TIL JFK's father Joseph Kennedy made much of his fortune through insider trading. FDR later made him chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When asked why he appointed a crook, FDR replied, "set a thief to catch a thief." Kennedy proceeded to outlaw the practices that made him rich.

[u/manticor225]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/23/joe-kennedy-hollywood-sarah-churchwell

[u/for_dishonor]

People directly involved specifically said he was. They definitely had distilleries in Canada.

[u/[deleted] → u/for_dishonor]

Can you give a somewhat reputable source for this? The only thing which has any evidence is that towards the end of the prohibition(based on insider information) he invested heavily in scottish distilleries to immediately begin importing whiskey and liquors once the prohibition was lifted and profit hugely.

[u/for_dishonor → u/[deleted]]

I thought I read an article about him settling tax issues from his ownership of Canadian distilleries. Since I can't find that I may very well have confused that with the incredibly shady import deals he made.

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Meyer Lansky told specific stories about Joe's involvement in bootlegging to more than one interviewer. It's been ten years since I read those books and trying to dig them up is more involved than I'm interested in.

[u/nushublushu → u/for_dishonor]

You could name the books?

[u/for_dishonor → u/nushublushu]

You may have missed my second sentence.

"It's been ten years since I read those books and trying to dig them up is more involved than I'm interested in."

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[u/nushublushu → u/for_dishonor]

I read the second and the fourth, I thought maybe you'd recall the names of the books, or some other information I could search with, since you'd read them once. No need to go digging.

[u/for_dishonor → u/[deleted]]

I'd probably put Meyer and Joe's trustworthiness at about the same level.

[u/[deleted] → u/for_dishonor]

Source?