Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross person
also: Freeway Rick, Ricky Ross, Rick, Ross, Freeway Ricky, Ricky, Freeway, Rasta, three-way Rick, Ricky Donnell Ross, Freeway, Ricky
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Related entities (most co-mentioned)
Daniel Blantonperson · 61Los Angelesplace · 42Cincinnaticountry · 15Los Angeles Police Departmentorganization · 12Gary Webbperson · 11Contrasorganization · 9Ricky Ross Trialevent · 9Alan Finsterperson · 8Cripsorganization · 8Miamiplace · 7Oscar Blantonperson · 7Ivan Arguellesperson · 7L.A. Sheriff's Departmentorganization · 6Steve Pollackperson · 6Danilo Blandonperson · 6Majors Drug Task Forceorganization · 5Nicaraguacountry · 5Andreas Torresperson · 5Los Angeles Timesorganization · 5Texascountry · 5Alfonso Jeffriesperson · 5CIAintelligence service · 4San Diegocountry · 4U.S. Department of Justiceorganization · 4
Claims (48)
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross recruited
Daniel Blanton book_quoted
“with the story that led to all of this research that we've gone over over the last few weeks. And it says that Gary Webb was swept into Ross's decade-long relationship with Daniela Blanton in late September 1995, two months into his investi…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 23 @ 4:56
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross member_of
Crips documented
“joined forces creating a Freeway Rick Task Force. It was one of the few times in the history of L.A. law enforcement that a single man was the subject of an entire task force. Ricky Ross is a 7-4 Hoover Crip, this is a quote, whose success …”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 35:39
Oscar Blanton trafficked
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“I don't have a lot of the details because the government has been very protective of him. They refuse to give us any discovery so far. But from what I understand, Blanton used to be one of Ricky Ross's sources back in 1980. And I suppose he…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance by Gary Webb Part 1 @ 1:07:26
Blanton Winfield trafficked
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“Colombian-Bolivian cocaine was coming into the United States, both through Texas and Miami, and they were shuttling it out to Los Angeles, to Blanton in Los Angeles. Blanton eventually becomes Ricky's direct. There was some cutouts in betwe…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner The Great Pretense Part 2 @ 1:16:34
Oscar Blanton recruited
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“I'll have him call you, and he hung up. Ross called a few hours later, and I asked him what he knew about Blanton. He said a lot. He was almost like a godfather to me. He's the one who got me going. Was he your main source? He was. Everybod…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance by Gary Webb Part 1 @ 1:09:21
Ron Lister supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented
“Ron Lister procured that equipment for Ricky. Blanton said Ross used to live in an apartment beside the freeway in San Pedro. It was an apartment by Florence, if I remember it correctly. So I get him a scanner, telephone security. When you …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 11 @ 10:23
Irving Fisher recruited
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“and we're bringing them in. And there's a few excerpts in here about how all of that works, but I'm not going to go into detail about that since we've already covered that in our last book. But there's a guy, the guy that recruits him into …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 8 @ 38:55
Irving Fisher supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“was dealing a little cocaine on the side to pay for his own habit. So Fisher decides that he can get Ricky cocaine and make a few bucks because he's now going to be basically a wholesaler to Ricky. And that kind of is what launched his care…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 8 @ 39:24
Ivan Arguelles supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“through dry spells. But Ivan Argules, another Nicaraguan exile, scuttling around LA to sell cocaine, had found this kid in South Central, Ricky Ross, and they were really starting to move powder. Blanton knew Ivan, who also used the name Cl…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 8 @ 40:54
Henry Corrales supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“Henry was so grateful for Blanton's help that he agreed to share his profits on the kilos that he sold 50-50. We split the commission, Blanton said, but he couldn't remember how much that was. I was selling to Henry Corrales and Henry Corra…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 8 @ 44:56
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross trafficked
Texas documented
“By 86 and 87, Ross said a good chunk of his business consisted of exporting drugs to higher priced areas like Fresno, St. Louis, Texas, Alabama. Police in St. Louis said cocaine prices there went into a free fall once the Bloods and Crips c…”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 52:12
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross funded
Los Angeles documented
“Field likes uniforms for local teams. He bought turntables and sound equipment for young rap artists and supplied eggs for Easter egg hunts. He paid for new pews and air conditioning for his mom's church. He sponsored a semi-pro football te…”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 38:56
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross trafficked
Alabama documented
“By 86 and 87, Ross said a good chunk of his business consisted of exporting drugs to higher priced areas like Fresno, St. Louis, Texas, Alabama. Police in St. Louis said cocaine prices there went into a free fall once the Bloods and Crips c…”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 52:12
Cornell Ward member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented
