to the general public Arnold Rothstein was a gangster about whom little is known usually his name only comes up when they talk about mafosi like Maya Lansky or Lucky Luciano and mention rotstein as their mentor and investor but this is only the first lower of the multifaceted personality of this Jewish businessman peeling the onion we first discovered that rodstein was involved in the ascent of at least a dozen leading prohibition gangsters it's then revealed to us that he is one of the biggest gamblers in the United States and had managed to fix the results of the World Series but that's not all digging deeper we find evidence that rotstein had serious political connections and was an intermediary between the authorities and the criminal community and finally he was one of the first to set up his own drug smuggling Network today we'll discuss a gangster who managed to turn everything he touched into money he was a gambler a casino winner a bootlegger a drug dealer a lone shark and every new Enterprise would lift his net worth to a new level and the more money he received the more he invested opening up new types of criminal activity and new ways to illegally make money if you want to learn how one man managed to build the underworld of the 20th century then meet Arnold rodstein on the other side of the law all the previous subjects in my channel had come from poor families of immigrants who had just arrived in America they had experienced firsthand all the charms of poverty and for them crime was the shortest road to a better life Arnold rotstein took that path from a very early age Arnold who would later be called the brain and the big bankroll was not an immigrant his grandfather had arrived in America in the middle of the 19th century and his father was born in America so his family had already gone through the stages of adaptation ation and poverty before Arnold was born in 1882 his parents Abraham and Esther rotstein lived in New York and were typical Orthodox Jews they honored the culture and religion of their ancestors and tried to instill the same Outlook in their children of whom there were five and even though Abraham managed to feed such a crowd and was a successful entrepreneur to the point that the rotstein family could well be called Rich nonetheless there was no way to be able to give enough attention to each child at least that is how it seemed to Arnold who developed an extremely selfish and jealous attitude as a child the future big Bank CR hated his older brother and believed that he got all the best and more Arnold shifted the blame for this to his parents gradually a child's discontent began to turn into teenage rebellion and if the elder brother wanting to please his father went to study to become a rabbi then Arnold despite his parents would deny deny Jewish values take the opposite extreme position and call himself primarily an American this Disobedience to his parents's intentions resulted in the fact that not deprived of mental abilities rotstein was extremely reluctant to study out the Jewish religious school the only subject that he recognized as having any value there was mathematics in the other classes his main intention was to come up with schemes to avoid learning anything and to outwit the teachers obviously rotstein could not last long in the traditional religious educational system in addition in parallel with pranks and manipulations of his teachers Arnold began to gamble an activity that combined his two main passions at the time love for numbers and Rebellion against the Outlook of his father after all gambling was strictly prohibited in Jewish religious teachings however in the New York of those years there was no strict ban on such entertainment for those who would try their luck you could even say more the Big Apple of the late 19th and the early 20th century was Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one where gambling was the most innocent of sins displayed there due to the fact that criminals and the authorities were intertwined with each other like lovers who had not seen each other in years the streets of New York were an explosive mixture of brothels drug dens and gambling establishments seasoned with corrupt cops and politicians and decorated by the early forms of organized crime the wave of indignation about the decline in Morality was just beginning to gain strength there were no ban on drugs there was no ban on alcohol and power was often obtained not by force of persuasion but by force of coercion bribery and fraud it's not surprising that officials not only gladly covered up dark Deeds but often were the owners of brothels or gambling houses themselves it was a time when dark and shadowy money making activities quietly went on in broad daylight in such a world even teenagers like young rotstein could easily find places to place a bet Arnold hung around the local bookmakers and since he was not allowed inside due to his age he tried to attract the attention of people inside in order to bet on his chosen horse more often than not he succeeded and having made a bet he then waited impatiently outside for the end of the race the only catch was that the bookmaker went out to him only if the horse lost and in the case of a bet he had won they simply stopped noticing him having fallen for such tricks several times in different establishments rotstein via such bitter experience came to understand how the gambling business really works and who actually makes money in it however understanding and applying the acquired knowledge are two different things Arnold still continued to play relying solely on his ability to memorize and analyze so he bypassed book makers and switched to dice and card games with his peers such hobbies and his lack of desire to learn could not Escape