Frank Matthews defied expectations, carving out a powerful position in the criminal underworld. This true crime story explores his rise from humble beginnings, showcasing his ingenuity and resilience in the face of adversity. It's a compelling look into a significant figure in black history and the intricate world of drugs and organized crime, a true American gangster story from real life. #FrankMatthews #TrueCrime #ColdCase #DrugKingpin #AmericanCrimeStories
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00:00They said no black man could do it.
00:02Watch me.
00:05The only kingpin who never got caught.
00:08Because he never got found.
00:13They say the American dream was built for white men in gray suits.
00:17But Frank Matthews read a different Bible.
00:19His gospel was supply and demand.
00:22His church was the corner.
00:25And by the time the feds figured out who they were dealing with,
00:28this brother from North Carolina had done what no black man in America had ever done before.
00:34He cut the mafia out of their own game and made them pay him for the privilege.
00:43Frank Matthews came into this world in 1944, down in Durham, North Carolina.
00:48Tobacco country.
00:50Segregation country.
00:52A place where a black boy learned early that the rules weren't made for him to win.
00:57His mama wasn't around like that.
01:00By the time he was old enough to understand what hunger really meant,
01:03he was living with an aunt who did what she could, but love don't always fill the plate.
01:11School wasn't for Frank.
01:13Seventh grade, he looked around that classroom and saw a dead end wrapped in a textbook.
01:18So he bounced.
01:19The streets caught him early.
01:21Petty theft, some assault charges.
01:23A juvenile reformatory that was supposed to straighten him out.
01:27Instead, it taught him one thing.
01:30The system wasn't designed to save him.
01:32So he'd have to build his own way out.
01:35He headed north.
01:37Philadelphia first, running numbers, learning the mathematics of the underground economy.
01:41Then Brooklyn, where the real action lived.
01:44Numbers was cool, but numbers was small thinking.
01:48Frank had bigger arithmetic in mind.
01:59Frank, the man of the hour.
02:01You come recommended, I hear.
02:03Numbers.
02:04Brooklyn.
02:05You move good weight.
02:06Yes, sir.
02:07I move what you give me.
02:08But I'm thinking maybe I can move more.
02:10More?
02:11You want more?
02:12You want to know what I think, boy?
02:13I think you go back to Brooklyn.
02:15You push what we give you.
02:16You'll be happy with what you get.
02:18I hear you.
02:23One thing, though.
02:24When I come back, I ain't going to be asking for nothing.
02:34The year 1965 changed everything.
02:37Frank saw what was happening in the streets.
02:40Heroin was flowing like water.
02:41And every drop of it was controlled by Italians who didn't look like him, didn't come from
02:46him, and treated black distributors like hired hands.
02:50Frank watched his own people push product they didn't own.
02:53Frank took orders from men who called them good boys while counting millions in the back
02:59rooms of Brooklyn social clubs.
03:01Frank decided he wasn't going to be nobody's good boy.
03:05He went to the mafia first, did the respectful thing, showed up ready to talk business, ready
03:11to pay tribute if that's what it took to get in.
03:13They looked at him like he was asking to borrow the family car, told him no, flat out,
03:20like he was beneath consideration.
03:22That rejection lit something in Frank that never went out.
03:34I guarantee the quality.
03:44And what is the heroine inside?
03:49Direct from South America, no Italians, no markup.
03:53You pay me, you cut your own, you keep everything.
03:56How much?
03:57First time?
03:58I give you a number.
04:00You tell me if I'm lying.
04:01He names a price.
04:03Frank's face doesn't change.
04:04But his eyes, they do a calculation that takes less than a second.
04:09How much can you get me?
04:13How much you want?
04:16Frank leans back.
04:17For the first time, a small smile crosses his face.
04:22Not happy.
04:24Hungry.
04:27Everything.
04:28You understand what's at stake here.
04:31I do.
04:31The risks are clear.
