Eliot Ness Achievements

Eliot Ness was born in Chicago, Illinois, April 19, 1903. Ness stands as the man most often recognized for destroying the multimillion-dollar breweries operated by Al Capone. Also responsible, in part, for Capone's arrest and conviction of tax evasion, Ness was instrumental in seizing the power Capone had over the city of Chicago. Ness was also responsible for turning around Cleveland, Ohio, in the mid-1930s, when the city was overcome with crime and corruption. When he was 18 years old he went to the University of Chicago , majoring in commerce, law and political science. He graduated as the top third of his class in 1925 and was hired as an investigator for the Retail Credit Company. He moved on to the Chicago branch of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1927 where he became an agent. Ness was moved to the Justice Department in 1928 to work with the Prohibition Bureau, responsible for cleaning up the practice of bootlegging. Working in Chicago's Justice Department, Ness received an assignment to serve with a special unit designed to bring down the infamous bootlegger, Alphonse Capone. Heading the task force assigned to the Capone investigation, Ness and nine other agents successfully seized operations of breweries run by Capone. This is one of Ness’s most recognizable achievements.
After the special force assigned to Capone was dissolved, Ness was chosen as the chief investigator of the Chicago Prohibition Bureau until the Prohibition ended. Ness moved to other operations around the area.
Ness's most difficult task surrounded the indictment of Capone. The gangster's money allowed him to buy protection and services from politicians, Chicago policeman, and even government agents. George Emmerson Q. Johnson assigned Ness to lead an operation. Ness had to choose 12 men to form this special squad. Ness's plan was to injure Capone in his wallet because that is where it hurt him the most. If the squad could severely damage the bootlegger’s sources of income, Capone would lose the power to buy protection and services. Ness's goal was to have a major impact on the gangster's approximate annual salary of $75 million. Ness and his 12 men were able to affect his income by 1 million. That may not look like a lot of money but they took down 6 of his breweries. One of Capone's men paid Ness a visit in Chicago's Transportation Building. He offered to pay Ness $2,000 to stop ruining Capone's businesses and promised an additional $2,000 each week following if he continued to work with him. Ness was outraged and ordered the man out. Ness immediately called the press into his office. That day in 1930, Ness announced that neither he nor any of his men could be bought by Capone, and their mission was unstoppable. The next day, a Chicago Tribune reporter referred to the special squad as "The Untouchables”.
This is the famous name that people refer Ness and his men as. Eliot Ness and his men forced Capone's organization to buy alcohol outside of Chicago and smuggle it in, a more expensive and time-consuming process. Successful in snuffing out Capone's bootlegging business, the special unit then had the awesome task of assembling a legal case against the mobster and his followers. On June 12, 1931, Ness went before a federal grand jury and accused indictments against Capone of his mob for conspiracy to breach the Volstead Act, specifying 5,000 different offenses against Prohibition
Laws. In the end, Capone was never brought to trial on Prohibition trials. Within two weeks, Capone was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in a federal penitentiary. Eliot Ness died on May 7, 1957, in Coudersport, Pennsylvania.