How did huge mob bosses that “everybody knew” was a mob boss, or criminal running the place, etc, get away with it?
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Because you csn know that someone is a criminal. Or a mob boss.
But in court, the judge don’t ask what yo know. The judge asks what you can prove.
You can know all the crimes the boss did. But if you can’t prove any of it, the boss walks.
And depending on the type of mob boss you might get invited over for dinner. On a little car ride.. Or to enjoy the view from a lovely tall building..
Others have given explanations, but there is one other reason they got away with it
The cops were also on the mob boss’s payroll.
The police back then were just as crooked as they are now- only instead of covering for themselves, they covered for the dude slipping them some cash under the table to look the other way when they ran illegal gambling operations.
It’s not just a thing on TV – one reason people didn’t mess with the operations wasn’t just cause the mafia would beat em up but cause the police could easily put you away.
Well the truth is that it’s not so black and white. What defines a “mob” or a “Mob boss”? An organization whos members commit crimes and the person who owns that organization? AKA *every* powerful company and country in the world? If you become powerful enough, the only reason you aren’t considered a criminal is because no one is strong enough to arrest you. The people we see as historical titans of industry and heroes of capitalism or revolutionaries are just the crime bosses who won. The ones who we see as archetypal villains are the ones who lost, but in a lot of cases it might have gone the other way. Butterfly flaps its wings, someone steps on a bug, and al Capone could have been remembered as an American hero.
Also, from another perspective, there are gradients of legitimacy from being squeaky clean to dirty as can be, and we live in a world of billions of people remember, thats a lot. At every point along that gradient there are people who plant the flag of their organization, and that represents how far that individual is willing to push morals, social norms, and the law in orger for their organization to succeed. With so many people in the world, there are always plenty of people who push things to the very edge as far as they can go without getting caught, and that’s where the anthropic principle kicks in. Its common curiosity to ask “What is the person who pushed the law the hardest and got away with the most? And how did they do it?”. We intentionally seek out stories and edge cases where people walk the line between legitimacy and criminality because those cases are interesting, not because they are common. For every “Mob boss” who got away with it for so long, there’s a 100 who immediately got killed or arrested. When you have 100 people commiting crimes at 100 to 1 odds of being caught, then that means 1 person is not gonna get caught, and theirs is the story we’re most curious to hear, so we culturally spread tons of stories about all the criminals that got away.
Knowing and proving are two different things and the mob bosses were very good in delegating criminal stuff so it was very hard to proof they were involved , it took a long time to get wires in, and witnesses to talk
You want to be the one that turns in the guy who you cant prove?
Many times law enforcement didn’t know who was in charge. They kept a low profile and didn’t display their wealth.
In the US you can’t convict somebody of “being a mob boss.” The state needs to point to a specific crime they committed, and then prove that in court (beyond a reasonable doubt.) Most mob bosses didn’t actually commit crimes themselves, and when they did, they’d be sure to have several guys willing to testify that they were out to dinner in another city or something at the time. Also, witnesses against the boss were sometimes paid off or threatened into not testifying (or simply murdered.)
Al Capone and Frank Nitti, among others, were finally convicted of tax evasion, because the government was able to prove that they hadn’t filed income tax returns, and that they had received money. Both of those things were fairly easy to prove.
Today, the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) act makes it easier to prosecute mob bosses, because the government can prove that the organization itself commits crimes, and then they can prosecute the leaders. That didn’t become law until 1970, though.
Finally, a question I know the answer to. It’s the rule about what evidence can be admitted into a courtroom, namely hearsay.
Hearsay is “an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of whatever it asserts.” As such, rumor and hearsay are inadmissible in a court of law. So only things that people witnessed with their eyes were admissible. And the mob bosses were very cautious not to do illegal things unless they trusted everyone in the room.
Boss tells lieutenant to kill Linda. This (ordering a hit) is an illegal act. Lieutenant delegates to henchman to kill Linda. Henchmen gets picked up by the fuzz and says Boss ordered the hit.
Police: “Did you witness boss order the hit?”
Henchman: “No. But lieutenant said it was the bosses order.”
That is inadmissible as hearsay, and only henchman and lieutenant can be prosecuted.
They of course, changed these laws with the Rico statutes.
You have to prove it. Lots of the mob bosses were tolerated/liked even by the places that they worked so lot less snitches. Mob guys wouldn’t roll over on their bosses back then. Then you have corrupt cops and judges, buying off/threats to the jury etc. They didn’t have the crazy technical surveillance they do now. Money was green and not 1s and 0s so it was harder to track.
“It’s not what you know. It’s what you can prove.”
They insulated themselves enough from what was happening and let the underlings actually do the work.
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