His father, Gershom Gleckman, was later described in his son's prison records as "a strict disciplinarian, a total abstainer, and law-abiding man."
In 1903, the Gleckman family emigrated to the United States via London and Nova Scotia, and ultimately the border crossing at Port Huron, Michigan, before settling in a heavily Ashkenazi Jewish neighborhood on the West Side of St. Paul, Minnesota.
[3] Using an unlisted telephone, Gleckman made regular calls from his suite to business associates in Chicago, New Orleans, Milwaukee, New York City, Havana, and Montreal.
[4] Michael Malone, a United States Treasury Department agent who had successfully infiltrated the Chicago Outfit, also rented a room in the hotel while investigating Gleckman.
Police officers Charles Tierney and Joseph Dahill later told the FBI that, during Brown's 1930–1932 term as Chief, Gleckman was granted a monopoly on illegal gambling and ran it from his suite at the St. Paul Hotel.