Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Thursday, January 22, 2015
N.Y. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver accused of $4 million bribery and kickback scheme
N.Y. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver accused of $4 million bribery and kickback scheme, Dems continue to support him
Thursday, January 15, 2015
crime report
forms
United States Attorney's Office
Southern District of New York
Attn: Civilian Crime Reports Unit (Criminal Division)
One St. Andrew's Plaza
New York, NY 10007
prisoner No. 46835-112
prisoner No. 46835-112 http://www.thejewishweek.com/spinka This week, an undisclosed federal prison will become the new address of prisoner No. 46835-112, Naftali Tzvi Weisz, known to his thousands of followers as the Grand Rabbi of Spinka of Borough Park. Last December, Weisz, 61, was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to heading up a decade-long, $10 million money-laundering scheme in which donors to Spinka charitable institutions secretly received kickbacks of up to 95 percent of their donations. The rabbi’s gabbai, or assistant, Moshe Zigelman, also received a two-year sentence.
Last December, Weisz, 61, was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to heading up a decade-long, $10 million money-laundering scheme in which donors to Spinka charitable institutions secretly received kickbacks of up to 95 percent of their donations. The rabbi’s gabbai, or assistant, Moshe Zigelman, also received a two-year sentence. Five others involved in the scheme received lesser sentences.
Rabbi Weisz is not the only Orthodox rabbi to recently find himself on the wrong side of the law. Last summer, three rabbis of the Syrian Orthodox community, including its chief rabbi, Saul Kassin, were arrested in New Jersey and New York on charges of money laundering. But the Spinka Rebbe of Borough Park is perhaps the first leader of a chasidic dynasty to become a jailbird. It has gone unnoticed, however, that his name carries a historic distinction invoking a singular artifact of the Holocaust known as the Auschwitz Album.
Found by chance in an abandoned German barrack by a young Auschwitz survivor in April 1945, as the Third Reich was in its death throes, the 56-page album contains the only known photos of Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau other than two photos taken secretly within a crematorium enclosure and smuggled out of the camp. Photography, except for “mug shots” of incoming non-Jewish prisoners, was normally forbidden even to the S.S., at the largest Nazi killing center. This tattered brown album, bound by a tasseled cord, was most likely ordered up as a private souvenir by a high SS camp official. In a deception that even the victims hoped to be true, it carries the hand-lettered title, “Umsiedlung der Juden aus Ungarn” (“Resettlement of Jews from Hungary”).
The album’s nearly 200 clear snapshots, organized as a pictorial narrative, first show the newly arrived victims in all their exhaustion, confusion and stoic dignity as they tumble out of the boxcars. It follows them as they line up before jack-booted SS inspectors for the infamous selection while their belongings are pillaged. Family members can be seen anxiously looking for one another as a minority is split off to be slave laborers while all others are led to the gas. No actual violence is seen, although in one photo, a group of older women and children are shown gazing calmly at the camera against a backdrop of what appears to be a red-brick administrative building. It is actually one of the four Birkenau crematoria, then working overtime. Beneath it are the undressing rooms and capacious gas chamber.
On the first page of the album is a photo of three chasidic men. The dominant figure, his gaze steady from under a soft-contoured, wide-brimmed black hat, is the 52-year-old grand rabbi of Bilke, a town nestled in a valley of the Carpathian mountains. His name is Naftali Tzvi Weisz, and he is the namesake and great-uncle of the current Spinka grand rabbi of Borough Park. Along with nearly half a million other Hungarian Jews, his community of about 1,500 Jews from Bilke was deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944.
Naftali was a son of Rabbi Isaac Weisz, whose own grandfather, Joseph Meir Weisz (1838-1909), founded the Spinka dynasty in the Romanian town of that name. His son, Isaac, moved the Spinka court to the chasidic stronghold of Mukachevo. Isaac’s piercing glance, it was said, was enough to send his dallying pupils scurrying back to study.
In 1929, one of Isaac’s sons, Naftali, accepted a call from Bilke’s Jews to become their grand rabbi. In the town’s memory book, Isidore Reisman recalled how he was among a crowd of students who trooped to the edge of town to welcome the charter bus bringing the new rabbi’s entourage. As the bus approached, Reisman saw “the bearded faces at the windows who were singing from the Psalms: ‘In joy they go forth and in peace they arrive.’” The first to step out was the aged Spinka Rebbe himself. His son, Naftali, a man with dark, aquiline features and piercing eyes like his father, was escorted to Bilke’s main synagogue in a festively decorated horse-drawn carriage.
“The arrival of the new rabbi marked a turning point in the history of our small town,” wrote Reisman in a two-volume memorial book to Jewish life in Bilke. “During his first year, dozens of students from many outlying villages in Carpathia and beyond flocked to join the Bilker Rabbi’s yeshiva.” On Thursday nights, Rabbi Weisz personally conducted gas-lit oral examinations, Reisman told me in a 1980 interview in Cleveland. On other nights, except for the Sabbath, the rabbi studied alone deep into the night. A disciple remembers once coming into his study and finding the rabbi engrossed in a text, his feet in a pail of ice water to keep himself awake.
