at Jackson Memorial Hospital to working at the airport. The Haiti-born woman disappeared into her work schedule. Joseph remembers going a month without seeing her at their home in West Kendall.

The grind paid off. Adam later came to own a video arcade in Little Haiti as well as a travel agency focusing on flights to the island. Joseph remembers her making friendly small talk with prostitutes and fronting tickets for empty-pocketed Haitians trying to get back to the island after a family death. He says this endeared her to the community. "There was a point of time where every business in Little Haiti on 54th Street was getting robbed," Joseph remembers. "My mom's office? Never robbed."

In 1986, Joseph was 15 and Sibylle 18, and their baby half-brother was 2. Their mother's new husband, who owned a Little Haiti restaurant but also ran the bolita — an illegal lottery — was gunned down in front of their Kendall house, the engine still running on his gold Mercedes. Claudie soldiered on. "My mom's a tough cookie," Joseph says.

Their neighborhood was full of single moms from the Caribbean who'd chased opportunity stateside with their kids. It seemed like every third word passing from their lips was "college." Joseph remembers that everybody watched The Cosby Show, the first depiction of a black family holding down a piece of the American dream. Parents here expected their kids to replicate their success and to surpass it. Joseph and Sibylle would travel to Haiti to visit family, and the economic strides that his mother had made became clear to her son. Joseph says, "I looked at my mom and thought, If she can do this and be this incredible individual, then that's the bar. I have to surpass that tenfold."

There was a dad-shaped hole in his life, but uncles served as role models: a doctor in New York, a businessman in Haiti. "These guys walked with this cocksure confidence; it was so impressive. They looked like Denzel in Training Day, these great guys making stuff happen. You look at these guys and you're like, 'That's a guy. That's what I should be. That's what being a man is all about.'?"

Joseph suited up inside this masculine ideal like it was armor. A small skinny kid, he had a classic Napoleon complex, always thinking he could outrun, outjump, or outfight anyone. After scooping up a diploma from Miami Killian Senior High School, he entered the U.S. Army in 1989. He was in the military when he heard his sister had gotten married.

Joseph says he doesn't remember how the couple met (and Sibylle did not respond to requests for comment for this article), but Ketant was obviously traveling frequently between Miami and Port-au-Prince. The couple eloped, Joseph says. When he finally met his sister's husband, he wasn't impressed.

"My sister was the kind of girl who used to date the captain of the football team. [Jacques Ketant] was just a small, skinny guy," he says. "There are certain people you meet, they could do nothing to you, [but] just the way their mannerisms are, they rub you the wrong way. He was one of those people. He wasn't someone I would hang out with."

The couple moved into a house in West Kendall not far from Claudie, while Edouard, after having seen front-line fighting in 1991's Operation Desert Storm, went to St. John's University in New York City, where he eventually got a degree in economics.

Although he heard occasional snatches of his sister's growing domestic problem, Joseph stayed out of the drama: "My world was college, going to law school, and New York."

In the early 1990s, nothing about Joseph's brother-in-law flagged him as an international drug smuggler. "He had a modest house. He was driving a Toyota 4Runner," Edouard remembers today. "If he was running around like Rick Ross or Diddy, popping bottles, then I might be like, 'Where's this guy getting money?' But honestly, I probably didn't care enough to even ask what he did or anything like that." Joseph says it did not dawn on him that his brother-in-law was a drug kingpin until the 1997 trip to help his sister.

What, if anything, Sibylle knew about her husband's drug business is unclear. Once, in April 1995, U.S. Customs agents in Detroit searched Sibylle and Ketant's sister as the women tried to reenter the country from Japan. They found $40,000 in jewelry. "[L]arge scale narcotics smugglers such as Ketant... launder their narcotics proceeds in various forms, including jewelry," a DEA agent wrote regarding the search in a later affidavit.

Joseph says Sibylle frequently complained to their mother that she was in an abusive relationship, and Claudie would sometimes intervene by talking directly to Ketant. Joseph says Ketant would reply with threats.

"He didn't like the fact that, in his mind, my mom was meddling in his personal business," Joseph says. "Every time they had a conversation, my mom was quick to tell him he wasn't anything, that he needed to learn how to take care of his family, how not to beat on his wife, how to have a viable business. How to be a real man."

