[10] In 2012, he pled guilty to attempting to cash a $17,000 federal disability benefit check twice, and because of his age and poor health, received a sentence of five years' probation.

[3] Lucas was born and raised in La Grange, North Carolina, a suburb of Goldsboro, North Carolina, to Fred and Mahalee (née Jones) Lucas,[10][11] He said the incident that motivated him to embark on a life of crime was him witnessing his 12-year-old cousin's murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, for looking flirtatiously at a white woman.

[13] After Johnson's death, Lucas turned to drug trafficking, and realized that, to be successful, he would have to break the monopoly that the Mafia held over the trade in New York.

There he met former U.S. Army master sergeant Leslie "Ike" Atkinson, who was from Goldsboro, North Carolina, and married to one of Lucas' cousins.

Lucas trusted only relatives and close friends from North Carolina to handle his various heroin operations,[6] believing that they were less likely to steal from him and be tempted by various vices in the big city.

This huge profit margin allowed him to buy property all over the country, including office buildings in Detroit and apartments in Los Angeles and Miami.

He also bought a ranch of several thousand acres in North Carolina on which he ranged 300 head of Black Angus cattle, including a breeding bull worth $125,000.

[6] Lucas rubbed shoulders with the elite of the entertainment, political, and criminal worlds of his time, stating later that he had met Howard Hughes at one of Harlem's best clubs in his day.

[16] When he was arrested in the mid-1970s, all of Lucas' assets were seized, as he later recounted:[16] The properties in Chicago, Detroit, Miami, North Carolina, Puerto Rico — they took everything.

If you got something, hide it, 'cause they can go to any bank and take it.In January 1975, Lucas' home in Teaneck, New Jersey, was raided by a task force consisting of 10 agents from Group 22 of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and 10 New York Police Department detectives attached to the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB).

[17] In his house, authorities found $584,683 in cash,[17] though Lucas contended that the officers executing the search departed with the full eleven million dollars temporarily stored in his attic, and documented only 5% of the currency seized.

[18] Lucas was convicted of both federal and New Jersey state drug violations, with the case against him built largely on over two years of investigative work and penetration of his distribution network by the "Z-Team" (Eddie Jones, Al Spearman, and Benny Abruzzo).

[1] Lucas then cut a deal to provide information that led to over 100 additional drug-related convictions; in exchange, he and his family entered the witness protection program.

Due to his advanced age and his poor health, which included his restriction to a wheelchair, prosecutors agreed to a sentence of five years' probation.

"[21] Many of Lucas' other claims, as presented in the film, have also been called into question, such as his being the right-hand man of Bumpy Johnson, rising above the power of the Mafia and Nicky Barnes, and being the mastermind behind the Golden Triangle heroin connection of the 1970s.

[22] Associated Press entertainment writer Frank Coyle noted, "[T]his mess happened partially because journalists have been relying on secondary sources removed from the actual events.

Adjepong) giving advice to up and coming mobster Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.) while he is on the run in North Carolina, inspiring him to form his own black criminal organization once he returns to Newark.

[citation needed] Lucas' wife, Julie Farrait, was also convicted for her role in her husband's criminal enterprise and spent five years in prison.