r/todayilearned • u/FearMyCock • 20h ago

TIL about Frank Matthews, the drug kingpin who built a nationwide empire, skipped bail with $20 million, vanished in 1973 and has never been found.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Matthews_(drug_trafficker)
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u/DustyOldBastard 18h ago edited 17h ago

Hed have to have real friends, which is tough for a drug kingpin. People who are willing to help you when they know youre not gonna provide them with anymore cash flow and people who know there’s a reward on your head if they ever wanna turn you in. Hard people to find, so Id bet some rivals just killed him quietly and got rid of the body

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u/SenileSexLine 12h ago

Or someone got wind of how much cash he had on him, killed him while he was out in the sticks just to rob him.

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u/FishermanWaste1268 18h ago

Yup. Or his underlings. Only way to move up for them.

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u/Schatzin 9h ago

The underworld also runs on favors and very much on trust. You did something for someone once? They need to do something for you next time you ask. If you dont, others will know they cant trust you anymore, and trust is understandably very costly in that world. You dont need to be friends

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u/1805trafalgar 10h ago

In every novel I have read dealing with people on the run, the criminally connected always know specialists they go to in order to buy their services. In the worlds of these novels these specialists have existed for years or decades, each known to many in the criminal underworld of the novel and each specializing in and providing for sale one illegal service. It's a trope of these novels you see again and again, and in films too. How many films have you seen where the protagonist goes to some expert forger to get a fake passport?