The FinCEN Files
Let's Know Things
Colin Wright
4.8 • 593 Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
This week we talk about Al Capone, money laundering, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
We also discuss document leaks, tax evasion, and suspicious activity reports.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Back in the prohibition era, United States, so from about 1920 until 1933, when the sale, transportation, importation, and production |
| 0:26.1 | of alcohol was prohibited in the country due to a constitutional ban, there was good money |
| 0:31.8 | to be made if you were willing to make transport and or produce alcohol, willing to do what was necessary to get it into the |
| 0:39.3 | hands and livers of people who wanted it, and were able to do it behind the backs of, or in some |
| 0:44.9 | cases with the paid participation of members of law enforcement. Many of the most popular |
| 0:51.7 | mob stories set in the United States are set during this period, |
| 0:57.1 | because the heyday of organized crime in the states, of the Tommy Gun and Fedora variety, at least, |
| 1:04.2 | was powered by a thriving black market for alcohol and other banned goods. |
| 1:09.6 | These organizations formed, or in some cases expanded, |
| 1:14.4 | to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity between supply and demand that arose as a consequence |
| 1:21.1 | of the ban. It was famously difficult to catch any of the mob bosses behind these exploits in the act at this time, too, |
| 1:29.7 | because a lot of what they were doing was easy to make go away, with a well-placed bribe or |
| 1:35.0 | assassination, and a bad rap could always be deflected to an underling, allowing the bosses |
| 1:40.8 | to continue running free while one of their peons did the time on their behalf. |
| 1:46.3 | Also making the capture and prosecution of these crimes tricky, though, |
| 1:50.4 | was that many of them came with fairly meager punishments, |
| 1:53.9 | and required comparably high levels of proof to actually charge someone. |
| 1:58.7 | Someone like Al Capone, then, who was one of the most successful and notorious gangsters in the United States during this era, |
| 2:06.6 | could publicly flout his crimes, live a lavish lifestyle, and then show very little money on his official accounting records. |
| 2:15.6 | Even to the point that he was charged with vagrancy, with |
| 2:18.9 | homelessness, basically, several times, because despite living the lifestyle of a multimillionaire, |
| 2:25.3 | he didn't have any official income or a home that could be officially linked to him in a way |
... |
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