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00:15It went from zero to a hundred in the blink of an eye.
00:20We had black mafia family lieutenants being pulled over, detained, and in some cases arrested.
00:26The smaller arrests, the bigger arrests, the chest moves, it builds a jigsaw puzzle.
00:31They pull us over and they're searching the car.
00:33They take us to jail and they uncuff everybody but me.
00:38And I go in this room and I see this agent flipping my ID.
00:43Is this you?
00:45No, my name is Terry Flittering.
00:47He said, man, it's good to finally meet you.
00:54Everybody moves like brothers.
01:07Everybody's shining like little money.
01:17There ain't no other fool like this in the world.
01:20There never will be.
01:20Finish your eyes.
01:34With that car stop of Terry, we were very fortunate that the local law enforcement officer identified
01:40who terry was contacted dea agents we were able to take in that jewelry process as seized drug
01:48assets then we also were able to accept those hundred and some phones and bring those into
01:52the investigation as evidence but there were no formalized federal charges and if we tried to
01:58work with law enforcement in southern illinois to hold them we would have been disclosing
02:02a lot of our investigation before we were ready to and it would have damaged the case
02:08if you move too fast you can jeopardize many aspects of the investigation we weren't tying
02:15that jewelry to any criminal activity that they can be charged with right away we referring them
02:21to do something else in this case they're going to have to tell somebody they got ripped for five
02:25million dollars worth of jewelry which means they're going to probably expose it on a phone or to
02:30somebody else the agent that flew in from d.c he looks at me and says you seem like a
02:37nice guy
02:38but i'm gonna see you again soon so there was no crime no ticking i wasn't under arrest for anything
02:48it was basically hey we're aware of who you are so i walked out the station and i took heat
02:55of
02:56anytime they hold you at a police stop six to eight hours until agents fly in there's something
03:02major going on so i kind of went underground
03:12at that point you know terry really went into in a bunker style living his life as far underground
03:19as possible and only popping his head up for the most pressing issues or situations
03:25i purchased a rv for like 225 000 when terry traded in his maybach for a rv
03:34it provided him cover and he could go around the country to his various houses and be covert about it
03:41so i just chose to not fly a private plane and i chose to just move slower sometimes when we
03:49tracked terry he would sometimes pay for private planes and his phone would go dead while he was
03:54in the air it took us a long time to figure out sometimes we thought he was on a plane
03:59in reality
04:00he was in a class a rv moving across the united states and would shut his phones off
04:06we're going state to state i remember one time we were in michigan i get a phone call like hey
04:12man
04:13you better be on the motorhome in five minutes feds on the lot i jump up grab my shit we
04:17hop on the
04:18motorhome we go to st louis so i retreated to st louis kind of to shake the surveillance if it
04:26was
04:26any in california or detroit or whatever st louis was just basically nobody knew where i was at except
04:33the crew members and it was secluded so if there was surveillance or anything i could see what was
04:41going on i was getting followed all the time people that were actually warning me that wanted me to get
04:50away from t like your kids need to get away i got a house over here i don't want you
04:56to get caught up in
05:05the whole idea of of taking down a group organization like bmf is it's like laying bricks
05:11you know you have to stack one brick on top of another until you get to the top
05:15you use the confiscation of the drugs for violence
05:21wiretaps everything no he ain't give it to me with all those components you have a great case
05:26there was a set date that all offices across the united states had agreed to for a roundup date for
05:32a takedown the u.s marshall service did a tremendous job analyzing phone records and identified locations
05:39for terry and meach nationwide takedowns are fantastic because there's one message that you want to send to
05:47the organization you want to send a crucial message to the organization that you're all super fucked
05:52there were probably about 250 officers and agents in detroit area we also sent teams to new jersey to
06:00atlanta to los angeles all the agencies in each location ready to go it was time to cut the head
06:07off the snake and take the main players off it was time to close the case this is the full
06:13force of the
06:13united states government local government state governments the united states attorney's office
06:17and we are here to do one thing and that's put you in prison the day of the takedown the
06:25marshalls
06:26had learned of meach's whereabouts in frisco texas and he was taken down
06:32shit i was in the bed watching sports center my phone started ringing said they got him they got
06:37i said who they got man they got me because i couldn't believe it man
06:43terry was tracked in florissant missouri i believe there were like 15 or 20 people in a house big
