The Berlin Mafia was the organized crime syndicate that controlled the Berlin underworld during the Weimar era. The Berlin Mafia rose to power during the economic uncertainty and political chaos of Interwar Germany, with several crime bosses developing their own rackets and territories. While Bela and Sandor Gosztony's group smuggled 35,000 bottles of arrack a year during the 1920s, Edgar Kasabian oversaw the blackmail of prominent politicians such as Konrad Adenauer and invested his illicit money in the Babelsberg Film Studio and in the Moka Efti nightclub. Kasabian, as the boss of the prized Mitte district, was the dominant partner in the alliance, whose constituents occasionally feuded, but more often worked together. In 1929, Kasabian had Sandor Gosztony's tongue cut out to punish him for selling cheap liquor to customers instead of the promised arrack, and he fed Sandor's tongue to Bela to send a message. Months later, the Gosztony brothers had their revenge by sabotaging the production of the film Demons of Passion, financed by Kasabian, by killing the lead actress Betty Winter with a sabotaged spotlight. As the Berlin Police believed that Winter's death was not an accident, the film company was not able to collect insurance, resulting in heavy financial losses and Kasabian nearly losing his mansion to the bank. The Gosztony brothers, with the help of corrupt policeman Leopold Ulrich, nearly succeeded in framing Kasabian's lieuenant Walter Weintraub for the murders, but Ulrich was arrested by the police after his duplicity was discovered, and he gave up the Gosztony brothers while deliriously speaking to an imaginary press conference. The police proceeded to arrest Sandor for being the murderer of Winter, Felix Krempin, Tilly Brooks, Jonny Bündner, and Vera Lohmann, and Kasabian and Weintraub bribed the police to ignore them as they slaughtered a captured Sandor with Thompson submachine guns.