“Cornell Ward later tried to explain it to ABC. He was a good bad guy and the whole community saw him that way. Now here's a funny story. So this is an interview with ABC News. This interview is being conducted by Forrest Sawyer. Forrest Saw…”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 37:35
Steve Pollack carried_out_attack
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented
“until he couldn't take it anymore. On January 21st, Pollock and his men hit the freeway motor in like a tornado. The entire motel, all rooms were searched. The task force reported that in room five, currency and paperwork were seized in Ric…”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 41:44
Alan Finster member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented
“They raided rental properties, broke furniture, kicked holes in walls, knocked the windows out, and every one of the renters were mad at Ricky. Ross's attorney, Alan Fenster, filed a formal complaint with the department saying that the beat…”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 43:08
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross trafficked
Fresno documented
“By 86 and 87, Ross said a good chunk of his business consisted of exporting drugs to higher priced areas like Fresno, St. Louis, Texas, Alabama. Police in St. Louis said cocaine prices there went into a free fall once the Bloods and Crips c…”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 52:12
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross trafficked
St. Louis documented
“By 86 and 87, Ross said a good chunk of his business consisted of exporting drugs to higher priced areas like Fresno, St. Louis, Texas, Alabama. Police in St. Louis said cocaine prices there went into a free fall once the Bloods and Crips c…”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 52:12
Mike Smith member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“San Francisco. He collected cocaine from hotel rooms all over the Bay Area and sold them to customers in Alabama, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Francisco. At least two of Blanton's biggest customers, Mike Smith in LA and Reggi…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 22 @ 40:34
Reggie Rash member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“San Francisco. He collected cocaine from hotel rooms all over the Bay Area and sold them to customers in Alabama, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Francisco. At least two of Blanton's biggest customers, Mike Smith in LA and Reggi…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 22 @ 40:34
Daniel Blanton recruited
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“Inside, Gary Webb was tickled because Katz wasn't going to get any of the information he already had about the CIA's involvement. The next morning, I ran down to the hotel lobby and grabbed a copy of the Times. Katz's story had ran, focusin…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 23 @ 44:10
Daniel Blanton trafficked
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented
“When the Justice Department Inspector General looked at Blanton's immigration records, he found them in disarray. During 1984 and 85, Ross and Blanton had admitted their cocaine trafficking empire was at its zenith. Ross was selling dope so…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 10 @ 22:29
Jacinto Torres trafficked
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“and discuss prices. Once the Torres brothers started selling to him, Ross used them to whipshaw Blanton on his prices, pointing out that his other supplier was offering him a much better price. Blanton acknowledged that Ross began getting c…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 10 @ 33:22
Daniel Blanton supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“Blanton began selling high-powered weapons to Ross and his friends in 1984. That's crazy. Courtesy of Ronald Lister, the ex-cop that we talked about a couple of shows ago. We started handling more and more money and then guns. Daniello gave…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 10 @ 57:37
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross financed_via
Medellin Cartel host_asserted
“Freeway Rick was a dealer's dealer. By the time the market exploded in 1984, Ross already was dealing directly with the Colombian cartels who supplied him from 50 to 100 kilos a day. Los Angeles Times stated in 1994, with that, Ross was abl…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 10 @ 55:01
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross financed_via
Los Angeles host_asserted
“Blanton agreed that Ross was being diluted with cash. Those times they were using two and three machines and they were counting day and night. To hide it all, Ross followed Blanton's advice and started investing in real estate, buying house…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 10 @ 42:28
Andreas Torres trafficked
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“just how much cocaine the Torres brothers were selling to Ross. But he estimated that their volume rose to a level comparable to his own. He saw them getting rich. If I sell to Torres, basically he was jealous of the Torres brothers. The To…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 10 @ 40:33
Crips member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“Well, Ross said that while he did not sell exclusively to Crip's gang members, they initially formed a large part of his customer base simply because he and Ollie had lived in a Crip neighborhood growing up. But that only mattered at the be…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 10 @ 54:32
Marilyn Stubblefield member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented
“One squad asked Detective John Edner to see what he could find out. Edner confirmed that Freeway Rick actually was real and his real name was Ricky Donnell Ross. While Edgar couldn't track him down, he did find Freeway Rick's girlfriend, Ma…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 16 @ 51:35
George Modlin member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented
