At the dawn of the 1930s, on the streets of Chicago, but also in the corridors of almost every law enforcement agency, one name was known to all and caused the fear of some and the rage of others: Al Capone. The Italian-born “businessman” controlled the largest organized crime network in Chicago, and his activities ranged from the manufacture and smuggling of liquor (then under Prohibition), illegal betting, and the provision of “protection” to illegal gambling, pimping and murdering rival gang members.
Capone was famous for his activities, to the point that when he attended baseball games he was cheered by the crowd, and he had gained a reputation as the Robin Hood of the day, as he often made large donations to charities. In fact, during the Great Crash, Capone was the first to create a soup kitchen for the unemployed. Also, it seems that the big gangster also enjoyed the tolerance of the Authorities. It is known that he maintained relations with the mayor of the city William Hale Thompson, while he had bought off many officers of the Chicago Police Department.
However, his fortunes soon changed, for two main reasons. On the one hand, Mayor Thompson seeking re-election in 1927 saw that his campaign – largely funded by Capone – would not have the desired effect and decided to change tactics. He replaced the chief of police, thus paving the way for the investigation into Capone’s illegal activities. But a more important role in the beginning of the gangster’s downfall was played by the so-called Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929.
That day, Capone ordered the murder of seven members of a rival gang led by Irishman George “Bugs” Moran, including the latter. Four of Capone’s men, two wearing police uniforms, headed for the auto repair shop where the gang members were. The two “policemen” ordered the seven men to face the wall and Capone’s other two associates executed them using two submachine guns. Bugs Moran, who that day saw the “cops” approaching the garage and eventually changed direction, when asked who might have ordered this action said, “Only Al Capone kills like that.” Despite the fact that in those days Capone was at his home in Florida, he was considered to be responsible for the murder, and the American police declared him “Public Enemy Number 1”.
So the various law enforcement agencies were determined to somehow arrest the mighty gangster. The infamous Elliot Ness, FBI agent and leader of the so-called “Untouchables” group, had begun gathering evidence of over 5,000 violations of Prohibition laws by Capone.
Meanwhile, a Supreme Court ruling was to change everything: in United States v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court ruled that profits from illegal activities were also taxable to the US state. So the Ministry of Finance and the tax authorities turned to Al Capone, who lived in ultra-luxurious apartments, wore very expensive clothes and dined in the best restaurants. Despite his lavish habits, Capone had never filed a tax return, as he could not justify his income from any legitimate activity, resulting in him appearing on tax records as having no income.
So CPA Frank Wilson and his team spent the entire summer of 1930 trying to find evidence that would link Capone to illegal profits. Studying more than two million documents gathered from occasional arrests of Capone and his associates, Wilson was able to locate three ledgers that indicated Capone had been paid $17,500 by a gambling operation. In order to confirm the information, he traced the man who had marked the books by comparing his handwriting with bank deposit slips, and later located a gangster associate who deposited money in the bank and bought $300,000 in bank checks in return, the cash from which they went straight to Capone. In this way Wilson proved that the profits from the gambling business had been collected by Capone, therefore the latter had received income on which he was obliged to pay taxes – which of course he had not.
After gathering a lot of evidence and conducting an elaborate trial in which he attempted, among other things, to buy off all the jurors and reach an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, on October 17, 1931, Al Capone was found guilty of 23 counts of tax evasion and sentenced to eleven years in prison, while he was forced to pay a fine of $250,000, as well as pay $30,000 in court costs.
Then, a new chapter opened in the life of Al Capone, that of his imprisonment. This period of his life was also turbulent, as after buying off prison officials and living in prison with all the comforts, he was transferred to a newly built prison, Alcatraz. Upon entering prison he was diagnosed with syphilis and very soon began to show symptoms of syphilitic paranoia. In 1939 he was released from prison due to his health condition and retired to his home in Florida. He died of a heart attack in 1947 at the age of 48, and his attending physician had reported that before he died the damage to Capone’s brain was so great that he had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old child.
Column Editor: Myrto Katsigera, Vassilis Minakakis, Antigone-Despina Poimenidou, Athanasios Syroplakis
