While working as a laborer with the Detroit Gas Company, Zerilli joined the Purple Gang, founded by brothers and Abe Bernstein and his brothers Bugs Bill, Raymond and Isadore, who had moved from New York as youths. Other founders were Harry Fleisher, and Louis Fleisher. After Michigan had prohibited liquor sales a few years before the Prohibition era started nationwide in the United States, these young men developed a street gang into what became known as the Purple Gang. It was dominated by American-born Jews whose parents had immigrated from the Russian Empire and eastern Europe. They smuggled liquor first from Ohio, which still allowed sales. After Prohibition, they smuggled liquor from Windsor, Ontario, across the Detroit River in Canada, and used many other waterways between the two countries, selling the illegal products at great profit.