“Ricky's cousin, George Modlin, stopped by and the majors gave him the same warm welcome. Modlin showed up while they were in the process of searching the house. We had most of the subjects detained in the living room. Modlin shows up and go…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 16 @ 52:29
Anthony Modlin member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented
“In late August, the major one struck again, rousting two of Ross's cousins, Anthony and Eric Modlin, on suspicion of having stolen firearms. They didn't arrest them. They tuned them up, is what they referred to it. In other words, they beat…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 16 @ 52:58
Eric Modlin member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented
“In late August, the major one struck again, rousting two of Ross's cousins, Anthony and Eric Modlin, on suspicion of having stolen firearms. They didn't arrest them. They tuned them up, is what they referred to it. In other words, they beat…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 16 @ 52:58
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross member_of
Ollie Newell documented
“The Ramos bust had been impressive in terms of cocaine and cash, but ultimately it was a dead end. Despite Torres's claim that the Colombian was one of Ross's big suppliers, no evidence linked him directly to Ross. In later interviews with …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 16 @ 53:56
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross recruited
Alfonso Jeffries book_quoted
“was trapped. Ross got the news and quickly assessed the damage. Nine kilos was enough to put Jeffries away for a couple of decades. The pressure would be on him to roll over and give someone up. If the dominoes started falling, they would f…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 21 @ 23:59
Daniel Blanton funded
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“Blanton provided him with free rental cars and complimentary hotel rooms. Meanwhile, Ross turned Blanton's daughters on to rap music, bringing them the latest CDs and talked to them about rappers and how he was bankrolling them from his coc…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 21 @ 18:10
Alfonso Jeffries trafficked
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“A lot of people stopped calling after that, Ross said. As Ross had feared, Alfonso Jeffries had broken. He told the police about Ross's trip to New York City and California to pick up cocaine. They brought 20 kilos back from New York the fi…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 21 @ 26:53
U.S. Department of Justice recruited
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“He'd been told. Yet now they wanted to know if he would be a U.S. government witness against the police. A drug dealer helping to put NARTS in jail. If that doesn't beat all, he thought. Now, again, this is the feds wanting a consent decree…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 21 @ 34:54
CIA trafficked
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross guest_asserted
“was a drug dealer dealer in los angeles he said that uh he was he was doing so much business he had a little drive-through set up then the cia you know the cia correct me if i'm wrong but set him up with drugs and then put him in jail um hi…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner The Great Pretense Part 2 @ 1:15:27
Daniel Blanton supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“He has developed a large organization which handles weapon sales, cocaine shipments, and business enterprises, and as a result, has used the cash to buy real estate, commercial, and residential. Now, again, Ricky Ross was not supplying the …”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 36:07
Ron Lister supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“He has developed a large organization which handles weapon sales, cocaine shipments, and business enterprises, and as a result, has used the cash to buy real estate, commercial, and residential. Now, again, Ricky Ross was not supplying the …”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 36:07
Scott Weakley supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“He has developed a large organization which handles weapon sales, cocaine shipments, and business enterprises, and as a result, has used the cash to buy real estate, commercial, and residential. Now, again, Ricky Ross was not supplying the …”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 36:07
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross trafficked
Colombia documented
“In order to make a dent in the crack cocaine there, they were going to have to shut him down. But then Ricky Ross was a major dealer and he was affecting South Central Los Angeles. He was supplying most of the dope in the region. We were he…”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 34:08
Danilo Blandon supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“Each one of those loads from Miami ranged from 200 to 400 kilos. These regular flights continued until at least 1984. They were not sure whether all of that was sold directly to Ross, but a huge chunk of it was because he didn't really have…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 9 @ 1:35
Henry Corrales member_of
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted
“that he was getting a little paranoid, Blandon said. Somebody from his organization was in jail. And he basically said, now, just remind you, Henry is the original go-between. He was the wholesaler. So it was Blandon, Henry, and then Ricky.…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 9 @ 2:07
Torres brothers supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“because they shared heritage with this new profession. He sold Ivan a little cocaine every once in a while when he couldn't find it at other places. The Torres brothers, the two giant guys with the car lot, also had gotten into the cocaine …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 8 @ 41:24
Daniel Blanton supplied_arms_to
