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‘American Gangster’ Frank Lucas, Onetime Drug Kingpin, Dead At 88: Report
Frank Lucas, a notorious drug dealer who became something of a folk hero after he was portrayed by Denzel Washington in the blockbuster mob movie “American Gangster,” died Thursday, TMZ reported.
Lucas, 88, passed away while being transported to a medical facility in New Jersey, where he lived, TMZ also reported.
Lucas rose to underworld fame in the late 1960s after spending years as a protege to Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, an African-American gangster based in Harlem.
Lucas soon began importing pure heroin from Southeast Asia in the caskets of soldiers killed in the Vietnam War. He was a…