06:49gambling party we were watching the world series and decided to play poker
06:56i had just won a ham for 250 000 as i was reaching for the money on the table police
07:06raided the spot
07:07i was in the kitchen like getting something out the refrigerator he come around the corner he see
07:12me like get out get out i ain't trying to get shot
07:19and the same agent that flew in from dc he came through the door looked at the crowd and pointed
07:25to
07:26me and he said i told you i'd see you again
07:34if the allegations are true the self-named black mafia family is involved in the kind of things that
07:39can tear families apart they had locked teary up in st louis and i'm talking to the lawyer and i'm
07:45like
07:45before now all they got him on is fake id you know what's happening but in my head i knew
07:53it was
07:53happening so it was a couple of days later i was in california in bed and it was like five
08:00in the
08:00morning they just snatched me out i was in cuffs so fast it was like and spun me around and
08:09i was in
08:09handcuffs i was at home i go to the door and i said yeah who is it oh it's the
08:15police you stanley lackey
08:17i said yeah and i'm butt naked at the time they instantly put me in handcuffs butt naked and we
08:24get down to the federal courthouse downtown and and i see everybody i know it's like 20 people
08:31i know in this room everybody in handcuffs i'm like oh my god it's over it wasn't until i was
08:37extradited back to michigan that i had a clear understanding of what was going down
08:43my attorney had breached me how this whole thing was playing out terry and demetrius were charged
08:50by a federal grand jury as principal administrators of a continuing criminal enterprise that put them
08:56in a position that if they went to trial and lost the sentence would be mandatory life the case against
09:02demetrius wasn't nearly as strong as it was against terry demetrius was never caught with drugs he was
09:09never caught on tape for somebody that had a reputation for being reckless in some ways he was
09:15actually pretty buttoned up we were more in the terry vein if you will the way the evidence came in
09:24and
09:24sometimes you have to run with what you've got terry could take a plea or roll the dice at trial
09:30but
09:31if he's found guilty terry's in there for life when you get an indictment it says the united states of
09:36america versus you and that is exactly what it means the entire resources of the police authority
09:41of the united states of america are coming down on you what are your odds meach and i were facing
09:48life
09:49it was definitely no numbers on the floor and the judge asked us to have a meeting to try to
09:56come to
09:56some form of agreement the prosecutor whispered to my attorney she wanted to offer me some type of deal
10:04if i would turn on meach there was a firm belief within the dea as well as the u.s
10:11attorney's office
10:12that they would eventually be able to get terry to flip on demetrius let's see if we can get him
10:18to
10:18eat each other it's just an insidious game you could be friends and call millionaires tomorrow and
10:25joe and i come knocking on your door and all of a sudden you realize the gig's up and now
10:29you're
10:29flipping on your best friend i thought that there was a chance that the pressure would cause them
10:35to cooperate on the entire organization and importantly up the food chain and back to mexico
10:41into the sinaloa cartel on the day the trial was supposed to start the defense attorneys arranged for
10:50terry and demetrius to be able to have a face-to-face conversation for the first time in almost two
10:55years when i met him by myself and i said well you know they offered me a deal to try
11:01to tell on you
11:02in the cartel he said well they didn't approach me i mean i remember being in the courtroom and the
11:10walls
11:10are pretty thin and within five minutes you could hear people hollering at each other the perception in
11:17the courtroom was that terry and demetrius were yelling at each other threatening each other
11:24the prosecutors that were sitting there i could kind of read their lips they were like this is it
11:29terry's gonna flip on him and we're gonna be able to put demetrius away for the rest of his life
11:37we know that's not true that's just malarkey it was never any argument despite what law enforcement
11:46or attorneys wherever they got that from that they had us arguing and they knew they had us
11:53going against each other that never happened this call is from an inmate at a federal prison
11:59demetrius plenary i told tf unless mom and dad don't need to see us get no life sin life been
12:07good to us
12:08it's going to take 30. meach would never turn on me and nor would i turn on him because we
12:15were just
12:15too close and we were just against everything to do with ratting snitching whatever you want to call it
12:24that was the least of our worries i simply told me i told him i wasn't interested they underestimated
12:31the constitution of a man like terry flannery and as the roof caved in on them both terry and demetrius
12:39were true to their code of honor and neither gave up the other i don't know if i was surprised
12:45but i
12:46was a little let down that they did not choose to cooperate they each decided to plea and the plea
12:52deals were 30 years incarceration each when he was sentenced i was there court room was kind of