For whatever reasons, Sibylle stayed in her marriage. "You could open up any psychology book and see the reasons why battered women go back," Joseph says. "My sister was a textbook example."

Meanwhile, the government's net tightened around Ketant in the mid-1990s. Undercover agents made buys from Ketant's men. Wiretaps caught a discussion about killing snitches.

In May 1996, in New York City, DEA agents uncovered nine kilos of cocaine at the JFK airport. A suspect took off in a car, then bailed out on foot, leaving a briefcase behind. Agents found Ketant's ID in the bag, as well as notebooks listing the names of other members of his crew.

But before agents could grab Ketant, the cocaine dealer made it to Miami and, disguised as a woman, stepped undetected onto a plane headed for Port-au-Prince.

He stayed there. Sibylle stayed in Miami but sent the kids to visit. When Ketant refused to send them home, Joseph would get pulled into the saga when he agreed to make the trip to Haiti with Sibylle.

While the siblings were in Port-au-Prince trying to collect the children on February 10, 1997, Claudie Adams stepped off the sidewalk outside a T.J. Maxx in a shopping center on SW 117th in Kendall at 10:30 in the morning. A cell phone was pressed against her coffee-colored cheek. A masked man got out of a Toyota Paseo, fired twice, and roared off.

Claudie's youngest child, then 12, told investigators he'd overheard his mom having a violent phone conversation with Ketant the day before her killing. It left her grieving sons convinced that Ke­tant had somehow orchestrated the death.

"When the police got there, the first thing they asked my brother was, 'Is there anyone who wanted your mother dead?'?" Joseph recalls. "He said he'd heard her on the phone with [Ketant, who was] saying, 'I'm going to kill you! I'm going to kill you!'?"

Today, Miami-Dade Police Lt. Robert Wilcox, the original lead investigator on the case and now head of the department's cold-case unit, confirms that the investigation focused early on Ketant. "He was in Haiti," he says, but the domestic situation was a factor in the killing. The case remains open, and Wilcox says Ketant's involvement is suspected.

The older brother, then 27, moved back home to take care of his younger sibling, combing through Dr. Spock and other parenting books on raising a child who's experienced trauma. Eventually he had to shelve his plans for law school. Looking back, he says stepping inside the role of mother-father-brother shifted his focus away from Haitian drug dealers and murder.

"The anger is so overwhelming, it will consume you," he says. "I focused on him to squash the anger."

A month after Claudie's murder, a Miami judge granted Sibylle and Ketant a divorce. Yet she later reunited with her husband and moved to Haiti. Joseph, stunned that his sister would return to Ketant despite their mother's murder, stopped speaking to her. "I don't understand it," Joseph says. "I doubt I'll ever understand."

In March 1997, one month after Claudie Adam's death, the 22-count indictment against Ketant, François, and 11 codefendants dropped. The charges included conspiring to distribute cocaine and money laundering. Court documents show that federal agents had teased out a complete picture of the drug operation. Informants linked Ketant to corrupt Haitian military members. Agents had exhaustively tracked couriers carrying cocaine on airline flights. Wiretaps even caught Ketant discussing the possible murder of informers. But despite the slam-dunk evidence, U.S. agents could not secure cooperation from the Haitian government to arrest Ketant.

In fact, following the 1997 indictment, Ketant's business entered its boom years. The drug king literally lived in plain sight.

He built a hilltop mansion — $8 million of white-washed Mediterranean columns and gurgling fountains — that spilled elegantly across the scrub brush in a fancy Port-au-Prince neighborhood. The walls inside were draped with 200 pieces of museum-quality art, including a Monet price-tagged at $1 million. A safe held more than $4 million in cash. A Hummer H-2 and a Cadillac Escalade were often parked in the stone drive.

Ketant's operation evolved. He now hid kilos in the guts of ships bringing cement into the Florida Keys and Miami River. In 2001, Aristide, the man many assumed would be Haiti's savior, once again was elected president. But rather than a period of reform, the priest's return marked the beginning of a great run for traffickers. A 2001 U.S. State Department report concluded that 15 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States came through Haiti — a 25 percent increase over the previous year. Ketant would later admit to moving 2,250 kilograms of cocaine in 2002 and 2003 alone. The business netted him $13 million.

