In 1980s New York City, while minimum wage sat at $3. 35 an hour and most households relied on food stamps and government cheese, a group of teenagers across the five boroughs was operating at a scale that defied the legitimate economy. By the time they were 16 and 17, these young men were extending each other millions of dollars in credit, moving cash in fives and singles so voluminous that storage became a genuine problem. This is the story of eight operations that emerged from housing projects like Marcy, Wagner, Cypress Hills, and Park Hill.
The men who built them were teenagers when they started, and their stories have largely been left out of the historical record. In Harlem during the heroin era, Jesse Gray and Freddy Meyers became millionaires before the crack epidemic changed the mathematics of the drug trade. Survivors from that era describe money as growing on trees. One man recalled that you could shake a tree and $100 bills would fall out.
These were teenagers extending each other millions in product on trust built between boys from the same neighborhood. The scale of cash was so overwhelming that hiding $2 million in fives and singles became an unanticipated problem. Around 1980, a group of 14-year-olds from Wagner Projects in East Harlem called themselves the Get Paid Brothers. They ventured beyond their immediate geography, building connections and finding angles across the city.
Their influence spread quickly. FS became the first man in Harlem with a Dapper Dan parka, the exclusive luxury streetwear that signaled status before a word was spoken. Alpo Martinez, who would later become a feared cocaine operator in Washington, D. C.
, saw the parka and had Dapper Dan make him one. It was Bob Lemon, however, who turned the Get Paid Brothers name into an operation that generated $30,000 to $400,000 per day on the east side of Harlem. When he fell under investigation, he relocated to Florida while his operation continued generating money in his absence. The FBI eventually caught up with him, charging him under the 848 kingpin statute, the most serious federal drug charge in the American legal system.
He received a 30-year sentence and served it in full. In 2021, Bob Lemon walked out of federal prison. He became a community activist, founding a nonprofit that has assisted thousands of young people in Harlem. The judge who sentenced him had said Lemon was the type of man who needed to be in the community giving back.
Lemon took that seriously. The same Wagner Projects produced the Purple City Crew, an operation on 122nd Street distinguished by purple everything. Purple neon lights under BMWs, purple faces in Rolexes, a purple 850. The crew worked from 7 a.
m. until 4:30 the next morning, taking just two and a half hours of rest before returning. Men slept in their parked cars rather than go home because leaving the strip meant missing money. The operation ran directly across the street from the Genovese family’s Pleasant Avenue headquarters in Manhattan.
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau eventually called it a $14 million per year operation. A multi-year investigation finally dismantled the crew, with eight members arrested in an early morning raid and half a dozen cars with purple running lights seized as evidence. In Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, a young man known as Puerto Rican Jesus grew up as the sibling his family looked up to. As a kid, he was in a bike accident, and instead of taking him to the hospital, police took him to his apartment.
That decision led to a lawsuit, and at 18, he received his settlement money. He invested it in himself as a street pharmacist. His spot on Pitkin Avenue became what he described as a gold mine, generating over $100,000 per day. In less than a year, he was a millionaire.
His reputation extended beyond Brooklyn. Mike Tyson, the heavyweight champion, took a liking to him. He became good friends with Azie Faison, and the two played basketball regularly. One day during a game, some Brooklyn men pulled up and spoke to Puerto Rican Jesus briefly.
When they left, he walked back to Azie and told him the truth: those men had come to kill Azie because of Alpo killing Dementio. Brooklyn had decided Azie needed to answer for what Alpo had done. Puerto Rican Jesus warned his friend before it happened and saved his life. In Harlem, Danny Diamonds ruled Marcy Projects, the same projects where a young Shawn Carter was growing up.
Danny had the best connect, the best quality, the best prices. He kept four safes in one house, top floor, middle floor, basement, and one more for good measure, because money was coming in so fast. He put other men in position, including a man from Red Hook Projects known on the streets as Calvin Klene. Calvin Klene connected with Danny Diamonds and his life changed immediately.
The government estimated Calvin was worth $28 million. Calvin himself said that if he was worth $28 million, you could break that in half, break it in half again, break it in half a third time, and he would still be a multi-million-dollar dealer. At some point, Calvin linked up with Shawn Carter, Jay-Z. They made money together.
In Calvin’s own words, he made a lot of money with the brother who would become the future biggest rapper in the world. The two eventually caught a case together after a party in 1989 devolved into mayhem. Jay and Calvin were charged with attempted murder, assault, and possession of a deadly weapon. Calvin had been acquitted of a murder just 45 days earlier.