As the Nazi shadow spread over Europe, Rabbi Weisz was invited by an American congregation to become its rabbi. He refused to forsake his own flock.
On the last day of Passover in April 1944, Bilke’s Jews, excepting a few men like Reisman who had been drafted into Hungarian forced labor brigades, were ghettoized in a nearby city. From there, they were packed into boxcars with only a single pail of water for the two-day passage to Auschwitz. Near the journey’s end, one of Weisz’s congregants asked, “Rabbi, what will happen to us?”
At that moment, the train curved off the main line onto the Birkenau spur. “Listen to the sound of the wheels screaming,” was the rabbi’s only answer, Reisman remembered.
On that train was 18-year-old, Bilke-born Lilly Jacob, who would survive. The end of the war found her enslaved at Dora, a small concentration camp near Nordhausen. As the Germans fled, Lilly, emaciated and typhus-ridden, entered an abandoned barrack and fell asleep on a cot. Upon awakening, she looked into a bedside cabinet and found the Auschwitz Album.
At least a million Jews had been deported to Auschwitz, only a handful of whom were from Bilke. Yet when Lilly opened the album to its first page, she recognized her rabbi, Naftali Tzvi Weisz. He’d been murdered, probably, on the same day his photo was taken.
Amazingly, Lilly also spotted herself in a photo of women selected for work, all them shorn of hair and wearing ill-fitting dresses taken from earlier deportees. Another photo, she believed, showed two of her younger brothers as they debarked from a boxcar. Considering it a family album, Lilly would not give it up after the war, even when the Jewish Museum in Prague offered to buy it in 1946. But she did allow the photos to be copied onto glass plates for a payment of 10,000 crowns, she told me in an interview.
That was enough to pay for passage to America for Lilly, her husband, Max Zelmonovic, and their infant daughter, in 1948. They settled in Miami, where Lilly worked as a waitress. In 1964, Lilly brought her album to Germany — at the request of the prosecutor — to testify at the trial of 22 former SS men who had been Auschwitz guards, some of whom could be identified in the photographs.
Then Lilly took her album home to Miami and kept it in the bottom drawer of her bedroom dresser until a morning in July 1980, when Serge Klarsfeld, the historian of the French Holocaust, arrived unannounced at her doorstep. He convinced her to donate the Auschwitz Album to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, even though she had promised the album to her grandchildren. Before the ceremony, Lilly was received by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who looked long and hard at the photos.
The Auschwitz Album has been called the single most important document preserved in Yad Vashem’s underground vault because, while many survivors have given testimony, only its pages preserve a photographic record of Jews at Auschwitz in the days when the death factory was working at maximum capacity. The images add up to a heart-rending human panorama.
Naftali Tsvi Weisz’s dignified gaze, on the first page of the album, will be preserved long after the criminal ignominy of his great-nephew from Borough Park is forgotten.
Peter Hellman wrote the text for the Random House edition (1981) of “The Auschwitz Album.”
organized crime funded by taxes
How much do you think it would take to make sure that a wanted criminal or two from Agriprocessors is not found?
And if one of them is finally located – at home on Kfar Kana where he had been foralmost three years – how much do you think it would cost to delay or stop extradition?
And if you're Avrohom Mondrowitz, a Gerrer hasid from a wealthy and connected Gerrer family who is very close to the richest rabbi in the world, the Gerrer Rebbe – who also happens to have the abillty to bring down government and split the United Torah Judaism part in two at a moment's notice – how much would it cost to stop your extradition to Brooklyn on many charges of child rape?
Israel Police had evidence that Mondrowitz was trading in child porn and was running an illegal degree mill, but they didn't do anything about it – even when they obtained a copy of Mondrowitz's hard drive.
Why?
Mondrowitz walked free until Ha'aretz did an exposé on him, which prompted the arrest.
Follow the money. Follow the illegal political deals. Follow the trail of stench all the way to the rabbis, top cops and political leaders.
Follow it and you'll know the truth.
The fundraising scandal surrounding Rep. Michael Grimm (R-Staten Island and Brooklyn) continues.
The Associated Press details where about 1/3 of Grimm's campaign money, $250,000 to $300,000, came from for his 2010 campaign – aides and close associates of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, the Sefardi 'kabbalist' and rabbi-to-the-stars whose organizations here and in Israel are under close scrutiny for financial irregularities like buying Pinto and his bar-mitzvah-age son custom-made suits and luxury watches, and buying expensive custom-made jewelry and top-of-the-line designer clothes for his wife.
And then there's the matter of one of his Israeli charities taking food donated to it to feed Holocaust survivors and sellling it on the gray market, and then allegedly using the cash to enrich Pinto associates and Pinto himself.
