Eliot Ness is known as the man who got Al Capone, a reputation that followed him throughout his life and exists today in films such as The Untouchables, books such as Torso and Chasing Eliot Ness and the television series The Untouchables from the early 1960s. But was Ness really the man who put Capone behind bars?
What many people do not know is that the main business of Al Capone was beer. He had breweries all over the city of Chicago during prohibition. Although alcohol was illegal under the Volstead Act during this time, bootleggers created what was known as bathtub gin and booze was imported illegally from Canada and other countries. Beer was brewed in breweries, many of them right in the Chicago area and was a big money maker for the man they called Scarface.
Eliot Ness was 27 years old when he started out in his task trying to catch Capone. He had been with the Treasury Department as a prohibition agent for two years at which time he earned a reputation for being honest. While other agents routinely took bribes in order to look the other way, Ness felt it was his duty to do the job he was hired to do. A job that paid less than three thousand dollars a year.
Taking on the biggest gangster in Chicago who, through the money made through his illegal activities such as beer, gambling and prostitution, was able to buy up most of the city, including the mayor Big Bill Thompson, was no easy task for Ness. Knowing that he could not trust anyone in Chicago to help him, he hired outsiders who formed the team that became dubbed The Untouchables in 1930. The moniker came from a reporter after Ness, who knew how to use the press to his advantage, spoke openly about being bribed by Capone.
Although Big Al, as he was often called, went to prison for income tax evasion, for which he eventually pled guilty after trying to bribe the jury pool, Eliot Ness was instrumental in getting the mobster behind bars. During his breweries raids, he and his men would confiscate records and submit them to the Treasury Department. The accountants at the department picked up on the income tax evasion.
Eliot Ness had did hit Capone with five thousand violations of the Volstead Act. However, these were thrown out because of the plea. The prohibition agent also made a substantial dent in the bootlegging activities, particularly the regarding the breweries, in Chicago.