In the 20’s, the Mafia were the kingpins in the crime business, having taken advantage of prohibition of alcohol to make most of their money. The Mafia made most of their money by selling bootleg versions of alcohol, but they made money through various different ways, none of which were legal. They used many illegal activities to make money, most of which were in big plots to get the money, such as bribing and blackmailing politicians and officers, which was probably one of their biggest schemes to get money.
They had many other, smaller, ways to get money for their organization. For example, they hijacked trucks filled with cargo, or bribed dock workers to cause an “accident” to get the exported cargo, both of which gave the Mafia large sums of money for each. The Mafia also used gambling and prostitution to get money quicker, or loan sharked (giving money to people in order to get more
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Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Throughout the novel, it talks about bootlegging and the mystery of how Gatsby became rich. Many of the examples came from the people that were at Gatsby’s parties, like in the portion, where Tom states that “Who is this Gatsby anyhow?... Some big bootlegger?” (Fitzgerald 107). There was also the reveal near the end of the book about how Gatsby became rich, also said by Tom, where he says “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter” (Fitzgerald 133). Given the fact that during the time alcohol was sold illegally because of the prohibition law, meaning that you could get tons of money by selling that at the time, and, again, stated by Tom while in Gatsby’s party, where he says “ A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know” (Fitzgerald 107). Those are all the connections I found of The Great Gatsby and the ways that the mafia made