Federal prosecutors had already spent years building a case against George Rivera when he threw himself a Christmas Eve party so lavish it would become their most powerful evidence. In December 1988, the 20-year-old Bronx drug kingpin, known on the streets as Boy George, chartered a yacht for 150 guests, complete with tuxedos, an open bar, a live performance by Big Daddy Kane, and gifts that included cash, Rolex watches, and a customized BMW. Photographs from that night were later introduced at trial, and the seating arrangements, organized by distribution spot, essentially mapped out his entire criminal enterprise. Boy George was barely old enough to drink when federal authorities linked him to a dozen homicides and indicted him on 14 counts, including conspiracy, running a criminal enterprise, and tax evasion.
He was convicted on all counts and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole under the federal kingpin statute. He went to prison in 1991 at age 22 and remains incarcerated more than three decades later. The rise that preceded that fall was astonishing. Rivera was born in the South Bronx, and his father left when he was six months old.
He said his mother beat him with extension cords, and he ran away from home at age 10. By 12, he had a court-issued PINS order and was bouncing between group homes, relatives, and the streets. At a group home in New Rochelle, other residents remembered him as quiet, charismatic, and always meticulously dressed, even when he had nothing. By the summer of 1985, George was 17 and homeless, sleeping on park benches and brushing his teeth at fire hydrants in one of the most dangerous intersections in New York City.
He studied local drug dealers, learning how they worked, who they sold to, and how the money flowed. He did not start by selling. He started by managing, handling the money, payroll, and supply for an established local crew. Within months, he was building his own operation.
What set Boy George apart from other young dealers was his product focus. While much of the city was consumed by the crack epidemic, he built his empire selling a different product, which he branded Obsession, stamped with a red crown logo. He later added a second brand called Sledgehammer. He ran his operation through a corporate front named Tuxedo Enterprises, employing men in their 30s and 40s on a weekly salary, offering cash bonuses and even sending top earners on vacations to Disney World.
George told every new hire the same motto. If I can trust you, I can kill you. The violence was not theoretical. Federal authorities linked him to a dozen homicides, including a man murdered in a restaurant parking lot on his orders.
In another case, he ordered the killing of a woman accused of stealing a gold and diamond belt buckle inscribed with the word Obsession from one of his supervisors. The enforcer who carried out the murder was reportedly paid a few vials of product, a $5,000 cash bonus, and an invitation to the Christmas Eve yacht party. By the summer of 1987, his organization was moving $100,000 worth of product per week. Within a year, that reached $250,000 per week, and at its two-year peak, his operation brought in $15 million a year.
He had 50 employees on payroll and multiple distribution spots across the South Bronx and Manhattan. The money bought him a mansion in Puerto Rico, paid for in cash, with the Obsession name tiled into the bottom of his pool. He kept an apartment at Normandy Court on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where he stored garbage bags full of cash. His fleet of luxury cars was customized with gadgets that earned him the nickname the Puerto Rican James Bond from the press.
A Mercedes with $50,000 in upgrades featured a license plate that slid out of view, radar detectors, a strobe light to blind anyone tailing him, and devices that sprayed oil and dropped nails from the rear. He also had a Porsche customized for $140,000 with an ostrich skin interior, multiple cell phones, and concealed compartments. Boy George later said the law would still be chasing him if he had made it to one of those cars the night of his arrest. The federal government had been tracking him since 1987, when a confidential informant introduced an undercover detective to Boy George.
The detective bought product directly from him, and George bragged that his organization moved $250,000 worth per week. Wiretaps from his Puerto Rico mansion, testimony from workers, and the yacht party photos formed an overwhelming case. He was one of the youngest people in American history to be convicted under the federal kingpin statute. His story was later chronicled in Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s acclaimed non-fiction book Random Family, which grew out of a decade-long reporting project that began when the author attended his trial.
Now, 50 Cent, who grew up on the same streets and survived being shot nine times, is producing a television series based on Boy George’s life called Obsession, named after the brand George stamped with a red crown. The blocks George once ran in the South Bronx have since been gentrified, with coffee shops and condominiums now standing where he once slept on park benches.