Moses Annenberg

Moses Louis Annenberg was born in Kalwischen, East Prussia (German Empire) in 1877 to a Lithuanian Jewish family. He left Germany and immigrated to Chicago in 1900.[3]

Annenberg began his career as a Chicago newspaper salesman at the Chicago Tribune, then, for the Hearst Corporation. He eventually built a fortune and the successful publishing company that became Triangle Publications, Inc., owning, among other publications, the Daily Racing Form.

During the Roosevelt administration, he was indicted for tax evasion on August 11, 1939, for income tax evasion for the years 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, and 1936, totaling $3,258,809.97 in income taxes evaded.[4] On April 4, 1940, Annenberg pleaded guilty to the 1936 income tax evasion count in the indictment that charged him with evading $1.2 million in taxes ($23.8 million today).[5]

Judge James Herbert Wilkerson, the same judge who previously sentenced Al Capone, sentenced Annenberg to three years in prison and a fine of $8.0 million ($154.7 million today) "the largest single tax fraud penalty in history" at the time.[5]

Annenberg married Sadie Cecillia Freedman (1879–1965). They had one son, the publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg, and seven daughters;[6] Diana Annenberg (1900–1905), Esther Annenberg Simon Levee (1901–1992), Janet Annenberg Kahn Neff Hooker (1904–1997),[7] Enid Annenberg Haupt (1906–2005),[8] Lita Annenberg Hazen (1909–1985),[9] Evelyn Annenberg Jaffe Hall (1911–2005),[10] and Harriet Beatrice Annenberg Ames Aronson (1914–1976).

Annenberg was released from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary prison on June 3, 1942,[11] and died in the Mayo Clinic on July 20, 1942, after having surgery for a brain tumor.[12] His Ranch A in eastern Wyoming is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

• Moses Annenberg's connection to Chicago's organized crime: Part 2 of 3
• Moses Annenberg's connection to Chicago's organized crime: Part 3 of 3
• Cooney, John E. The Annenbergs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982.
• Cooney, John "Annenberg, Moses Louis" American National Biography (1999) https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1602545
• Fried, Albert. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980. ISBN 0-231-09683-6
• Johnson, Curt and R. Craig Sautter. The Wicked City: Chicago from Kenna to Capone. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. ISBN 0-306-80821-8
• Reppetto, Thomas A. American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2004. ISBN 0-8050-7798-7
• Schatzberg, Rufus, Robert J.Kelly and Ko-lin Chin, ed. Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994. ISBN 0-313-28366-4
• Winter-Berger, Robert N. The Washington Pay-Off: An Insider's View of Corruption in Government. New York: Dell Publishing, 1972.

• Paper Trail Annenbergs
• The origins of the Mob and the Atlantic City Conference