Here's Just Another Example Of The Ghetto Mentality Being Glamorized
She's sports a sharp pantsuit, her nails are done, her makeup is flawless, and her hair is fierce.
But unlike the old Klymaxx tune, Michele Anne Fletcher is not having a "Meeting in The Ladies Room."
Instead, the little more than five feet tall street tough hustle from New York is sitting behind a bookstore table, promoting her self-published novel.
"Charge It to the Game," says Fletcher is a "remarkable story" with a protagonist she describes as "coldblooded and conniving."
Folks show up at this first book signing curious to see what has become of the sistah who resided in the seven-bedroom Mediterranean-style home in Glenn Dale, owned upscale hair salons, and had a loving husband and three beautiful daughters.
A picture-perfect family, right? Except here's the rub.
Fletcher financed that picture with the identities of over 40,000 people in what's been described as one of the largest fraud schemes in recent history in the DC Metropolitan Tri-state area.
While doing 2 1/2 years in prison, Fletcher wrote her tale of a Black woman who took what she wanted -- bodacious bling and Manolo Blahniks.
It is a tragic story based on her life. A life where only six months ago, she was on lockdown.
But sales are slow at the first signing. Her former nanny, Smiler Haynes, is one of few present.
Haynes says she was floored when agents raided her bosses residence in April 2003, clueless that the couple's home office concealed a credit card imprinting machine where blank cards with numbers from stolen Visa registers were manufactured.Haynes buys a book and passes it across the table.
After she inscribes it, Fletcher sits up straight up and says, "You thought I'd never get back, huh. I'm back."
One click of Fletcher's Web site reveals her humility.
Call her Miss Plastic/ Did time, paid her debt/ Got out in '06 with her plans set/ Different game, same chick
A month and a half later and Fletcher, by her count, has pushed more than 10,000 books at $15.95 each.
She's right -- same chick, unfortunately.
At least 500 copies alone have been sold at Karibu Books, a local bookstore chain targeted at African American readers. Last week Fletcher was featured as a "credit card fraud expert" on a local television morning show, where she warned viewers to stop using their credit cards frivolously and the host told the audience to go buy her book -- with cash.
Fletcher is part of an industry of ex-prisoners writing tales of life on the streets. About 10 percent of the adult African American interest books published between September 2006 and March 2007 had street themes, according to Publishers Weekly. All but one of this month's top-selling paperback novels on Essence magazine's June book list is street lit.
While I don't have a problem with the sistah getting paid legitimately, I would rather have her helping law enforcement take out others who are ruining millions of people's credit. I would be thrilled to have her mentoring women in prison, starting a church ministry, or writing a book about how the rest of us can avoid getting screwed by people like her.
Instead, Fletcher seems intent on adding her name to the list of convict-turned-money-making authors in the world of urban fiction.
The godmother of hip-hop literature, Vickie Stringer, is a former cocaine dealer from Columbus, Ohio. After her release, Stringer launched Triple Crown Publications, now a large independent publishing house. Her first book, "Let That Be the Reason," sold more than 100,000 copies -- the first 2,500 she sold book by book from a tote bag.
There is no doubt that Fletcher's recent incarceration lends her novel street cred.
In the piece, she tries to explain how her Prince George's home was the Barbie Dream House she played with as a little girl. Growing up in a Brooklyn brownstone, her father provided his two girls with extravagant trips, clothes from Saks Fifth Avenue and private-school education -- with money stolen through check fraud and other crimes, for which he was locked up.
Fletcher describes her mother in the book as her best friend, whom she protected from her angry, abusive, now estranged father. A father, she says, who taught her "how to shop for free."
Michele Fletcher and her husband, Francis, bought their first stolen card in a nightclub. Her first purchase was a pair of pants from Bloomingdale's and a Louis Vuitton bag.
Francis Fletcher had grown up in Southeast Washington, surrounded by drugs and theft. Before his conviction for identity fraud, he had been arrested on charges of petty theft.By the time Michele Cameron married Francis in 1998, she had a daughter and a career as a cosmetologist.
Together, they inserted themselves into Maryland's Prince George County. The wealthiest predominantly Black county in the country, the Fletchers had none of the typical credentials, yet all the trappings of success.
The Moné & Company salons, named after Michele's first daughter, were founded with $120,000 in loans from the federal government and a local bank.
Fletcher admits she could sometimes be dictatorial and haughty, walking through the salons like a queen, referring to the stylists as "the girls."
The three shops employing nearly 50 people were well known in the local beauty industry, with
revenue topping $70,000 some months, Fletcher says.
But, she notes, business expenses exceeded that. Unlike most beauticians, the stylists at Moné had salaries, in some cases as much as $80,000. Some employees had health care benefits. The salons had impressive marble floors and accent fountains.
The house they built had a 13-aisle closet that Michele Fletcher filled with nearly 1,000 pairs of shoes. They bought five plasma screen televisions and three satellite dishes. Outside sat two Mercedes-Benzes, a Lexus SUV and a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle. Michele Fletcher's wedding ring was custom-made, six carats of diamonds with many small baguettes surrounding a large pear-shaped marquise-cut stone.
For more than three years, the Fletchers kept acquiring things, until they were caught by police in 2003 trying to buy three $400 DVD players with a counterfeit Visa at a Target Superstore.
After pulling out several fake credit cards, an investigation led to a sting that Fletcher recounts in her book. Dozens of federal agents surrounded the house and knocked her front door to the ground.Francis Fletcher was arrested first and Michele spent a moment contemplating how she might escape with her girls, but there was no way out.
When the door slammed down that early morning, Michele Fletcher says she became conscious of the crime. At that moment, it was her family that she clung, not to the shoes or plasma screen TVs.
She and her husband pleaded guilty a year later in June 2004. He was sentenced to five years, she to four.She got out early on good behavior. He will be released next month, and Michele Fletcher says they plan to stay together -- and to seek counseling to learn how they can direct their entrepreneurial drive away from crime.
The couple sold their home to pay their $183,000 restitution. The cars and other valuables were seized. Michele Fletcher's family collected photos and other personal items left behind and stuffed them into trash bags.
In prison, she had nothing. One night she wrote of the rottenness of materialism.
In my community, we don't believe in greed. Like Moses in the wilderness, God fed his people Manna. He gave them strict instructions. Do not take more that you can eat for the day. If you do, it shall surely turn to worms!
Fletcher currently lives in her mother's former home in Largo, with her oldest, Moné, now 18. Her two younger girls, Jade, 6, and Nyya, 4, are with their grandmother in Atlanta.
In her mother's old house, Fletcher's narrow closet has room to spare.
A pair of Anne Klein patent leather sling backs with scuffed heels, a seasons-old Louis Vuitton bag, and a faded Ecko jumper are salvaged vestiges of her old life.
She drives a used Ford Explorer, given to her by a friend.
In the meantime, she is living off book sales, gifts and income from odd jobs. She also sells Avon and hosts "passion parties," where she hocks massage oils to women to rev up their sex lives.
"I have always had it in me to do my own thing. I could have started out the correct way," Fletcher says. "The legal life is fruitful."
After researching the details of what took place, I'm actually left feeling more annoyed than inspired.
Original Story By Krissah Williams