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“He kept saying he could get me some stuff for really cheap and could make me a lot of money if I started dealing in Cincinnati. Ricky, initially, was not interested. When Blanton called him from Detroit one day in the fall of 1987 and asked…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 21 @ 18:43
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross trafficked
Daniel Blanton documented
“for another 10 years. In 1996, when Gary Webb began looking into the 1986 raids, the Sheriff Department officials would initially deny that they had ever occurred. Because remember, they purged all the records. If the Blanton investigation …”
▶ The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 20 @ 33:37
Los Angeles Police Department covered_up
Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted
“The police claimed that Ross had attacked them with a frying pan, so naturally they just used it on him. Bruised and sore and swollen all over, the crack king of L.A. was unceremoniously dumped into a cell in Los Angeles Metropolitan Correc…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 21 @ 29:53
Mentions (120)
▶ 5:56
Ricky Ross would later say, quote, I thought it was some pretty bad shit, but he told me there was nothing to worry about. Nobody had found nothing. Nothing was going to change, unquote. Blanton and Ross continued buying and selling million…
▶ 33:37
for another 10 years. In 1996, when Gary Webb began looking into the 1986 raids, the Sheriff Department officials would initially deny that they had ever occurred. Because remember, they purged all the records. If the Blanton investigation …
▶ 34:08
In order to make a dent in the crack cocaine there, they were going to have to shut him down. But then Ricky Ross was a major dealer and he was affecting South Central Los Angeles. He was supplying most of the dope in the region. We were he…
▶ 35:39
joined forces creating a Freeway Rick Task Force. It was one of the few times in the history of L.A. law enforcement that a single man was the subject of an entire task force. Ricky Ross is a 7-4 Hoover Crip, this is a quote, whose success …
▶ 36:07
He has developed a large organization which handles weapon sales, cocaine shipments, and business enterprises, and as a result, has used the cash to buy real estate, commercial, and residential. Now, again, Ricky Ross was not supplying the …
▶ 36:38
Though Ross had made a concerted effort to keep a low profile, driving around in a Ford station wagon, he had become too successful for his own good. Ross could no longer hide his fortune, and after a while, he no longer cared. I was like t…
▶ 37:08
the godfather, although buying friendships wasn't in his wheelhouse. According to the LAPD captain, he'd become quite a heavyweight. He's sort of a local hero, the same way drug cartel leaders are. He employs people. He spends lots of money…
▶ 38:34
Forrest Sawyer says, God, that's hard to believe. Ward said, it's easy. All you have to do is just go through the neighborhood and see. So Forrest Sawyer did. He interviewed people who described Ross as a well-liked person. They told of the…
▶ 38:56
Field likes uniforms for local teams. He bought turntables and sound equipment for young rap artists and supplied eggs for Easter egg hunts. He paid for new pews and air conditioning for his mom's church. He sponsored a semi-pro football te…
▶ 39:26
ain't really done nothing. It's just that he sold dope, unquote. Another veteran probation officer told the LA Times he was more like a Robin Hood type guy. You never heard of him getting high or drinking or beating women or dealing dope to…
▶ 39:51
The police believe that cutting Ricky Ross down to size would not only be a propaganda victory for law enforcement, but would send a message up and down the gang members chain of command that things were changed. The cops estimated that the…
▶ 40:19
The Sheriff's Department assigned five narcotics detectives and the LAPD contributed four, all of whom were selected because of their talents and narcotics expertise. Because Major One had been sniffing around Ross since 1986, its superviso…
▶ 40:44
In keeping with Sobel's personal motto, march or die, all five task force detectives were put on full-time cash overtime so they could keep up 24-hour surveillance of everything. For task force detective Steve Pollack, who had been working …
▶ 41:12
What he did, he poisoned tens of thousands of people. He overdosed them. He killed them. There is a lot of crack babies out there because of him, unquote. And he made a pointed effort to point out that the crack was now spreading throughout…
▶ 41:44
until he couldn't take it anymore. On January 21st, Pollock and his men hit the freeway motor in like a tornado. The entire motel, all rooms were searched. The task force reported that in room five, currency and paperwork were seized in Ric…
▶ 42:12
Investigations disclosed Ricky Ross had purchased six of these radios at about $10,000 apiece. They raided Ross's mother's house. They found a stolen 9mm Uzi two-point-blank bulletproof vest. The search on Annie Ross's house sent Rick into …
▶ 42:41
and was yelling at Pollack on the phone. Going after my mom? That's a kind of shit, he said. As the weeks went on, it got worse. Three task force detectives searched Ollie Newell, that's his partner's apartment, and gave Newell a vicious be…
▶ 43:08
They raided rental properties, broke furniture, kicked holes in walls, knocked the windows out, and every one of the renters were mad at Ricky. Ross's attorney, Alan Fenster, filed a formal complaint with the department saying that the beat…
▶ 43:36
Sobel and his men fired back with a search warrant for Finster's financial records, accusing him of money laundering and supporting cocaine trafficking. Finster's complaints were perfunctually investigated by the sheriff's internal affairs …
▶ 44:05
And every single one of them was done this way. So the L.A. Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles Police Department physically beat all of these people up and destroyed every place they went. You can judge whether that's right or wrong, …
▶ 45:05
the gist of what we're talking about. Daniel Blanton's reassurance to Ross that nothing would change, the Nicaraguan had already made up his mind to get out of Los Angeles. The raids on his home and other locations, his bonus cover, and his…
