Free BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family by Mara Shalhoup Page A

jeweler and self-pronounced “King of Bling,” Jacob Arabo.
    Long before he had the pleasure of creating diamond-encrusted “Five Time Zone” watches for the likes of David Beckham, or of dressing Christy Turlington in a $180,000 necklace for her wedding to actor Ed Burns, Jacob was a struggling immigrant working in Brooklyn’s then-not-so-chic Williamsburg. In his midteens, he’d landed work in a jewelry factory, welding bracelets for $125 a week. He found the work was inspiring, and in his spare time he sketched out jewelry ideas in a notebook he carried with him. Twenty years later, his eye for design had turned him into a multimillionaire—thanks in no small part to the status heaped upon him by rappers who coveted a “Jacob,” as his pieces were affectionately called. It was Jay-Z who helped popularize the phrase “Jacob the Jeweler” among the hiphop set, and others followed suit: “I went to Jacob an hour after I got my advance,” Kanye West would later rap. “I just wanted to shine.”
    His Upper East Side store, Jacob & Co., was designed to look like the inside of a diamond mine (a mine perhaps inhabited by a Rockefeller), and the walls were hung with autographed photos of Jacob’s clientele: Jessica Simpson, P. Diddy, and 50 Cent. In wealth and appearance, Meech and Terry came across no different from a vast number of Jacob’s customers. But the Flenorys would stand out in one significant way. Jacob was more than familiar with the federal Form 8300, the one that the IRS requires for any cash transaction totaling more than ten thousand dollars. The vast number of Jacob’spieces exceeded that price—and many of his clients actually carried that much cash. But with Meech and Terry, as with most of the associates who showed up at Jacob & Co. on their behalf, no such forms were filed.
    One of those associates, Terry’s upper-level manager A.R. Boyd, recalls accompanying his boss during one of his more exorbitant purchases: a $300,000 pinkie ring. Another associate, Slim (the one who impersonated Meech on the phone), traveled with Terry to Jacob’s so that Terry could pick up some jewelry for Tonesa. On that occasion, Slim recalls that Jacob’s wife, Angela, said she didn’t like how Meech and Terry came into the store with large groups of people. So from then on, Terry would meet Jacob in various New York City hotel rooms—where A.R. helped count and pack between $100,000 and $300,000 that Terry was shelling out for Jacob’s bling.
    Terry and Meech also purchased jewelry with the assistance of friends who actually earned, through legitimate channels, the kind of money that would allow them to shop at Jacob & Co. Damon Thomas, an L.A. music producer who constitutes half the Grammy-nominated production duo the Underdogs, met Terry in 2004. They were introduced by Damon’s cousin, who described Terry as the manager of several rappers. A year later, Damon would try to cover up the fact that he helped Terry buy jewelry from Jacob—a decision Damon would come to regret. Similarly, Meech used Swift Whaley, the Orlando auto dealer who procured his silver Lamborghini, as a go-between to buy jewelry from Jacob. In the end, that arrangement didn’t work out so well, either.
    But for all the hoops the Flenory brothers had to jump through, it was worth it to see those three diamond-studded letters—
BMF
—grow bigger and bigger with each passing pendant. It was an honor to bestow increasingly massive medallions on their most loyal associates. And it was a source of pride to see others gawk at the sparkle that hung from the crew’s neck. Most onlookers could only fantasize about the wealth that made such a thing possible.
    One of those onlookers was a man hired in the spring of 2003 to remodel the White House. Over a period of six months, the contractor built a granite wall, installed new cabinets and kitchen appliances, and laid a limestone floor in the basement, among other tasks. The bill for his work