His paternal grandfather was Harris Rothstein from Bessarabia. Arnold Rothstein was widely reputed to have organized corruption in professional athletics, including conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series. He was also a mentor of future crime bosses Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and numerous others. With the advent of Prohibition, Rothstein saw the opportunities for business; he di- versified into bootlegging and narcotics. Liquor was brought in by smuggling along the Hudson River, as well as from Canada across the Great Lakes and into upstate New York. Rothstein alsopurchased holdings in a number of speakeasies. Later he became the first to illegally import Scotch whiskyin his own fleet of trans-Atlanticfreighters. He knew that high-end booze would be the "chic thing to have". With his banking support and high-level political connections, Rothstein soon managed to end-run Tammany Hal to the street gangs. Subsequently, his criminal or- ganization included such underworld notables as Meyer Lansky, Jack "Legs" Diamond, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, and Dutch Schultz, whose combined gangs and double- dealing with their own respective bosses subverted the entire late 19th-century form of political gangsterism. Rothstein's various nicknames were Mr. Big, The Fixer, The Man Uptown, The Big Bankroll, and The Brain. By 1925, Rothstein was one of the most powerful criminals in the country and had forged a large criminal empire.