Pinto denies that he has any operational control over that charity and, in an Israeli way of doing things the politically connected Pinto was not charged – and neither was anyone else. A similar arrangement was made when Pinto's charities and Pinto had tax problems a few years ago. What we in the US would call money laundering and tax evasion Israel decided to call nothing. Pinto paid the government a portion of his back taxes and all was forgotten. The multimillionaire was left free to keep defrauding followers with fake blessings and promises of business success which, followers are told, can only come true by 'donating' lots of money to Pinto.
Pinto spends about half his time in New York City and the other half in Ashdod, Israel where he has a large mansion.
Where does Pinto get his money in the US?
Some of it comes from the same people who funded Grimm's campaign with Pinto's blessing.
And where did these Pinto followers get their money?
For some of Pinto's heavy-hitting donors and even Pinto's aides, the answer is pornography – porn:
…One of the rabbi's closest aides, Benzion Suky, owned a company that distributed porn videos and has settled lawsuits by adult film studios who accused him of selling bootlegged DVDs, according to court records. Suky and his wife gave a combined $9,600 to Grimm's 2010 campaign and a real estate partnership that lists Suky as its managing member gave $4,800, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Another big donor was Rafi Maman, proprietor of companies in North Bergen, N.J., that distribute adult films and sex toys. He also has settled lawsuits accusing him of bootlegging, including two which also named Suky as a defendant. Maman, his wife and a real estate partnership that he listed as his employer gave $19,200 to Grimm's campaign. That total includes $7,200 in individual contributions from Maman, or $2,400 more than is allowed by law.
A third Grimm contributor, Eli Halali, is listed in business records as the agent of another company that distributed pornographic movies. His name also appears on at least one such video, "Blonde & Beautiful Vol. 1," as the keeper of records verifying that the film's performers were over age 18. He gave $4,800. Two apparent relatives, Bluria Halali and Jaclyn Halali, each contributed $4,800.
[Ofer] Biton, formerly one of Pinto's top aides, also had a hand in adult entertainment. Florida business records list him as being the president of AMOB Inc. The company is registered at the same address as the Miami Playground, a shop once named by an alternative newspaper as the city's the best adult video store.
Election records do not list any donations from Biton, who, as an Israeli citizen without permanent residency in the U.S, is barred from giving money to political candidates.
But the Israeli helped Grimm in other ways that are allowed, including accompanying him on fundraising visits to congregation members, several of whom were heavy hitters in New York's real estate and jewelry businesses.…
Pinto's porn connection isn't something new. The Forward and FailedMessiah.com have both previously reported it. So, I believe, did Ha'aretz.
For his part, Grimm denies any wrongdoing.
So does Pinto, the 'clairvoyant' 'mystic' who somehow couldn't see that he was surrounded by pornographers and criminals, who claims Ofer Biton extorted him and forced him to support Grimm.
Biton was arrested in late July and charged in early August with immigration fraud.
There will almost certainly be more arrests.
The fundraising scandal surrounding Rep. Michael Grimm (R-Staten Island and Brooklyn) continues.
The Associated Press details where about 1/3 of Grimm's campaign money, $250,000 to $300,000, came from for his 2010 campaign – aides and close associates of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, the Sefardi 'kabbalist' and rabbi-to-the-stars whose organizations here and in Israel are under close scrutiny for financial irregularities like buying Pinto and his bar-mitzvah-age son custom-made suits and luxury watches, and buying expensive custom-made jewelry and top-of-the-line designer clothes for his wife.
And then there's the matter of one of his Israeli charities taking food donated to it to feed Holocaust survivors and sellling it on the gray market, and then allegedly using the cash to enrich Pinto associates and Pinto himself.
Pinto denies that he has any operational control over that charity and, in an Israeli way of doing things the politically connected Pinto was not charged – and neither was anyone else. A similar arrangement was made when Pinto's charities and Pinto had tax problems a few years ago. What we in the US would call money laundering and tax evasion Israel decided to call nothing. Pinto paid the government a portion of his back taxes and all was forgotten. The multimillionaire was left free to keep defrauding followers with fake blessings and promises of business success which, followers are told, can only come true by 'donating' lots of money to Pinto.
Pinto spends about half his time in New York City and the other half in Ashdod, Israel where he has a large mansion.
Where does Pinto get his money in the US?
Some of it comes from the same people who funded Grimm's campaign with Pinto's blessing.
And where did these Pinto followers get their money?
For some of Pinto's heavy-hitting donors and even Pinto's aides, the answer is pornography – porn:
…One of the rabbi's closest aides, Benzion Suky, owned a company that distributed porn videos and has settled lawsuits by adult film studios who accused him of selling bootlegged DVDs, according to court records. Suky and his wife gave a combined $9,600 to Grimm's 2010 campaign and a real estate partnership that lists Suky as its managing member gave $4,800, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Another big donor was Rafi Maman, proprietor of companies in North Bergen, N.J., that distribute adult films and sex toys. He also has settled lawsuits accusing him of bootlegging, including two which also named Suky as a defendant. Maman, his wife and a real estate partnership that he listed as his employer gave $19,200 to Grimm's campaign. That total includes $7,200 in individual contributions from Maman, or $2,400 more than is allowed by law.
