Memphis is about to be in the spotlight, thanks to one of the more infamous names attached to it.
“24” actor Dennis Haysbert is set to lead a film as a CIA agent at the center of the case involving an infamous Memphis drug trafficker, Craig Petties in the action-drama “American Smuggler”, according to reports from Deadline. The film is expected to center around the hunt for Petties, the criminal empire he built out of West Tennessee in collaboration with a Mexican drug cartel and how it was brought down.
Petties was sentenced to nine life sentences in 2013 for multiple crimes ranging from selling cocaine to murder for hire while running his “drug empire” which branched out to multiple states across the South.
“Craig Petties was the ringleader of one of the largest and most violent criminal organizations to ever operate in the state of Tennessee. The court’s sentence of life without the possibility of parole holds Petties accountable for his ruthless acts,” said Edward Stanton, then U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, after Petties was sentenced in 2013.
Who is Craig Petties?
Petties grew up in the rough Riverside neighborhood of South Memphis before later moving to Mexico. There, Petties is accused of using cellphones to orchestrate drug shipments into U.S. cities and assassinations of rivals in Memphis, according to archived stories from the Commercial Appeal.
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Through the early 2000s, Petties made friends with higher ups in the drug trafficking community before being introduced to the powerful Beltran Leyva Mexican cartel.
Petties, who is now 48, spent years building a network of people and a criminal racketeering enterprise that spanned from Mexico, Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and elsewhere, according to the United States Attorney’s Office. His organization was involved in trafficking cocaine to different areas, racketeering and murder.
In 2002, Petties fled the United States for Mexico and spent years evading federal agencies. It was in 2009 that he secretly pleaded guilty to multiple offenses including four murders, kidnapping and conspiracy. He was sentenced in 2013 to nine concurrent life sentences.
Where is Craig Petties now?
Petties is currently serving his life sentences at USP Allenwood, a high-security federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, according to a Bureau of Prisons website.