his father's notice and so the father decided to take his son into the family business pulling him out of school at the age of 16 and sending him around the country as a Salesman for the company of course nothing good came out of it in the end Arnold lost all the company wees and expense money at card games in Chicago in 1899 returning to New York he sold some personal belongings and used that money to rent a hotel room and avoid his father you could say that the teenage rebellion ended in Victory after this incident the father left him alone and basically gave up on him in the future they would resume communication but Arnold would never become a full-fledged member of the family again however ever at that time young rotstein was not disturbed by this and actually consider this a positive Advantage he had finally thrown off the shackles of his parents and could do whatever he wanted and he wanted to play to keep a roof overhead he got a job as a cigar salesman while devoting all his free time to improving his playing skills drawing his hand at everything where you could hit the jackpot from playing cards to shooting pool over the course of a couple of years rotstein visited almost all the gambling houses in New York and gained invaluable experience in how the business works now he knew which establishments were best avoided and with whom it were better not to sit at the table but most importantly Arnold acquired dozens of acquaintances and arranged to play on the side that never loses new friends began to invite him to games where the loser was known in advance and rotstein readily agreed agreed without any pangs of conscience as such predetermination fit into his new philosophy of minimizing risks the most important acquaintance he made in such institutions was of the informal leader of tamy Hall Tim Sullivan Sullivan had a tremendous influence in the political landscape of New York and was also the owner of several gambling houses he and rodstein went to the same billyard room and from time to time played with each other while discussing ing various matters naturally in such conversations the subject of gambling would pop up and Sullivan was impressed by Arnold's knowledge in this matter he gave rotstein a job as a manager in one of his establishments this position allowed Arnold to better understand how the game works not only from the side of the player but also from the side of the owner of the establishment at the same time he gave him a regular income many times higher than his salary in the cigar store but Arnold rotstein would never have earned his big bankroll nickname if he had stopped there having received the necessary experience a good income and most importantly influential friends he began to try his hand at opening gambling establishments on his own it is clear that his first Enterprises of this kind were not luxurious casinos with hundreds of thousands and profits but only small places where a couple of dozen people would Gather in an empty Warehouse he equipped a room for playing dice and also rented a small apartment where he arranged card games not only did such Enterprises bring profit to Arnold as the owner of the establishments but he also became a lone shark loaning money to losing visitors at very high rates and to ensure that all the funds would be guaranteed to return back to rot Stein's pocket he made friends with the influential gangster of those years monk Eastman so if someone decid decided not to repay the loan then Eastman's boys would use every possible lever to persuade the delinquent and the big bankroll would happily share the profit with the boys however despite all the previously mentioned money-making schemes in which rotstein minimized risks as much as possible he was still primarily a player and if you add to this his egocentric nature this mixture often made him plunge into extremely dubious Adventures such as the one of 1908 in those days Arnold moved in the circles of an informal group of intellectuals among whom he earned the reputation of an extremely arrogant and selfish person and in order to put him in his place one of the members of the circle invited a pool shark to New York and then having conspired with the others in the group at the next group meeting he began to belittle rot Stein's abilities at pool and to EXT all those of his pooled shark friend thereby he manipulated Arnold to challenge the pooled shark the next day they met at a pool table and played nonstop for a total of 32 hours the winner of each game would receive $500 in order for you to understand the scale of this contest more than $3,300 in 2023 was at stake in each game and although by the end rotstein remained in the Black by 50 ,000 in 2023 this case demonstrates well that despite his excellent understanding of the world of gambling Arnold was often overcome by his emotions and followed their lead he challenged a person without knowing his true abilities and therefore was stuck without the ability to minimize risks because of his lack of the most basic intelligence about his opponent in principle rot Stein's entire life was a war between emotions and reason he knew perfectly well how to make money he could accurately pick profitable Enterprises but he could not control his emotions at all which often resulted in rash acts one of which would eventually destroy him however Arnold's demise was still far off in the distance for the moment his calculation dominated his emotional impulses yes from time to time he lost money on bets or cards and often times was left with only a couple of in his pocket but this was not because he had lost but because his money was constantly in circulation he issued loans invested in the ventures of acquaintances and constantly put money to work thereby accumulating $112,000 by 1910 