A third Grimm contributor, Eli Halali, is listed in business records as the agent of another company that distributed pornographic movies. His name also appears on at least one such video, "Blonde & Beautiful Vol. 1," as the keeper of records verifying that the film's performers were over age 18. He gave $4,800. Two apparent relatives, Bluria Halali and Jaclyn Halali, each contributed $4,800.
[Ofer] Biton, formerly one of Pinto's top aides, also had a hand in adult entertainment. Florida business records list him as being the president of AMOB Inc. The company is registered at the same address as the Miami Playground, a shop once named by an alternative newspaper as the city's the best adult video store.
Election records do not list any donations from Biton, who, as an Israeli citizen without permanent residency in the U.S, is barred from giving money to political candidates.
But the Israeli helped Grimm in other ways that are allowed, including accompanying him on fundraising visits to congregation members, several of whom were heavy hitters in New York's real estate and jewelry businesses.…
Pinto's porn connection isn't something new. The Forward and FailedMessiah.com have both previously reported it. So, I believe, did Ha'aretz.
For his part, Grimm denies any wrongdoing.
So does Pinto, the 'clairvoyant' 'mystic' who somehow couldn't see that he was surrounded by pornographers and criminals, who claims Ofer Biton extorted him and forced him to support Grimm.
Biton was arrested in late July and charged in early August with immigration fraud.
There will almost certainly be more arrests.
how to bribe a police
Pinto Bribery And Money Laundering Case May Only Be The Tip Of The Iceberg
Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto eyes closedRabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto and his wife (who tried to kill herself earlier today – please see my previous post) have been arrested for bribery of a police officer and money laundering. Haredi kabbalist and miracle worker rabbis, mostly but not completely Sefardim, are feared to be at the heart of a network of shadowy figures who launder money and bribe police, helping evidence against criminals 'disappear' and allowing wanted criminals to escape. The going rate for a cop to lose evidence in a major crime? 200,000 NIS. And the kicker is that up to 1/3 of the money paid these haredi 'miracle' kabbalist rabbis allegedly goes to organized crime.
46 people arrested
Man Sentenced For Laundering Money Through Haredi Charity
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
David Goldhirsch, one of 46 people arrested in Solomon Dwek’s massive 2009 federal sting known as Operation Big Rig or the New Jersey Sting, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison last week after having pleaded guilty in June to owning and operating an illegal money transmitting business.
Goldhirsch, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, was originally charged with money laundering conspiracy in a 14 point indictment along with Rabbi Lavel Schwartz and Rabbi Mordechai Fish. Both Schwartz and Fish, who are brothers, pleaded guilty and have already been sentenced, Schwartz in December to one year and one day in prison, and Fish in May to 46 months in prison.
Goldhirsch laundered money through a hasidic charity he controlled, Boyoner Gemilas Chesed.
He took a 10 percent commission from Dwek for turning Dwek’s checks – which Goldhirsch was told were from the proceeds of Dwek’s sale of illegal counterfeit designer handbags – into cash.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Dwek told Goldhirsch the money was from the sale of counterfeit handbags.
Approximately three-quarters of all Operation Big Rig defendants have pleaded guilty or been convicted, among them New Jersey politicians including a state assemblyman, the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, and the deputy mayor and council president of Jersey City.
Also among them are five haredi rabbis from New York and New Jersey who have pleaded guilty to money-laundering-related charges, including the Chief Rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community, who was sentenced to probation. The longest sentence handed down to any of the rabbis was five years in federal prison.
According to the Associated Press, two of the 46 original defendants were acquitted at trial. Four others had the charges against them dropped.
Two more of the original 46 defendants’ cases are still reported to be pending. Another defendant is a fugitive.
if you blinka youll miss another spinka stinka finka in the clinka, waddya thinka? another drinka? (winka,winka) in comments
Spinka Hasidic Tax Fraud And Money Laundering Conspirator Sentenced To Prison Mira Zeffren was part of the Spinka Rebbe's money laundering and tax evasion scheme. She was arrested in 2011 and charged with five counts. Zeffren originally pleaded not guilty, but then reached a plea bargain with the government, pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States. Mira Zeffren was sentenced Monday to 8 months in prison, 2 years of supervised release, 500 hours of community service, a $30,000 fine, and $84,294 in restitution:
…Pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, it is the judgment of the Court that the defendant, Mira Zeffren, is hereby committed on Count 1 of the Indictment to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons to be imprisoned for a term of 8 months.
