What Was Gatsby Doing Illegal? Jay Gatsby however did not earn his money in an honest way. He earned it by bootlegging alcohol, which as we all know was illegal because of the prohibition of alcohol during the time of this book, and he also earned a lot of his money from fake stocks. What
Is Bootlegging Still Illegal? The bootlegging era came to an end because the Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which repealed Prohibition, effectively defined bootlegging out of existence. In other words, the illegal activities that had constituted bootlegging were, by that amendment, no longer illegal. Does bootlegging still exist? Although the well-known bootleggers of the