January 17, 1899 - Al Capone
Capone's career illustrates how organized crime consolidated power during Prohibition, transforming street-level vice operations into a sophisticated and politically connected enterprise. His Chicago Outfit controlled bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution across the city through a combination of bribery and violence, with corruption reaching into both the mayor's office and the police department. The scale of that infrastructure — and the difficulty authorities faced in dismantling it — made him one of the most studied figures in American criminal history.
From Wikipedia
Alphonse Gabriel Capone (, kə-POHN; Italian: [kaˈpoːne]; January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he was imprisoned at the age of 33.
Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrants. He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, Capone moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard of Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana.
A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone. Although Capone expanded the bootlegging business through increasingly violent means, his mutually profitable relationships with Mayor William Hale Thompson and the Chicago Police Department meant he seemed safe from law enforcement.
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