Finally, seven hours later and shortly after midnight, Meech was out of jail. And BMF was on the move. Omari got the call at 12:45 A.M. In a voice weary but still upbeat, Yogi gave as many details as she could. “He fillin’ out paperwork right now,” she said. “He ain’t talkin’ on no phones. He said he want to see everybody at the Elevator spot.”
“All right, well, just call me when y’all almost there so I can come on,” Omari said. “We ain’t but down the street.”
Five minutes later, an unidentified man walked out of Omari’s front door and drove off in a black Land Rover. One of the agents told another agent, camped out up the street, to note which way the Land Rover headed. That agent watched as the Land Rover turned right out of Omari’s subdivision onto North Druid Hills Road, and he radioed a third agent, who was even farther up the street, with the instructions to follow the vehicle. That agent tailed the Range Rover from North Druid Hills to Roxboro Road to Wieuca Road and, finally, onto Peachtree, in the heart of Buckhead Village. By then, however, Omari was walking out his front door, and the agent pulled off in order to help the others keep up with their primary target.
After disappearing into his garage, Omari sped off in a silver Porsche SUV. One of the surveillance cars took off after him, onto North Druid Hills Road, then onto Roxboro and from there to Wieuca. The other agents didn’t even have a chance to join the pursuit. Omari was driving so fast and taking so many sudden turns that nobody could keep up. They lost him.
The following evening, Yogi called Omari to chat. It quickly became obvious to the agents that she and Omari were close confidants—and that she was a confidante to Big Meech as well. Yogi spoke at length with Omari. She said that Meech tells her “more and more” every day. She said she has the “inside scoop” on what the boss is thinking and doing. She described J-Bo—Meech’s hawk eyed second-in-command—as her boss as well (though not nearly so likeable a boss as Meech). Those two, she told Omari, “are the biggest tricks out there.” She also mentioned that Meech, Baby Bleu, and Ill currently were out of town on business.
An hour later, Omari got a call from Jeffery. The news wasn’t good. Jeffery said the security guard, the one from the Atrium, had been fired—presumably because someone found out the guard had been covering for them.
The day after, the agents again staked out Omari at his house. This time, though, they had a bigger team—eleven guys to the four who took part in the prior effort. They didn’t want Omari to get away again, but they also needed to be sure they followed him to a destination that mattered. They were hoping he’d lead them to the mysterious Elevator, which the chatter over the wire revealed to be a headquarters for BMF’s crew. Of course, they’d settle for a traffic stop—as long as he was in possession of enough dope to maybe, somehow, convince him to talk.
When Omari called Jeff late that afternoon, moments before he pulled into the driveway, his language suggested he might be arriving with a drug shipment.
“When you hear the doorbell thing, come help me get the stuff.”
“Say what?” Jeff asked.
“I’m fixin’ to pull in. Just come help me get this shit out the car.” An hour after Omari’s Porsche pulled into the garage, he took off again. Agents followed him as he made several stops. He picked up Yogi at a house in the posh Atlanta neighborhood of Brookhaven. From there, Omari and Yogi stopped by a CompUSA and a Sprint cell phone store, then drove to a gated subdivision in north Atlanta. Agents waited just beyond the iron gate, and the Porsche reemerged minutes later. The next stop was a gas station, where agents watched as Omari, Yogi, and a young woman (whom they must have just picked up) dipped inside the store. Finally, after the Porsche made a ten-minute pit stop at Omari’s home, the occupants started on a longer trip—and the agents took that to be a sign that there might be something valuable in the car. The surveillance team followed the Porsche along several surface roads before finally hitting the highway. When the Porsche topped out at 85 mph, the agents radioed local deputies to request a traffic stop.
Obliging the flashing lights, the Porsche pulled to shoulder on the ramp between I-285 south and I-20 east, about twenty miles from Omari’s home. The young woman who’d been spotted at the gas station was now driving, and Omari was a passenger. Pointing at Omari, the woman told the officer, “Everything in it belong to him.” When officers asked if they could search the car, the woman consented. But the search was in vain. They found zilch.
Thirty minutes later, Jeff called Omari.
