Key figure in Louisville ‘Black Mafia Family’ gets 30-year term – Louisville Courier

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They called themselves the Black Mafia Family and claimed to be nothing more than a hip-hop empire that threw million-dollar parties and drove fancy cars like Aston-Martins and Bentleys.

But the government says that BMF Entertainment was a laundering sham and cover for a sophisticated national drug-smuggling operation with links to the Mexican drug cartels and tentacles in 11 states, including Kentucky and Indiana.

In 2005 the Drug Enforcement Administration coordinated a nationwide take-down of BMF, seizing more than 630 kilograms of cocaine, $14 million in cash and other assets, and arresting nearly 50 associates.

But not until this week in Louisville did the last piece fall, with the sentencing of Toree "Pink Suit Cuz" Sims, 36, who government witnesses claimed brought 100 kilograms of cocaine to Louisville from 2002 to 2004 as the head of BMF's local operation.

Convicted in July of conspiring to traffic in cocaine, Sims was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Simpson III to 30 years in prison, a punishment that was enhanced because he was found to have been a leader of a drug organization.

Robert Corso, the head of the DEA in Detroit, where BMF began in the 1980s, said in a statement that with Sims' sentencing a drug organization that "brought the devastation of illicit drugs to cities across the nation has been dealt a knockout blow."

Sims was one of the last principals to be sentenced because he escaped capture — driving away in a BMW convertible — for more than a year after he and other leaders were indicted in 2005, according to court records.

He was caught in 2006 after he and BMF were featured in two episodes of the television program "Americas Most Wanted."

Sims lived in style. Secret recordings show that he was negotiating to buy an $80,000 Mercedes-Benz, and police found about 20 fur coats belonging to him in a search of a house where he lived with a girlfriend, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

Sims has filed a notice he that he will appeal his conviction, which came after a four-day trial. His lawyer, Armand Judah, declined to comment.

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