How Prohibition Put the 'Organized' in Organized Crime

How Prohibition Put the ‘Organized’ in Organized Crime

https://www.history.com/news/prohibition-organized-crime-al-capone

"In fact, before the passing of the 18th Amendment in 1919 and the nationwide ban that went into effect in January 1920 on the sale or importation of “intoxicating liquor," it wasn’t the mobsters who ran the most organized criminal schemes in America, but corrupt political “bosses,” explains Howard Abadinsky, a criminal justice professor at St. John’s University and author of Organized Crime. "

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"Making money was easy, says Abadinsky. The hard part was figuring out what to do with all the cash. Money laundering was another way in which organized crime was forced to get far more organized. When gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931, loads of Prohibition-era mob money was funneled into the new casinos and hotels. Underworld accountants like Meyer Lansky wired money to brokers in Switzerland who would cover the mobster’s tracks and reinvest the cash in legitimate business. Others, like Capone, weren’t as savvy and got sent up river on tax evasion charges.

When Prohibition was finally repealed in 1933, the cash grab was over, but the sophisticated black-market business schemes and money-laundering tactics of organized crime were here to stay. The biggest gangs shifted their operations away from alcohol and into secondary businesses like drugs, gambling and prostitution. They also profited greatly from the Great Depression."