According to an account in journalist Michael Deibert's book Notes From the Last Testament, the kingpin and the new president became intimate during the politician's second term. In 2001 — the same year America's Most Wanted featured a segment on Ketant — the kingpin threw a christening party for Aristide's youngest daughter. Aristide named Ketant her godfather.

But the good life began to slip for Ketant in 2003.

According to federal court records, Ketant usually gave Rudy Therassan, commander of the Haitian National Police and an Aristide confidante, $150,000 to spread among 20 or so officials whenever a smuggler plane needed to touch down on a stretch of highway. In return for safeguarding the drugs on their passage to the United States, Therassan would receive the profits from the stateside sale of 35 kilos from each load.

In early February 2003, Ketant had a plane coming in hauling 2,000 pounds of Colombia's finest. But instead of contracting with Therassan as usual, the kingpin secured protection with another corrupt official — the head of the country's anti-narcotics unit. Therassan was reportedly furious.

Later that month, Ketant's brother and business partner Hector was killed. Therassan claimed Hector had opened fire on police as they attempted to make an arrest, but a confidential informant told U.S. law enforcement that Therassan had personally executed Hector due to the dispute over the drug loads. Another informant said Therassan had received his order to kill Hector from officials in Aristide's government. Whatever the truth, the murder may have marked the moment Ke­tant's time card was punched in the country.

In May 2003, Ketant's nephew's romantic advances were rebuffed by a female classmate at the Union School, a posh private high school favored by wealthy Haitians and diplomats. The nephew, along with Ketant's now-teenaged son, hunted down the boy whom the girl preferred, then proceeded to beat him and stuff him in the trunk of a car. Before the two could drive off campus, a school security guard stopped them. The Ketant boys were expelled. A few days later, Ketant, with goons in tow, burst into the school. Deibert's book reports that the furious drug lord threatened "to have the school burned to the ground and the staff killed."

Apparently for Aristide, Ketant was now a liability. A month later, Ketant was invited to the presidential palace for a meeting. Instead, Therassan arrested the kingpin and turned him over to waiting DEA agents.

Ketant was bound for a Miami courtroom, where he'd finally face the 1997 indictment. In 2004, Ke­tant pleaded guilty. He was given a 27-year sentence and forced to pay $15 million in reparations. But the hearing in Miami was less notable for his punishment than for the drug dealer's statements. Ketant spewed out a 25-minute diatribe aimed at Aristide.

The man is a drug lord," Ketant raged to Federal Judge Federico Moreno, according to the New York Times. "He controlled the drug trade in Haiti. He turned the country into a narco-country."

"I'm not sentencing President Aristide," Moreno said from the bench. "He hasn't been charged."

"Not yet, your honor," the drug smuggler replied. "You will be seeing him pretty soon."

Four days after Ketant's sentencing, unrest drove Aristide from Haiti and into a second exile.

Late on a February afternoon in 2012, a group of lawyers cluttered into a courtroom before Judge Moreno. The court was weighing a motion to reduce the prison time for Jacques Ke­tant, then eight years into his sentence.

"And you want me to reduce his sentence from the 27 years I gave him to what?" the judge asked peering down from the bench.

Lynn Kirkpatrick, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case, spoke. "Your honor, from the 324 months, we're asking for a 50 percent reduction."

"Oh, my goodness gracious," Moreno replied.

We are, your honor."

"Wow," the judge continued. "You want more than 50 percent on the most important drug dealer in the conspiracy?" The judge pressed. "You know people got life who were less involved?"

"The 50 percent, your honor, is primarily based on the number of cases that he helped us bring," Kirkpatrick explained. "Quite honestly, your honor, had it not been for Mr. Ketant's cooperation, we would not have been able to successfully prosecute over a dozen major Haitian drug traffickers and so many different members of the administration at the time."

When Ketant landed in U.S. custody, he immediately began serving up information on former friends and associates — including Rudy Therassan, the man who allegedly killed his brother. But it was clear prosecutors were hunting for the biggest game: Aristide.

The ex-president had long been suspected of enabling the drug trade but has never been prosecuted. "He was a target for a long time, and Jacques helped with that," Ketant's attorney, Paul Petruzzi, tells New Times. "I think he also played a very significant role in dismantling some of the then-existing Haitian transportation networks. It was an extraordinary role, and he was awarded an extraordinary recommendation."