04:33Good.
04:33Then we proceed.
04:34Agreed.
04:35No mistakes.
04:37He found his way to a Cuban named Bager who had connections that bypassed the Italians
04:42altogether.
04:43Direct pipelines to South America.
04:46To Europe.
04:47Places where the product was cheaper, purer, and nobody cared what color you were as long
04:52as your money was green.
04:54Frank studied that Cuban like a PhD candidate studies a thesis.
04:58How to move weight.
05:00How to build a network.
05:02How to make men loyal without trusting them.
05:07By the early 1970s, Frank Matthews had done what the mafia said a black man couldn't do.
05:13He built his own supply chain.
05:15Heroin and cocaine moving through 21 states.
05:18From New York down to Florida, out to the Midwest, up and down the eastern seaboard.
05:23He controlled the cutting, the packaging, the distribution.
05:28When product went out, it went out under his flag.
05:32The Italians who'd turned him down started hearing his name in whispers.
05:36And those whispers carried a new sound.
05:39Respect.
05:42You sure about this stash?
05:44Just move it.
05:45We got heads coming.
05:46Faster, let's go.
05:50We got 50 large here.
05:52Change the drop location to the docks.
05:54Mark it on the map.
05:56These three packages move east now.
05:59Frank Matthews had become a problem.
06:01Not just for the cops who hadn't caught on yet.
06:04For the mafia.
06:05Who suddenly realized the man they'd dismissed was now eating off their plate.
06:10For the whole established order of the drug trade.
06:13Which had never seen a black man sit at the head of his own table.
06:17Frank didn't just want a seat at the table.
06:19He wanted to know who built the table in the first place.
06:23And why he couldn't build a bigger one.
06:34There's a difference between being rich and being that rich.
06:38The kind of rich where you got a mansion on Staten Island.
06:42Across the street from a Gambino boss.
06:44And you don't even flinch.
06:46The kind of rich where you fly to Vegas with suitcases full of cash.
06:50And the casino hosts treat you like visiting royalty.
06:53Because they know what you're carrying.
06:56The kind of rich that makes white men in three-piece suits nervous.
07:00Because they can't figure out how a 7th grade dropout from Durham got it without their permission.
07:14So now look forward to the situation.
07:51That's right, look at me.
07:56Frank moves different.
07:57Not loud, not flashy like the young boys who'd come after him.
08:02The ones who thought a gold chain was the same thing as power.
08:06Frank's power was quiet.
08:08It was the way he walked into a room and every conversation stopped.
08:12It was the way he looked at a man and that man understood.
08:16Frank Matthews had already considered every move you could make,
08:20and he'd decided which ones you were allowed to live through.
08:24He bought a mansion in Tothill, Staten Island, wealthiest enclave in the borough.
08:29His neighbor across the street?
08:32Paul Castellano, the head of the Gambino family.
08:36Frank would step out on his porch, light a cigar, and nod at the Don like they were equals.
08:42Because in Frank's mind, they were, maybe more than equals.
08:47Because Frank had built what he had from nothing, while Castellano inherited a throne.
09:12Philly checking in.
09:14Major Coxon wants more weight.
09:19How much?
09:2250 keys.
09:27Tell him he got it.
09:29But I want the money up front from now on.
09:33He ain't gonna like that.
09:37I don't care what he likes.
09:39He wants to sit at my table, he pays my price.
09:52Frank Matthews was estimated to control the cutting, packaging, and sale of heroin in every major East Coast city.
10:00He was moving product through 21 states.
10:03But Frank wasn't just thinking about money.
10:06He was thinking about revolution.
10:18How long we been pushing their product, huh?
10:20How long we been taking what they give us, paying what they say, and smiling while they count their money
10:25off our work?
10:26The mafia controls the import.
10:27But that's changing.
10:29The Corsicans are ready to deal direct.
10:30The Cubans are ready.
10:31We don't need the Italians no more.
