Arnold "the Brain" Rothstein (17 January 1882-6 November 1928) was the boss of the Jewish Mob in New York City during the 1920s and the first man to take advantage of Prohibition; he was also famous for fixing the 1919 World Series. Rothstein was one of the richest criminals of all time, amassing a fortune of over $125,000,000 through gambling, bootlegging, and racketeering. Ironically, Rothstein would fall into debt himself and be shot and killed by George McManus after refusing to pay McManus after losing a controversial poker game.
Biography[]
Gambler and businessman[]
Rothstein in 1920
Arnold Rothstein was born in New York City, New York on 17 January 1882, the son of Jewish immigrants. Rothstein was good at mathematics, but he was never interested in school, and he was jealous of the attention that his family gave to his brother, who was studying to become a rabbi. Rothstein began shooting dice when he was young, and he moved to the Tenderloin district of Manhattan to establish an important gambling casino in 1910. Rothstein also invested in the Havre de Grace, Maryland horse racing track, fixing several of the matches; by age 30, he was a billionaire. In 1919, he hired some men to bribe Chicago White Sox players to perform poorly during the 1919 World Series, fixing the game and winning $350,000 ($5,017,196 in 2016) in one day. In 1921, he won $500,000 ($6,096,005 in 2016) after fixing the Travers Stakes.
Prohibition[]
Rothstein in 1921
When Prohibition began on 16 January 1920, Rothstein was one of the first criminals to plan out the smuggling of liquor into the United States. He invested in a number of speakeasies and brought in Canadian Club Whiskey as a partner of Lucky Luciano, an Italian criminal. His partnerships would later include Meyer Lansky, Legs Diamond, and Dutch Schultz, and he became a founding father of organized crime in America. Rothstein became an ally of Tammany Hall, and he mediated between rival gangsters as well as politicians. At the height of his power, he owned $10,000,000, which now totals up to over $125,145,502.
Downfall[]
Rothstein let money get the better of him, however. On 1 November 1928, he lost a high-stakes poker game to George McManus, owing him $320,000 ($4,500,000 in 2016). Rothstein claimed that the game was fixed, and he refused to pay up. Three days later, McManus entered one of Rothstein's meetings at the Park Central Hotel and fatally shot him, and Rothstein died at Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital at the age of 46.