What Happened to Al Capone’s Money After He Went to Prison?

In January 1939, seven years into his sentence, Al Capone was moved to Terminal Island prison near Los Angeles. His family had just paid $37,692.29 toward his fine and court costs, and another $20,000 still stood between him and the prison gate. That same year, his organization's take was being estimated at $30 million a year. Yet when Treasury agent Frank Wilson summed up the case, he wrote that Capone "had no bank accounts, kept no book records of activities, bought no property in his own name." In this video, we open the records the government and the Capone family left behind: the cloth-bound ledger of the Hawthorne Smoke Shop in Cicero, seized in 1926 and found "accidentally" four years later; Fred Ries and his cashier's checks bought under the name "J. C. Dunbar"; the $72,320 wired to Miami under other men's names; the Supreme Court's 1927 bootlegger case, United States v. Sullivan; the Palm Island house deeded in 1928 to a Miami hotel manager and later signed over to Mae Capone; the bills Wilson's agents collected, from diamond-studded belt buckles to $580 of monogrammed pajamas; the fine that had to be paid before he could leave prison in 1939; Ralph Capone's testimony to the Kefauver committee in 1950; the vault opened on live television on April 21, 1986; and the 2021 auction of his belongings by his granddaughters. This is the story of what really happened to Al Capone's money after he went to prison, and why the government spent half a century looking for a fortune that was never in his name. Sources disagree on a few points: the verdict is dated October 17 or 18, 1931; the court costs appear as $7,692 or $30,000; and the auction price of his Colt pistol was $860,000 at the hammer, $1,040,600 with the buyer's premium. Primary sources: Special Agent Frank J. Wilson, Summary Report, December 21, 1933 (IRS FOIA): https://www.irs.gov/pub/foia/file-2-report... United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 (1927): https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/t... Capone v. Aderhold, 65 F.2d 130 (5th Cir. 1933): https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/65-f-2d-130-... Kefauver committee hearings, Part 5 (1950): https://archive.org/details/investigationo... Maritote v. Desilu Productions, 345 F.2d 418 (7th Cir. 1965): https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appel... 💬 If your family remembers April 1986, tell us in the comments: did you watch Geraldo Rivera open Al Capone's vault, and did you believe the money was behind that wall? #AmericanHistory #AlCapone #Prohibition #Chicago #Gangsters #TaxEvasion #Alcatraz #IRS #1930s #Untouchables #TrueCrimeHistory #FinancialHistory #HistoryDocumentary #Documentary #OldAmerica