“We just got pulled over by the police,” Omari told him.
“For real?”
“Yeah.”
“They searched it?”
Omari didn’t want to get into all that. “Um, I’ll call you back, man.”
The next day, agents listening to the wire perked up at what sounded like not-so-well-guarded drug talk. Yogi had called Omari for help in figuring out how to tally different piles of bills.
“Hey, um, listen,” she said. “One rubber band of, uh, twenties is what?”
“Um, a stack.”
There is a difference, however, between a stack, which totals $2,500, and a double stack, which is worth twice as much. Omari sensed that Yogi wasn’t too sure about how to differentiate between them. “It’s not double is it?” he asked.
“One stack,” she said, “but it’s got two rubber bands.”
“Both tied?”
“Yeah.
“That’s five.”
“Ooh, well, I was about to fuck up. That’s why I asked. Thank you very much.”
In another call, Yogi used an unusual euphemism for what the agents believed to be a dope shipment. And the term she used later would come in handy for the investigators.
“Look,” Yogi said to Omari, “if Ralphie got somethin’ on the back of the truck, would he leave it there all night?”
“If he got somethin’ on the back of the truck?”
“He, um, put all his ‘dry cleaning’ on the back of the truck. You don’t think he should leave them clothes on the back of the truck like that, should he?”
“I don’t know. Where he takin’ ’em to?”
“He was takin’ them from the, uh, from the Elevator.”
“Uh, I don’t know. Whatever man, just tell him it’s whether he want to or he don’t.”
“I mean, it’s just a call,” she said. “What would you do?”
“Umm, I wouldn’t go back, I tell you that.”
“Oh, leave it where it is?”
“Yeah.”
Two days later, Yogi had some interesting gossip to share. She brought Omari up to speed on matters involving the rapper Young Jeezy. She claimed that Jeezy was behind on some payments for his Lamborghini, which he’d gotten from a dealership in Orlando that regularly secured cars—Lambos, Ferraris, and the like—for BMF. The owner of the shop was Eric “Swift” Whaley, a 350-pound man with a heart condition that rendered him a far cry from the image his nickname conjured.
Yogi was clearly getting a kick out of the situation. “Jeezy called me talkin’ ’bout, ‘Let me tell you what that punk-ass Swift did.’ I said, ‘I know—took your car.’”
“He took it?” Omari asked, incredulous.
“Yep. He runnin’ round here tellin’ everybody his paperwork wasn’t straight,” Yogi said. The car, she claimed, had been impounded. “Jeezy just ain’t made a motherfuckin’ payment on the car in five months,” Yogi continued. “Swift told me if I get Jeezy to pay a car payment, he’ll pay my car payment.”
“What the hell is wrong with that boy?”
“Swift told him the only way he can get it back is if he pay it all the way off. He said that’s fucked up. He said, ‘No, I’m gonna get the Medina.’ I said, ‘Okay, Hollywood.’”
“I ain’t never heard no shit like that.”
“Isn’t that crazy? Niggas be frontin’ one way and shit. Mmm, mmm, mmm … rappers.”
As for Yogi and Omari, both were having some self-restraint problems with
their new rides—she with her Benz and he with his Porsche. Meech, whom she and Omari often referred to as “Dude,” had noticed their dilemma. “Dude said, ‘Yogi don’t drive the motherfuckin’ car,’” she told Omari a few minutes after the Jeezy story. “I need to just stop bein’ hardheaded, but when you know you ain’t got no transportation, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. I know it’s especially hard on you, ’cause you hate bein’ in the house.”
From that, and from what Omari said next, it appeared to the agents that Meech’s crew was under a sort of self-imposed house arrest.
“Not really,” Omari said. “I ain’t got no problem with it. It’s just, I wanna get out like one time. But I see that’s not possible.”
“That’s for sure. You know these motherfuckers are actually for real laying in wait for a nigga to leave the motherfuckin’ club.”
Omari was getting a little stir crazy. Yogi, too. And the fact that they fell back on talking on the phone as opposed to going out—that they let their guards down on their cells and that, likely out of boredom, their lips got looser and looser—well, that turned out to be better for investigators than had the two of them been hanging out all over town. Their chatter was the foundation of the HIDTA case.
