The problem with your comment is that there are countless examples of organized street gangs, like the one in the Montreal thread right now, so how else is one to interpret your comments?

Now this a thread about the Bds, do you know anything about them, what they were? I f not chew on this......




Feds: Gang was 'independent nation' of crime
Chicago Sun-Times, May 14, 2004 by Frank Main

As the "king" of Chicago's notorious Black Disciples street gang, Marvel J. Thompson ran a recording studio, owned a lounge and even operated a pirate FM station that warned his underlings when the cops were coming, prosecutors say.

Thompson, 35, is accused of sitting at the helm of a massive criminal corporation that raked in as much as $300,000 a day in drug profits and kept its members in line with baseball bats and guns.

But a 185-page indictment unsealed Thursday is likely to dethrone Thompson and put dozens of his top leaders behind bars for a long time, said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.
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"These defendants are alleged to be not just drug dealers, but individuals who had their own laws, territory, justice system and economy," Fitzgerald said. "They operated as if they were an independent nation, subject only to the laws of the streets."

Chicago Police launched the investigation, code-named "Marvel Less," six years ago after a federal indictment decimated the hierarchy of another murderous organization, the Gangster Disciples. Police will monitor BD turf to make sure violence does not fill the vacuum created by arrests of the gang's leaders, said Police Supt. Phil Cline.

Chicago Police and federal agents executed a dozen search warrants Wednesday, seizing more than $300,000 in cash from one of Thompson's properties along with 11 guns, bulletproof vests, jewelry and boxes of gang documents, authorities said.
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With the help of the Federal Communications Commission, they also shut down 104.7 FM, a station running out of a building Thompson owns at 6723-29 S. Parnell, officials said.

The station was automated most of the day, but it broadcast live at night, playing uncensored rap and even sending a car around Englewood to take requests and have listeners give "shout-outs" to friends over the radio. Its signal went from Cermak to 110th and from the lakefront to Western, said Larry Langford, a city spokesman. The city's Office of Emergency Communications helped authorities locate the station, which was broadcasting without a license, and record its illegal transmissions, he said.

"They played rap music, unedited, uncut," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Alesia. There were also "almost public service announcements to the other gang members alerting them to surveillance in certain areas of the South Side."

A studio for M.O.B. Records operated in the same building on Parnell, officials said. Thompson, president of M.O.B., produced "Cha- Cha Slide," a hit album.

The indictment charged 47 people with participating in a 15-year drug distribution conspiracy that could lead to sentences of 10 years to life. Thirty-two of the defendants, including Thompson, were in custody Thursday.

They allegedly controlled the sale of heroin, cocaine and marijuana throughout the South and West sides. Randolph Towers, a 144- unit Chicago Housing Authority high-rise at 6217 S. Calumet, was the hub of their operation, officials said.

The gang used night-vision devices to look for police and posted radio-equipped members on the roof with assault rifles. Trash containers were positioned to keep squad cars out, and anyone entering the building was frisked, officials said.

Thompson, who attended a VIP party after the NBA All-Star game last year and rubbed shoulders with star players, bought buildings to launder his drug money, authorities said. He owned the Nice & Easy Lounge at 73rd and Halsted; a building at 69th and Halsted that housed a currency exchange, liquor store and restaurant, and a house at 101st and Church.

Other BDs spent lavishly, too. Twins Varney Voker and Varmah Voker owned an Atlanta car wash and bought luxury cars such as Bentleys and Mercedes, the indictment said. Varney Voker allegedly bragged he earned $3 million in six months.

The gang is ruthless, Fitzgerald said. In August 2001, for instance, a man and his 6-year-old son were shot because he refused to employ BD members at his drug spot. Earlier that year, an undercover Chicago cop was wounded when BDs patted him down and found he was wearing a bulletproof vest. They opened fire, striking his vest, which saved him.

In 1993, Thompson was convicted of a murder at a South Side car wash where the husband of a Cook County Criminal Courts judge, Loretta Hall Morgan, was also wounded. A judge acquitted Thompson before he was sentenced because a witness recanted, officials say. State drug charges are now pending against him.

