Gotta pay those taxes
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SCOTT JAGOW: For a look back at this week in business history, we open the Marketplace Vault — and we find an infamous crime lord in the courtroom. Here’s Stacey Vanek-Smith.
STACEY VANEK-SMITH: Al Capone was born in Brooklyn to family of modest means, but modest just wasn’t Scarface’s style.
He arrived in Prohibition-era Chicago when he was just 21 and soon gained control of organized crime in the Windy City.
[ Movie clip: There is violence in Chicago, of course. But not by me and not by anybody I employ and I’ll tell you why: ’cause it’s not good business. ]
Actually, it was very good business. Capone pulled in an estimated $100 million a year bootlegging and running gambling and prostitution rings.
Capone soon topped the FBI’s Most Wanted List, but he proved hard to catch, because of his tactics of witness intimidation and bribery.
But, as they say, the only certainties in life are death and taxes and this week back in 1931, Capone was sentenced to 11 years in jail for tax evasion.
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