10:33You saying we cut them out completely?
10:34I'm saying we build our own pipelines.
10:36We buy direct.
10:37We set our own prices.
10:39We keep everything.
10:40Question is, y'all ready to stop being employees and start being partners?
10:53The entourage traveled with him everywhere.
10:56Not just muscle, though he had plenty of that.
10:59But lieutenants.
11:01Connections.
11:02Faces from Detroit and Philadelphia and Newark and D.C.
11:06Men who controlled their own territories and answered to one man.
11:11Frank ran his organization like a corporation.
11:13He had accountants.
11:15He had lawyers.
11:16He had pilots.
11:18He had people whose only job was to count the money and make sure nobody was skimming.
11:24Nobody skimmed from Frank Matthews.
11:26People who tried had a way of disappearing.
11:29And Frank had a way of making sure everybody knew it without ever saying a word.
11:34He moved millions.
11:36Not over years.
11:38Over weeks.
11:39The feds would later estimate his operation moved more than a billion dollars in product
11:44over the course of his reign.
11:46In today's money, you'd need a calculator with too many zeros.
11:54Vegas is the target.
11:56We consolidate power here, and then we move west.
11:59This is our time.
12:03Las Vegas was his playground.
12:05Frank would fly out with anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 in cash.
12:10Pocket change for a man whose real money was parked in accounts, properties, and business
12:16fronts across the country.
12:18He'd hit the tables, drop money like it didn't matter, because in his world, it didn't.
12:24The casinos knew exactly what he was.
12:27They didn't care.
12:28Frank wasn't just a gambler.
12:30He was a laundromat in human form.
12:33Every dollar that passed through his hands at the craps table came out the other side clean.
12:38The women, the cars, the sweets, the champagne that cost more than most men made in a month.
12:47Frank lived like a king because he had figured out something the kings themselves didn't always
12:52understand.
12:53A king is only a king.
12:55As long as nobody remembers, he was once a peasant.
12:59Frank never forgot where he came from.
13:02He just made sure nobody else got to see it.
13:05But here's what made Frank different from every other kingpin who came before him.
13:10In 1971, he called a meeting, brought together black and Hispanic dealers from across the
13:17country, Atlanta, a hotel conference room, the kind of place where businessmen usually
13:23talked about quarterly earnings and stock options.
13:26Frank wasn't talking about stock options.
13:29He was talking about revolution.
13:31The Italians controlled the heroin supply, had controlled it for decades.
13:37They set the prices, dictated the terms, and let the black distributors fight over the scraps.
13:43Frank laid it out simple.
13:45What if they cut out the middleman?
13:47What if black and Hispanic organizations started buying direct, cutting the mafia out of the loop entirely?
14:02Frank was putting together a coalition that would have changed the drug trade forever.
14:07He was building something that had never existed before, a network of black and brown dealers
14:14who controlled their own supply, set their own prices, and answered to nobody but each other.
14:20The Italians watched, and they didn't like what they saw.
14:26I don't like what I'm seeing.
14:29We are going to have to do something about Frank.
14:34Frank Matthews was no longer just a drug dealer.
14:37He was a threat to the entire structure of organized crime in America.
14:42A black man who had figured out how to do what the mafia did, but without the baggage of tradition,
14:48without the codes of silence that had started to crack under federal pressure.
14:53Frank was building something new, and the old powers had a rule about new things.
14:59They either co-opt them, or they crushed them.
15:03We are going to have to do something about Frank.
15:06Frank had already refused to be co-opted.
15:18Frank held another summit, this time at the Sands Hotel in Vegas, during the Ali-Kwari fight.
15:25The DEA was watching, taking notes, building a case.
15:49We got him! We finally got him!
15:53Soon after, the police got authority to tap Frank's phones,
15:56and what they heard would bring down an empire.
16:04April 1973.
16:06The Waldorf Astoria, New York.