that was enough to open a full-fledged gambling establishment the only problem was that by this time gambling in New York City had become illegal and Arnold needed political protection so he went to to Tim Sullivan who agreed to help on only one condition rotstein would have to take in Sullivan and a guy named Willie sheer as partners the big bankroll agreed and another $24,000 were added to his $112,000 with those funds Arnold rented a three-story Mansion setting up a bar on the first floor a gambling casino on the second and he moved in on the third under the terms of the agreement with Sullivan rodstein managed the house on his own and Sullivan and Shear only received a percentage of the earnings and though rodstein was completely satisfied with everything Shia saw deception everywhere and believed that Arnold was skimming most of the proceeds for himself therefore when the first large bet of $440,000 was lost in the casino Shia decided to appropriate all the money for himself in order to settle scores with his partner he took the check drawn by the loser but having cashed out the money money he did not give rotstein his share that only made things worse for sheer the big bankroll didn't make a fuss or ask his criminal acquaintances to shake down his partner for the money he went to Tim Sullivan and told him that sheer could keep the money for himself but that his stake in the establishment should go to rotstein Sullivan reasoned that this was a completely Fair resolution of the issue and gave the go ahead to Arnold's idea who transferred the ex i s to paper and then caught a drunk Willie in a bar and with the words you can keep the money for yourself just sign this piece of paper for Sullivan slipped him a contract which he signed without reading and so with a stroke of a pen the big bankroll doubled his profits from his casino and kicked out an annoying partner thus laying a solid foundation for his meteoric rise for the next decade the name of Arnold rotstein would appear wherever gambling took place and his scams would be remembered not only by contemporaries for their sums but would also remain in the anals of History surprising with their sophistication and audacity after receiving the share of his former partner's profits rodstein began to redirect it to improving the house within a couple of months he radically changed the situation turning an unremarkable Place into a gambling esta M of the highest class patronized by the rich who were ready to part with their money of course rotstein gave them a little push in the direction of his establishment he hired dozens of people who moved in high circles but who did not themselves have impressive fortunes and therefore were not averse to earning extra money and asked them to mention his Casino more often such rotstein agents would receive 10% of all losses incurred by the people they had directed to the casino most often this role was played either by pretty girls or guys who were master manipulators and the rich suckers who were driven to slaughter in this way like sheep would not only lose impressive sums but then later advised their friends to go to the excellent rotstein gambling house the $40,000 loss appropriated by Willie Shear considered to be a huge loss at that time became quite common at Arnold's casino because the new audience was ready to lose 100 ,000 or $200,000 at a time it was only necessary to P them a drink at the right time surround them with a couple of beauties and they would do the rest themselves however as Rodin's business was booming a storm was brewing in the justice system that could easily level everything that Arnold had built with such effort as I said earlier the entire industry of Vice which included gambling operated in New York under the the patronage of the democratic party organization called Tam Hall this organization controlled by the police which was already directly engaged in collecting money for protection by 1910 the bribes and protection money totaled the equivalent of $40 million in 2023 a year and it seemed that it would take more than a dozen years for such a racket to collapse but as history has shown this impression was deceptive it only took a couple of years and one impulsive snickering man named Charles Becker Becker was a typical bad cop constant abuse of power and Corruption schemes that is he was an ideal candidate to become the main person collecting money from gambling houses brothels and Drug danss Becka worked in the field using his Mastery of persuasion to get owners of illegal Enterprises to pay good money to their protectors therefore when he was once again caught up in a scandal Tam Hall and the police barass would excuse him and release him back to the street again Time After Time avoiding well-deserved punishment so often Becka began to feel invulnerable therefore his methods of collecting protection money became more and more ruthless and cruel and the conviction that everyone should work exclusively under his authority became almost non-negotiable in his mind so when Tim Sullivan began to lose his mind due to illness and retired Becca went on the offensive against Sullivan's friends who had previously been Untouchables that's how he ran into the owner of a gambling house by the name of Herman Rosenthal he beat Rosenthal raided his establishment and tried his best to intimidate him but Rosenthal still refused to pay and then he went to the editor of the local newspaper and reported the lawlessness of the police before that Tam Hall and the police authorities for the sake of all times and rosenthal's friendship with Tim Sullivan tried to somehow resolve the conflict between Becka and Rosenthal but after Rosenthal attempted to expose Becka tamon strongly advised Rosenthal to shut up and give in Rosenthal of course