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

came to about $200,000, and all of it had been paid by a man called Pops—typically in cash installments between seven thousand and nine thousand dollars.
    The contractor soon learned that Pops was Charles Flenory, the father of the man who owned the house. Pops’s son, Terry, supposedly was an investor in several Atlanta nightclubs. Thus the explanation for the stacks of bills seemed reasonable enough; after all, nightclub owners had access to large amounts of cash. But the contractor’s bank wasn’t buying it. He was warned by bank officials that his deposits looked suspicious, as if he or his client was trying to avoid the ten-thousand-dollar reporting requirement.
    Soon after the warning, the contractor was witness to other curious goings-on at the White House. Once, he saw several men crashed out on the basement floor, sleeping alongside piles of guns, money, and platinum medallions that spelled BMF . He later asked one of the men what BMF stood for, to which the man replied: “It stands for the Black Mafia Family. If you haven’t heard of us, you soon will.”
    Others who visited the White House in 2003 recall seeing more than just guns, cash, and bling. Throughout the summer, Doc, the Flenory’s CFO, stopped by to pick up his weekly shipment of cocaine: ten kilos. High-level manager Freak Green typically oversaw the White House and, by extension, its cache of drugs. But on other occasions, BMF’s upper echelon—Slim, Texas Cuz, or Terry himself—would be on hand to dole out the weekly supply. Even A.R., who was fairly new to the organization, was privy to some major transactions at the White House. No one asked him to turn his head when, in the basement of the house, he laid his eyes on a hundred neatly stacked kilos.
    A.R. also was close enough to Terry to tag along with him whilehe checked out an investment opportunity: a car dealership and customization shop called 404 Motorsports. The slick showroom was located on the southern fringe of Buckhead, just north of a seedy row of strip clubs on Cheshire Bridge Road. The business, with its polished floors and $100,000 whips, was impressive—as was its co-owner, Tremayne “Kiki” Graham. Kiki’s shop had sold tricked-out rides to mega-producer Jermaine Dupri and Atlanta Brave Andruw Jones. And Kiki, a sinewy, six-foot-five Clemson University graduate, was the equivalent of local royalty. The seemingly gentle and soft-spoken giant was married to the daughter of Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin.
    It appeared that the meeting between Terry and Kiki went well; a week later, Kiki stopped by the White House, and A.R. helped load Terry’s investment in 404 Motorsports into the secret compartments in Kiki’s customized car. Terry’s investment totaled $250,000, broken down into rubber-banded stacks of cash.
    Later that year, Terry offered a friend from New York a job at the dealership—not that the friend didn’t have other employment opportunities. After all, the man, Darryl “Poppa” Taylor, is the cousin of music mega-producer Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. Terry first met Poppa through Diddy’s chief of security, Paul Buford. Terry and Paul were tight, and Paul had impressive credentials of his own. In addition to working as Diddy’s personal security (a job that had once belonged to Wolf Jones, whom Meech was accused of killing), Paul also had been the bodyguard of Diddy’s most prized rapper, Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace. But Paul wasn’t just a bodyguard. He also distributed cocaine that he got from Terry. And on at least one occasion, a BMF driver delivered sixty thousand dollars from Terry to Paul, who received the money at Diddy’s New York record label, Bad Boy Entertainment.
    Terry made frequent trips to New York, often to visit Jacob the Jeweler. During one of the trips, Paul set Terry up with a car and chauffeur: Poppa, Diddy’s cousin. Poppa was paid two thousanddollars to drive Terry from New York to Detroit. From then on,