16:08Frank Matthews walks into a meeting that's supposed to be business as usual.
16:12But the man across the table has other plans.
16:16His name is Ernie Coco Coraluzzo.
16:19Genovese crew.
16:21Greenwich Village.
16:21And he's about to make a mistake that could get a man killed.
16:32Forty kilograms.
16:33Three hundred seventy-five thousand.
16:36You got the product?
16:37I got it.
16:38You got the money?
16:39Money's there.
16:41Delivery tomorrow.
16:43Pleasure doing business.
16:59Where's the product?
17:03Ain't come.
17:04What you mean it ain't come?
17:07Coraluzzo took the money and bounced.
17:09Word is he fled to the Bahamas.
17:10Find me somebody close to him.
17:12Somebody he can't ignore.
17:15Like who?
17:16I don't care who.
17:17Just find me somebody.
17:21Coraluzzo thought he could steal from Frank Matthews and hide in the Bahamas.
17:24He was wrong.
17:26Frank's people went looking for leverage.
17:28And they found it.
17:29In a man named James Big Jimmy Capitordo.
17:45Let go of me.
17:46What are you doing?
17:49Shut up, Jimmy.
17:50Get in the car.
18:05You know who I am?
18:07Yes.
18:08Good.
18:10Then you know why you're here.
18:13Your boss took three hundred seventy-five thousand dollars of my money.
18:16He ran to the Bahamas with it.
18:17No product.
18:17No call.
18:18No nothing.
18:19You're going to help me get it back.
18:20I don't know nothing.
18:22You know enough.
18:23You're his man.
18:24He hears you're in trouble.
18:26He'll come back.
18:27Make the call.
18:45They got Jimmy.
18:47They got Jimmy.
18:48They got Jimmy?
18:48I'm on my way.
18:52Coraluzzo didn't hesitate.
18:54He flew back to New York that night.
18:56And when he met Frank again, the terms had changed.
19:11three hundred seventy-five thousand, all of it back, plus twenty-five keys on consignment to make things right.
19:19You ever try something like that again?
19:21I won't send for you, man.
19:22I'll send for you.
19:23We good?
19:24We good.
19:26Frank got his money back, plus twenty-five keys on consignment.
19:30But the move sent a message to the Genovese family.
19:33Frank Matthews wasn't afraid of them.
19:36And that message would have consequences.
19:50Frank Matthews steps off a plane, same as he done a hundred times before.
19:55Suitcase in hand, money in his head.
19:58But this time, when he walks through the terminal, there's men waiting who ain't casino hosts.
20:03Men with badges and federal credentials, and the kind of look that says they've been watching you for a long
20:10time.
20:11Frank had outrun the law for years, but even the fastest man can't outrun the moment when the law decides
20:17it's time for you to stop.
20:36We need to get to the gate.
20:38I know, the contact will be waiting.
20:41Stay sharp, eyes open.
20:43Always.
20:45Frank Matthews, you're under arrest.
20:51What's the charge?
20:55Tax evasion.
20:57Conspiracy to distribute heroin and cocaine.
21:00You boys been busy.
21:02The feds had been building their case for years.
21:05Tax evasion.
21:06Drug conspiracy.
21:07Conspiracy to distribute.
21:09The kind of charges that add up to a life sentence without parole.
21:13They'd flipped informants, tracked money, connected dots that Frank thought were too scattered to connect.
21:19By the time they grabbed him in Vegas, they had enough paper on him to wallpaper his mansion on Todd
21:25Hill.
21:25The indictment was a brick.
21:28Federal prosecutors looked at Frank Matthews and saw a trophy.
21:32The biggest black drug trafficker in American history.
21:36Taking him down would make careers.
21:39The U.S. Attorney's Office pulled out all the stops.
21:43Then came the bail hearing.
21:45The feds demanded $5 million.
21:48An astronomical sum.
21:50The largest bail ever set in American history up to that point.
