Detroit Kingpin Johnny Curry on Making $200M, White Boy Rick Snitching, Did 14 Years(Full Interview)

all right here we go today we have johnny curry one of the biggest kingpins to ever come out of detroit welcome to vlad tv oh thank you and glad to be here well you have a very interesting story and this is our first time talking so i want to start in the beginning so you were actually born in 1959 so you grew up in the 60s and 70s absolutely now now your family's actually from the south right correct okay and seven kids all together say nine nine kids all these nine kids okay and at one point you know the family moved to detroit to find a better life right so what was detroit like in the 60s and 70s it was almost like we was young so that was almost like the time that uh the national guards came in a lot of looting going on in detroit a lot of stuff was going on so it was like that i was young man and they did um they kept everybody like inside the house uh basically um it's a lot of little riding it was the riding that's what it was almost in the riding time right i remember that all right they did the writing here now you're in a big family and you guys grew up in kind of a lower middle class neighborhood was your family was your family struggling or were they okay struggling yep yeah what do you think was what do you think was the hardest thing growing up in terms of uh being in a family that big being a family that big uh actually to defeat us for my father mother and she was only my father was the only one working so my mother wasn't working she was just like at home moms trying to take care of family and then my father worked at two jobs matter of fact working two jobs to try to provide for us okay and at one point you actually grew up in the church yeah i went to church i was an altar boy matter of fact i was all the boy to church okay uh so you're an altar boy in the church you're growing up in this family your dad's working two jobs mom's a stay-at-home mom right absolutely but at one point you start getting mixed up in the streets yes i did i started getting mixed up in the street i actually would started off getting mixed up in the street actually with a the game it was called the bks i started got tied up with the bks earl flynn's hustlers chain gang that's when we first kind of started off a little bit there right and the bks uh stood for black killers black killers yeah absolutely okay i mean back then when you had gangs was there fist fights gun play bats knives or was it you know mostly with your hands that was gun play okay definitely gun play like how old were you when that started happening i had to be at least 15 years old okay and what was the first instance that you remember where guns were involved uh actually i'ma tell you exactly what happened um i was going to school so i know he had to be 50 i was going to school and uh we was going through fenney high school off of warren avenue and i was going uh me and a friend of mine we was riding on the bus and we was actually in an altercation with the uh hustlers when because that's what they territory was across connors and warren and so i seen them all gathering up together and i seen the great get on the bus with these guns so i kicked the window out the bus and jumped off the bus ride that's our first altercation that i had now we didn't hear many altercations but the first altercation that i really got into is when i kicked the bus window out and jumped off the bus because i knew they was doing what they had to do okay now at one point your mom ended up dying yeah my mom died that was devastating yeah okay and was her death sort of like a trigger for you to kind of change your life a bit yes it did it triggered me off to change my life because after she died she uh had a what they call a re rem of uh her death and she put us all together and uh because she had a blood vessel busting her head and she went into a coma she said i want y'all to be strong and uh strong family and poor together and then next thing you know a couple hours there she went into a coma and she stayed into a coma for about a week and we was all really praying that she left because uh after the doctor said that she had blessed a bust a blood vessel on her head that uh she would be numb but a vegetable so we was praying that god took on away and he answered our prayers and he did yeah sad very sad well at one point i guess you got into it with your father and he he forced you out of the house right matter of fact yeah after my mother passed he did he forced me out of the house and up actually what i did uh about five houses down from where we stayed at on b wick it was a vacant house so i didn't have like say coats or nothing to put on anything so i wouldn't stay to this vacant house about five hours down the street from where we uh originally was growing at and uh i went and stayed in the vacant house and um decided to do something different there after my father put me out okay in terms of something different i guess one of your older brothers uh charles actually charles uh really see my brother charles was actually doing um weed at the time and peels and doing it that's actually where i started from because he was doing his thing and he was getting a lot of money and i said uh i went to my brother and said uh i wanted to do basically what you doing get some in that you know form and do something like that so i started from my brother charles actually that's where we started from me and my twin brother okay so then you guys actually had your own weed house at one point right right there where my father when we was born and we finally took that over because my father i guess he met his girlfriend and he moved out so we moved basically back in and we started our own little weed house there okay so you have one wheat house but it starts to grow it gets to like 25 houses at one point something like that yeah it branched out you know it's like anything you start off one and then branch out that's like four general motors mcdonald's everything you start one and you branch out okay and it was you your twin brother and charles were those the three that were actually working this business or there was other other people as well it was other people as well definitely but in terms of people in charge the people in charge was me the people that was in charge over basically was my brother charles he started then he hit his little thing and i took over basically i was like head of the family after child's first okay so as you're growing this this business you start actually supplying some of the other gangs in the area absolutely okay and i mean detroit had an interesting kind of mix of of crews there was young boys incorporated right they was west yes uh the pony down gang they was whisked best friends they was east chamber brothers they was east and then uh demetrius holloway and maserati rick they were east okay and i remember i interviewed jalen rose who grew up in detroit and he was talking about how he grew up around young boys incorporated right that was that whole thing okay do you know jaylen rose at all not really at all i only knew like basically tommy he was east jaden was west tommy was east okay so you have this operation detroit and you built it up to about 25 houses but you're mostly doing weed mostly at that time yeah it's mostly weak yep uh and then you uh connect with your wife's uncle cici oh you did a little research didn't you yeah i connected with cc he was out of new york matter of fact right and uh cece actually had uh connections to uh the gambino crime family absolutely and uh these guys are pushing heroin definitely so now you're getting bricks of heroin you're right so what was it like dealing with the gambino mafia just like me and you or cardone we was they was regular