▶ 50:13
Months after fleeing Virginia, Sandino showed up in Los Angeles just in time to take over Danielle Blanton's business, another known government-protected drug dealer. After Blanton moved, Ross said, he would call him in Miami time to time, …
▶ 50:45
with the Nicaraguan operation in Los Angeles well after he moved to Miami. By then, Ross said the cocaine business was losing some of its allure. His friends and mentor, Danielle Blanton, was 3,000 miles away. He owned about $5 million wort…
▶ 51:15
This is a quote. At first, I had never saw anybody addicted to cocaine. It took a while before before it started to affect anybody that we dealt with. I mean, nobody at first. It was like everybody was using cocaine, drove big cars and, you…
▶ 51:44
had gotten addicted to cocaine. It was now personally affecting him. By early 1987, the LA crack market had become so saturated and so much gang activity was accompanying it that they were going outside of Los Angeles, all over the country,…
▶ 52:12
By 86 and 87, Ross said a good chunk of his business consisted of exporting drugs to higher priced areas like Fresno, St. Louis, Texas, Alabama. Police in St. Louis said cocaine prices there went into a free fall once the Bloods and Crips c…
▶ 1:06:56
It's a pretty big one. Have you ever heard of someone named Freeway Ricky Ross? Indeed, I had. I'd run across him while researching the asset forfeiture series in 1993. He's one of the biggest crack dealers in LA. That's what they say, Broo…
▶ 1:07:26
I don't have a lot of the details because the government has been very protective of him. They refuse to give us any discovery so far. But from what I understand, Blanton used to be one of Ricky Ross's sources back in 1980. And I suppose he…
▶ 1:08:52
No wonder those bastards won't give me his name, Finster said. Forgive me, but if you only knew what kind of bullshit I've been going through to get that information from those son of a bitches. And then some reporter calls me up from San J…
▶ 1:09:21
I'll have him call you, and he hung up. Ross called a few hours later, and I asked him what he knew about Blanton. He said a lot. He was almost like a godfather to me. He's the one who got me going. Was he your main source? He was. Everybod…
▶ 1:09:50
right when I was getting going. Damn, I thought. That was right when Blanton said he had started dealing drugs. Would you be willing to sit down and talk to me? He said, hell yeah. I'll tell you anything you want to know. At the end of Sept…
▶ 1:10:18
and watched as Finster and other defense attorneys made another futile attempt to find out the details of the government's informant so they could begin preparing their defenses. Assistant U.S. Attorney O'Neill refused to provide a thing. T…
▶ 1:10:48
correctional center. He knew nothing of Blanton's past, I discovered. He had no idea who the Contras were or whose side they were on. To him, Donella was just a nice guy with cheap dope. What would you say if I told you that he was working …
▶ 17:57
sophisticated telecommunication and eavesdropping gear. Blanton was having the time of his life. As far as he and Ricky Roth were concerned, 1984 had been a terrific year, and 1985 was going to be better. Blanton was now an official guest o…
▶ 22:29
When the Justice Department Inspector General looked at Blanton's immigration records, he found them in disarray. During 1984 and 85, Ross and Blanton had admitted their cocaine trafficking empire was at its zenith. Ross was selling dope so…
▶ 22:57
to smaller crack dealers. It continued growing and growing until sometime he could buy 100 kilos in a week. Blanton and Ross was driving him nuts with constantly telephoning in orders. I was getting orders all the time, Blanton said. I was …
▶ 23:26
He was calling like every two or three hours. Sometimes he would want me to deliver them at two o'clock in the morning. Blanton finally worked out an arrangement with his Colombian supplier to give Ross large quantities of cocaine for no mo…
▶ 23:56
He's a good payer. I give 20 or 25 kilos on credit to him all the time. Don't bother me until you've got the money. That was Blanton. There was a reason Blanton wanted out, why he wanted Ross out of his hair for a while. The Blanton family …
▶ 25:31
He was the chief supplier to the largest minority owned business in the area. Again, it was drugs. So when Blanton basically didn't want to be making the trips out to South Central and he really didn't want Ricky hanging around his house an…
▶ 27:40
The lot paid taxes on the $4,000 at a cheaper rate than what you could have paid for laundering money through a bank. And suddenly, the $2,000 in drug profits had a legitimate pedigree. Now that Danilo was a suburbanite with businesses to r…
▶ 28:10
He talks about hanging out at his house and even staying the night there. But that got a little awkward as time went on. Ross noticed a change in his mentor's demeanor after he joined the country club in Rialto. Daniela started getting rela…
▶ 28:41
would turn red and he'd keep trying to get me to use it. And Ricky said, I don't drink and I don't do drugs. I just sell them. Blanton habits would leave him soft and bloated. The Nicaraguan dealers began to call him the fat pig. Ironically…
▶ 29:12
Ricky Ross a little nervous. The way he saw it, people who got lazy got sloppy, and sloppy people made stupid mistakes. This was a business where you couldn't afford even one mistake. Ross's two years to perfect his delivery and distributio…
▶ 29:39
Nearly every big crack dealer in town was getting cocaine from him. There was no limit to the average cocaine dealer's greed. You could buy your way into anything or even out of it if you had a disagreement with another guy. Money talked. R…
▶ 30:12
to Danello. When he looked closely at his operation, he saw a glaring weakness and that was his exclusive relationship with Danello Blanton. It didn't make any sense to have his entire life resting in one person's hand. If Danello disappear…
▶ 30:42
from other cocaine importers, major traffickers, who dreamed of finding a customer the size of Ricky Ross. Blanton once told an associate that the beauty of dealing with the black people was that they sold cocaine so rapidly that there were…