Jay-Z looked at the situation and offered to take the weight, since he did not have a record. Calvin told him no, to go home and bail him out. Jay-Z testified on Calvin’s behalf. Calvin blew the trial down to four years for assault.
The future billionaire testified for a Brooklyn crack dealer. Kevin Childs grew up in the Highbridge and Sound View section of the Bronx with holes in his sneakers, putting cardboard in the bottom to cover them. He got his introduction selling loose weed joints. By his senior year in high school, he had moved to cocaine.
By 1985 and 1986, he connected with a young hustler from Harlem named Nappy Red, and the two scaled up to $30,000 per day at their crack spot. Then a drought hit New York. A shipment had been caught, and prices jumped from $20,000 per kilo to $40,000, double if you could even find it. Kevin Childs watched Scarface and made a decision.
He got on a plane with money and jewelry, flew to Miami with his partner, and looked for a connect with no introduction and no guarantee anyone would do business with them. He met Sam Ferguson, known as Pman Sam, a well-known Florida dealer who recognized what Kevin Childs was. Kevin came home with a Colombian connect that changed everything. He expanded to multiple states, including Washington, D.
C. At his peak, he was making $300,000 per week. In 1987, he and his cousin bought a Jeep, took the top off, and rolled through the Bronx throwing thousands of dollars out to the community. Then in 1989, three masked men abducted a teenage girl, robbed her, and demanded more money.
Somehow she led them to Kevin Childs’s mother’s house. The gunmen went inside and shot everyone in the house, including Kevin’s mother and the teenage girl. One person survived. Kevin described that moment simply: that was his run.
He kept operating, but the government was building its case. In 1994, he was arrested with 21 co-defendants, including his children’s mother and other family members. The government claimed he made over $40 million. The cooperating witness against him was a man Kevin had once helped, a man whose life Kevin had saved.
Two trials both ended in hung juries. The government offered a 10-year plea, and Kevin accepted under one condition: his best friend, who had been sentenced to 17 years, also received 10 years. He would only accept the deal if it protected his friend. They agreed.
Kevin Childs served 10 years and came home. The Fertado brothers, Tony, Lance, and Todd, were three brothers originally from Harlem who moved to the south side of Queens. Only one year apart in age, they moved together as a unit. They started selling weed to help the family make ends meet, moving 20 to 30 pounds at 12 and 13 years old.
Out of 1,500 people associated with their organization, at least 500 were selling weed for the oldest brother, Tony. In the early 1980s, Tony switched to powdered cocaine, and the brothers became what Queens streets called the Kings of Kings. They supplied the Fatcat organization and the Supreme Team, two of the most powerful drug organizations in Queens history. Then they outgrew their connect and went direct to a cartel in Colombia.
The numbers the government produced in court were extraordinary: 3,000 kilos every six months, with 200 kilos generating $15 to $30 million per week. They never took consignment. Every kilo was paid for in cash. Their longevity was built on a specific discipline.
Lance described it himself: they knew how to get ghost. When heat came, they shut down completely, sometimes for a year at a time, letting investigations stall and surveillance lose its thread before coming back. It worked for over 20 years, since 1979. Eventually, a major connect they were dealing with was working with the government.
In 1995, they were arrested with 32 people in nine different states. Tony received 18 years. Lance received 15. Todd received seven years and 11 months because there was no physical evidence against him specifically.
All three brothers are now home, and they created an anti-drug, anti-gang warrior tour implemented through schools and workshops across New York. The crack epidemic arrived on Staten Island later than the other boroughs, but the effects were the same. Park Hill, the public housing development renamed Killer Hill, became the center of the island’s organization. In the summer of 1988 and 1989, Brooklyn tried to attack, Queens tried to attack, the Bronx tried to attack, Manhattan tried to attack.
Every borough sent men to Staten Island to try to take what the island had built. They all learned the same thing: Staten Island defended itself. The man who held it together was a kingpin known as Dusty. His operation on Killer Hill kept four boroughs at bay.
But the federal government eventually did what four boroughs could not. Dusty received two life sentences plus 80 years, a sentence designed to ensure he would never see the street again. All eight of these men were teenagers when their operations began. They grew up in projects where the legitimate economy offered $3.
35 per hour, food stamps, and government cheese. They made a different calculation. Some died, some served decades in prison, and some came home to work with the communities they once operated in. History remembered the names it was forced to remember.
These are the ones that were forgotten.