[4] According to one report, Ezra amassed a vast fortune estimated at from twenty to thirty million dollars primarily through the importation of opium,[5] and successful real estate investment and management in early twentieth century Shanghai.

[15] Ezra "erected – on the land bounded by Nanking, Kiujiang, Szechwan and Kiangse Roads – 1,000,000 taels worth of residences that enjoyed modern amenities.

[20] By 1915 Ezra had generated enough wealth to be able to re-sell at the price he had paid for it a choice property in the most desirable part of the Hongkou District on the northern bank of the Suzhou Creek diagonally across Huangpu Road from the Astor House Hotel, to the United States for their consulate.

In 1919 Ezra resigned from public life because of a gambling scandal involving his brother, Judah, who had paid the favourite team to lose in a baseball tournament in 1918.

[30] Ezra died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the Shanghai Nursing Home after collapsing in his office at Kiukiang Road about noon on Thursday, 15 December 1921, aged only 38,[31] in abject poverty and isolation, abandoned by his former colleagues.

[34] According to Douglas Valentine, "Left to their own devices, the degenerate Ezra brothers squandered the family fortune and by the mid-1920s had decided to trafficking in illicit drugs.

[36] The Ezra brothers formed a connection with Italian Mafiosi Antone "Black Tony" Parmiagni, Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Frank Costello, Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky, and with Ye Ching Ho (Pinyin: Ye Qinghe), also known as Paul Yip (or Paul Yi), an agent of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang and with the approval of Chiang's Nationalist government, "which relied on opium profits for its survival".

[38] Despite their guilty pleas and co-operation with authorities in testifying against their confederates, they were fined $12,000 each and were imprisoned for twelve years,[39] thus "bringing their family's fortunes to an abrupt and dramatic conclusion.