▶ 31:11
Ross had other players who came around, usually offering him deals, but no one could meet Blanton's prices. A new supplier could turn out to be a fly-by-night or a snitch. Daniello, on the other hand, was his friend, his protector. Ricky Ro…
▶ 31:45
was like back in LA. This is Ross talking. He would always tell me when they were going to raid my houses. The police always thought I had somebody working for the police. And he was always giving me tips like, man, don't go back over to th…
▶ 32:15
that he owed much of his success to Danilo, felt almost superstitious about tampering with a winning formula. I can't say I never would have found out about it, but before I met him, the chances of me being a big dope dealer were slim to no…
▶ 32:49
He'd met them through Blanton. Blanton's assistants eventually had, they had like a party and they had met and they had slipped Ross the phone number of the Torres brothers in case he needed anything. On one particularly busy day, he had ca…
▶ 33:22
and discuss prices. Once the Torres brothers started selling to him, Ross used them to whipshaw Blanton on his prices, pointing out that his other supplier was offering him a much better price. Blanton acknowledged that Ross began getting c…
▶ 33:53
Coke from the Torres's. I got a piece of the apple. He confirmed that Ross started driving his kilo prices down even further. But the new relationship had a bit of a rocky start. Jacinto Torres quickly got into trouble with the police. He a…
▶ 35:29
My money, my ledger, my clients, all the names. They're going to find a house. I have got rented. And when they get there, they'll find the whores. I don't think, I don't want to think about it. He turned to Andreas and said, Rick is the on…
▶ 38:32
to cocaine trafficking. Ross eventually turned Blanton and the Torres brothers against each other, a situation that would have due consequences for Blanton in later years. The longtime friends became bitter rivals, fighting each other for R…
▶ 39:04
was working with a drunken Blanton about how low the brothers' cocaine prices had fallen. Blanton looked at him, bleary-eyed, and said, Chepita is screwing one of them. He used the F word. And said he was going to put a hit out on him. He s…
▶ 39:32
Blanton suggested that Ross set up a came by with the adulterous brother and tell the MF-er to bring it at such and such a time. And I'm going to have some guys there waiting for him. I'm going to take care of that effing guy. Ross said he …
▶ 40:33
just how much cocaine the Torres brothers were selling to Ross. But he estimated that their volume rose to a level comparable to his own. He saw them getting rich. If I sell to Torres, basically he was jealous of the Torres brothers. The To…
▶ 41:04
on many occasions. If Ricky Ross was going through 150 kilos of cocaine every week, and as Ross said, the figure is a reasonable average. It means he was selling enough to put a staggering 3 million doses of crack on LA streets every seven …
▶ 41:31
about $6 million a week in cash from the profits of the young dealer. Sometimes we'd spend $4 million or $5 million in a week with the guy, Blanton said. Blanton said that Ross was using an apartment in South Central as a counting house whe…
▶ 42:01
He would pick up his payments there. When Danilo came over to the counting house, he said, man, I'm going to have to get you a money machine because, you know, our problem has got to be counting that money. You know, I started telling him, …
▶ 42:28
Blanton agreed that Ross was being diluted with cash. Those times they were using two and three machines and they were counting day and night. To hide it all, Ross followed Blanton's advice and started investing in real estate, buying house…
▶ 49:40
Cocaine is found widely in the black community in Los Angeles, but it is almost totally absent from the Hispanic area. The explanation for this seemed obvious once Danilo Blanton's Rick Ross partnership is factored in. There was no market u…
▶ 54:32
Well, Ross said that while he did not sell exclusively to Crip's gang members, they initially formed a large part of his customer base simply because he and Ollie had lived in a Crip neighborhood growing up. But that only mattered at the be…
▶ 55:01
Freeway Rick was a dealer's dealer. By the time the market exploded in 1984, Ross already was dealing directly with the Colombian cartels who supplied him from 50 to 100 kilos a day. Los Angeles Times stated in 1994, with that, Ross was abl…
▶ 55:30
He had another three ounce houses servicing 100 to 200 mid-level dealers. Finally, he had his own private list of VIP customers, maybe 10 or 50 of the biggest dealers, who dropped tens of thousands of dollars at a time. Ross's gang customer…
▶ 55:58
setting up new crack houses, setting up connections. It was the start of an unprecedented crisscross migration of the gangs and the drugs. And it was the start of Rasta's expansion from a large regional drug trafficker to a national conglom…
▶ 57:37
Blanton began selling high-powered weapons to Ross and his friends in 1984. That's crazy. Courtesy of Ronald Lister, the ex-cop that we talked about a couple of shows ago. We started handling more and more money and then guns. Daniello gave…
▶ 58:08
And said there was plenty more where that came from. He started selling guns after the business got huge. And they would be things like guns with silencers on them. And everybody then started coming to Ross wanting guns. Blanton had access …
▶ 58:47
what is called a street sweeper, the Thompsons. He sold everything. I think he sold those for like $3,000 a piece. It's a fully automatic that you see in the movies, like in the old gangster movies, Ross said. He also had Uzis. He sold pist…
▶ 59:21
Ross had bought a silver plated Uzi submachine gun and Ollie, his partner in all of this, his old neighborhood friend that lived next door. He became a gun fanatic like he couldn't buy enough guns and he had everything to include a 50 calib…
▶ 59:53