people they wasn't hired people to deal with to sit down and told us like we sitting there talking they weren't like that or it wasn't a scary thing or anything like it was just normal people okay and you you originally started out with two bricks of heroin right now heroin is very different from weed very different right i i remember like hearing stories from from some of my friends about how the big drug dealers would keep a heroin addict with them at all times because that heroin addict would do anything in order to get a hit if he needed to go in and kill the whole building he would do it ain't too much different than crack and they do that with crack too but i understand what you're saying yeah it's true right well it's a lot more serious than weed basically people people get a lot you know a lot more addicted you know they go through withdrawals and people will do a lot more for heroin absolutely so and with the heroin comes the violence i'd say so yeah okay so what changed in your operation when you moved from we to heroin what changed operation it was more money actually in the heroine than it was when we definitely i actually i really stopped even messing around with uh weed my uh twin brother continuing during the week where i actually uh had met uh like you say my uh ex-wife's uh uncle and i got into the heroin field okay so now now you're in the heroin business absolutely and you're making more money so do the number of houses start to increase you didn't need as many houses with heroin as you did with the weed because it's like you you understand like we could take i could actually take a key of heroin and you can have actually 20 pounds of weed i'd make three times much you more than you off the key of heroin than you would off the 10 20 out 20 pounds a week so it was triple the money so you have to have as many houses with a weed that you did with heroin and so okay well and then at one point you end up getting into cocaine yeah then i yeah both of them i had cocaine heroin i had my own uh outlets and on field everything that i did after a while i had my own outlets in my own fields and own ways of getting it uh basically i was my own boss basically but then at one point the cocaine becomes crack right and that seems to change everything change the whole game okay so what changed when crack uh entered the picture when crack came in it was like more or less like this freebase thing they was putting down there with this stuff uh 151 uh uh the liquor was a 151 they would cook it and put it in a pipe and go from there um that's when i was actually really dealing with uh i really don't want to say his name and that's not me really but um we went to him and actually that's when we started uh messing actually with most a lot of the cocaine because it was totally the cocaine nines totally the way they used cocaine is totally different back then when they was doing cocaine back then totally different now because they use the 151 that's that uh don q don don q 151 that's when it really was really popping in it was really a mess at that time it just really kind of surfaced a lot well um you're building up this operation and i guess at one point you're worth about 100 million dollars is what they say they yeah the feds kept pretty much under accurate for right price then you know so they know about some 150 100 200 million somewhere up in that area well i guess there ended up being a drought in terms of connect to new york so you guys got together and went out to florida i got together who was you guys i don't know everything but i got together went out to florida okay you went out to florida and then that's where you got a colombian connection absolutely what did you have to go through to get that connection matter of fact i can mention his name because he's passed now guy named ted he was a biker white guy and uh actually he um hooked me in with a connection out in florida and uh we went from there and then i was also tied into this guy he's passed to uh that i got the berliner from he hooked me up with a connection out there too in florida that's when i actually took the corvette was act the balloon was actually a corvette from the beginning and we took it out to pompano beach i drove it out there and hit the conversion did out there and that's when i met another connection out in florida because that's when the the coke was so tough you could smell the money like you go in the bar and this the money smell like cocaine yeah the the colombian connect yes do you know if it came from pablo escobar one of the other cartels or you didn't know cartels i can't see which cartel but it came from a different cartel okay was there ever a point that you wanted to actually fly out to colombia to actually get a more direct plug or were you happy with what you had fly out to columbia and get it more direct yeah you actually did that and one time i went that way okay what was that colombian trip like actually for when you go out there and get a direct connect that's anywhere you go you get a direct account you don't have to go through different channels you're going directly to the man you don't have to go uh through this person that person or five or six different people you're going directly to the mayor okay so you met with the head guy over there right okay and how many kilos were you pushing at that point at that time we might have been fish pushing 50 kilos at a time that's a start okay and you know from what i understand the colombians if you end up messing up their money there's some serious repercussions no you know that was there was there situations where people know i never claimed this was always strictly business i kept it business personal sometimes you would actually go to them if you keep business straight business it's a lot different and uh you could be actually you could be actually broke and me to connect and as long as you they trust you and you they money is good you give it to them they give you the money you can be broken go to them they give you 50 100 keys and you take a downfall and put up and give you 100 keys and put you right back there well when you're pushing that much weight i mean you have the police that are you know busting it there's there's robberies there's kick doors there's rip-offs and so forth so during that time were you having problems with shipments getting lost or skimmed or anything no i never hit a shipment or nobody kicking indoors or nobody even robbing me huh okay it wasn't as violent back then as it is now aha see you guys guess back then everybody respected everybody uh the younger crowd started kind of messing that up the older crowd respected you was next door fat selling coke or heroin that's your business so but nowadays or back i can't really speak on these younger guys but they don't want to see nobody next door dealing next to them or this but back then everybody respected everybody we put it like that everybody respected everybody you was doing your thing everybody it was all everybody was getting money that's the key everybody getting a dollar so that's all that matters i don't care what care what the next man make as long as i made mine and fed my family that's all that mattered okay so you're making your money and the money started to really stack up right uh you're buying a nightclub for your brother charles yeah i bought it from him uh you bought a car lot i bought a car lot on grasses in 15 mile never forget that that's where actually i got the berliner from one of the uh white guys out there is the one that kind of turned me on to the connection out in florida john scott he's passed now so that's all right uh you bought a limo service uh yeah i had a limo service that i used at the hall you did your homework didn't you i i did i did and you bought two gas stations