<p>Soon after her wedding, she was driving a Mercedes Benz, living in a swank Chicago apartment and watching her husband pull a pack of heroin out of a teddy bear head he got in the mail.</p><p>The former prostitute told investigators her husband and his twin brother hauled garbage bags full of cash into their home _ $3 million on one night alone _ and laundered their money in an Atlanta nightclub and other businesses.</p><p>But when things went bad _ she got caught in machine gun fire _ the woman decided to cooperate with investigators in exchange for her kids' protection.</p><p>Her story and those of 25 other unidentified federal informants makes up the bulk of a 185-page federal complaint unsealed in Chicago last week, when 47 alleged Black Disciples members were charged with drug conspiracy after a six-year investigation the FBI called one of the biggest gang busts in at least a decade.</p><p>The government's complaint weaves together evidence from witness accounts, wiretaps and undercover surveillance to paint a picture of a drug empire run with corporate precision.</p><p>Federal prosecutors say the gang effectively commandeered the Randolph Towers public housing complex on the South Side in 1991 and has maintained its grip ever since, making it the nucleus of a drug ring that took in as much as $300,000 a day.</p><p>Overseeing the operation, prosecutors say, was Marvel Thompson, the alleged "king" of the Black Disciples. The federal complaint says Thompson, 35, laundered his drug money in legitimate businesses, including a rap label named M.O.B. Records, which helped Chicago artist DJ Casper create an international hit with his 2000 single "Cha Cha Slide."</p><p>Thompson and 39 other defendants remained in federal custody after hundreds of law-enforcement officers raided the gang's purported headquarters last week. Seven remained at large Thursday.</p><p>Thompson's court-appointed attorney said the government's evidence is thin because it relies almost exclusively on former gang members who cooperated with authorities in exchange for reduced sentences.</p><p>"That's the sum and total of their case," attorney John Meyer said Tuesday.</p><p>The government claims Thompson divided drug-dealing zones among about ten Black Disciples "board members," who collected "street tax" from lower-ranking members selling crack and heroin. Even the highly profitable twin brothers allegedly had to pay higher-ups $80,000 a month for the right to control the lucrative heroin operation at Randolph Towers.</p><p>Gang leaders would buy wholesale batches of cocaine _ several kilograms at a time _ and enlist the help of members to cook the powder into crack and package it into $10 "dime bags," the complaint alleges.</p><p>One former Black Disciple turned federal witness described to investigators how he would show up at Randolph Towers at 8 a.m. and head straight to apartment 1007, where crack was being split into packages as small as 25 dime bags to as large as 1,000.</p><p>He and other gun-toting gang members worked 14-hour shifts selling crack on the lower floors of the housing complex and on nearby streets, with some sellers hauling in as much as $10,000 a day, the complaint alleges.</p><p>Prosecutors claim gang members routinely frisked building residents as they entered and sometimes stood sentry on the roof of the 16-story building with guns and night-vision goggles to guard against rival gangs.</p><p>"They operated as if they were an independent nation, subject only to the law of the streets, not the law of the land," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said last week.</p><p>For gang members who broke Black Disciples "laws," board members allegedly assigned punishments ranging from baseball-bat beatings to being shot in the leg.</p><p>In one incident, federal authorities claim gang leaders offered a rival gang member $3,500 and a trip to Disney World if he kept quiet about an earlier shooting by Black Disciples, who opened fire on the man while he was driving with his wife and two small children, leaving his 6-year-old son with a bullet wound in his chest.</p><p>Over the years Chicago police conducted sporadic raids and searches on the building that led to dozens of arrests, although the gang's leadership remained mostly intact.</p><p>But at least one alleged gang leader seemed to anticipate the looming federal crackdown.</p><p>"They (federal law enforcement) gonna try to make a grand move," alleged Black Disciple Alfred Creamer said during a secretly taped conversation with two other members last month, according to the complaint. "They want to cut the head off the snake and the tail."</p>
