Aside from liquor bootlegging, which, of course, was the illicit manufacturing of alcoholic beverages, or the smuggling of branded liquor from Canada and Europe where it was still legal to buy that the American underworld trafficked in for nearly 13 years during what’s commonly referred to as the “Prohibition Era” from 1920 until the failed Volstead Act was finally repealed in 1933, no other underworld racket has ever been so pervasive, lucrative, and widespread as the gambling rackets.
In fact, no other illegal racket has ever even come close.