yeah that's where we all got me maserati rick uh everybody kind of hung up that's when we kind of clicked up together days like that go up there and sit around and that's where i met kathy at that gas station right there right you're right so you own this gas station uh this pretty lady pulls up and i just say i said i'm gonna pump up guys let me get her gas so i said do what you want miss don't worry about i'm disowned me and that's when i met her okay and i guess you were going through a divorce at the time of your first i was going through the divorce with my first wife then okay so you go and meet uh kathy vaulson right that pronounced her name right that's absolutely right you met kathy volson at your gas station you pumped your gas you guys started dating right you let you guys end up getting married right but kathy has a very interest interesting background because she was the niece of coleman a young who was the first black mayor of detroit absolutely and one of the most powerful black mayors for a long time in detroit right right and the way this guy sort of ran his operation was that whole family basically felt like they're above the law if that's where you want to put it i guess so but i wouldn't say above they didn't feel like they was above the law okay but but they they had a very interesting background so yes she might have she was she was engaged with vinnie johnson at the time ah okay got it well i guess kathy's father uh willie clyde volson jr right was married to mayor young's sister juanita clark and he was a drug kingpin okay let's get that straight too they were not married he was married already he was dating kathy's mother they were never legally married aha okay well you end up marrying kathy right uh she she got pregnant with your child and the baby shower was actually held at the mayor's mansion absolutely so here you have the mayor's niece and this drug kingpin having a baby shower at the mayor's mansion and everything's starting to get all intermixed at this point what do you mean intermixed well i mean now you're sort of part of this whole political violence i put it like i'm working my way in let's put it like that first i just didn't mix up but i was working my way in got it got it um now in the process of of being married to kathy and starting to make your way into this political family what you finna say is i get the perks i started getting perks let's put it like getting perks because you're getting perks yeah there you go and one of the perks was a direct line to gill hill right he had a homicide he was headed out expected hit homicide right and gill actually has a very interesting background because he appeared as a as a police sergeant inspector in the eddie murphy's movie beverly hills uh copper whatever it is yeah that's right he was inspected it was a huge film that was a huge big feeling of fact yes it was okay so now you have a line into the police department several but several lives yeah and uh i guess you were actually well i guess kathy was able to actually get confidential files that the police had on you true okay and you were paying off the police the whole time what do you think i was getting chicken feed but no yeah i was paying them off okay so give me an example of how police payoff works you don't actually just pay them off you just say here uh you would throw him actually throw him something and say go had lunch on me or have dinner on me and you you actually easing your way in you just don't how much it cost me or how you might say i might walk up to stay here man they go take your family i get something here's ten thousand and they give it okay it's like a pace that's not like a you owe me fifty thousand or you only no no it don't work like that i don't know what other people do but that's what i was doing i might make a big lump sum of money and say here man go have his family take your family out to eat or here's a christmas present here's a bonus anything because then you just start throwing it in my family yeah got it so you just throw thousands of dollars all the time if you want to quit throwing it put it throwing it i wasn't throwing it i was just giving it to him okay and i guess there was even an instance at one point you got pulled over by a police officer you was doing your back back work huh i got pulled over by an officer one day and i mentioned kathy's uh uh mother and he knew i needed and matter of fact i put him on the phone he talked to her and after that it was history right i was right because i guess when you when he pulled you over he saw the drugs in the back seat but since he knew who you were he was like don't worry about it do you need a police escort to wherever you're going right but i was cool after that i didn't need the police escort but he asked me if he wanted me to take take me on in but i felt i was comfortable i was cool okay so you're building up this this operation you got ties into the police department so you almost have police protection in a way yeah that's true i go for that yeah so then the whole white boy rick park right i guess his father was an arms dealer and was selling guns to you guys right that started started off from that yeah okay and i guess when his dad would meet to to sell you guns his son who you ended up calling white boy rick right i ended up calling white boy rick because he was real close to my little brother that's how i met him through my youngest brother boo rudel matter of fact that's how i met him okay and he was about 14 at the time somewhere up in that area and uh you liked him he said uh he said my brother let him come around we started hanging around together i felt like he was cool was all right with me so i didn't have any problem with all at all with him absolutely so now you got this white kid who is hanging out with you and i guess you guys start bringing him into the business slowly he mostly started working with my young like i said he came around my young brother and i mean i like like you saying i'm not going to turn my young brother down so they really work together basically he never worked it directly with me i'll go that far only that person worked directly with me was uh his father that i was buying the uh silencers from because he was silent he had silencers all kinds of guns okay and you know when you when you see some of the articles in the pictures uh there was a picture of i guess you and white boy rake with matching fur coats i don't i mean i saw the picture but it didn't it wasn't like that i saw that picture okay you know and white boy rick started really making money at 15 i guess he bought a mercedes with like 62 000 in cash i've never seen that mercedes you never never seen it i never said okay well regardless of what happened i guess his father ended up getting busted by the feds and right as an informant absolutely he was a foreigner before him but go here right and then i guess in order to save his father white boy rick became an informant as well i don't know how they did that situation i can't ride on that one okay and you had no idea that rick was an informant i had no idea at the time he was informed no no i didn't even know his father actually wasn't informed at that particular time yeah well i guess there's a situation when uh white boy rick ended up getting shot in the stomach i heard of that yeah okay they were saying is one of your associates it wasn't my associate got that story wrong too okay so explain explain that story was uh rick's father was working in a house rickman went behind that house and stole the gun out the house when they got the gun to the house the gun accidentally went off and shot rick at that particular time i told actually the fox news that came out that y'all hit it on your file that they knew that uh they he they sure they didn't they sued