The Ledger That Caught Capone

What actually happened

Prosecutors couldn't hold witnesses on the violence. They recanted or disappeared. So the Treasury's unit under Frank J. Wilson built a different case: a ledger seized years earlier from a Cicero gambling house, matched by handwriting to Capone's bookkeepers, proved income. Income, even illegal income, is taxable. The Supreme Court had settled that in 1927.

In October 1931 Capone was convicted on tax evasion and sentenced to eleven years. The most feared man in America was undone not by a rival, but by the gap between his lifestyle and his tax returns.

The play to remember

Attack the paperwork, not the fortress. Power that can intimidate witnesses usually can't intimidate its own accounting.