Prohibition
In 1923, with Prohibition in effect, Cornero became a rum-runner. His clientele included many high-class customers and night clubs.
Using a shrimping business as a cover, Cornero started smuggling Canadian whiskey into Southern California with his small fleet of freighters. One of Cornero's ships, the SS Lily, could transport up to 4,000 cases of bootleg liquor in a single trip. Cornero would unload the liquor beyond the three-mile limit into his speedboats, which would bring it to the Southern California beaches. His fleet easily evaded the understaffed and ill-equipped U.S. Coast Guard. By the time Cornero turned 25, he had become a millionaire.
However, in 1926 the law caught up with Cornero. Returning from Guaymas, Mexico, with an estimated 1,000 cases of rum, he was intercepted and arrested. Sentenced to two years imprisonment, he jokingly told reporters he'd only purchased the illegal cargo "to keep 120 million people from being poisoned to death". While being transported by rail to prison, Cornero escaped from his guards and jumped off the train. Cornero boarded a ship for Vancouver, British Columbia and fled the U.S. Eventually reaching Europe, he spent several years there in hiding. In 1929, he returned to Los Angeles and turned himself in.
In 1931, shortly after his release from prison, Cornero established the Ken Tar Insulation Company. However, federal authorities soon discovered it was a cover for a large scale bootlegging operation and raided it. Cornero then moved his operations to a location in Culver City, California. Soon he was producing up to 5,000 gallons of alcohol a day. Federal authorities raided the Culver City site, but found no evidence of bootlegging; Cornero was probably warned ahead of time.
Read more about this topic: Anthony Cornero
Famous quotes containing the word prohibition:
“He had never learned to live without delight. And he would have to learn to, just as, in a Prohibition country, he supposed he would have to learn to live without sherry. Theoretically he knew that life is possible, may be even pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs. But it had never occurred to him that he might have to live like that.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“No political party can ever make prohibition effective. A political party implies an adverse, an opposing, political party. To enforce criminal statutes implies substantial unanimity in the community. This is the result of the jury system. Hence the futility of party prohibition.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)