Casper Holstein

Casper Holstein
Born	December 7, 1876 Christiansted, St. Croix, Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands)
Died	April 5, 1944 (aged 67) New York, NY, USA

Casper Holstein (December 7, 1876 – April 5, 1944) was a prominent New York mobster involved in the Harlem "numbers rackets" during the Harlem Renaissance. He, along with his occasional rival Stephanie St. Clair, was responsible for bringing back illegal gambling to the neighborhood after an eight-year absence following the conviction of Peter H. Matthews in 1915. Holstein became known as the "Bolito King".

Born of mixed African and Danish descent in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, Casper Holstein moved to New York City with his mother in 1894. His father was a landed person of color who was in turn the son of a Danish officer in the Danish West Indies Colonial militia. Attending high school in Brooklyn, he enlisted in the United States Navy following his graduation. During World War I, he was able to revisit his birthplace while stationed in what had become the United States Virgin Islands. After the war, Holstein worked as janitor and doorman in Manhattan eventually becoming a messenger, and then head messenger, for a commodities brokerage on Wall Street.

During this time, he began to become familiar with the stock market and began studying the system and numbers. He was eventually able to devise a lottery system based on those principles. Previously under and before Matthews the number was set by a system in which a set of digits 0 to 9 were drawn out at random and posted in a club house. This however allowed for the organizer to cut losses by fixing the outcome. It also created limitations on disseminating the winning number out to the gamblers. There were unrelated statistical numbers published by the newspapers which Holstein found could be used by an organizer instead. At various times the US Customs House receipts, daily share volume and leading horse race parimutuel betting handle have all been used to set the daily number. This change permitted a larger number of gamblers to play the same game and with reduced fear of fixing. As the Prohibition began, Holstein's lottery system proved popular and soon Holstein became known as the "Bolita King", going on to earn an estimated $2 million from his lotteries.

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