the insurance company that the guy accidentally shot him was his name was john matter of fact he had he don't have a problem with it his name was john okay so it was accidental shooting it was actual dental shooting but i guess in the movie or whatever or whatever they did or whatever they made it look like that i made a phone call and that was inaccurate okay i mean was there a word at that point that white boy rick might be a snitch not i didn't get the information at that time that he might have been a schnitzel okay well but by 1984 the feds had basically started a full a full-blown investigation absolutely into your operation right and i guess they even broke into your house and planted listening devices around your house right there in uh my office at the holiday hall they did it they put some uh listing devices in there too right and the feds essentially wanted white boy rick in order to bust you to bring my organization down yeah exactly yep so then there was a whole situation around uh you know the marvelous marvin hagler fight in vegas i remember that okay so tell me what led up to that uh we all wanted to go to the fight out in vegas so um kathy's father knew some people out in vegas uh the tropicana it was called the trip economy i know it's totaled down and gone but uh he got us some flight tickets down there so uh me and kathy went on that on that matter of fact i sent kathy before i went and i came down later a couple of days later and uh we just went to the fight set at the fight and i mean when tommy was all right we was close you know and uh we went to the fight okay but certain things were my ticket my tickets were already paid for my flight ticket everything was pre-booked everything was done okay but then there was a situation over another guy who owed you money that was supposed to set up a bunch of tickets and stuff like that for the fight i don't recall that nobody owed me money over me setting up any like i said my tickets was already paid for i never arranged your setup for anybody else to get no tickets from anybody okay and was white boy rick with you when you guys went to vegas daddy got another wrong part they got in the movie that he was never in vegas with me if he was in vegas and matter of fact me and uh bernstein did he been in vegas out there and we had a little not altercation anything but that's what the dispute was if he would i was out there with the fbi agents that arrested me schwartz and herman gromin we all had a little interview out there and um and i let them know at the time and they knew it that he was never in vegas with me if he was in vegas he was with the fbi he wasn't with johnny curry so that whole incident that went down in that vegas thing i never seen him in vegas him and sister anybody never seen any of them in vegas period i don't know where they got that from but like i said it's hollywood i don't know where they got that from and it didn't matter to me okay well who is leon lucas i knew him yeah okay so leo lucas was a drug dealer yes and at one point there was a drive-by shooting that happened at his house i heard it at you okay in the shooting uh leon's 13 year old nephew damian lucas ends up getting killed absolutely and all hell broke loose after that i really don't understand why all hell broke loose after that i i don't i didn't i don't know nothing about that one that all hell broke loose i don't i can't recall that well well in terms of the investigations the police and everything else like that because it was such a high profile murder and the kid was so young that it just brought a lot of heat to detroit quite naturally any young child get uh in detroit anywhere else get killed it should bring high profile okay and they try to say that you were somehow involved in that we never said i was involved the agents we wanted to short that story you can ask the agents that actually i did the interview at the maya museum in vegas they knew that johnny had nothing to do with that now whoever else has something to do with it i know nothing of i asked a few questions they said no and they was left at that so they knew they actually had my phone tapped everything tapped everything i was doing so they knew i had nothing to do with that they stated that matter of fact when he was in the mom museum uh three years ago mike two years ago three years ago i was with bernstein them and we had a interview down there they knew i didn't have anything to do with that so i don't know where that came from okay but i guess that you had admitted that you bribed gil hill of the police department to try to hinder that whole investigation i never bribed anybody to hinder any type of investigation i don't know where they got that from okay but you know these stories i'm not just making this up oh no you're not making the stories up i heard of them stories before too you're not making it up but i never bribed anybody okay but you and gill were in communication got it got it do you think that that detroit shooting of the young kid do you think that that started bringing everything down i don't think so they was already after me regardless of uh that incident or any other dense incident they was they was aiming to get me and plus by me being married to uh the mayor's needs you know i mean i'll say i hate to put it like this but it was a little racial thing they didn't want me to be this black powerful mayor they tried to take him down in my case so uh they asked me questions about him they asked me questions as though like look if you give us answers or give us this on uh coleman we'll let you go we do this and that i wasn't buying that so uh it was a to me i feel it was a little racial thing there and i feel on the the uh the white boy thing you know i'm not a racist person at all that uh his situation was like as though let's i don't know how they went to him and i don't know and i don't really care but they went to him they wanted to take gill down they want to take coleman down quite naturally the target was me and he wanted to take me down and he did but right because by 1987 the feds felt that you had made about 200 million dollars in drugs money goes fast don't it though it does yeah especially when you're taking care of the neighborhood when you're taking care of the neighborhood buying cars houses it's not a lot that's that's really not a lot what do you think was the most extravagant thing that you purchased i bought a big yacht it was a matter of fact it was about about a three hundred thousand dollar yacht at the time uh uh i had all kind of cars houses uh jewelry everything okay and then april 2nd 1987. yeah they came in and indicted me hallelujah what was it um april fools day the day after the day after fools day they got me in my office matter of fact right uh you and your brother got indicted right uh your father got in got indicted uh my sister your sister uh wyman jenkins lamont davis allen hill senior about 20 something miles might have been 23 24 of us yeah a bunch of people got indicted what was that day like oh hell came down basically but it was but i thought i would get a bond though because actually if i didn't kill nobody or at that time they was giving out like they would give you a bond you go in you have a bond hearing i didn't mind if i had steve fishman as my attorney we wanted them fought real hard for the bond here but when they heard that they played the tape one of the tapes that said uh basically after feds i got enough money buried to leave the country they played the tape in the courtroom and i'll never forget this judge richard sahirin was the judge at the time held me without buying we had like a three hour mind here and normally a mind hearing don't take for 15 20 30 minutes at the max i had a three hour buying hearing okay and so you got denied bond