Career
Purchasing a dry goods store on Clinton Street, by 1854, the business was operating as a front for the Mandelbaums" criminal operations (she would later need to store goods in two large warehouses in the city). However, instead of waiting to be approached by criminals, Mandelbaum began financing thieves and burglars and was involved in planning some of the biggest thefts in the city"s history. Expanding her operations, she controlled several gangs of blackmailers and confidence men as well as a school to recruit and teach younger criminals on pickpocketing.
She was also a top competitor to the Grady Gang.
During this time, she had become one of New York"s most prominent hostesses of New York"s high society, as well as the underworld, regularly associating with some of the most well-known criminals of the day including Queen Liz, Big Mary, "Black" Lena Kleinschmidt, Adam Worth, Sophie Lyons, and George Leonidas Leslie as well as judges and police officials. However, in 1884, New York District Attorney Peter B. Olney hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to infiltrate Mandelbaum"s organization.
An agent, posing as a prospective thief, arranged to have several marked bolts of silk stolen from a store where it was discovered in a police raid on her home the following morning. She settled in Hamilton, Ontario where she remained until her death in 1894.