Upon release from imprisonment, the defendant shall be placed on supervised release for a term of 2 years under the following terms and conditions:
1. The defendant shall comply with the rules and regulations of the U. S. Probation Office, General Order 05- 02, and General Order 01-05, including the three special conditions delineated in General Order 01-05;
2. During the period of community supervision the defendant shall pay the special assessment, fine and restitution in accordance with this judgment's orders pertaining to such payment;
3. The defendant shall perform 500 hours of community service, as directed by the Probation Officer;
4. The defendant shall truthfully and timely file and pay taxes owed for the years of conviction; and shall truthfully and timely file and pay taxes during the period of community supervision. Further, the defendant shall show proof to the Probation Officer of compliance with this order;
5. The defendant shall cooperate in the collection of a DNA sample from the defendant; and
6. The defendant shall apply all monies received from income tax refunds, lottery winnings, inheritance, judgements and any anticipated or unexpected financial gains to the outstanding court-ordered financial obligation.
The drug testing condition mandated by statute is suspended based on the Court's determination that the defendant poses a low risk of future substance abuse.It is ordered that the defendant shall pay to the United States a special assessment of $100, which is due immediately.
It is ordered that the defendant shall pay restitution in the total amount of $84,294 pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § to the Internal Revenue Service.
The defendant shall receive credit for any restitution paid prior to sentencing. Restitution shall be paid in full within thirty days of sentencing.
The defendant shall comply with General Order No. 01-05.
It is ordered that the defendant shall pay to the United States a total fine of $30,000, which shall bear interest as provided by law.
On the Government’s Motion, the Court orders Counts 2, 3, 4, and 5 dismissed as to this defendant.
It is further ordered that the defendant surrender herself to the institution designated by the Bureau of Prisons on or before 12 noon, on April 9, 2013. In the absence of such designation, the defendant shall report on or before the same date and time, to the United States Marshal located at Roybal Federal Building, 255 East Temple Street, Los Angeles, California 90012.
Court recommends that the defendant be placed in the camp facility at Danbury in Connecticut.
Defendant informed of right to appeal.
Bond exonerated upon self surrender.
In addition to the special conditions of supervision imposed above, it is hereby ordered that the Standard Conditions of Probation and Supervised Release within this judgment be imposed. The Court may change the conditions of supervision, reduce or extend the period of supervision, and at any time during the supervision period or within the maximum period permitted by law, may issue a warrant and revoke supervision for a violation occurring during the supervision period.…
To read more about the Spinka scam and Zeffren's role in it, read her indictment:
gangster launder billions of dollars
A reputed gangster who calls himself "a simple Jew from Kiev" has emerged as the central suspect in an international bank-fraud probe that investigators term the biggest money-laundering case in history.
The case involves an apparent scheme by Russian mobsters to launder billions of dollars in criminal proceeds through one of America's oldest and most respected banks, the Bank of New York. The FBI's yearlong investigation into the scheme was disclosed by the New York Times in a series of articles in late August.
Beyond the Times' disclosures lies a far more complex story, reported piecemeal in a variety of publications here and abroad. Together they tell a hair-raising tale of international crime and intrigue by reputed crime boss Semyon Mogilevich and his so-called "Red Mafia."
Mogilevich's mob is said to be the largest and most dangerous criminal organization to emerge from the breakup of the Soviet Union; it's engaged in arms dealing, drug smuggling, prostitution, contract murders and international art theft.
The gang has been described as resembling traditional Italian mafia groups in its hierarchy, brutality and reliance on family and ethnic ties. Most of its members are Jewish.
The money-laundering and related allegations, though, lift Mogilevich to a level of sophistication and influence rare in organized crime. They also hint at the magnitude of threat posed by Russian organized crime, both to Russia and the world at large.
Britain, in particular, has been investigating Mogilevich's group for more than four years, seeking to unravel a worldwide network of shell companies implicated in money-laundering, contraband sales, stock manipulation and investor fraud. It was Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service that tipped off the FBI last year to Mogilevich's apparent relationship with the Bank of New York.
Switzerland is also investigating the gang, on suspicion that it helped launder millions of dollars through Swiss banks for Russian government officials. Those cash movements began just before the August 1998 ruble devaluation that led to Russian financial chaos. Some say Kremlin officials traded on their inside knowledge of policy plans, bleeding the country.
Part of the laundered money -- at least $200 million, by some accounts -- may have come from International Monetary Fund aid. The IMF is now facing criticism in Washington for sloppy oversight. That, in turn, could hurt the presidential hopes of Vice President Al Gore, a key architect of the IMF's Russia policies. The GOP-led House Banking Committee is holding hearings on the allegations later this month.
Others whose names have surfaced in the mushrooming probe include several so-called "oligarchs," the business tycoons, many of them Jewish, who control much of post-communist Russia's privatized industry. Those mentioned include Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a leading banker and oil executive; Boris Berezovsky, formerly a ranking Yeltsin aide; and Vladimir Goussinsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress. All three headed Russian banks that have been implicated in the Mogilevich investigations.
Another "oligarch" implicated is Konstantin Kagalovsky, a close ally of Khodorkovsky. His wife, Natasha Gurfinkel, headed Bank of New York's East Europe operations until she was suspended last month.
