Rick Ross and The Freeway Junkyard Boys (A Real Life Heisenberg)

 Rick Ross grew up in an L.A. ghetto. Ross was a high school tennis star, and many speculate that he started his life of crime after failing to get a scholarship to college due to his illiteracy. 

 At age 17 he dropped out of high school. He could not read well enough to fill out a job application so he hit the streets, stealing and dismantling cars and then selling on the parts with his friends. He called their gang "The Junkyard Freeway Boys." 

 Within a year of leaving school, he had tapped into the crack cocaine market, which was booming due to the new "crack" form available to the working classes. It is pure cocaine mixed with water, baking soda and cooked into cracks and rocks to be smoked. 

 He had a near-endless supply at bargain prices.

 Ross saturated the inner city with the drug and it wreaked havoc on poor urban communities turning entire families into crack addicts. He was initially unaware of the drugs side effects which include respiratory problems, cardiac arrest and psychosis. 

 Ross used a network of runners and dealers to distribute it and employed people just to count his money. 

 Narcotics detectives with the L.A. county sheriffs department investigated his operation for eight years, but he avoided capture by changing locations and cars frequently. Although more cars, property, crews and vehicles he obtained caught enough attention for a federal investigation. 

 A special task force was set up called "The Rick Ross Task Force" and was compromised of D.E.A. agents, L.A.P.D. and the sherrifs department. 

 Between 1956 and 1990 Ross and his crew expanded into other cities. Authorities in these cities were also drawn into the investigation, but with little success. In October 1986 Ross was arrested on federal charges for conspiracy to distribute cocaine in St. Louis, but the case was dismissed due to lack of evidence. 

 Ross was indicted again on cocaine trafficking charges in Ohio and Texas, when drugs bound for Cincinnati were picked up by a sniffer dog and traced back to Ross. This time the charges stuck and he was sentenced. When he finished his time in jail he immediately had to do nine months afterwards in Texas. He was parolled in 1994. 

 Ross's Nicaraguan source Blandon was caught bragging about his cocaine dealings with Ross on a wiretap and Blandon was arrested in San Diego where he faced federal charges and a lengthy jail sentence. 

 The D.E.A. presented Brandon with a deal. In exchange for working undercover for them they offered him a reduced sentence, a green card and a $42,000 salary. Blandon agreed. 

 His first set up was with Ross himself, he set up a cocaine deal with him, and at the drop the cops closed in and arrested him. 

 He was tried in a federal court and given his previous drug crimes was given life without parole. 

 Investigative journalist Gary Webb visited Ross in prison and told him of Blandon's betrayal. 

 After several interviews with Ross, Webb wrote a whole series on "Dark Alliance" his articles revealed that Blandon had long been working for the government as an informer. This unlocked a whole new dimension to the case claiming that the drug empire was connected to the C.I.A. and the contra army, who were fighting against a revolutionary government in Nicaragua. 

 Webb stated that the money Ross paid his Nicaraguan contacts was going to found and arm the contras. Which meant the C.I.A. turning a blind eye to the funds through all of that time. 

 Webb was later discredited by media outlets, but later the C.I.A. acknowledged that it had worked with suspected drug runners and used funds from Ross's empire to arm contra. Ross bemoaned the actions of the C.I.A., saying that the government had exploited him. 

 Ross taught himself to read and write in prison and studied law books. He used these books to fight his sentence which was based on the "Three Strikes Law." He claimed that his latest charge was not his third conviction as his convictions in Ohio and Texas were for the same offense. 

 His own lawyer dismissed this but in 1998 the ninth circuit court of appeal agreed with this reasoning. Ross's sentence was reduced to sixteen and a half years from twenty. He was released in 2009 after serving fourteen years behind bars.