definitely then we went to the sixth circuit they denied it we went to the sixth circuit in cincinnati they denied the mine this time when you're going through all the indictments and everything do they reveal that white boy rick is an informant that came later that came later they came you still had no idea right they that came later down the line okay so you're facing all these charges and how many charges were you facing at that time yourself most of the the most one was the one with the 848 the ricoh that's the continual criminal enterprise the 848 carries life without perosi all my charges the unlawful use of a telephone uh tax evasion i was facing a lot of charges okay so you're facing life in prison definitely without the possibility of parole too my case carried that okay and ultimately you accepted a plea deal absolutely without telling on anybody okay so they're offering you to just walk away free if you snitched on everybody not snitching on everybody they never really came to me and asked me you can walk away if you snitched on the only time they came to me to let me go i was had already got my time is when they went and came back to me and wanted to take coleman young down they came to me and asked me about some cucarons that my wife supposedly had in a safe for they asked me about the kookaburras and they asked me will you give us something on coleman and we could do this and we could do that so i asked the ward i didn't want to see these guys anymore i don't want them up here the only one could do then they would hit actually go in and get the fly me out of there to see me because the warden has that much power in prison to say well he doesn't want to see you so you can't force me to see him they wanted to bring me out of prison or bring me back to a court to see me matter of fact herman grohmann was the one that came down in him and schwartz came down i think i was in uh macomb george or texas canada they came down here to see me and asked me about that and i then i told the war and i didn't want to see them don't bring them down anymore i mean that little time what could i do i mean that little time i just did it laid down did my time i was kind of tired anyway from all the ripping and running and stress so it was all right to do a little rest well ultimately you accept a 20-year plea deal with the possibility of parole that's right correct okay in the 20 years is the mandatory minimum the 10 years was the mandatory minimum at that time was let no less they offered me no less than 10 no more than 20. that's the agreement that we had made but fishman said johnny they're gonna give you the 20. so let's just accept that and go so at the time i was willing to take the 20 and go that's without talking about anything any of my connections any my plugs in the country out of the country or anything they just want it coming okay so here you are 28 years old yeah except accepting a plea deal of 20 years which is almost your whole life yeah i felt good because it was gonna give me life so i felt good about it you figured just like this other case is happening with his police officer if he could septem quite naturally september if he don't take any game 40 what can you say they offered ricka i'm actually a cop so when he went to trial and wanted to fight him that's when they hit him with and that sentence carried life without parole too i just wasn't crazy enough to fight him my lawyer was good steven fishman and he said johnny i can't beat all the charges i'm gonna beat some of them but i'm not gonna beat all these charges that's coming at you right so you took a 20-year 20-year plea deal right uh you gotta find 250 000. yeah do you ever pay that back no why don't you pay your property that'd be nice but okay and then uh 18 other defendants also uh pled guilty as well right once once out there once they got the kingpin everybody else just fell like dominoes basically like dominoes so once i fail everybody else fail well i guess while you were locked up white boy rick started actually messing with your wife right uh kathy absolutely when you found out about that how did you feel no different only thing i was really concerned about is me doing this time up in jail what goes on out in the street you can't worry about you can't deal what's going on out there you got to live your life you got to come here you sit up in jail or anywhere you at and be worried about what's going on in the street you're going to be stressed out and you're going to start having mental problems so that wasn't a big issue to me about who she was dating plus she was at the time she was getting high not trying to make no excuses here but she was getting high so just like i told them at the mom museum they went up to the the uh she they put it in rehab they went up to the rehab place and got her made her deals offer the drugs and this and that so quite naturally if you're a dope i hate to say it like that but if you using drugs let's put it like that if you use the drugs you might accept to say anything you might be telling a lie you could be telling anything but you accepting drugs who's to say you telling the truth about anything so i mean what what was it to be mad about then i was concerned about my time i wasn't concerned about what my wife was doing that's life life goes on okay so you get busted you know you go through the whole uh process you accept your 20 years and then later that year white boy rick gets busted as well right and you would think with all the cooperation that he did that they would just let it all slide but in fact he ends up getting life in prison right it's like let's go back to this here then though i mean didn't nobody just like right now say by hypothetically speaking i go to cardone anybody and put a gun in their hand and say man go kill this that's cardone decision to make so they did i didn't make cardone do anything you have your own life to live so he if he decide that's what he want to do that's on him so if the feds came to him and he made that decision that he wanted to help his family out or get the time off his father or whoever it was his sister mother whoever it was that he did what he chose to do johnny done what he chose to do but i accepted mine and went and dealt with it i didn't go back and decide to tell on nobody or snitch out nobody i chose that game i have to deal with it anybody else should they choose that game you live with the consequences simple i mean when you found out that the guy that snitched on you and cooperated with the feds on you ended up getting life in prison himself how did you feel i didn't i didn't feel i didn't feel hurt about him or i i didn't say oh glad he got that or anything like that if that's where you want to put it no i wasn't happy about nobody getting no time i felt that uh the actually if you want to put it on anybody it should have been the feds today the one went to a young kid 15 years old and why would you would you want somebody coming to your young child 15 14 16 and put them in that type of situation you feel hurt about it so yeah yeah that's a bad situation to put a young child in anybody so i'm not uh defending the guy or anything like that there but that's a bad situation for them to actually stoop that low to go after an organization go after anybody at 15 16 years old to try to take a uh take my organization down it's business it ain't personal it's business and when i write my business like a corporation like a mcdonald's or wendy's a burger king i ran it like that business it's all business ain't personal right because white boy rick got arrested at 17. he was locked up until the age of 48. okay he was the longest serving non-violent juvenile offender in michigan history correct it's crazy yeah it's crazy but i went down to actually i went down to uh when they