did not listen which untied the hands of an embittered policeman Becca hired several gangsters to kill Rosenthal but the way he planned the assassination was the height of stupidity and arrogance four Bandits drove up to the restaurant where Rosenthal was leaving and shot him in front of a couple of dozen Witnesses among whom were several policemen yet everything would be fine because specka could easily shut up any cop however the day before Rosenthal had visited Republican prosecutor Charles Witman who was not controlled by Tam and reported everything that he had told the newspapers so so this case was pursued at a break neck base and Charles Becker was soon put in the dock on charges of organizing the murder as a result this case received wide publicity and clearly demonstrated to the public the corruption of the police and the lawlessness that had previously been hushed up although this case failed to establish Tam Hall's involvement in this racket it broke Tam's control of the police now the vice squads began to work according to their intended purpose which meant that the owners of gambling houses could no longer work as openly as before that's how one murder broke a huge system that had run for decades but where some lose others will certainly gain and Arnold rotstein who seemed destined to go under with tamy Hall if they could be proven to have been involved in the protection of gambling instead only increased his influence as the Democrats came away unscathed all the public outcry around Becka did not just inhibit further police lawlessness it made it no longer possible for politicians to protect illegal Enterprises as openly as before now tamy Hall needed trusted private citizens who could connect the criminal world to the authorities with minimal involvement of officials rotstein who was familiar with both worlds became one of those people if politicians needed to find a person for a dirty job they'd go to R Stein as would gangsters who needed to solve their problems with the law thanks to this position Arnold's Authority grew on both sides of the law that was a situation that he gladly made the most of for example when one day a car was stolen from one of his friends one call was enough for Rin to get the car returned safe and sound within an hour along with an apology to the girl for the inconvenience caused thereby or when police raided the apartment where rotstein was playing a card game and rodstein without understanding what was happening shot and wounded one of the raiding police officers in the hand Not only was rotstein immediately released but the police apologized for the disruption of the game the subsequent trial found him not guilty while one of the policemen was found guilty of giving false testimony however it is noteworthy that rotstein tried not to abuse his new position real realing that even in such conditions he did not have complete immunity in order not to push his luck too far he began to look for new ways to make money on gambling because it had almost become impossible to openly work in New York avoiding the attention of the police was extremely simple instead of holding the games in one place and risking complaints by the locals new locations were assigned each time most often in pre- rented hotel rooms this type of business was called called the floating game however such an Enterprise could not become rot Stein's main stay he held floating games purely for wealthy acquaintances his main gambling income came from casinos in the suburbs where it was still possible to work openly he opened the first such institution called Holly arms on Long Island in the village of Long Beach this place included a hotel in a casino and was located in the middle of well-kept landscaping in which a street flowed rotstein lured the best groupers in New York and the chef of one of the leading Golden Apple restaurants there turning Holly arms into an elite institution it was a kind of country club for the rich where among other things they could lose a couple of thousand in a pleasant atmosphere the second even more luxurious was a casino called the creek located in the resort town of Saratoga Springs here the Casino was even more luxurious and impressive than at Holly arms and visitors here lost not just a few thousand but tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars the establishments turned out to be so successful that in just a couple of years they made a million outout of rotstein giving him the opportunity to calmly do what he loved most bet on the horse races for a while he even did it on his own track called hav The Grace which he owned in partnership with several rich people but rot Stein's murky schemes made his Partners look bad and they eventually forced him to sell his stake and I must say that such measures taken by other shareholders were not groundless most of the time arold played dishonestly for example there were not uncommon cases when right before a race on which rotstein had placed a bet the jockey of a leading horse was suddenly changed of course that led to completely different results than the bookmakers had predicted a good example was the incident that occurred in 1917 at the races in Laurel where the two Champions AIS and Omar kayam met Kim had won the competition in the past and many had blamed the badly performing jockey of hourless for this and in Laurel 5 minutes before the start of the race and quite unexpectedly for everyone this jockey was replaced by another and hourless one which brought Rothstein $300,000 and although it was not possible to prove the existence of fraud such a large bet on an outsider made clear that Arnold had inside information in less significant races which attracted less attention than the competition of Champions rodstein went to more Brazen