Meyer Lansky, Mob Tycoon Meyer Lansky grew up in a poor Jewish immigrant family. Each week the family scrimped and saved to eat the Sabbath meal, known as cholent. Every Friday night, young Lansky would take his meal to the bakery with a penny to pay for the privilege of cooking cholent. Every Friday night, Lansky also walked past the dice games on the corner. One week, Lansky, fascinated by the amount of money people were throwing around, bet his five cents. Lansky was confident that he would win and bring home a lot more money for his family. “I handed the money to the banker, sure I would win – and to my dismay, I lost it!” Lansky remembered later. Lansky promised himself that he would never fail his family again and that he would be a winner and beat them all. Lansky began to study the games and searched for the secret to winning. He finally figured it out and started winning. He gambled for weeks all over the Lower East Side, amassing a small fortune that he kept under his mattress. Within a few years, Lansky became a “shtarke,” or a person who commits violence for a price. It is with this work that Lansky's name first appears in criminal records. At sixteen he was charged with felonious assault, but the charges were dismissed. He was later arrested for attempting to be a pimp. He pleaded guilty and was fined two dollars. One day Lansky was walking home when he was approached by a group of Sicilian boys, led by Salvatore Luciano, later known as Charlie "Lucky" Luciano. Luciano asked Lansky to pay homage to his gang. Lansky refused and proved to be a dangerous force. It was then that Luciano and Lansky reached an understanding that never left the two. Between 1914 and 1920 Lansky formed his own gang. Five boys joined Meyer Lansky in an attempt to fight the Irish and Italian gangs. Later Benny Siegel, aka Bugsy, joined the group, and he and Lansky became closer than brothers. The gang was known as "the Bugs and Meyer mobsters" and were "equal opportunity thugs". No one was safe from the mafiosi. They harassed all different immigrants, Jews, Irish and Italians alike. The men opened a truck rental garage to accommodate their business, which also gave them access to a warehouse.