In a crackdown on illegal gambling, over 30 people were arrested, including NBA players and mafia members.

The most well-known sports rigging scheme by mobsters…

The American mob has a lengthy history of manipulating sports gambling and fixing games.

The 1919 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago White Sox is arguably the most notorious example of a game being rigged by mobsters.

It is still unclear what led to the issue that became known as the Black Sox Scandal. It focused on claims that eight White Sox players purposefully lost the series in order to get up to $100,000 in compensation. After the evidence vanished from the grand jury files, the suspected players were found not guilty in a trial in 1921, but they were expelled from Major League Baseball for good.

Court documents identified New York gangster Arnold Rothstein as the likely kingpin, and he is generally regarded as the mastermind of the bribery scandal, even though no mobsters were actually tried for their roles in the purported plan.

Born into a Jewish household, Rothstein, also known as “The Brain,” worked with Jewish, Italian, and Irish gangs rather than being a member of a single criminal organization.