The Black Disciples have a long history in Chicago. In 1974, they split from the Gangster Disciples to form their own gang.

Larry Hoover, head of the Gangster Disciples, has been in prison since the 1970s. Thompson has met him six times behind bars to talk about gang business, authorities say.

Longtime Black Disciples leader Jerome "Shorty" Freeman also is behind bars on a 1989 drug conviction.

The indictment refers to Freeman as "co-conspirator A," sources say. It says "co-conspirator A" stepped down as the leader of the BDs in April 2000 in an effort to get out of prison early.



Scams build gang empire
Reputed gang leader Marvel Thompson controlled real estate as well as drugs. What was his secret weapon? Mortgage fraud.


From his second-story office in a grimy South Side commercial building, crime lord Marvel Thompson kept watch over his turf.

The reputed king of the Black Disciples street gang relied on beatings, murder and mayhem to control drug-selling corners across the South Side, prosecutors allege.

To lock in territory, the 36-year-old Robeson High School dropout also deployed a more sophisticated weapon: mortgage fraud.


Over the course of a decade, Thompson used straw buyers, sham sales and phony identities to secure more than $1 million in mortgage loans that went unpaid, records and interviews show.

The Black Disciples' expert use of mortgage fraud signals a menacing development. Once confined to a relatively small group of swindlers, mortgage fraud has morphed into a method of supporting ongoing criminal enterprises such as drug-dealing, smuggling and prostitution, records and interviews show.

Thompson acquired vacant lots, single-family homes and hulking apartment buildings that wrapped around corners where his gang dealt crack and heroin. Gang functionaries lived in some buildings and used others to store drugs and weapons and to stage operations, the Tribune found.

Thompson and a circle of criminal associates used the property to sop up lucrative bank loans. And they collected hundreds of thousands of dollars more from U.S. government Section 8 checks that are supposed to go to landlords to subsidize the rents of poor families.

Similar schemes have cropped up in the Chicago area and across the country, court records show.

A coast-to-coast methamphetamine ring based in the southwest suburbs--known to prosecutors as the Esawi organization--used mortgage fraud to launder drug profits. Traveling Vice Lord Marc Roberson, a convicted cocaine dealer, worked with a swindling crew to secure mortgage loans on two ramshackle West Side homes.

But few of the operations appear as fully evolved as Thompson's. By May 2004, when he was indicted on federal drug conspiracy charges, Thompson controlled at least 15 South Side properties, the Tribune found. Most were clustered within a half-mile of his headquarters at 6901 S. Halsted St. in the Englewood neighborhood.

From there, Thompson kept track of his land portfolio using an HP Vectra computer tower equipped with IBM Red Brick Warehouse business software, search warrant receipts show. Two handguns were tucked nearby.

Thompson pleaded guilty to federal drug conspiracy charges in March but denied being the gang's leader in a court statement. He awaits sentencing and faces 10 years to life in prison. Thompson and his attorneys declined to comment.

His collection of South Side properties was the fulfillment of a stubborn dream. Aided by a cadre of lawyers, accountants and mortgage brokers, Thompson began buying buildings in the early 1990s, soon after he allegedly assumed leadership of the gang.

A dope supplier introduced Thompson to a real estate broker and loan officer who helped him "start a corporation to facilitate the purchase of real estate in order to launder drug money," federal prosecutors wrote in 2004 court papers. "Thompson wanted to use [secret land trusts] to obtain legitimate bank loans."

In the hands of an honest investor, Thompson's properties could have been worth millions of dollars and might have kindled development in a swath of Englewood struggling to rebuild.

Instead, they became ravaged, dangerous shells.

Secret land trusts

To understand how dubious mortgages helped generate cash for Thompson and extend his gang's dominion, consider the three-story, 15-unit courtyard apartment building at 6723-29 S. Parnell Ave.

Thompson bought the building in a 1995 tax auction, although patchy county land records don't show how much he paid. He then titled the property to a secret land trust using an Illinois law that allows property owners to withhold their identities from public records.

Assisting Thompson in these transactions was attorney Peter Loutos, who helped Thompson acquire at least three other properties using secret land trusts, the Tribune found.