ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN
- AKA 'ABE THE JUST' - GANGSTER -
G'day folks,
Throughout history, there have been renegades and rebels that seek to increase their wealth and earn respect through madness and chaos. Here is one of them.
Born in 1882 as the son of an affluent and righteous Jewish businessman
known by the nickname “Abe the Just”, Arnold Rothstein decided at a very young
age not to follow in his father’s footsteps. He inherited his father’s
intelligence and none of his conscience, taking to gambling as a child like a
fish to water. All the scoldings in the world couldn’t stop him from rolling
the dice - in fact, they often spurred him on!
Rothstein’s intelligence was off the charts, earning him the nickname “The
Brain”. By the time he was 28, he had already established his own casino in New
York and was heavily invested in a horse racing track, where his reputation for
fixing outcomes first sprouted. He spent the next few years carefully building
a network of spies, informants, and enforcers, making a fortune and reaching
millionaire status by the age of 30. He was among the first to exploit
Prohibition for profit through bootlegging and black liquor sales.
Despite a
few brushes with the law on match-fixing charges among many other things,
Rothstein never saw the inside of a jail cell (after witnesses and evidence
always mysteriously disappeared). By the time of his death in 1928, Rothstein
had amassed the largest criminal organization in the country, filled with other
notable gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Dutch Shultz. He died of a gunshot
wound after a poker game went fatally wrong.
Clancy's comment: I'm always curious to learn how some of these crooks died.
I'm ...
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