was doing a documentary let's put it like that when he was doing the documentary and sean uh reese and one i guess supposedly did the documentary he came to me and um he didn't offer me anything and i just wanted to put it out there that they shouldn't have been in that jail that long for a non-bi actually now i'm violating the fence right so basically i wasn't on his side or anything like that but nobody my brother somebody like that where murderers get out in 20 15 and it was just drugs look at marijuana now today they tried to put me away from here when i look at it now today you probably got something everybody's going growing some i smoke a little bit here and then probably matter of fact we're doing a few strands of the curry counter now i'm doing some strains for something well you end up doing 14 years right in a federal facility yeah in uh texarkana texas quite a few they ship you all around see the feds ship you to different facilities i was interior i started off in terry hill indiana actually where timmy mcveigh was uh death penalty and they did matter of fact we built that spot down in there when i was in terry hut indiana and we was building that little facility because they make you work now and then they ship me out to oxford wisconsin i went to uh macomb george i went to texas county texas they ship you all around so the time went pretty fast well how hard was it you're 28 years old you're used to living this lavish lifestyle with yachts and mansions and you know luxury cars and jewelry and women and you know the best food and traveling and now beautiful you're in a you're in a dirty cage with no women surrounded by criminals and you have to make it work back to that again that's the life i chose so i accepted the consequences what comes behind it there's consequences on anything you do right they're consequences so that's the life i chose so i felt if the consequences came to what i had to do i'd done what i had to do i went in laid down got me some rest matter of fact because i needed it and live my life what was it like to walk out of that jail cell oh man like i said back then we was using bag phones the uh i didn't even know what a phone was now today i can't work my iphone too good now but uh we using bag phones and the little mobile uh phones and all that but uh when i walked out the scene it was beautiful it was beautiful to be back out like i said i just you know i did my time and laid down and rest and had a lot of thinking to do too well you know you said that you last a lot longer than most major dope dealers i last a long time out there yeah 10 years you might have been 12 13 years 12 13 years because you were more cautious than everyone else and you bribed the police then you go back to bride i didn't bribe them they was in my pocket let's put it like that so much as bribe i was in my pocket okay but working with the police kept you going let's put it like that working with the police working with the police and then i had a powerful mirror behind me which they never managed to bust he ended up dying any charges they never got to him and that's what they was mad about because actually they used to try to say this because he was real tight but at the time blanchard was the governor and he was real tight with blanchard that's how i got my gun permit uh my liquor license i had just got a liquor license for my club and everything um yeah i mean a lot of times when you go in and i've i've interviewed a lot of major drug dealers yeah you know on the show from freeway ricky ross you know from l.a to little d and uh from the bay area and so forth and they all kind of tell me the same story they say when you go in you got millions of dollars and you you put this property with this family member and you put give this other person some cash and everything's supposed to be waiting for you when you get out and don't get out yeah not going to answer that but it don't work like that and then a lot of times if the fed is following you they know where every spit penny you spent they actually call four seat of seizure law they four seeds all that so you put everything in four seizures and then they take every they take a lot from you though so but that's the life we chose so we have to deal with that too right i mean when you look at what you did you got to ball out for around 12 years but then for every year that you got to ball out you had to spend a year in prison right do you think it was worth it i enjoyed the money like i said but um it was worth it i enjoyed i put it like this i enjoyed the life that i was living i put it like that it wasn't the light for a lifetime no but uh 10 15 years at that time i was young so i mean what a lot of these young guys do i mean was there ever a point where you said look i know the feds are onto me uh you know people around are getting busted let me just take these millions and go somewhere where there's no there's no way the the u.s can get me when there's no extradition policy go to like uh that's what the child that was the bond here in florida said that anything when we first talked i said that i got enough money basically buried to leave the country but it don't work like that they if they wouldn't got escobar and he had billions and billions of dollars so what makes like they when he came and got me or you well escobar was in colombia who i don't care in south africa if they want you they coming to get you i don't care if you're in israel they they're coming to get you got you well i don't know i mean when he got married marco uh his wife hit all the shoes and when he got him they went there and that was at whatever yeah but you got edward snowden who would be somebody told them that was all for political federal thing or whatever that was it ain't got nothing to do with drugs and doing what you're doing when they got a snowden and all them they might have made deals with other country presidents and all that uh but when they want you they coming to get you i don't care where you can go up under a canoe they're gonna find you they went over that guy what's his name and he had all that money on him didn't they and killed him anyway uh the iraqi uh oh uh hussein did it okay then what you think about all the money he had did they go get him i thought finding them beard was so long they thought it was santa claus there you go there you go well you know at one point you did find out that uh yeah rick snitched on you but you did say that you actually have nothing against him even though he helped he'll put you in prison for what he wasn't the one actually see david goes back he helped the feds put me in prison the feds put me in prison they had a job to do and i don't even knock them and i've seen i've seen them like say at the maya museum with a few other associates and uh they did a job they had it just like you got a job to do what you doing now yes that's a job right right they hit a job they're federally so you don't knock federation you know not police officers but when police officers doing what they doing now today that's wrong you got but you got a job to do i had a job to do was to feed my family almost like what jonathan major said in the movie johnny here to feed his family so that's the way he chose to do and feed his family that's what he chose to do to feed his family well uh i talked to uh white boy rick this morning you did oh that's good i did i did yeah me and him been in contact you know we're talking about possibly doing something in the future uh and he said he has absolutely no ill will towards you either oh well you know what though then why you had to ask me that he don't have none that gives me how i'm not against him for what right it goes both ways there you go fair exchange ain't no robbery there you go there you go um well then in 2018 they