Three hours later, Yogi and Omari were on the phone again. During this call, Omari’s mood had taken a turn for the worse. Yogi, who was constantly trying to lift his spirits, did her best to combat his fatalistic mumblings. She reminded him of his rather fortunate standing with her—and with Meech.
“Half the shit that I tell you, I break confidence in my boss to tell you,” she admitted. “I know I shouldn’t be tellin you. But it’s because I just see you in a totally different light. I think sometimes I see more than you see yourself. And I have conversations with Dude, and I know certain things that he think of you.”
Omari wasn’t having it. As Yogi’s tone shifted from admonishing to nurturing and back again, he remained morose. He was worried about the Atrium shootings—and Decarlo’s bust, too. He also mentioned that he thought he was being watched.
Take heart in one thing, Yogi reiterated: You are in Meech’s good graces.
“Dude just asked me how’s everybody,” she said. “I’m tellin’ him everybody cool, but motherfuckin’ everybody gettin’ an attitude. He’s like, ‘Shit, everybody just got to sit in then.’ I don’t want you to sit around your house mopin’ about everything bad that’s goin’ on with you. You gotta take all of that energy that you spendin’ mopin’ around and get on with your fuckin’ life, O. You still in a good position right now, a real good position.”
“I’m not mopin’,” Omari skulked. “I’m not doin’ shit, man. I’m rollin’ with everything that comin’ my way. But I’m not fixin’ to be sittin’ round here all happy-go-lucky, smiling at everybody.”
“Like I was sayin’, everybody ain’t against you, O.”
“I never did say anybody was against me. Ain’t nobody with me or against me.”
“I ain’t tellin’ you how to run your life,” Yogi said, laughing a little, trying to lighten the mood.
“Shit, well, maybe I just don’t feel like talkin’ sometimes. Maybe I’m just sittin’ here thinkin’. Maybe that’s what I’m doin’.”
“You just my friend,” Yogi explained. “I care about you, and I don’t like seein’ you like this, that’s all. If it’s wrong to be carin’ about you, then I’ll deal with that on my own but—”
Omari cut her off. “I appreciate all the care,” he said. “I appreciate everything, for real, from everybody and whatever. But when it’s all said and done, or when it all comes to an end, if they want O, they comin’ to get O. I’m still the one that got to deal with it at the end of the day. I do. Maybe I’m preparin’ myself for the worst.”
The following day, the worst seemed to be on its way. The security guard from the Atrium called again. He reminded Omari that he had been fired. As compensation, he said, he wanted a car. He told Omari, “I’ve done my part.”
An hour later, the security guard talked to Jeffery. “I need my little bit right now,” he said.
“Tomorrow,” Jeffery replied.
The guard had been partly responsible for Omari and Jeffrey becoming suspects, and now he was helping undo the damage. For that, he’d already been paid $2,500 up front, and he was guaranteed another $2,500 when the case was dismissed. Somewhere along the way, though, the guard decided he wanted more.
After hanging up with him, Jeffery called his twenty-two-year-old girlfriend, Courtney Williams, to vent. The guard had been fired, Jeffery complained to Courtney, because he said too much about what had happened—though not enough to get Jeffery and Omari arrested. Now, the guard wanted Omari and Jeff to compensate him for his loss of income. Such demands were unwise, Jeffery hinted to Courtney. “People need to realize how much clout we got in this motherfuckin’ city,” he told her.
The Atrium situation was clearly stressing out Omari and Jeffery. Yogi wanted to ease their worrying. So she stayed on top of the situation, claiming to be in contact with the attorney, Vince Dimmock, who was handling the case. So far, neither of them had been charged—and they might not be, thanks to the security guard’s willingness to hold back on what he’d witnessed. That’s what Yogi wanted to discuss with Omari on November 2, 2004.
“Vince said they really don’t have all that they want,” she said. “So you just really gotta take what he said, and stay ahead of the game.”