13:02quiet it was difficult because you had both of them taken away it was like a drop of a ball
13:08moment
13:09because i guess i never really realized that you could get that much time for doing something like
13:15that it's the beginning of the end for the uh bmf in atlanta dea alleges brothers terry
13:22and demetrius flannery our founders who began their drug trafficking career selling crack in the
13:26mid-80s it was a hard pill to swallow but i told them you got to remember what i when
13:36i always taught
13:37you you got to stay prayerful and you got to stay strong no matter what even though it was very
13:43traumatizing to hear that your boys are going to spend 30 years away from you i was concerned for their
13:50well-being worried about them going to prison and their safety yeah this was real tired we were
13:59going to be gone for a while me tonight was doing this so long that it was the inevitable either
14:06going
14:06to go to prison or die in the streets i was tired i was really just tired of having to
14:12run this operation
14:14every day of having to be so evasive and hired from law enforcement it was a form of relief in
14:22the
14:23arrest knowing that it was over i didn't have to do it anymore
14:31there were about 66 defendants indicted federally in detroit as part of bmf
14:38but then there were people indicted all over the u.s when all said and done probably upwards of 125
14:46or more
14:47defendants charged about 500 kilograms of cocaine were seized as part of the dea detroit investigation
14:56when the whole case was through millions of dollars worth of assets were seized by the government
15:03they took everything my houses and cars jury worth millions of dollars yeah man
15:12the charges against tenisa were money laundering in nature she moved money she facilitated money
15:18laundering she enjoyed the lifestyle that a lot of money affords and i got 57 months in prison time
15:26that's not that long so when i first got there i'm in a whole new world no more a thousand
15:32count
15:32sheets no more king-size bed no designer clothes it was like i have been stripped of everything
15:43prison was pretty rough but not rough for me i had ties to everything good alliances so i never had
15:51any
15:51problems with anybody prison is a place where if you know a lot of people which mech and i did
15:58from
15:58all over not just one state you pretty much had things your way with the officers and the inmates
16:05you would think because i lived in belair moholland hill that it was some heck of an adjustment it
16:12really wasn't we come from nothing growing up in poverty like mech and i grew up in prison was a
16:20step up from that i spent most of my time in prison studying the bible my focus was getting home
16:27to
16:27my children and not being an old man when i got home to them i spoke with my son and
16:33daughter every day
16:35until the minutes ran out on the phone they sent cards and letters because my daughter would send
16:41pictures and they just was always there for them and i think that helped them get through it that was
16:47hard time in his life i wasn't allowed to talk to me all those years in prison we would send
16:56messages
16:57to the kids he sends his love i send my love terry would get visited every year or two by
17:04dea or a
17:05prosecutor and they would promise him the world and tell him we'll give you a get out of jail free
17:09card
17:09if you tell us all the secrets of the black mafia family they were fruitless endeavors terry was never
17:14going to do that they never did i was focused on doing my time and going home i always knew
17:21i
17:21wouldn't do 30 years during the course of prison it didn't take me long to put the mirror to my
17:28face
17:28and self-reflect i didn't choose to blame others for my actions my peace came in accepting the fact i
17:39did this to me
17:43we are in the midst of a serious financial crisis congratulations mr president senior whitney houston
17:50has died the u.s now leading the world in deaths with the coronavirus claiming more than 20 000
18:03american lives prisons are scrambling to safeguard a population living in close quarters so we're
18:10hearing about people in the streets uh passing from this virus over 2600 inmates and almost 3 000
18:17staff members of prisons and jails nationwide have now contracted covet 19. covet 19 is sweeping
18:23through the country's jails and prisons we're seeing officers are taking off from work and not
18:31wanting to be around telling people to not stand next to each other people catching these viruses and
18:37actually passing away in the system it created a sense of panic thursday u.s attorney general william
18:44bar said he has directed federal prisons to expand its use of home confinement for inmates in 2020 i had
18:53about 15 years in i was on the phone with a friend of mine and we were talking and the
19:00administration
19:01asked me to step to the back they were all standing there with my file on their desk
19:06i said yeah you're going home finally happened my miracle happened they're the leaders of the black
19:16mafia family and they're from southwest detroit terry flannery is being freed because of the virus
19:22this is the post on instagram from curtis 50 cent jackson saying black mafia boss southwest t is out
19:28take your time getting to the bank no hurry just have what you owe him by monday