21:54They wanted Frank to sit in a cell until trial.
21:57They wanted him off the streets so bad they could taste it.
22:02But Frank had something the feds hadn't fully accounted for.
22:06Money that didn't exist on any ledger they could find.
22:09Cash in places they'd never think to look.
22:12People who owed him favors and were ready to cash them in.
22:15Then, the judge looked at the $5 million figure, looked at the defense, and came back with something
22:21that made the prosecutor's blood run cold.
22:24Bail reduced.
22:27$325,000.
22:29Frank posted it.
22:31Walked out.
22:32And in that moment, the feds realized they'd made a mistake.
22:37They'd let the fish slip back into the water.
22:40And they had no idea how deep the water went.
22:52$5 million bail.
22:54The defendant is a flight risk, Your Honor.
22:58He has access to millions in unreported income.
23:02$5 million is unprecedented.
23:06These are unprecedented circumstances, Your Honor.
23:10Bail is set at $5 million.
23:27Good news.
23:29Bail was reduced.
23:33To what?
23:34$2.5 million.
23:36You agreed not to fight extradition.
23:37That ain't good news.
23:39That's a start.
23:51Bail is further reduced to $325,000.
24:30Where are we going?
24:32Away.
24:34For how long?
24:38You don't ask me that.
24:40You never ask me that.
24:41But I need to know.
24:43There's nothing to know.
24:44Just leave it.
24:46There's money in the closet.
24:48You take what you need.
24:49You don't call nobody.
24:50You don't tell nobody.
24:51You don't know where I went.
24:54If they ask you my business,
24:55when you tell them I was just a man who wanted more than they was going to give them,
25:01July 2nd, 1973.
25:03Brooklyn Federal Court.
25:05Frank Matthews is supposed to appear for a hearing that will decide the next phase of his life.
25:10The courtroom fills.
25:13Prosecutors ready their arguments.
25:15Reporters crowd the gallery, pens in hand,
25:18ready to write the next chapter of the Black Caesar story.
25:21The judge takes the bench.
25:23The clerk calls the case.
25:25Frank Matthews does not answer.
25:27They wait.
25:28They call again.
25:30The courtroom buzzes with a confusion that slowly curdles into something darker.
25:35The marshals check the doors.
25:37The prosecutors make phone calls.
25:39Somebody goes to look for Frank's lawyer,
25:42who is also suddenly not answering calls.
25:44By the time the court officially notes Frank's absence,
25:48he is already gone.
25:50Vanished.
25:51Like smoke through a screen door.
25:55The feds went crazy.
25:58The biggest manhunt in DEA history.
26:01Agents fanned out across the country,
26:03across the Caribbean,
26:05across South America.
26:06They pulled informants out of their holes.
26:08They offered rewards.
26:10They interviewed everybody who had ever shaken Frank's hand,
26:14smoked his weed,
26:15counted his money.
26:17Nothing.
26:18Frank Matthews had taken somewhere between $15 and $20 million in cash
26:23and disappeared from the face of the earth.
26:26No body.
26:27No trail.
26:28No credible sighting.
26:30Nothing but theories and rumors that swirled for decades and never settled.
26:36The FBI never closed the file.
26:39To this day,
26:40Frank Matthews is listed as a fugitive.
26:43A man who vanished so completely
26:45that the government couldn't even prove he was dead.
26:48For 50 years,
26:50the question has sat there like a splinter
26:52under the skin of American law enforcement.
26:54What happened to Frank Matthews?
26:57And the answer,
26:58whatever it is,
26:59has never been something they could bring themselves to accept.
27:09There's two kinds of disappearances in this world.
27:11The kind where a man runs because he's scared,
27:14and the kind where a man runs because he's smart enough to know that staying means dying.
27:20Frank Matthews wasn't scared of nothing,
27:22but he was smart enough to know that the people who wanted him dead
27:25didn't need a court order to make it happen.
