Aaron Sapiro

Aaron Leland Sapiro (February 5, 1884 – November 23, 1959) was a Jewish American cooperative activist and lawyer for the farmers' movement during the 1920s. He became notable for suing Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, for libel as a result of an article published about his activities in The Dearborn Independent newspaper, in 1927. One of the many issues he spoke on was cooperative grain marketing and was particularly active in California and Saskatoon in Saskatchewan where he addressed several meetings between 1923 and 1924. However, he was also associated with organized crime, particularly with Al Capone and groups such as the Chicago’s Laundry Owners’ Association, a front-group for the Mob, by whom he was retained for $25,000 a year (1930 dollars). In the early 1930s, he was repeatedly arrested, accused of organizing a laundry racket conspiracy which linked him with Capone. He was indicted by a grand jury in 1933 for racketeering. In 1934 another trial resulted in a mistrial and he and Capone had the charges against them dropped, but as a result of the trial he had his license to practice law in New York State revoked, while the negative publicity it generated forced him to retreat from public life and into obscurity.