Kenneth Weiner <----wow I was surprised to see his name. I've got a pretty cool Weiner story.
My dad and his brothers use to have a precious metals refinery in Detroit [[and later, in Royal Oak). Their main customers were jewelry stores but they would also occasionally melt down gold for pawn shops - no doubt stolen jewelry that the shops knew they couldn't sell. One of their biggest accounts though was with Kenneth Weiner who they knew to be acting on behalf of Coleman Young.
He used to bring them gold Krugerrands to melt - apparently Coleman Young had a large investment in the illegal South African coins and he began trying to "liquidate" his investments as the Feds started to sniff around. The word was, Coleman was laundering some of his drug money by having Weiner fly out to Europe where Krugerrands were legal to buy, and bring them back to the US to be stashed for later. I guess the heat got to be too much and so my dads business was tasked with melting them for gold content.
They'd melted down plenty of shady gold before, but at some point they must have realized that there was a big difference between a stolen necklace that someone pawned and South African Krugerrands that the Feds were on the trail of, so they severed ties. I remember them being a little nervous for awhile about the possible repercussions of that decision but in the end nothing happened.
I think the biggest problem with Rick is he knew enough to hang the Mayor but played coy until the Mayor died. At that point he was useless to the Feds so he's been left to rot ever since. He should be let out though because he was convicted under the 650 Lifer Law, which was repealed. Most of the guys doing life for the same crime got out when it was repealed - he shouldn't be treated any worse than the other POS dope dealers that got out after 20-25 years for even more weight than he was caught with.
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