Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas, whose role in one of the country's biggest heroin empires inspired the film American Gangster, reportedly died at the age of 88 on Thursday. According to The New York Daily News, a relative’s Instagram post said Lucas passed away due to natural causes in New Jersey. Lucas, who was depicted on-screen by Denzel Washington, was known for spending his money on flamboyant fur coats, homes, and cars. He once bragged that his drug ring, the ‘Country Boys,’ imported heroin into the U.S. through false-bottomed coffins. After he was sentenced to 70 years in jail in 1975, he cooperated with the government about his old competitors. He was released, but sentenced to another seven years in jail after he was caught in a 1984 drug deal. He once told New York Magazine that he should have been dead a “hundred times,” but he said he was still alive because “people like me.”