So Ricky says, I started buying houses and Ollie started buying guns. He said his fellow dealers bought more than 100 guns from Blanton. He sold so many to other dealers and friends that in 1987, the L.A. police would list weapon sales as a…
▶ 1:16:16
Go ahead. Hi, Colonel. I just want to pick up, given that we're kind of dealing with the Los Angeles Police Department as it relates to Ricky Ross. What department? LAPD. As it relates to Ricky Ross. Well, I think it's kind of important to …
▶ 1:18:44
New York, where the NYPD's Bureau of Special Investigations or what they call the BOSI unit, which probably they've changed the names. But, you know, the point is that there are these long term intelligence connections to these police depar…
▶ 9:54
Blanton also did a brisk business in selling electronic equipment to cocaine dealers. He sold walkie-talkies to Ross and his crew, who used them to keep in touch during cocaine and money pickups. He also sold them police scanners, voice scr…
▶ 10:23
Ron Lister procured that equipment for Ricky. Blanton said Ross used to live in an apartment beside the freeway in San Pedro. It was an apartment by Florence, if I remember it correctly. So I get him a scanner, telephone security. When you …
▶ 10:51
on another phone and talk to him and nobody can listen. Ross said his crew carried the police scanner in their cars when they were on deliveries so that they could eavesdrop on patrol cars in the neighborhood. They also used one at the coun…
▶ 11:19
They've got equipment, police detection systems, sophisticated weapons, and better equipment than we do. Sobel and his team had raided Ross's Big Palace on wheels, a well-known, stocked, but curiously customer-free auto parts store that was…
▶ 12:23
That falls in line with everything else we found out. The search also found Teflon-coated bullets commonly referred to as cop killers. In the LA Police Department summary of searches at locations associated with Ricky Ross, Deputy Chief Gle…
▶ 35:21
Ricky Ross confirmed that Blanton had an uncanny ability to accurately predict upcoming police raids, but said he was never able to explain his clairvoyance. The Torres brother told Gazzetta that Blanton was working with the Laguna Beach po…
▶ 49:36
Plotted their next move, Jerry Guzetta asked the Torres brothers to show him around South Central. He wanted to know more about this black dealer by the name of Rick. They drove Guzetta to a vacant two-story apartment building and told Guze…
▶ 50:37
Swinging by another place, the brothers pointed out a newly constructed motel named Freeway Motor Inn. Rick had bought the land for a million dollars, and they told Gussetta that he had built the hotel there and that Rick's mother, Annie, w…
▶ 51:05
The Torres brothers had led him to the legendary three-way Rick, the elusive crack lord whose existence was a myth to that point. While rumors of the super crack dealer had been floating around South Central for years, it wasn't until 1986 …
▶ 51:35
One squad asked Detective John Edner to see what he could find out. Edner confirmed that Freeway Rick actually was real and his real name was Ricky Donnell Ross. While Edgar couldn't track him down, he did find Freeway Rick's girlfriend, Ma…
▶ 52:03
On May 15, 1986, according to Stubblefield's brother, Steve, they kicked the door in, ransacked the apartment, arrested her, and beat Steve with a flashlight, telling him to pass a message to Freeway Rick that they were on to him. During th…
▶ 52:58
In late August, the major one struck again, rousting two of Ross's cousins, Anthony and Eric Modlin, on suspicion of having stolen firearms. They didn't arrest them. They tuned them up, is what they referred to it. In other words, they beat…
▶ 53:27
reverting back to his exclusive relationship with Daniello Blanton. His price were so low, you just couldn't compete. Ross and Blanton had become very close friends. While the Majors crew worked Ross's organization from the bottom up, Major…
▶ 53:56
The Ramos bust had been impressive in terms of cocaine and cash, but ultimately it was a dead end. Despite Torres's claim that the Colombian was one of Ross's big suppliers, no evidence linked him directly to Ross. In later interviews with …
▶ 5:42
that having this information is critical to understanding what's going on in the world today. So it's just crazy how all of that works out. Amen. Amen. Exactly. All right. So Chapter 21, Dark Alliance, starts off with Ricky Ross wanting and…
▶ 6:12
He wants to get away from Los Angeles. He wants to get away from all of the craziness that he himself created in conjunction with the Nicaraguan mafia that the CIA had moved in there to flood the zone with cocaine, both in Los Angeles and S…
▶ 6:42
was where Mary Bronner had grown up. Ricky had traveled there at least once with her to try to get her help from her being hooked on cocaine. So he was interested in moving somewhere in the Midwest so that his money that he had stashed away…
▶ 7:11
And he could live kind of incognito as just the guy on the block and not the crack cocaine dealer, that mega dealer that he had become. So he had taken $300,000 in cash with him in, which of course in that city at that time would allow them…
▶ 7:43
He moved into a townhouse and basically just kind of wanted to live the recluse lifestyle outside of drugs. He had an obsession with real estate and wanted to get into that business in Cincinnati. At the time, he was 27 years old. And peopl…
▶ 17:41
and spread to 24 other locations in South Florida. Blanton's rent-a-car business was so successful, court records show, he became an authorized outlet for Chrysler Corporation and GM vehicles. They loved those car lots. Ross said that he vi…
▶ 18:10
Blanton provided him with free rental cars and complimentary hotel rooms. Meanwhile, Ross turned Blanton's daughters on to rap music, bringing them the latest CDs and talked to them about rappers and how he was bankrolling them from his coc…
▶ 18:43
He kept saying he could get me some stuff for really cheap and could make me a lot of money if I started dealing in Cincinnati. Ricky, initially, was not interested. When Blanton called him from Detroit one day in the fall of 1987 and asked…
▶ 19:12
