Record
Case file
1919/1936
Internal Revenue Service, FOIA historical documents (file 5)
Intelligence Unit narrative, 1919–1936: excerpt on Al Capone
Seven-page excerpt from the Bureau of Internal Revenue Intelligence Unit's narrative history of 1919 to 1936, covering the Capone income-tax case and its aftermath.
- Date
- 1919/1936
- Kind
- case-file
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-11
- Rights
- A record of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Treasury Department, released by the Internal Revenue Service under the Freedom of Information Act. A United States government work, public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. § 105.
A seven-page excerpt from “Intelligence Unit, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Treasury Department: Organization, Functions and Activities. A Narrative Briefly Descriptive of the Period 1919 to 1936.” The cover names Guy T. Helvering; the IRS says Elmer Irey, Chief of the Intelligence Unit, prepared it for Commissioner Helvering. The excerpt does not print its compilation date, so the date here is the span it covers.
The Capone section dates his conviction “on the charge of evading income taxes, October 17, 1931,” and says: “Upon conviction he was sentenced to ten years in the Federal penitentiary and one year in the Cook County jail, to be served at the completion of the prior sentence, and was fined $50,000.” It names Ralph Capone as Al Capone’s brother and describes the contempt case of Philip D’Andrea, whom it calls an ostensible bodyguard, who was searched during a recess of the trial, found carrying a loaded revolver, and sentenced to six months in jail.
The narrative is the agency’s own account, written in its period language, which this archive does not adopt. Quotations follow the PDF’s text layer with scanning errors corrected.