actually came out with the white boy rick movie right uh you went to the premiere definitely okay do they pay you in order to use your character in that movie they didn't pay me anything matter of fact like i said i was the actually the thing with sean reese did was more to me interesting than the thing with the the movie was just totally from the beginning all false the movie was totally just like the wedding that the mayor's mentioned that never happened the trip in vegas that never seen me that was off everything but right but what happened was what's nice about it i talked to sean reeves matter of fact the night that they did they premiered out and i think it was a montrealer toronto somewhere they did it he called me personally and he was it was real nice because he actually put jonathan majors on the line the guy that portrayed me in the movie which i think he did an excellent job on his part but he was only to do what they was giving him that's like a script you only can follow the strip and he because when i talked to him he said johnny if they would have came to you maybe they would have got more out of this movie because you was the main actually the main character in this movie not this guy i'm not i don't like i don't have anything it's not this guy that was snitching trying to take my organization down you don't respect the snitch i don't care who he is if i'm gonna snitch you don't respect me i don't care what i done or who i do i don't respect the snitch i don't care frank lucas when he when he died everybody's to my frank lucas day first thing i heard some people on facebook saying how you gonna respect the snitch even though he told on police officers i never told on anybody and never will well i remember i interviewed freeway ricky okay and his plug uh blandone ended up snitching on him and you know this is the guy who he made hundreds of millions of dollars with you know and it was tied into the whole iran contra thing where they're using drug money to finance a war in south america and everything else like that and blandon ultimately set him up to get busted and gave him life in prison which he eventually ended up you know getting chopped down but he told me something very interesting in our interview he said when he first got locked up he was upset and he was mad at blandone for snitching on him but then he had an epiphany where he realized that when you get into the drug game snitching is part of it no it's not i don't know where you get that from it's not part of the game i don't know what person you're dealing with but whoever you deal with it's not part of the game to snitch on so it would be you so actually what you're trying to say it's a part of me to go out and snitch on somebody that's a priority guy that's not a problem no no that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is basically saying that no no what what he realized is that you're going to get snitched on if you become a drug dealer at one point not maybe it's about your supply or your contact i knew people who was around me was gonna snitch matter of fact they brought some girls in that was around me was actually boosting stealing furs and doing this and all that they told on me my own brother told on me okay that's this is what i'm saying right but as far as me going out and snitching that's not part of the game but then i'm saying and using drugs at the same time some people you less weak when you are getting high using drugs or anything then me just blatantly going out and saying okay i'm gonna reduce my time and go to schnitzel i'm gonna do this and i don't care if it's iron contra fail or beirut contra affair ain't got nothing to do that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying freeway ricky didn't snitch on anybody that was excellent you know i respect that i guess but what he's saying was that if you get into the drug game you need to expect to get snitched on by someone around you true i go for this should not be enough it should not be a surprise not your supplier or your plug you don't expect them to snitch on you i can see my family member somebody close to me my woman my wife or anybody but not my plug you don't do that that's not respect how can i respect you if i'm saving i'm getting stuff from you and you my plug from out of the country or wherever you at i'm not going to turn you in for nothing if ain't got known you why would i turn you in so basically when you got busted did they try to get you to snitch on your plug and churning who's applying all the stuff too they what like i said they wanted coleman young ah okay that's what they really wanted they didn't ask me nothing about my plugs or they never knew because they never got that close to my plugs or outlets and nothing like they wanted coleman young they wanted this little corrupted police department i guess it was ran by all blacks or whatever and they wanted them they wanted guild healed by him being the inspector of homicide and he tried to turn one thing to another thing about this case and this and that so the key was to try to not bring coleman down he never brought even with the kookaron thing they tried to bring him around with the kookarions because they expected that my wife had supposedly heard the kookarions hidden away from me the gold coins that he had got from africa supposedly let's put it like that supposedly yeah i don't know nothing about it well you said your own brother snitched on you yeah he was getting high so i don't hate him today about it one of my nephews was telling on me they was getting high so they weak it's vulnerable when you get them weak like that they're vulnerable so i mean that's anybody the person that's violent was you can get to them and they knew and they picked they should they picked their people out who's this weak vulnerable to get to well one of the things that you've talked about was you know when you the way that white boy rick kind of got sort of presented in the media and the movies that he was some huge major he wasn't nothing like that he was like that i guess you said that if you were a 10 he was a two right i didn't say that i did yeah yeah um i mean they even said that he was like the leader of uh was it was it best friends or young boys incorporated something like that let's just get that straight too then for a liter of anything let's you know like we should go back to this point about being racist i'm not a racist person a lot of people around me not racist the black guy a 15 year old kid come in the neighborhood of a predominantly black neighborhood i think you're gonna just honestly think if you was 15 years old do you think you come in a predominant black neighborhood and think you control anything they wouldn't do numbers but take whatever you got i'll rob you you don't control or run nothing and they won't let that happen that's just it that's just the bottom line what about me a black guy coming in your predominantly white neighborhood out there where you probably live at i'm just going to take over that ain't going to happen yeah yeah but the media had a field day with him the media hit that you go again right the media hit a field day with it he wasn't like that he wasn't like that a lot of a lot of times i i don't want to put it like this here a lot of times i think that my young brother protected him a lot like uh guys around me protecting me because they respected me so they wasn't just going to go out and do anything to this little boy without actually going through me they respected that it's called about to respect regardless or whatever you do you have to respect that person respect whoever him her whoever has a lot to do even with the drug game is respect right well because at one point uh white boy rick had an assassination attempt what was assassination entail me i