With that bit of business out of the way, Yogi and Omari wound up talking for nearly an hour—or, to be more precise, Yogi talked for the better part of an hour. Omari, as usual, mostly listened. She chattered on about the progress over at the club Meech was opening. It was going to be called Babylon, the same name as Tony Montana’s club in Scarface. She complained about J-Bo, who, compared to Meech, didn’t seem to appreciate her. J-Bo didn’t hold a candle to Meech, not in her book.
Noticing that Omari was zoning out, she switched topics.
“What are you doin’?” she asked sweetly.
“Just thinkin’,” Omari said in a far-off voice.
“About what?”
“I don’t know, everything.”
“Tell me one thing you’re wonderin’ about.”
“Um, why I keep gettin’ calls from somebody sayin’ I’m fixin’ to go to jail and shit.”
“You don’t think that’s just the talk in the streets?”
“Yeah, it might be.”
“Who’s discussin’ you?”
“I don’t know. Just different people.”
“You talkin’ ’bout people from Boulevard, right?”
“Nah, no. Somebody called and was like, ‘So-and-so said this.’”
Yogi believed she had an explanation for all that talk: envy. “I can name thirty niggas on Boulevard that wanna see you go to jail right now and hope that they could take your place,” she said. “Nigga, don’t give them that.”
Then, she got deep.
“I see the character traits in you that are in Dude,” she said. “I see you bein’ a leader. I see a lot of you in him, and I see a lot of him in you. I know what Meech used to be like in his younger days. The conceit that you have, he had—but he’s a little more humble now, because he’s a little bit older. I just see you and him bein’ the same kind of people, and I think people in the Family see that also.”
These were treacherous times, she continued. People felt the heat, because the heat was real. Take St. Louis. Thirteen BMF guys had just been indicted there, including a high-level manager named Deron “Wonnie” Gatling—who’d gone on the run. “I’m talkin’ about St. Louis so hot right now, I’m sure everybody think the world is on fire,” Yogi said. “We all a little warm around this motherfucker. But I just don’t see why they keep singlin’ you out. I just think that it would have been done by now, you know what I’m sayin’? That’s just my opinion. I just feel like you sittin’ there stressin’ yourself out and it’s not time for you to s
tress yourself out, you know? Everybody got their time. I don’t think it’s yours, though.”
The most Omari could offer in response was a long “Hmmmm.”
To which Yogi responded, “Let it go, baby.”
Of course, Omari couldn’t.
November 4, 2004, was a day of bad omens—some of them obvious, others not. Two days had passed since Yogi’s extended pep talk, and Omari was as paranoid as ever.
His first order of business that afternoon was to help bond one of his associates out of jail. Decarlo Hoskins had been locked up for nearly three weeks and had just that day been granted a $100,000 bond. Omari felt obligated to help. You had to look after those who could incriminate you, after all. Little did Omari know that it was too late.
A couple of hours later, Omari got an ominous phone call. The man on the line identified himself as Omari’s brother. Investigators knew that wasn’t the case, though they didn’t know who the caller was.
“I need to talk to you real urgent,” the man said. “Real, real important, my nigga.”
“It’s bad?” Omari asked.
“Hell yeah. I think it is.”
“About me?”
“Yeah, nigga, you heard me?”
“Man …”
“Your shit is all right? Your, um, your jack?”
Omari wasn’t all that sure anymore. Despite the fact that he and Yogi had been talking freely on his cell, he began to doubt it was safe.
“Um, I’m gonna call you from another,” Omari said.
“Hurry up, son.”
Omari’s paranoia was mounting. One of his next calls showed just how freaked out he’d become—and how close he was to figuring out what, exactly, was going on. Omari called to request a favor from a woman, who in turn called a friend of hers on another line. Her friend worked at the Atlanta Police Department.
Omari was worried that a black truck he kept noticing, a truck parked on the curb just up the street from his house, might be part of a surveillance team. Earlier, he’d jotted down the truck’s tag number. Now he was reading it to the woman, who repeated it to her police source. The agents listening in could tell that the person who betrayed them was inside the APD, because they were able to trace the number back to the department. The actual perpetrator, however, was never identified.
BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family Page 14