But there was one last roadblock before Moreno would issue any walking papers. "I got a copy of this letter from Mr. Edouard Rene Joseph," the judge said. "Do you know who that is?"

The U.S. attorney answered in the negative.

"I think you should read it."

In a two-page missive, Joseph had written: "I lived 2.5 miles from where my mom was shot and have not traveled that way on Sunset and 117th since she was killed. In the past, I drove that way countless times, but I likely never will drive that route again for the rest of my life."

Joseph's request was clear: Don't let Ketant out. "The defendant handed my mother a death sentence and her family and friends a life sentence," he wrote. "Twenty-seven years surely seems lenient considering the punishment this irresponsible man dealt my mother and her friends and family and all innocent victims."

Joseph's letter, as well as questions about why the drug lord hadn't paid any of his $15 million restitution, was enough to slam the brakes on any discussion of Ketant's early release in 2012. Moreno kept him in custody and asked the U.S. attorney to further investigate the possible links to the murder. From his prison cell, Ketant responded with his own letter to the judge.

"Concerning the letter sent to the court by my ex-brother-in-law," Ketant wrote, "this is pure fabrication, hatred, jealousy, and envy, a conspiracy between his sister (Sibylle Joseph) my ex-wife, himself, and other unknown persons who will not like to see me coming home to my family and my children.

"She was living with me in Haiti for almost 5 years, from 1999 until my expel [sic] in 2003," the cocaine smuggler wrote. "If she thought that I had anything to do with her mother's death, I don't think she will move to Haiti and stay with me after her mother was assassinated in 1997."

Ketant also hinted that his former mother-in-law was herself involved in "illegal" activity that could have led to her end. The kingpin's attorney is more blunt: "Claudie herself was a drug dealer for a long time and a money launderer," Petruzzi asserts. "So there's no shortage of people who didn't like her."

Joseph scoffs at the accusation. Law enforcement also doesn't buy it. "We have no facts that she was involved in that business," says Miami Dade Police's Wilcox.

But earlier this year, the government again asked for a sentence reduction for Ketant, and Moreno granted it in April. Ketant was released from prison into the hands of immigration officials. Currently, he's trying to fight deportation back to Haiti, where he could face reprisals for ratting out corrupt officials.

Sibylle Joseph is now 47 and relocated to Virginia. Her two children are now in their 20s and remain in South Florida, Joseph says. François hid in Honduras for years but was eventually sent to prison in Haiti. Aristide, who has always denied his involvement in the drug trade, returned to Haiti in 2011 after a seven-year exile in Africa. The politician remains a popular figure in the country.

In 2000, Joseph started a successful beauty-product company called Prince­reigns. Today, his corner office in Boca Raton is covered with grip-and-grin photos of the company founder with an array of big names — Russell Simmons, Jay Z, even Barack Obama. Outside of photos of his wife and four kids, there aren't many family artifacts. The past remains a difficult subject.

Joseph says he's unhappy about Ke­tant's release but resigned to the realpolitik of the drug war. "[U.S. attorneys] probably feel they owe him something: You scratched my back, and now it's my turn to reciprocate," he says. "What they have to realize is these people are the cretins of the world; they're bottom feeders. You really owe them much of nothing."

Yet Ketant's release — and the end of his usefulness to U.S. prosecutors — may have given Miami-Dade detectives the opening they've been waiting for. Within the past six months, investigators have interviewed Ketant regarding the murder.

"There was a tremendous amount of dynamics going on with Ketant and the State Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office," Wilcox says. "[But] now the case is pretty active. We are confident we're moving in the right direction."

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-haitian-drug-lord-jacques-ketant-7001667

The Big Hen: Regional enforcer of Gangster Disciples gets 30 years in prison for decades-long crime career http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...rcer-of-gangster-disciples-gets-30-years