measures in everything he could bribe jockeys to hold the horse at the right moment or give money to Grooms who inserted small sponges into the horse's nostrils to make breathing difficult all these tricks made it possible to minimize the risk of losing money as much as possible but they were so to speak common tricks Al used by many other dishonest players the case of an unprecedented scam performed by rotstein which no one else repeated occurred in 1921 at the races in the aqueduct by this time Arnold already owned his stable where among other things there was a horse named side which until that moment was practically unknown because it had not yet raced often nonetheless it showed excellent results in training rotstein decided to bet on it first he called side reel into a race where his opponent's past results were clearly lower than his and secondly the horse was brought from Arnold's Stables literally 5 minutes before the start of the competition with these actions rotstein confused the bookmakers as much as possible not only did they not know anything about the horse but even at the last moment they do not know whether it would take part in the race at all since it was not present at the track that's why the chances of side Rael winning at the beginning of betting were listed as 50 to1 against it winning plus we must add the fact that at the time bookmakers could accept bets only orally and on that day there were about 20,000 people in aqueduct so the 100 $20,000 that rotstein bet and side reel via his agents did not arouse any suspicion and Arnold pulled in $850,000 in profit at the end of that race in today's money that would be about10 million however rotstein was not always able to fix the race and luck often left him for others which is why the large bankroll could lose tens and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars in One race so in cases in which Arnold could not rig the results and minimize risks he hired a team of professional analysts who taking into account many factors included humidity and wind speed and direction bet rot Stein's Money receiving a percentage of his winnings the most remarkable aspect of this was not that this approach really brought profit to Arnold but how he came to it all early one morning rotstein went to the kitchen in his house to get a drink of water and discovered that a man with a gun was rumaging through his cabinets in search of money The Uninvited Guest did not look like a typical robber which naturally did not escape the eye of the big bankroll who knew this class firsthand this guy turned out to be an ordinary teacher from California Will Davis who had arrived in New York with $1,000 and his own betting system on which he was going to make money but had been robbed immediately on the day of his arrival after that he was upset and killed time in a bar thinking about what he should do next there he learned about a rich casino owner who lived without security and kept thousands of dollars in cash so David got a gun somewhere and went straight to rodstein Arnold managed to get the whole story out of Davis during the time when he went to get some money for the unfortunate robber after that he offered Davis a choice he could either take the $11,000 he demanded or if his sister were really as good as he said it was then rotstein would be ready to give him hundreds of times more and pay a percentage of the profits Davis chose the second option and proved to the big bank roll the validity of the analytical approach to betting on horses it's also worth noting that rotstein was not only betting on horses he was interested in everything except football which he considered difficult to predict for example there is a story that Arnold was involved in rigging a boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Jim T which brought him $500,000 but the most famous story involved the rigging of the 199 world series between Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago White Socks for the viewers who don't know about baseball the rigging of the World Series is equivalent in scale to the rigging of the Champions League finals the Stanley Cup or the NBA Playoffs the story itself dates back to the middle of 1919 when several white socks players the white socks were favored to win the World Series that year decided to throw the series for a good bribe as they were unhappy with their salaries and the unwillingness of team owner charles kisy to raise them born as a theory in the summer by September 1919 this idea was already beginning to become reality when several white socks players met in Boston with a bookmaker named Joe Sullivan who after listening to their offer agreed to pay them 8 $1,000 this amount in today's dollars would be about $1 million and Sullivan did not have such funds so after shaking hands with the players he immediately contacted his acquaintance in New York who you guessed it was Arnold rotstein Sullivan described the situation to rotstein asked for a loan and promised to keep Arnold informed of all developments so that he could also make a profitable bet naturally the big bankroll agreed and from that moment on was embroiled in the biggest scandal in the history of baseball however as it later turned out Sullivan was not the first person for whom the socks had offered to throw the World Series a few days before the meeting in Boston the white socks players had been in New York where they offered the same deal to two small gamblers and part-time former baseball players named Bill Burns and Bill Mahar asking them for $100,000 looking for more investors in the adventure Burns and Mahar eventually both went to the same rodstein Arnold who had already sent money to Sullivan nevertheless agreed to talk to them appointing a meeting place in a crowded