don't think i had anything to do with you but it was uh when they did the documentary about them which you were in as well they had uh what was the hitman's name um yeah nate uh boon boom yeah right did you know him yeah okay when he was talking about all the murders and everything that he was doing did that surprise you though yeah it surprised me because i think he was just shooting it out there i don't know about all that i think he was just trying to get his role in there and i think he was pissed off about that because when he went to the uh uh actually i think it was the to the premieres they hit in detroit he was kind of upset about that because they didn't even bring him up in the movie his name was never brought if you see the movie now you've seen the documentary that shawn them did now you didn't see the movie did you see the movie yeah i saw a little did you see him in the movie did they bring his name up one time in the movie no so why are you asking me that there right there you go there you go uh well uh johnny curry you had a hell of a life man hey y'all enjoyed it you've lived uh 10 ten lifetimes worth of where and you know what and thank god i live ten lifetimes exactly right exactly how did you feel about the premiere and how did you feel about the documentary how did you feel about the movie and what do you think you which one did you like um honestly i didn't think the movie was all that great i thought the movie you know what nine you agree with me did the movie wasn't autographed i liked it the uh the documentary did uh shine them did better not like the movie because when the movie the way the movie started off and it came out to be especially with this i hit a big head in the head with a bottle i never drank in my life huh they're like i suppose you hit him in the head in the bottle so actually the the thing of the movie that they did from the beginning was all dead wrong now as far as the part they played my wife and ears are getting high okay they're fine she was getting that i'm not knocking that but as far as them that i got married at the mayor's mansion uh arc derek gnarlin was there that never happened right the move out in vegas that never happened when you look at your past career as a drug dealer when when you look at the the hundreds of kilos of cocaine and heroin that you push through the city yeah and the the devastation that caused uh you know the mothers getting addicted to drugs the kids being born you know with physical abnormalities uh you know the families they got torn apart the people who you know started out as regular working people and ended up on the street doing whatever you know do you feel any level of guilt to yourself let's put it like this here if i didn't do it somebody else would have let's put it like that i mean uh i enjoyed the money like to say but i would never choose that life again but if i didn't do it trust me just like the next soldier stepping up if you're in the line of duty somebody get killed on the battlefield the next soldiers step up another platoon comes in so what can we do about it they brought it here for us to do it they put it here for us to do it so we did i did what i had to do to feed my family and take care of me well you have kids right yeah i'm a grandfather hold on don't tell my age but i'm a grandfather i love my kids that's why i love kids so deal that you be talking keep saying about this i mean after we hear that discussion in uh vegas about this young kid don't think for one minute i i feel real moist when it comes to children because i love kids i give all type of events i get try to give back to the kids and they give picnics parties cardone we all give events trying to help out if the day i can help them when i invite and if i don't have it i'm gonna try some type of way to try to help them out i have a lot of remorse when it comes to kids young kids any of them well if one of your grandkids approached you and said grandpa i want to follow in your footsteps but i'm not going to make the mistakes that you made i'm going to be a lot more careful and i'm going to be more slick and you know i'm going to i'm going to be an even bigger kingpin than you've ever been okay you know what then that's what i respected about my father because he put me out that's the same thing i would do to them put them out there you go so i answered it for y'all i'm gonna put them out and say i don't wanna hear that get on out of there i'm not gonna be you're not gonna be nothing like me or what i used to be that's history that's over with there you go you know and then uh on july 20th uh 2020 white boy rate got released right that was good after yeah after doing 31 years in prison that was a long time yeah um you know on my phone call today with rick i said hey do you want to do you want me to put you on speakerphone with johnny uh while we're doing our interview he said no i think i'm going to hold off uh i think you know at some later point we'll we'll go ahead and talk but eventually yeah i wish him the best do you plan on ever meeting up with him and talking it really ain't nothing to discuss really to talk about what i mean what happens happened and that's history now you got sometimes it's like history over the bridge over the water you gotta let whatever happen go on it's like in a marriage life goes on yeah you can't sit back and reminisce about what went on 15 20 25 30 years ago you got to move on with life if you sit back on your mind you're gonna stress you out and think about what your wife did on you 30 years ago i don't know how many times man i don't know you're married now but i'm just saying you think about what she did 30 years ago how can you have a life with somebody else life goes on yeah i have it yeah you're right you're right and it's just impressive your ability to actually not feel any bitterness or remorse or revenge or anything like that anger bitterness ain't gonna help the situation what you can't control don't worry about that's how learning in prison don't control don't try to understand control anything that's happening on in the world you can't control you're in prison same thing out here you can't control to keep it moving life goes on life goes on life goes on johnny curry you're uh you're an example of life going on man there you go it's like you're doing well you're doing well uh it seems like you've left that life completely behind you definitely definitely i'm doing good now you're getting into you're doing legal marijuana now which is interesting like i said i got a few strands coming out called curry counter you can check it out but uh i'll check it out here check it out i got a couple of strands coming out um there you go yeah freeway ricky is now doing yeah illegal marijuana as well i mean it's interesting how the same stuff you guys were doing went to prison for now you're actually doing it legally you can get a bank account and put your drug money into a bank account now and pay taxes on it that's right you pay the tax zone and keep it moving one thing about the gov as long as you pay the taxes they already don't mess with just pay the taxes they keep you moving because i gave they gave me that charge to tax evasion i got that right right that's how they got al capone eventually remember right you got him couldn't find nothing else so he had to get him on tax invasion exactly yeah well johnny curry man i appreciate your time wish you all the best man i feel like the best from johnny curry still is still still you have to come man yet to come you have to come exactly until next time man all the best all right back peace peace

Channel: djvlad

Views: 2,716,057

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Id: P0XxdPyW9Uc

Length: 70min 36sec (4236 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 01 2021