Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Simon Flegenheimer; August 6, 1901 – October 24, 1935) was an American mobster based in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s.

Schultz's rackets were weakened by two tax evasion trials led by United States Attorney Thomas Dewey, and also threatened by fellow mobster Lucky Luciano.

He worked as a feeder and pressman for the Clark Loose Leaf Company, Caxton Press, American Express and Schultz Trucking in the Bronx between 1916 and 1919.

With the enactment of the Volstead Act and the start of Prohibition, the shipping company began smuggling alcoholic beverages into New York City from Canada.

[citation needed] In the mid-1920s, Schultz had begun work as a bouncer at the Hub Social Club, a small speakeasy in the Bronx owned by a gangster named Joey Noe.

Using their own trucks to reduce high delivery costs, they brought in beer made by Frankie Dunn, a brewer in Union City, New Jersey.

[1] The Noe-Schultz operation, which had begun to flourish in the Bronx, soon became the only gang able to rival the network of Italian crime syndicates that became the Mafia's Five Families.

Retaliation started a few weeks later when Arnold Rothstein, a crime boss in the Jewish mob, was found fatally shot near the service entrance to the Park Central Hotel on November 6, 1928.

This was because Schultz's subordinates received a flat salary instead of the customary percentage from the take—a unique arrangement compared to other major gangs in organized crime.

In February 1932, while Coll was taking a call in a drugstore phone booth, gunmen armed with machine guns entered the store and shot him to death.

Working through a hulking gangster named Jules Modgilewsky (also known as Julie Martin), Schultz made deals with the leaders of Waiters Local 16 and Cafeteria Workers Local 302 to extort money by forcing restaurant owners to join the Metropolitan Restaurant & Cafeteria Owners Association, an employer association that Schultz had founded.

Those who refused to join the Association were faced with exorbitant wage demands from labor unions, followed by strikes and stink bomb attacks.

At the meeting, at which chief enforcer Bo Weinberg and mob lawyer Dixie Davis were also present, Martin belligerently denied Schultz's charges and began arguing with him.

When Davis later read a newspaper story about the murder, he was shocked to find out that the body was found on a snowbank with a dozen stab wounds to the chest.

In the early 1930s, United States Attorney Thomas Dewey had set his sights on convicting Schultz for non-payment of federal taxes.

[1][13] New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was so outraged at the verdict that he issued an order that Schultz should be arrested on sight should he return to the city.

This tactic angered the runners and the games' controllers, who, despite being threatened with violence for showing any dissent, hired a hall, held a mass protest meeting and declared their version of a strike.

Very quickly the cash flow dried up, and Schultz was forced to back down, permanently damaging the relationship between his gang and their associates.

Believing that a guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion at the second trial, Luciano and his allies implemented their plan to take control, which met little resistance because of the ongoing bad feelings over the attempted pay cuts and the support of Weinberg.

[1] Publicly, Schultz was forced to accept that version of events because of the ongoing attention from law enforcement agencies and Dewey, now a special prosecutor appointed by LaGuardia.

[15] Later, Murder, Inc. leader Albert Anastasia approached Luciano with information that Schultz had asked him to stake out Dewey's apartment building on Fifth Avenue.

"[16] Dutch Schultz was shot on October 23, 1935 at the Palace Chop House restaurant at 12 East Park Street in Newark, along with his accountant Otto Berman; Abraham “Abe” Landau, his new chief lieutenant; and his personal bodyguard, Bernard "Lulu" Rosenkrantz.

[1][17] While Schultz was in the men's room, two Murder, Inc. hitmen named Charles "The Bug" Workman and Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss entered the establishment.

He then entered the rear dining room with Weiss, with both men firing numerous times at the Schultz gang members.

He lingered for almost one day, speaking in various states of lucidity with his wife, mother, a priest, police and hospital staff before dying of peritonitis on October 24, 1935.

[20] Schultz's last words were a strange stream-of-consciousness babble spoken in his hospital bed to police officers who attempted to calm him and question him for useful information.

Martin "Marty" Krompier, whom Schultz left in charge of his Manhattan interests while he hid in New Jersey, survived an assassination attempt the same night as the shootings at the Palace Chop House.

Shortly before his death, fearing that he would be incarcerated as a result of Dewey's efforts, he commissioned the construction of a special airtight and waterproof safe into which he placed $7 million in cash and bonds (equivalent to $156,000,000 in 2023).

[22] Several actors have portrayed Dutch Schultz in film and television: Vic Morrow in Portrait of a Mobster (1961), Vincent Gardenia in Mad Dog Coll (1961), James Remar in The Cotton Club (1984), Dustin Hoffman in Billy Bathgate (1991), Lance Henriksen in The Outfit (1993), and Tim Roth in Hoodlum (1997).

On November 18, 2020, a PBS Secrets of the Dead episode entitled "Gangster's Gold" premiered which detailed the investigation and the hunt for Schultz's lost treasure.