June 4, 2020 — Former Bad Boy Records security chief Paul (P.J.) Buford is seeking a get-out-of-jail free card from a federal judge in Detroit based on his contracting the Coronavirus in prison serving a 20-year prison term for narcotics trafficking activity as a member of the notorious Black Mafia Family. Buford, 50, is one of the last remaining members of “BMF” still behind bars from the landmark 2005 Operation Motor City Mafia bust. Lawyers for Buford filed a motion for compassionate release this week in U.S. District Court out of Michigan. BMF co-founder, Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, 50, walked out of his Ashland, Kentucky prison cell this spring six years early via a compassionate release granted by U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson. His brother, the more high-profile, Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, who became the face of the culturally-transcendent BMF at its peak of power in the 2000s, is currently awaiting a ruling from Lawson on his identical motion. The story of the Flenorys and BMF will soon arrive on cable television as a scripted series produced by rapper 50 Cent at the Starz network. The Flenorys started BMF in Detroit in 1990 and gradually expanded around the country, setting up BMF satellite crews in 24 different states by the time they were indicted a decade and a half later. At the time of the Operation Motor City Mafia indictment finally landing in the fall of 2005, authorities declared BMF the biggest domestic drug organization in American history. DEA records show informants telling the government that Bad Boy Records founder and hip-hop mogul Sean (Puff Daddy) Combs received his seed financing for the iconic New York music label from BMF in late 1993. P.J. Buford was Bad Boy’s Head of Security when the label dominated the charts in the mid-to-late 1990s. He was also an early lieutenant of the Flenory brothers’ in their drug affairs and helped with their east coast expansion, according to DEA records. New York Police Department intelligence files note Buford’s underworld connections and the fact that he would often act as Puff Daddy’s personal bodyguard and hand-pick the security detail assigned to Bad Boy’s most popular acts like Notorious B.I.G., Mase and Lil’ Kim. Combs’ first cousin, Darryl (Poppa D) Taylor, was a BMF soldier as well. Buford and Taylor were both nailed in the Operation Motor City Mafia case. Buford went on the run for four years making his way on to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List until he was finally apprehended during a routine traffic stop in 2009 down in Mississippi. Big Meech shot one of Puff Daddy’s favorite bodyguards to death in 2003 in self-defense in a famous incident that occurred outside a music industry party in Atlanta’s trendy Buckhead neighborhood. Besides Buford and Big Meech, only BMF “consigliere” Fleming (ILL) Daniels, remains in prison from the core BMF crew. Daniels is doing 20 years for drug dealing and life for a state murder case out of Georgia stemming from an altercation at an Atlanta nightclub parking lot in 2004 where Daniels is alleged to have shot a man execution style for touching his Porsche. The 47-year old Daniels is a native New Yorker. Without judicial intervention, Buford is looking at a 2025 release date.