had what he had in mind. Ross said that his relationship with the Nicaraguans was such that he would have done almost anything for them. The business, as Daniello called it often, had been custom made for Ricky. He went on to say that Ricky…
▶ 19:45
He was just an illiterate high school dropout, a zero. When he was dealing, he was something big. And Daniello would prey on that. Quote, it got to the point where I enjoyed selling drugs so much that I could be in bed with a woman and I'd …
▶ 20:17
his own was effortless. By then, Ross was an old hand at creating new crack markets. I knew the recipe. I knew what to do. I would just go into the black neighborhoods and meet people. So, Daniello was not going to allow Ricky Ross a minute…
▶ 20:50
giving recruits apartments, beepers, cocaine with instructions on how to conduct street sales. The drugs were stored in the trunks of parked cars placed around the neighborhoods, which again is why they love the car dealership business. Sud…
▶ 21:21
We had a lot of crack in the east and west, but not in Cincinnati until Ricky Ross came here, one of the local police officers said. He could blow the locals out of the water when it came to making drug deals because he was getting them so …
▶ 21:55
Middleton and Fairfield, Ohio, as far west as Cincinnati and St. Louis, as far south as Atlanta and even in Texas. One of the police officers said that Ricky Ross could sell popsicles to Eskimos. Ross later said, I could go anywhere in the …
▶ 22:29
In 10 months, Ross said he had sold 300 to 400 kilos of Blanton's cocaine in the Midwest, netting himself about $2 million in profit. He flew to Miami once a month to drop off the cash. Either we would meet there or we would meet in New Yor…
▶ 23:30
said the bag was bound for Cincinnati. A call was placed to the Cincinnati DEA's office. They asked for advice. The DEA office said that they'd stake out the bus and see who shows up for the suitcase. A few days later, one of Ross's employe…
▶ 23:59
was trapped. Ross got the news and quickly assessed the damage. Nine kilos was enough to put Jeffries away for a couple of decades. The pressure would be on him to roll over and give someone up. If the dominoes started falling, they would f…
▶ 24:26
and he'd have the best lawyers. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. The mere fact that a Crip had been caught in Cincinnati with cocaine, quote, led the FBI and DEA field office in Cincinnati to investigate allegations that the Crips …
▶ 24:55
and Ricky knew his time was short. Ross discovered that one of his underlings was having sex with his girlfriend. That sensed it for him. He was getting screwed every way in Cincinnati, and it became time to go home. I sold what I had, and …
▶ 25:25
He was worried about Alfonso Jeffries, whose steadfast silence on Ricky's behalf had been rewarded with a 20-year prison sentence. That was straight federal time, no parole. Jeffries had already rolled on him for all Ricky knew. Ross went i…
▶ 25:56
He said, I guess about a month after I got back to Los Angeles, Blanton started calling him again. Blanton would call two or three times a month until the word got out that Ross was under investigation as well. A grand jury in Smith County,…
▶ 26:26
in Texas in May of 1988 and discussed a cocaine deal on a tapped phone line. The fugitive warrant was issued. About three months after I was in Los Angeles, they did a program on CBS that was talking about me, that I was under investigation…
▶ 26:53
A lot of people stopped calling after that, Ross said. As Ross had feared, Alfonso Jeffries had broken. He told the police about Ross's trip to New York City and California to pick up cocaine. They brought 20 kilos back from New York the fi…
▶ 27:22
In June of 1989, Ross and 13 other people were indicted on federal charges of cocaine conspiracy in Cincinnati. And another fugitive warrant was issued. Now he had the state of Texas and the U.S. government after him. Ross melted into South…
▶ 27:51
when an unmarked police car came screeching up. One of the guys said that it was NARCS, so Ricky Ross ran. And when I ran, they started shooting at me. They had shot about 12 times at me. Bullets were zipping by. He found an unlocked house …
▶ 13:30
started talking about his connections to the CIA. If the Justice Department thought the CIA would ever tell them anything about him, she asked. Lister laughingly told the agent he was headed out the door towards freedom. They were dreaming …
▶ 13:59
He became one of the federal government's star witness in the second round of corruption trials in 91, and his appearance on the witness stand was in some ways an historic occasion. It was the first time that the man who had helped touch of…
▶ 14:25
Ross, probably the most significant drug dealer ever to testify for the government. Freeway, Ricky, along with a host of other lesser drug dealers, appeared as government witness, opened up an inner world of the big crack dealing for the wi…
▶ 14:54
of cocaine in South Los Angeles, becoming a multimillionaire by the time he was 22. He told of the properties that he owned, the speedboat that he had docked at nearby Del Rey, his fleet of cars, his ski trips to Aspens, his 14 row seats at…
▶ 15:24
That's the other drug dealer. Smith said that they had created an economic empire, including a tire shop, apartment building investments, built hotels. And he mentioned that Ross, a convicted trafficker, had been described as the godfather …
▶ 16:20
When he was in the CIA and now, the government is the only people that have the access to the equipment, but minorities are the ones going to jail for it. Such comments, combined with the Senate reduction and other favors Ross and his cohor…
▶ 16:46
who had difficulty accepting the testimony of drug dealers over the denials of the accused officers. Under cross-examination, Ross admitted that the Justice Department had agreed to cut his sentence in half and had permitted him to keep the…
▶ 17:15
They really gave away the farm, one of the jurors said. The LAPD detective, who was the architect of the Freeway Ricky Task Force, Ross's nemesis, Steve Pollack, was one of those acquitted. He was later re-indicted on civil rights and incom…