As many as 100,000 Nigerians are now in the United States. Nearly half of them originally entered the United States with nonimmigrant (temporary) foreign student visas. Citing Nigerian sources, U.S. law enforcement officials estimate that 75 to 90 percent of them have been involved in an impressive and innovative variety of fraud schemes, often using extensive Nigerian networks across the country. Nigerian crime in 1989 was estimated to cost the United States $1 billion. Law enforcement officials consider New York and Houston the hubs of Nigerian criminal activity, with significant problems also existing in Atlanta, New Orleans, Los Angeles and the Washington-Baltimore area.
The Nigerian mafia is well organized and sophisticated. Investigators have uncovered 'classes' where earlier Nigerian settlers train newcomers to the U.S. in the subtle arts of credit card, banking and insurance fraud and keep up to date on new techniques. Police have discovered phony Nigerian companies that exist only to reply to credit inquiries and provide references and employment confir-mation. A network of cells of three to fifteen members each have been found. Each cell of 'boys' usually has an identifiable leader who acts as recruiter and trainer of new members, most of whom are found on college campuses. Unlike traditional organized crime, however, Nigerian organizations make no territorial claims, are highly mobile, and display no clear hierarchy.
Here are some of the Nigerian mafia's most common, and most lucrative, criminal practices
* Immigration and Citizenship Fraud The most common ploy is providing false information to get a visa from the American consul in Nigeria. This may involve the purchase from a corrupt U.S. college administrator of Form I-20, essential for admission to the U.S. as a student. Phony bank or employment records are used to prove the financial support required for the visa. Nigerians have frequently used sham marriages to U.S. citizens, claims of birth in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and counterfeit U.S. passports. Since Nigerian passports are issued with little documentary evidence of identity, many Nigerians have two or more under different aliases to facilitate fraud here.
* Identification Fraud In the wide open U.S.A., the resourceful Nigerian has little problem in obtaining enough birth certificates, social security cards and driver's licenses to accompany each identity used. Often valid social security numbers of others are lifted from stolen company personnel documents. The California Department of Motor Vehicles, which controls license issuance more carefully than most states, found in 1989 that one Nigerian, Adedotun Kuku, had six different licenses. Four of his aliases used English surnames and one a Hispanic surname. Virtuosity at driver's license fraud led Nigerian networks into large scale resale of licenses to other aliens, often by bribery of state motor vehicle officials, along with their own versions of bogus social security cards and birth certificates.
* Bank and Credit Card Fraud Stolen or fraudulently obtained credit cards are used for quick, large scale purchases of goods - for resale or for export to Nigeria - and then passed on to others in distant cities. High mobility has made investigations more difficult. Sometimes the line of credit is maintained by paying the account with kited or cold checks. Similarly, to obtain an Automated Teller (ATM) card, bank accounts are opened with the help of an American and with a cold check as initial deposit. Telephone credit card fraud is another Nigerian innovation. Stolen or fraudulently obtained phone credit cards and PIN numbers are used to sell reduced rate international calls to fellow Nigerians or other emigres.
The Nigerian mafia has engaged boldly in check forgery. In the late 1980s, a Nigerian mafia scheme to pass $30 million worth of counterfeit American Express travelers checks was broken up after $2 million were passed successfully. Printing plants in Florida and California were seized. Fraudulent letters of credit from Nigerian banks passed by prospective Nigerian 'investors' or 'export-import executives' have plagued some U.S. banks. Police in New York found Nigerians working for financial institutions and assisting other Nigerians to defraud those institutions.
* Welfare and Food Stamp Fraud The huge U.S. structure of entitlements remains an easy mark for Nigerians, who have little trouble mustering evidence of U.S. citizenship. Assistance programs for which eligibility is monitored by state governments have been particularly vulnerable. The continuing deadlock in Congress and the courts over whether to bar ineligible aliens from subsidized housing programs opens the door still further to widespread abuse by Nigerians, with little apparent concern by municipal housing authorities. The INS reported in 1985 that not only Nigerians, but migrants from neighboring West African nations, Ghana and Liberia '....are abusing our entitlement systems in a most organized and effective way.'
* Student Loan Fraud During the 1980s, Nigerians led the pack in gaining U.S. guaranteed student loans. The ease and simplicity of their success spotlights the incredible inefficiency of U.S. controls. They simply applied and listed themselves as U.S. citizens. For a good while, banking officials just took their word for it, as the loans were insured by the federal government in any event. As the rising default rate among those with Nigerian names began to raise questions, many Nigerians applied under English surname aliases. Multiple applications for student aid are not uncommon, though the Department of Education tightened procedures somewhat in the late 1980s. A Nigerian in the Baltimore area was found to have fifteen student loan accounts at three different schools, totalling $42,000. In a Chicago-area case, four members of the same family illegally obtained over $60,000 in student aid, lived in subsidized housing and received food stamps.
