Alcohol Tax Unit, U.S. Department of the Treasury

When Prohibition ended with the passage of the 21st Amendment, and after three years under the Department of Justice (1930–1933), The Bureau of Prohibition would soon be reorganized, briefly as the Alcohol Beverage Unit, under the control of J. Edgar Hoover, before becoming the Alcohol Tax Unit (aka The Unit) and being transferred, again, back to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The Unit seized many alcohol distilleries in the first few months after its creation. With growing support from the public, the hard work of the Unit slowly began to pay off. The Unit managed to dismantle large liquor syndicates, changing the perception of Federal law enforcement, as well as the attitudes of prosecutors, juries and the courts.

Cleveland, Ohio, had a desperate need for a lawman with the talent and integrity of Eliot Ness. The country’s seventh largest city with a population of just under a million, Cleveland was infested with so much crime and corruption that it had earned a reputation as an untamed town. The public had lost faith in its police and city officials were starved for help. Ness was just 31 years old when he arrived at his new post as the Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Alcohol Tax Unit, Northern District of Ohio. With 34 agents under his command, Ness methodically tracked down, raided and destroyed a string of illicit liquor operations, earning a reputation for “taking down a still a day”. In one of their most sensational raids, they captured what was believed to be the largest distillery in northeastern Ohio. Ness and his agents seized over a $100,000 worth of equipment capable of producing a thousand gallons of bootleg liquor a day, and cheating the U.S. out of close to $30,000 a week in taxes – an astronomical sum for day.