Max "Big Maxie" Greenberg (1883–1933) was an American bootlegger and organized crime figure in Detroit, Michigan, and later a member of Egan's Rats in St. Louis.
He oversaw the purchasing of sacramental wine from Orthodox rabbis, then allowed under the Volstead Act, which were sold to bootleggers in the St. Louis–Kansas City, Missouri area during Prohibition.
[3] Soon after the Baden bank heist, Greenberg, Ben Milner, and Edward "Big Red" Powers were sentenced to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary on an interstate theft charge, stemming from the Egan-sponsored robbery of some railroad cars in Danville, Illinois.
[5] In the fall of 1920, he was introduced to Rothstein by Waxey Gordon and asked for a $175,000 loan to purchase speedboats to bring in alcohol from Ontario to Detroit as well as additional funds for graft payoffs.
[9] Returning to New York City, Greenburg and Gordon then began leasing motorboats and trucks which brought in bonded whiskey and scotch from Rothstein's contacts in Canada and the United Kingdom.
The bootlegging operation became one of the biggest and most successful in the country for five years until September 1925 when Prohibition agents seized one of their ships off Astoria, Long Island.
By 1933, the three owned at least 16 or 17 breweries stretching from Buffalo, Elmira and Syracuse, New York to eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, according to the US government.
On the afternoon of April 12, 1933, Greenberg and Gordon were scheduled to meet with Hassel at his suite on the eighth floor of the Carteret Hotel in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Between 2:30 and 4:00 pm, taxi driver George Hickman told police he drove Greenberg and two other unidentified men from the hotel to the Harrison brewery.
[14] Shortly after the meeting started, Gordon left his partners and walked down the hall where he claimed to have entered the room of a young lady, 22-year-old mob prostitute Nancy Presser, with whom he spent the rest of the afternoon.
He was the last to see Greenberg and Hassel alive as, several minutes later, he returned to the room after hearing gunfire and found both men had been shot to death.
Entering the room, Parkowitz discovered Hassel's body laying face down near the office doorway while Greenberg was slumped over a closed rolltop desk shot five times in the chest and head.