Nobody has formally been accused of any wrongdoing.
Russian Jewry experts fear the allegations may help fuel Russia's already rampant anti-Semitism, by seeming to confirm extremist myths about Jewish "rape" of Mother Russia. All told, Mogilevich's mob may have looted as much as $15 billion from the Russian economy in the last few years. "It can't help but have an impact," said Isabella Ginor, a leading Israeli analyst of post-Soviet affairs.
Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich, 53, was born in Kiev and graduated from the University of Lvov with a degree in economics. An Israeli citizen since the early 1990s, he currently operates from Hungary, where he is married to a local woman.
He has been known to law enforcement authorities for decades, and is a familiar figure in the Russian media. In the West, though, he was virtually unknown until May 1998, when he was profiled in a lengthy article in the Village Voice by investigative reporter Robert Friedman.
Friedman went into hiding shortly afterward, at the urging of the FBI, which told him Mogilevich had taken out a $100,000 contract on his life. He is currently writing a book about Russian organized crime.
As described by Friedman, Mogilevich first became involved in petty crime in Moscow in the 1970s. He made millions in the 1980s by bilking Jews leaving for Israel, promising to sell their valuables for them after they left, then pocketing the proceeds.
He spent the 1990s allegedly building his Red Mafia from his new base in Budapest, sending lieutenants to acquire legitimate companies in England, Canada, Australia, the United States, the Caribbean and elsewhere, then using them as covers for his illegal activities.
Activities cited by Friedman include a sale of $20 million in stolen East Bloc weaponry to Iran, the theft and resale of Torah scrolls, a scheme to dump American toxic waste in Chernobyl -- in cooperation with the Genovese crime family -- and a phony antique restoration shop that took in Russian art treasures and sent fakes back to the owners, while the originals were secretly sold at Sotheby's in London.
Britain appears to have been a favorite base for Mogilevich's financial schemes. In 1995, British authorities shut down a firm he had created there to launder funds from his worldwide criminal activities. In 1997, authorities began investigating a far more complex scheme, in which he acquired a Hungarian magnet factory, incorporated it in Philadelphia, then took it public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1994. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock was sold, yet few magnets were produced. Federal authorities, tipped by Britain, shut the firm down for securities fraud last spring.
The magnet probe led British investigators to Benex, a London-based firm allegedly controlled by Mogilevich. It was set up in March 1998 for the sole apparent purpose of transferring funds out of Russia.
Benex's only officer, reputed Mogilevich lieutenant Peter Berlin, is married to Lucy Edwards, the Bank of New York officer who was fired last week for her apparent role in the money-laundering scheme.
Edwards, born Ludmilla Pritzker in Leningrad, has declined to comment so far. Berlin has disappeared, and knowledgeable observers suggest he may turn up floating in the Thames.
As for Mogilevich, he granted an interview to a Moscow newspaper this week and insisted that the only money he ever laundered was $5 left in a shirt on wash day. The whole affair, he claimed, is "the raving of the FBI."
J.J. Goldberg writes a weekly column for The Jewish Journal.
organ trafficking money laundering
Does it matter that so many of the men arrested today in New Jersey and New York on charges that include money laundering and organ trafficking are Jewish? And not just Jewish but rabbis and community leaders? Of course it matters to Jews. This is big news from New York to LA, with all the attendant hand-wringing and oy-gvalting that goes along with the revelation of a prominent crook who, as my mother would say, happens to be Jewish (see Madoff, Bernard).
But you’ll notice a lot of those arrested have Italian surnames. Is the Italian press full of oy veys (in Italian, of course)? No. But Jews see a Goldstein in handcuffs, and feel viscerally the shame, the guilt, the fear of backlash…
Some resent it. Rabbi Brad Hirschfield of CLAL, who made his resentment at the press’s emphasis on the “Jewish” angle clear in this email:
When New Jersey Mayors, politicians and rabbis get arrested for money laundering, it’s news that should be reported. It’s especially important for Jews to hear this news and address the discomfort created by religious leaders behaving badly. Isn’t that what we ask of other groups when their leaders do the same?
But the coverage, which initially began in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, suggests that the motivation for the coverage may be less than appropriate. In fact, it may be nothing less than an excuse to vent deep resentment at a particular portion of the Jewish community.
When a headline reads, “NJ officials, NY rabbis caught in federal money laundering, corruption sweep”, one expects a story which describes that event. In this case however, no mention is made of any rabbis actually getting arrested. Despite plenty of details about various politicos being taken into custody, there is nothing about rabbis.
This may be a big deal, but the headline and the story don’t match - where is the info on the rabbis? This kind of coverage actually borders on Jew-baiting, and it potentially says something at least as ugly about the author/editors as it does about those who committed any crime. Consider the following quote found on the paper’s website and carried on CNN: The arrests…“began with an investigation of money transfers by members of the Syrian enclaves in New York and New Jersey,” the newspaper said on its Web site, NJ.com. Those arrested Thursday “include key religious leaders in the tight-knit, wealthy communities,” the report said.