restaurant after listening to the offer of novice swindlers the large bankroll demonstratively made a scandal in public shouting that he would never get involved in the proposed Adventure behind this performance was rot Stein's expectation that and doing business with Sullivan he was sure that Joe would operate quietly but two small players even if they could come up with the money would likely get caught somehow anyway so a demonstrative refusal to them in public was forstein a trump card up his sleeve in case the scam became public however after refusing Burns in public Arnold immediately sent his man Abe atel to him atel gave Burns $100,000 and said that that rotstein had changed his mind why did he do it you ask it's all very simple having given the money to Sullivan he understood that Sullivan would not give it to the players right away but he would use most of it to play bets therefore a scenario was quite likely in which the white socks players might consider themselves deceived and refuse to comply with their end of the bargain but if in addition to Sullivan they were offered another $100,000 by other people people then greed should have outweighed any suspicions on paper everything seemed to be perfect solivan promised the players $10,000 after each lost game and the remainder after the final loss atel who acted on behalf of rodstein promised the players through Burns and mahog $20,000 after each lost game and the remainder at the End of the World Series the White Soxs were happy with these deals and through the first two games after five games that that would have to be lost to lose the series to win the series a team had to win five games however instead of the $60,000 due from two groups of gamblers the socks had received only $20,000 the baseball players in a rage demanded their money from Burns and mahog which they in turn tried to beg from AEL but Abe didn't give a dime in addition Sullivan who also owed money to the baseball players did not contact them then either so without warning they won game three of the series knocking out the low money Burns and mahog who were betting everything they had on every single game after that this couple simply disappeared into the air leaving only Joe Sullivan in the game who did not lose anything from one white socks victory since he had bet on their defeat in the series as a whole but who could no longer allow them to win after the third game Sullivan contacted the baseball players and paid them another $20,000 promising not to disappear again and pay on time which of course he lied about after the third white socks loss Sullivan went missing again and didn't pay instead the baseball players and their families began to receive threats from gangsters so they eventually threw the series suffering the last defeat in the eighth game of the series and while inside this scam everyone was trying to cheat each other and rake in more money outside the public began to suspect that something was a Miss in Boston Sullivan had bet large sums of money against the white socks in New York rodstein had bet over $300,000 against the white socks through his agents and in Cincinnati Abe atel had bet on the defeat of the white socks in every single game the Reds White Sox rivalry was put under intense scrutiny with many journalists and uninvolved bookmakers openly talking about the corrupt ion of the series however the public outcry and the subsequent trial did not affect rotstein in any way yes he was involved in this case and even appeared before the court but thanks to political connections and precautions taken in advance which maximally distanced him from the epicenter of events he did not suffer any punishment having received according to the most conservative estimates at least $1 million in profit from this scam and what is most remarkable Arnold had essentially earned this million by proxy Sullivan Burns and mahog had come to him for the money and then they had taken care of everything on their own rodstein only had to skim the cream off the top and I must say that this was not an isolated Case by the mid 1910s Arnold was already living up to his big bankroll moniker and he was approached every month by dozens of people who needed money for completely different purposes on SC scams on bets on living until the next paycheck and even for payments for the murder of an Unfaithful husband rotstein gave to everyone and then took it back with interest according to his lawyer Arnold was as obsessed with lone sharking as he was with gambling or betting he could spend all day in his favorite Cafe where people came to describe their ideas and get a loan and then spend just as much time recovering his money with interest for rotstein usually was also a form of gambling where he put up money and then claimed the jackpots in the form of Interest or something else for example several Broadway producers took out loans for their Productions but their Productions ended up failing so they were unable to pay back the money rotstein agreed to forgive them the debt if they'd ensure their lives and give their policies to him they agreed to the deal with the devil and put their lives at the mercy of the Lar bankroll who could easily order their murder if his further requests were not met USU also brought rotstein shares in many Enterprises of other people who could not pay back loans and time but were ready to share part of their businesses that applied to both the legal sector and in the shadow one from one gambling house in New York in 10 years time Arnold rotstein made his way to a Fortune of tens of millions of dollars by the 1920s when prohibition was introduced he was coming up as one of the most serious players in the Big Apple crime scene he had influential friends on both sides of the law as well as the