27:30Rat or not,
27:31I've been waiting a long time to do something about him.
27:57He was supposed to testify
27:58against Joe T.
28:00That wasn't going to happen.
28:02He say anything,
28:04he ain't going to say nothing now.
28:06He said anything,
28:18not a trace,
28:19no body,
28:20no sighting,
28:21no money trail.
28:23He walked off the face of the earth with $20 million.
28:26Somebody saw something.
28:27Yeah.
28:28Somebody saw everything,
28:30but nobody's talking.
28:32You know why?
28:34Because they still scared of him.
28:36Even gone,
28:37they scared of him.
28:41The theory that makes the most sense
28:43is the one the feds never wanted to admit.
28:46The Genovese family got him.
28:48Here's why it fits.
28:50Frank was supposed to testify in a case
28:52against the Genovese connected trafficker,
28:54a man named Joseph Joe T. Lappie.
28:58Frank had information that could put Lappie away for a long time,
29:01and the Genovese family had a rule
29:03older than Frank's entire operation.
29:06Witnesses don't live to testify.
29:10Bahamas,
29:11July 1973.
29:13Somewhere around the same time
29:15Frank missed his court date,
29:17there were whispers about a body.
29:19A black man,
29:21dumped in waters that don't give up their dead easy.
29:24The Bahamian police looked into it.
29:26Or didn't.
29:28Records got lost.
29:29Stories got confused.
29:31The kind of confusion that happens
29:33when powerful people don't want questions answered.
29:38But here's the part that keeps the story alive.
29:41No body ever identified.
29:43No death certificate.
29:45No witness who could place Frank in the ground.
29:48For 50 years,
29:50people have claimed to see him.
29:51A man matching his description in Atlanta.
29:54A big spender in the Caribbean
29:56who moved like Frank moved.
29:58A recluse in some South American country
30:01living under a name nobody knows.
30:04Frank Bender,
30:05the forensic sculptor
30:06who made a name for himself
30:07putting faces on the dead,
30:09made a bust of what Frank would look like
30:11in his later years.
30:12They sent it out.
30:14Tried to generate leads.
30:16Got nothing.
30:17The file sits in some FBI archive
30:20gathering dust,
30:21waiting for a break that may never come.
30:27The money complicates everything.
30:2915 to 20 million dollars in 1973
30:33is something like 100 million today.
30:36That much cash doesn't just evaporate.
30:39Somebody spent it.
30:40Somebody hid it.
30:42Somebody passed it down to somebody
30:44who knows where it came from
30:46and has spent a lifetime not talking.
30:53Maybe Frank Matthews is dead.
30:55Maybe he's buried somewhere
30:56the Bahamian sun don't reach.
30:58Maybe the Genovese family got him after all.
31:01Or maybe he's still out there.
31:04Different name, different face.
31:06Living on money that's been laundered
31:08through so many hands
31:09it don't remember where it came from.
31:11Sitting on a port somewhere.
31:13Looking at water that could be the Caribbean
31:15or someplace nobody would think to look.
31:18Smiling at the fact that for 50 years
31:21the United States government
31:23has had a file on him
31:24that ends with a question mark.
31:28That's the thing about Frank Matthews.
31:31He did what nobody thought
31:33a black man could do.
31:35Built an empire.
31:36Stared down the mafia.
31:39And when the time came to pay the piper
31:41he looked at the bill,
31:43folded it up,
31:44and walked out the door
31:45with the whole tab unpaid.
31:48They called him Black Caesar
31:50and Caesars don't fall.
31:53They either rule forever
31:55or they disappear so completely
31:57that nobody can prove
31:59they ever fell at all.
32:04or they закры seek the court.
32:08Then he goes back with the end
32:09and nobody will carry the court
32:09so heires
32:09marijuana,wers
32:14the card Soon
32:18it
32:19won't fall The
32:20apartment of
32:20Day 3
32:21Day