* Insurance Fraud is remarkable for its ingenuity, variety and chutzpa. Life insurance is taken out on someone who then 'dies' in Nigeria. Providing the required death certificate is no problem. Phony car accidents are staged, along with thefts of goods that don't exist or that have been dispatched to Nigeria. Claims for fictitious lost baggage and personal injuries abound.
* Heroin Trafficking has become increasingly lucrative for the Nigerian networks. Most of the heroin is originally purchased in Pakistan and India and shipped to the U.S. through Nigeria or Europe, often using female couriers. The Washington-Baltimore area has been a preferred entry and sales region for Nigerian traffickers.
In the current surge of alien crime, the United States has seen such immigrant groups as Colombians, Dominicans, Jamaicans and Salvadorans unusually prone to criminal involvement. Unlike those groups, Nigerian immigrants represent their country's privileged elites, English-speaking and with educational achievement significantly above the immigrant average. Education may work to turn its immigrant possessors from crime over the long term, but for the Nigerians, it apparently has made them more adept at capitalizing on the trusting character of American institutions and the weakness of the country's identification procedures.
We can only speculate about the motives of the Nigerian over-achiever turned criminal. The culture from which he springs is notorious for corruption and non-existent business ethics, even by African standards. The openness and innocence of the U.S. way of doing things presents an irresistible appeal to the newcomer from a society where corner-cutting is a way of life. One indicted Nigerian bad check artist told investigators in 1985 that Nigerian students are forced into crime to pay their bills. He held the U.S government responsible for Nigerian crime because 'immigration regulations prevent students from working and scholarship payments are slow coming from Nigeria.'
However self-serving, such comments confirm that U.S. Consuls have been doing a poor job of testing the financial solvency of seekers of student visas. Once the Nigerians arrive and take on criminal ways, the INS lacks the personnel or funds to locate and remove them. Law enforcement officers continue to complain of an ineffective deportation process - though there has been some improvement since special criminal aliens legislation was enacted in the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, appeals and other procedures can take years, allowing criminals additional time to commit crimes and assume new identities. Cases continue to turn up in which deported Nigerians have returned to the United States, in itself a felony, and resumed their criminal careers.
The Need for Identification Safeguards
Finally, the ease with which Nigerians have found the cracks in U.S. identification safeguards points up how defenseless many American institutions are - and unnecessarily so. The unwillingness of banks, for example, to share information on cardholders allows many persons to use the same identifying information to obtain cards. Financial institutions often do not verify information provided on credit card applications. State govern-ment social assistance agencies, and some federal ones, check perfunctorily, or not at all, on the citizenship status of applicants for costly assistance programs. One cause is the continuing tendency of service providers to think of screening and enforcement as 'not their job.' The INS entitlements verification system (SAVE) legislated in 1986 checks only those applicants who own up to being non-citizens. The INS data base ostensibly covering all the nation's aliens still contains many omissions, and the Social Security Administration has consistently refused to provide the data that would strengthen the system.
States issue drivers' licenses without verifying legal immigrant status - only three states now bar illegal aliens from licenses - and allow officials little time to check suspect ID documents. The prospective passage of 'Motor-Voter legislation' will place new burdens on motor vehicle administrators, but may have the benefit of conditioning them to be more attentive to applicants' citizenship status. No major breakthrough against false identity is likely until the states impose much higher security standards on the issuance of birth certificates and drivers' licenses. The rapidly advancing technology of biometric identification gives the states a capacity to obtain a unique and permanent identification fix on 175 million holders of drivers' licenses and state ID cards and future applicants for them. Similar techniques would permit federal tracking of the more than one million illegal aliens arrested or cited yearly. New developments in automated fingerprint ID systems make possible the computer coding, storage and comparison of hundreds of millions of prints. Persons arriving on these shores may still give a false identity, but with biometrics that person will be locked into a single identity for a lifetime. �
[This article was based in part on reports and exhibits of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Congress; on The Nigerian Mafia, a 1989 study by the Los Angeles Police Department; and on data from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.]

