On October 17, 1931, Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion.  It may be a misdemeanor not to file, but it’s a felony to evade, and they got Capone on five counts of evasion.  That’s enough to get you thrown in Federal Prison for 11 years.  Well, maybe not you, but for Capone it was. 

 

Alphonse Gabriel Capone, lovingly nicknamed “Scarface,” was born, fittingly, in Brooklyn, way back on January 17, 1899, and he died, also fittingly, in Miami on January 25, 1947.  In-between he became the most ruthless crime boss in the United States, rising to power on profits from Prohibition.  But it wasn’t just illegal booze.  He also made money off of gambling and prostitution. 

 

Operating out of Chicago, he made millions.  Hundreds of millions.  And nobody could touch him.  Just watch the 1987 movie The Untouchables, which was based on a TV series of the same name running for 1959 to 1963.  They weren’t exaggerating.  Capone stayed out of jail by pretty much controlling the police, politicians, and just about everybody else through bribes and extorsion. 

 

Capone rarely killed anybody, as the story goes.  He didn’t need to.  He had other people do it for him.  It is estimated that he is directly or indirectly responsible for anywhere from 33 deaths to over 200.  Most of the people Capone allegedly killed were from rival gangs, that, and those he believed to be traitors.  The most famous of those deaths was probably the Valentine’s Day Massacre, which was the catalyst of the excellent 1959 movie Some Like it Hot.  On February 14, 1929, seven members of a rival Chicago gang were executed in a garage.  The Valentine’s Day Massacre brought a public outcry against Capone.  It was just too blatant.  It caused President Hoover to go after Capone, and he did that with Special Agent Eliot Ness.  Ness targeted Capone’s supply lines, and that led to finding Capone’s ledger – a record of all that money he wasn’t paying taxes on.  Capone’s lawyers tried to negotiate paying back those taxes, but they just made it worse by admitting to even more money Capone hadn’t reported. 

 

And so Capone was finally carted off to prison, first in Atlanta, and then in Alcatraz.  Capone was released from Alcatraz after only 8 years because his health had severely deteriorated from untreated syphilis.  Yeah.  It just keeps getting worse.  It was neurosyphilis.  Syphilis of the brain.  He spent the remainder of his life mentally incapacitated. 

 

And in all that there is a lesson... well, aside from practicing safe sex.  You can sell illegal booze, run illegal gambling rackets, promote prostitution, and kill all the people you want.  But for god’s sake, pay your taxes. 

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