DETROIT – A big woman once lived in this small house on the city's tough west side. Jessie Mae Carter – all 6-foot-3, 270 pounds of her – was best known for her oversized traits: her frame, her laugh and her talent in the kitchen that produced scents that could tempt the entire neighborhood.

"You'd walk by that house and smell it and even if you weren't hungry, you'd get hungry," said Wanda Nelson, who lived around the corner. "Oooooh, could that woman cook."

In that house, out of that kitchen, Jessie Mae raised children and grandchildren – including one who became famous.

And on every possible occasion she'd entertain her extended family too. The entire clan would pack the place for her chicken and ribs, her cakes and pies, her hugs and smiles; generations of Jessie Mae's brood – including one who became infamous.

It was there that two young cousins first talked about how they were both going to make it big, make a name for themselves, make it out of Detroit and into one of those rich suburbs to the north where the auto execs live.

One, a grandson, everyone could see coming. He was all Jessie Mae, so big (growing to 6-foot-8, 300 pounds) and so gregarious that even as Robert Traylor went on to become a star at the University of Michigan and the sixth pick in the 1998 NBA Draft he was still best known for his care-free attitude, girth and colorful nickname – "Tractor."

His cousin, Quasand Lewis, wasn't blessed with those physical gifts. At 6-foot, 205 pounds and six years older than Traylor, he was going to have to get out of Detroit another way, the hard way. But even early on at those family gatherings, relatives say, everyone saw the toughness, street smarts and determination that made big things, in a different way, possible for him, too.

So as Traylor went on to earn more than $11 million during a seven-year NBA career, moving, indeed, to the promised land of wealthy West Bloomfield, Lewis, at least monetarily, was doing him one better. He was living up to his end of those childhood dreams, arriving too amidst the cul de sacs and four-car garages of the same suburb. They were two cousins straight out of Detroit.

When Lewis was finally busted by federal authorities in 2004, he had sold an estimated $178 million in marijuana and cocaine in Metro Detroit and had associates with suspected links to nearly a dozen murders and four fire-bombed houses, according to federal prosecutors. They declared Lewis as the kingpin of a massive and ruthless organized crime ring and deemed him Michigan's biggest pot dealer, perhaps ever.

"For more than a decade (Lewis) subjected our citizens to violence, our neighborhoods to devastation," U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy said.

Lewis had even found a way to reach back into Jessie Mae's house, back to those family cookouts, even after the big woman had died, her little house was long sold and the grandson she raised herself, Robert Traylor, should have known better.

"Quasand Lewis needed to launder drug money," Murphy said. "Robert Traylor helped him launder (nearly $4 million) of it."

Which is how Lewis wound up in federal prison for the next 18 years and Traylor, just two years removed from the NBA playoffs, two years from being LeBron James' teammate, is staring down a cell himself.




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What I posted wasn't the "meat" of the article. That was just an introduction. I can't believe he didn't know that his cousin was on the wrong side of the law. If he didn't know, then he is a very naive person and his cousin really did take advantage of him. He's looking at some time in jail for IRS fraud, but hopefully that's it if the judge believes his story of naivete.

What an interesting article. But hey, I say it time and time again. Family will screw you better than a stranger, and they have no remorse when they do it. They can be your worst nightmare.