Meyer Shapiro and his brothers, Irving and Willy, were tutored by Irish American hoodlum Legs Diamond. Aside from Willie Shapiro all of them died the same year, 1931. Diamond was gunned down in Albany in December. Meyer was found dead in a Lower East Side tenement with a single bullet wound in his head. Irving Shapiro was gunned down by seven rival gangsters who assumed he was his brother Meyer. The Shapiros came along at a time when slot machines were being introduced prolifically. They made a considerable amount of their revenue from slot machines.