By Frank Main
Crime Reporter
The Chicago Sun-Times
As the "king" of Chicago's notorious Black Disciples street gang, Marvel J. Thompson ran a recording studio, owned a lounge and even operated a pirate FM station that warned his underlings when the cops were coming, prosecutors say.
Thompson, 35, is accused of sitting at the helm of a massive criminal corporation that raked in as much as $300,000 a day in drug profits and kept its members in line with baseball bats and guns.
But a 185-page indictment unsealed Thursday is likely to dethrone Thompson and put dozens of his top leaders behind bars for a long time, said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.
"These defendants are alleged to be not just drug dealers, but individuals who had their own laws, territory, justice system and economy," Fitzgerald said. "They operated as if they were an independent nation, subject only to the laws of the streets."
Chicago Police launched the investigation, code-named "Marvel Less," six years ago after a federal indictment decimated the hierarchy of another murderous organization, the Gangster Disciples. Police will monitor BD turf to make sure violence does not fill the vacuum created by arrests of the gang's leaders, said Police Supt. Phil Cline.
Chicago Police and federal agents executed a dozen search warrants Wednesday, seizing more than $300,000 in cash from one of Thompson's properties along with 11 guns, bulletproof vests, jewelry and boxes of gang documents, authorities said.
With the help of the Federal Communications Commission, they also shut down 104.7 FM, a station running out of a building Thompson owns at 6723-29 S. Parnell, officials said.
The station was automated most of the day, but it broadcast live at night, playing uncensored rap and even sending a car around Englewood to take requests and have listeners give "shout-outs" to friends over the radio. Its signal went from Cermak to 110th and from the lakefront to Western, said Larry Langford, a city spokesman. The city's Office of Emergency Communications helped authorities locate the station, which was broadcasting without a license, and record its illegal transmissions, he said.
"They played rap music, unedited, uncut," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Alesia. There were also "almost public service announcements to the other gang members alerting them to surveillance in certain areas of the South Side."
A studio for M.O.B. Records operated in the same building on Parnell, officials said. Thompson, president of M.O.B., produced "Cha-Cha Slide," a hit album.
The indictment charged 47 people with participating in a 15-year drug distribution conspiracy that could lead to sentences of 10 years to life. Thirty-two of the defendants, including Thompson, were in custody Thursday.
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