authority of a person who would never refuse to help even if he took his percentage for it and soon this Fame would lead dozens of criminals to his door many of whom would later forever leave the marks on the history of crime as I said at the beginning of this video New York at the beginning of the 20th century was the embodiment of Sodom and Gomorrah but by the 1920s the time for public Vice was coming to an end first part of the public had rebelled against prostitution and it had gone into the Shadows then it was the turn of gambling houses which had to evolve into floating games after the drugs were outlawed and finally in 1920 alcohol was banned for the initiators of these changes all this looked like a victory like the beginning of the transformation of society into something new bright and not burdened by sin the problem was that the society itself which was not asked about any of this was completely unwilling to give up their sins and especially those that were prohibited by the 18th Amendment where there is demand there will soon be Supply and thousands of guys with a the gun in their belts all over the country began to bootle naturally the vast majority of such businessmen did not have the money to expand on a grand scale many were satisfied with being small town bootleggers and those who weren't went to people like Arnold Rothstein thanks to his Fame as a man with money ready to lend to them during prohibition the big bankroll had a hand in the development of more than a dozen gangsters among whom were such notorious personalties like Maya Lansky Bugsy seagull Lucky Luciano Frank Costello Bill DWI Dutch schults Jacob Shapiro Jack Diamond waxy Gordon and Maxi Greenberg most often of course rotstein acted as an outside assistant for these personalities but the last three characters were for sometime very closely tied to the big Bank role in alcohol smuggling after all loans are loans and Arnold was not going to miss such an excellent opportunity to earn money with waxy Gordon and Maxi Greenberg he entered into a partnership agreement when they came to him asking for money at first rotstein even controlled the entire smuggling operation himself but then realizing how many problems bootlegging brings with its constant robberies and shootings he faded into the background only receiving a percentage of the profits he had the same situation with Jack Diamond who in initially worked for Arnold as a personal security guard then retrained as an escort of alcohol trucks and then received funding from rotstein and independently engaged in bootlegging as you can see the big Bank R deliberately distanced himself from alcohol smuggling putting it in other hands and remaining in the shadows despite the good profits he did not like the fact that bootlegging had too many variables for it to run smoothly it required big ship small boats trucks warehouses and bribes to police officers Customs officers and Coast Guards and who knows who else and if something suddenly fell apart then the whole operation went down the drain and don't forget about the lav of boot leers for stealing from other boot leggers drugs are another matter from one suitcase of magic powder you could earn as much as from a dozen ships with booze in addition the competition in this business was 100 times lower than in the trade of illegal alcohol after rot Stein's death the drug enforcement agency would call his Network the largest in the history of the country by the time Arnold bought heroin in Europe and China and then smuggled it into the states through various means in Europe two men named Don Collins and Harry Martha worked for him and in China Sydney Styer Jacob kenberg and George erner bought drugs and then shipped the product to New York City where rotstein sold it to other gangsters who were already retailing to heroin addicts in addition to drug smuggling the big Bank role was also in at the beginning of Union racketeering making a significant contribution to the introduction of organized crime into the clothing District unions and although employers and workers hired gangsters to provide support and protection during strikes even before rotstein got into to the ACT it was his funding that marked the beginning of the full penetration of gangsters into unions it all started with the fact that in 1924 the Communists turned to the big Bank Ru with a request for a loan for the needs of the party Arnold agreed and gave them $1.8 million at 25% per anom and also help them find a Common Language with the police during strikes and strong guys to resist if the police moved to disperse the strikkers in order for these strong guys to avoid suspicion they were accepted into the Communist party and trade unions and of course these thugs obeyed none other than Arnold rodstein who could use them to pump money from the unions into his pocket at first this racket was headed by Jack diamond and Jacob Organo by the end of the 1920s they would be replaced by Lewis bu galter and Jacob Shapiro who after the death of rot Ste would take over most of the clothing unions if you look at how the 1920s began for Arnold prohibition drug smuggling Union racketeering it could be said that nothing foreshadowed trouble he still found new Enterprises as before and earned money from most of them but in 1928 he hit a rough spot at the beginning of the year he lost about a million dollar on unsuccessful real estate Investments and then began to regularly lose large sums of money Maya Lansky said that rotstein during this period was like a man possessed as if a gambling fever had entered his brain which did not give him the opportunity to stop it could be said that emotions knocked out the rational part of the big bankr despite his calculating mind having dominated him for so long it's also worth noting