“Enclaves”? “Tight-knit, wealthy communities”? Could it be that the paper harbors deep resentment against Jews who they see as over-privileged, stand-offish people who operate as a law unto themselves? Is this the moment to celebrate how “those people” will now get their comeuppance? If not, why describe the community in classically anti-Semitic ways instead of calling out the specific leaders who broke the law, violated the religious rules of their own community and should be punished to the full extent of the law for any wrongdoing they committed?
This story needs to be told, but it needs to be told better than this. It needs to be about justice, not just desserts. By the way, when all this calms down, the Syrian-Jewish community should also take a good look at itself to see what they do which contributes to their being perceived of this way by their neighbors.
While victims of bias should never be blamed for the bias against them, in most cases for a stereotype to take hold it must be rooted in some partial truth. Ironically, coverage like that in the Star Ledger will make that ever less likely to happen, confirming the kind of hostility which is used by any community looking for a reason to turn inward.
But J.J. Goldberg, the editorial director of The Forward, had perhaps the most insightful take on the Jewish reaction in a post Madoff interview with New Voices magazine. He said our reaction is shock not because we’re afraid of anti-semitism but because we naively hold our religion inviolate:
It’s because we hold Judaism so dear, we don’t want to think it’s capable of creating problems. In 1993, there was a wave of Pell Grant fraud cases where people were setting up phony schools to apply for Pell Grants and then keeping the money. [The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations] had two days of hearings. [Anti-Defamation League National Director] Abe Foxman wrote a letter [to John McCain] complaining that all of the witnesses that had been called up represented yeshivas. He said, the way this has been set up it could create the unfortunate impression that this is some particularly Jewish pattern of crime. And McCain wrote back and said, it is. Yeshivas were this huge network of institutions where people study full time. They had been mainly supported by the billionaire Reichman family from Toronto. [The Reichman family] went bust, and all of a sudden there are all of these cases of fraud and money laundering. Anything to support this impossible system. But you can’t talk about Judaism leading to wrongdoing. It can’t be. Judaism is only good.
The less involved you are in daily Jewish life, the more inviolate it has to be. Think of Superman and [the city of Kandor] in the little bottle in his Fortress of Solitude. It has to be preserved because there’s nothing you can do with it. Flowers that you press into a Bible. The less you can do with it the more you need it to be perfect.
Goldberg traces the problem of corruption in the Jewish community to the rise in wealth (well, one could argue, it is kind of hard to be tempted to money-launder when you have no money). He says:
Before the modern age, Jews lived in ghettoes. They could tax themselves. Tzedakah was not voluntary. Shabbes wasn’t voluntary. The first synagogue in America, Shearith Israel in New York, adopted a rule saying that if you violated Shabbes you got fined. It didn’t work. People just resigned from the synagogue. [The community] had lost enforcement power. And once you’ve lost enforcement power, you’ve got to ask for it. And once you’ve got to ask for money, you become dependent on the wealthy. Rabbis now depend on the goodwill of a few rich people. And so the balance of power between the moralists and the hedonists shifts. There used to be a check. The moral authority of the Jewish community had enforcement power. Now it’s around for entertainment. Instead of scolding Jews, now they scold goyim. They have no authority to scold the Jews. None. Rabbis lose their jobs for being moral scolds. So there is no more moral authority.
I don’t know if the people arrested are guilty, but if they are, Goldberg’s harsh last statement—“There is no more moral authority”—will be just a bit harder to disprove.
how to destroy people
CRIME IS NOT SO BAD
"There are a million ways that religious institutions defraud the government," said one Brooklyn accountant who asked that his name be withheld. However, it's not just the Jews, he claimed, "churches do the same thing." Churches and synagogues are exempt from filing tax returns -- although many do -- and the government usually does not audit unless it has probable cause. As a result, this can make fraud easier. In the last decade or so, a number of Chasidic institutions on the East Coast have been charged with such crimes, including the 1997 case against the Skverer Hasidim in Rockland County, N.Y., where four men were found guilty of defrauding the government of millions of dollars in federal Pell Grants. But in the Orthodox community, many defended them, despite the crime, because the money was used to support needy yeshiva students.
"Nobody here owns a yacht," a resident reportedly said, and the feeling then -- as with many such institutional fraud cases -- that if the money is used to help the community and not line someone's pockets, it's not so bad.
That, in fact, is a pervasive attitude these days in Brooklyn, where the Spinka case raised fewer eyebrows than in Los Angeles, because the attitude is everyone does something. This kind of discussion has been a hot topic on many Internet blogs that discuss the ultra-Orthodox community.
"The government are thieves, what gives them the right to take 40 percent to 50 percent of someone's income? Anyone who can save yiddishe gelt from going down that toilet is doing a mitzvah," one contributor wrote on the Vosizneias (Yiddish for "What Is News?") blog.
