Casper Holstein was a numbers racketeer who made a fortune in New York's Harlem neighborhoods. Born in 1878 on St. Croix, Danish West Indies, to a father who was a mulatto landowner the son of Danish military officer father and African descent mother, Holstein moved to New York City in 1894. After service in the U.S. Navy, the veteran Holstein eventually became involved in gambling and found a niche in the African-American neighborhoods of Harlem, where he devised a dime-based numbers betting enterprise. By the early 1920s, Holstein's system achieved huge popularity and he became known as the "Bolita King," earning him an estimated $5000 a day. Holstein used his illegal revenue for many philanthropic causes both within Harlem and back in the renamed U.S. Virgin Islands. Eventually, Holstein was muscled out of his operations by competing (white) organized crime. In 1935 Holstein was arrested and convicted of illegal gambling and served a one-year sentence. Upon release Holstein invested in real estate and offered mortgages to minorities in the Harlem community until his death in 1944, when a reported 2,000 people attended his funeral at Harlem's Memorial Baptist Church.