even though it's not often mentioned that people around Arnold began to notice Strange Behaviors in this period behavior is very reminiscent of the habits of drug addicts and Rodin's wife noticed that this year her husband's Social Circle changed dramatically if earlier he had spent more time among politicians and Wealthy businessmen now he surrounded himself with gangsters like Jack diamond and Maya Lansky whom he had previously only considered to be useful acquaintances and all this foreshadowed only one thing sooner or later with such a life rotstein would run into serious trouble however no one could have expected that an ordinary game of cards would be fatal for Arnold in early September 1928 the big Bank R took part in a card game organized by George McManus which was also attended by Alvin Titanic Thompson two smalltime gangsters Meer and Sam Boston as well as two gamblers Martin Bowie and Nathan Nate Redmond for a while during the game regardless of the hand rotstein held he could not win a single hand with a decent pot and started to suspect that he was being swindled each time he bet more and more and finally holding a great hand raised his b to $4,000 but lost again then he exploded and began to shout and accuse those present of cheating and then quickly left promising that they would not receive a scent of the $320,000 he had lost that day Arnold did not lie he really was not going to pay believing that he had been deceived however judge McManus who as organizer of the game was somewhat responsible for rotstein was determined to get every penny every day the office of the big bankroll began to receive dozens of calls calling for him to pay up and McManus himself at each meeting with rotstein personally tried to convince him so when George called Arnold and invited him to his hotel room the big bank roll did not expect trouble however it happened he went up to mcmanus' room in the late evening of November 5th and came down less than an hour later with a bullet wound to the stomach in the lobby of the hotel he was discovered by a poter who immediately called the police and an ambulance when Law Enforcement Officers arrived at the hotel rotstein did not say a word to them about what what had happened he repeated the same behavior in the hospital where he was taken by an ambulance at first glance this looks strange since Arnold had previously made reports to the police on offenses directed against him and he had no special commitment to the criminal Code of Silence so let's examine more closely the event that took place when the police investigation began at first a pistol which had been used in the shooting was found below the windows of the hotel and then directly in the room where rotstein went they found a coat with the initials of George mcmanis but after that strange things began to happen the prince from the gun disappeared there were no traces of blood along the entire length of Arnold's path from the room to the lobby and almost no one was looking for McManus himself even though he was the main suspect the impression was given that someone was putting sticks into the wheel of Justice to understand who benefited from this you need to take a closer look at George mcmanis Who as it turned out had no less influential political connections than Arnold rotstein McManus like rotstein was a kind of intermediary between the authorities and the underworld having important acquaintances in Tam Hall which ultimately saved him from prison although all the evidence and several witnesses clearly pointed to his guilt therefore it's not surprising in that rotstein was silent about the shooter after all this would not be evidence against some petty gangster McManus would certainly have been backed up by tamy Hall and this would have threatened the possible loss of his own political patrons okay we figured out why rotstein was silent and why mcmanis was eventually acquitted but what actually happened in the room if you add up all the testimonies all the evidence found by the police as well as the facts that they ignored then the following chain of events is derived McManus checked into the hotel in the morning of November 5th having quarreled with his wife the day before a little later two Associates visited him with whom he spent a noisy time pumping himself up with strong drinks by the evening having had more than enough to drink he decided to invite rotstein to talk around 11:00 p.m. Arnold entered the room a convers began which then turned into raised voices after that either McManus himself or one of his friends broke down and pulled out a gun either intentionally or accidentally shooting rodstein and then the associates dumbfounded by what had happened throw their weapons out the window and quickly leave the hotel room it all happened so fast that McManus put on rot Stein's coats which looks like his own then Arnold ascended with a wound into the lobby of the the hotel from where he was taken to the hospital where he would stay for a day on November 6th doctors declared the death of Arnold rotstein due to damage to internal organs approximately 600 people were present when he was buried in the Queen's Cemetery the sudden death of the big bank roll caused confusion among the people associated with him the hunt for his records and documents immediately began which would cause inconvenience to many important people and the most cunning clothes Associates immediately snatched up fat pieces of his fortune but that's a completely different story this was the biography of Arnold rodstein Gambler casino owner boot leer drug dealer lone shark and the most notorious venture capitalist in the Underworld during his not too long life he managed to put his hand to everything that would feed the criminal world during the entire 20th century