Southern Blacks have been engaged in racketeering activities a little longer than those outside the South. Mainly Bootlegging, Gambling, & Prostitution. More to come.

The Black underworld in the South haven't received much historical research compared to Midwestern, East Coast , and a minor degree to West Coast sections. The Black bootleggers of prohibition had setup shop in neighborhoods of small towns and large cities via mom & pop stores, gas stations, motels, clubs & hole in the wall joints especially. Using these businesses as a front to sell to their clientele and bribe/kickback a portion of their earnings to the local sheriffs/police in their area. Mississippi is well known for having a long history of bootlegging/moonshining with prohibition ending in 1966. Major hubs for the bootlegging racket in Mississippi was the Delta, River towns next to Louisiana border, Gulf Coast & Gold Coast ( Rankin County area known as East Jackson). Black bootleggers was known to network with white bootleggers despite the racist climate of that time. A Gold Coast hotel operated by 2 Black brothers had doubled as a nightclub with bootlegging and gambling activities as well.

Illegal gambling have been a major racket in the Black underworld of the South with Policy/Numbers being active in New Orleans, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville, & other locations. In Nashville's Black underworld the racketeers gain significant prominence with political backing. Even in the 1960s it was mentioned in a Nashville paper that there was a dozen or so Black Kingpins netting millions from the numbers racket. Nashville' s history with Numbers racket lasted a long time until the city legalized the lottery in 2004. Atlanta authorities referred to the policy/numbers racket as the Bug racket, everytime one shutdown another opens and numerous, and it tended to be highly competitive between different enterprises often engaging in conflicts over business. New Orleans Black underworld was fill with policy wheels. Some Black underworld locations preferred cards/dice games than polucy/numbers such as Mississippi cities. Overall, During the 1920s-1960s the most lucrative rackets waa Bootlegging, Gambling, and lesser degree Prostitution. As the 1950s to 1990s arrived so does a shift in rackets takes place. Mainly drug trafficking along with gun trafficking & fraud.

Drug Trade grew to replace bootlegging and gambling as a major racket in Southern Black underworlds. New Orleans had Black drug kingpins as early as the mid 50s with the New Orleans crime family taking a back seat to the drug trafficking. Black traffickers was traveling to Chicago for the source and dealing to other local traffickers. The locations of New Orleans heroin market shifted to the housing projects in central city. DTOs & local crews proliferated in the city during the 60s-90s. Atlanta, Houston, & Miami continues to be well known distribution hubs and many Black racketeers in these locations gained large revenues and network with other traffickers from different Black underworlds. One of the most common links Southern Black underworlds share with the other regional Black underworlds is the historic migration. The racketeers know how to engage in certain cities in part to family connections in which allow a flow of racketeering activities between different regions.

What's the reason for "gang banging" in African American hoods/gangs? Is it personal/turf/vs crew vs crew etc. or what? I never really understood or dared to dig into the American gang life like the cartels and simply went with the simplification of these gangs by the general public and on these forums.

The reason for it is highly personal vendetta and/or money. It seems to be overgeneralized that every conflict involves turf or is even gangbanging at alll. Sometimes people and media automatically label a domestic violence situation involving gang members as gang-related and/or gangbanging.

Aren't a lot of supposed " gangster " rappers simply actor musicians who happen to act out some of their lyrical content in real life though ? This is a topic unto itself , but I was actually watching a documentary about so called gangster rappers in contemporary Chicago the other day , and pretty much all the fellows in it fit that description .

Of course I could be wrong , but I highly doubt actual black gangsters would engage in that kind of attention seeking behavior , especially ones of Jeff Fort caliber .

Prison bars couldn’t stop powerful Godfathers of United Blood Nation as they directed violent gang war http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...-powerful-godfathers-of-united-blood-nat

Well many gangsters are ine the backround.
People like Harry O, Kato, Supreme and others.
Even Larry Hoover call some executives like J.Prince.
Some rappers are gangsters, but the real one are the one in the shadow. Rap industry is a big money laudering machine.

There's tons of drug money laundered through the rap industry. Street gangs have a bit of a "not to be taken serious" reputation when it comes to the organized side of crime, but there's definitely more than a few (street) smart criminals among them.

Speaking about the East Coast Bloods (UBN); is it just me or do they have a sizable amount of Puerto Ricans in their ranks?