19:40we're here in the house where it all started there's a lot of memories in this house
19:46my father demetrius and i built this house from studs we put the electricity in the plumbing
19:54laws the whole nine it's a beautiful thing to be home and out of a prison cell and back where
20:01it all
20:01started it was unbelievable we were overjoyed that we got the opportunity to put our eyes
20:11and our arms around him again
20:15so in 2020 i ended up coming back to detroit i heard that t was home so i'm thinking i'm
20:23single
20:24maybe we can rekindle something you know and we started talking we had been apart so long that we
20:32just would be better as friends i got a chance to get my closure i understood that our time and
20:40our
20:40season was over with and it was done it's amazing that i can kill somebody and get 10 years or
20:49less
20:50and here it is drugs non-violent crime you're giving me 30 or life sentences you know it just
20:57it don't make no sense just over the last year you've had members of the mafia that have been
21:05convicted of 5 10 15 20 murders and somehow they're walking out after 20 years black mafia family you'll
21:15give them 30 years terry had no violent crimes there is an institutional racism baked in to the american
21:24justice system i hear a lot of talk about non-violent drug crimes and i i have to tell you
21:30i don't think
21:30there's such a thing the drugs cause addiction they cause overdoses they cause overdose deaths
21:40it causes misery did i play my part in that yes at the time we was ignorant to what was
21:48being done
21:48me tonight the first generation crack dealers we hustled through the 80s the 90s and the 2000s
21:57of the coke business i don't like to use the word regret i use the word remorse because there are
22:07some
22:08things i wish i could have done another way they did so much damage across the united states in terms
22:15of
22:15addiction all based on greed they are intelligent they have leadership ability they have charisma they
22:24had business sense they could have been anything they wanted maybe it's not too late for a redemption
22:35coming home i realized when you come home you're gonna have to find a job you're gonna have to
22:39find a place to live you're gonna have to learn to live what's really called normal when i came out
22:46i had no skills i didn't have a college degree i didn't have any of that so what was i
22:51gonna do did you
22:53consider going back to that life yeah lots of times you know you consider it but i knew i i
22:59changed i
22:59said god wouldn't want me to do that i changed my life and i'm gonna stick it out i've been
23:04home for a
23:05while now my relationship with my brother meach is great we don't have any differences life's too short
23:12for that i'm looking for my brother to enjoy life like i've been doing since i've been home god forgives
23:19but
23:19sometimes it's hard for man to forgive demetrius could be doing much more good out here it's a lot of
23:28youth out here that are robbing and stealing and killing and demetrius could show them that this
23:34is not the route to go you know it's a different era now i didn't change my way of thinking
23:39a lot
23:40now i just want a chance to be able to live the legitimate life just as good as i did
23:46when i was
23:47doing a lot of things illegally you got the same sentence you should be able to get out in the
23:51same
23:53circumstances free big meach today
24:00this week after serving nearly 20 years in prison big meach who headed up the black mafia family is out
24:07of
24:08prison big meach will serve the remainder of his sentence at a halfway house in miami
24:14big meach is home y'all and now he has the opportunity to begin a new chapter what you had
24:20from bmf from 1990 till 2005 will never happen again nobody will ever be able to reach those heights
24:27nobody will even try for the next 50 100 years people are going to be talking about what
24:32tearing demetrius did some people might glamorize the things that meach and i did when the story gets
24:38told it's gonna be bmf you hear it in the music sometimes but what the music don't reveal is the
24:47losses in your life the glist and the glamour may look appealing to you you may think was the money
24:54worth
24:54that i can honestly say no the bmf legacy shows you that if you put some structure together and
25:02stick together you can be successful now you get a chance to turn a negative into a positive
25:09and do positive things
25:13bmf just changed a lot of people's lives in so many ways
25:17i'm just proud to be their sister and they deserve to come out of this on top i wouldn't change
25:26nothing
25:26because everything was a learning experience good or bad experience is the best teacher
25:33i'm proud of everything you know what i'm saying my whole life i am the man that i always wanted
25:39to be
25:39and i'm him life today for me is pretty easy i can share my story with people i can educate
25:48the youth
25:49and people in the streets to try to help them realize that it's another way to value family value
25:57freedom in the end we're choosing a new way of life it ain't over for black mafia family
26:12so
26:22so
26:24so
26:24so
26:24Let's get started.
26:54Yeah, I'm ready.
26:56Man, I appreciate it.
26:58Yay!
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