Randa Abdelfattah and Ramteen Arablui

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524 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 2 Apr

Randa Abdelfattah and Ramteen Arablui’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.

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Throughline · Al Capone and the transformation of the IRS · 2 Apr 2026 podcast

They had their fingers on the levers of power.

Al Capone really knew how to pull those levers.

And was essentially considered untouchable.

You couldn't get people to testify.

You couldn't keep people alive who were going to testify.

There had been organized efforts to take him down for years.

At one point, there was even a $50,000 bounty on Capone's head, the equivalent of close to a million dollars today.

But no one had ever succeeded.

Just days after the Valentine's Day massacre, the gruesome details and photos still fresh in people's minds.

A new president took office named Herbert Hoover, determined to clean up the streets of gangland Chicago.

And he caught wind of someone in the Treasury Department at the IRS who might be the guy to do it.

Elmer Irie.

So he calls up Elmer's boss, the Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, and tells him, Direct Elmer to get Capone.

If you're thinking, OK, wait, let me get this straight.

You're saying the IRS, the boring agency everyone loves to hate, that's who was put in charge of hunting down the most dangerous man in America?

Yeah, that's what we're saying.

The IRS is a law enforcement agency.

Which isn't usually how we think about it.

The agency that collects our taxes every year.

And where do our tax dollars go?

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