The blog comments, though, seem to be about evenly divided between two camps: On one hand are those castigating the government or the bloggers posting the news for spreading gossip; on the other are those demanding that the community finally put a stop to criminal behavior. One particularly poignant plea came from New York white-collar defense attorney Joel Cohen, in an essay published in 2006 titled, "Jewish Felons: The Problem of Criminality in Observant Communities." Cohen described witnessing a disturbing rise in crime among Orthodox and Chasidic Jews.
"The problem in the observant community, however, is not merely occasional, nor does it often make headlines. Daily, in metropolises around the country, yarmulka-wearing criminal defendants appear before the bar of justice," he wrote.
Some prisons -- especially in New York, Los Angeles and Miami -- have daily minyans, visiting rabbis, kosher food, classes and Shabbat meals, Cohen wrote. "The most common charge is fraud: against businessmen and run-of-the-mill citizens alike, most frequently involving victims outside of the Jewish community, against the government, against insurance carriers, against banking institutions, health care fraud, money-laundering and stock-swindling."
Cohen pleads with his fellow Orthodox Jews to denounce the criminal activity:
"Only with the open denouncement of wrongdoing from within the particular observant community can the community hope to demonstrate and protect the Torah's commitment to honesty in one's interpersonal dealings as being at least equal to, if not greater than, its commitment to technical observance of mitzvoth," he wrote
DON'T BLAME THE MESSENGER\But the most talked-about aspect of the case -- both among bloggers and at Shabbat tables on both coasts -- has been the involvement of Kasirer. From the start, most here guessed accurately who he was -- an informant who turned state's evidence to save his own skin -- but what they wanted to know was what was he? Was he a moser -- an informer, who, according to traditional Jewish law, must be killed for turning against a Jew and is denied access to "the world to come."
The Talmud forbids a Jew to inform on another Jew to a secular government, even if that Jew violated both secular and Jewish law.
Today, among poskim -- Orthodox rabbinic deciders -- there is a debate over whether a Jew may turn in another Jew in a democratic state. Some rabbis say that laws of moser do not hold in the United States because they were established to protect Jews from corrupt and anti-Semitic governments that would likely torture and give Jews worse treatment than other prisoners than merited by Jewish law.
This is not the case today in a democracy, they say. "These rules apply only to one who informs on another to bandits and so endangers that person's money and life, as these bandits chase after a person's body and money, and thus one may use deadly force to save oneself," it is written in the Aruch Hashulchan, ("Laying the Table," a book about Jewish law written in the late 19th century).
But many insist that the laws of moser do apply today, and that it is forbidden by Jewish law for one Jew to inform on another to any secular government.
Rabbi Ezra Batzri in "Dinnai Mamonut" ("Laws of Money") says informing is prohibited. "All rules of informing are applicable even currently .... Even if they bring all matter to court, it is clear that, through interrogation and the police, government can destroy people, and in many places they do, in fact, destroy people."
defaulted on $17.3 million in loans
Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto’s NYC Headquarters Subject Of Foreclosure Lawsuit
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto’s nonprofit Mosdot Shuva Israel is being sued for foreclosure on its Manhattan headquarters building, the Jewish Voice reported.
The property, located at 122 East 58th Street, houses Pinto synagogue (among other things).
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday, January 8 by Corigin Real Estate Group.
Corigin claims that Mosdot Shuva Israel defaulted on March 17 on two loans: one for $15 million and the other for $5 million, both from Signature Bank. Corigin bought the loans from Signature on March 13.
Members of Mosdot Shuva Israel’s board of directors are named as defendants in the lawsuit because they gave personal guarantees for the loans. Among them are Ilan Bracha, Haim Binstock, Yosi Zaga, and Pinto’s cousin and top aide, former pornographer Ben Zion Suky. Also named in the suit are Haim Revah and Joseph Ben Moha.
Corigin says Pinto’s charity owes $14.3 million on the $15 million loan and $3 million on the $5 million loan.
Suky reportedly claims that an agreement to extend the loan was made with Signature Bank and that a total of $22.3 million was borrowed. $5 million was repaid, leaving an unpaid balance of $17.3 million.
“We are thinking about what will be our next step on Signature Bank,” he said. “We have a bank that we’re going to refinance with, in the next few days,” Suky reportedly said.
Mosdot Shuva Israel purchased the property for $28.5 million in 2009.
Pinto is expected to serve at least one year in prison for attempting to bribe senior police officers. A charity he controlled there stole tens of millions of dollars meant to help elderly Holocaust survivors. Much of that stolen money allegedly ended up in Pinto’s pockets, and the case against him is reportedly nearing the indictment stage.
Known as a kabbalist to the stars, Pinto is also closely connected to Israel’s underworld and its branches in the Diaspora – especially in New York City.
An Israeli investor, Tomer Shohat, who found irregularities in the operation of a New York City property owned in part by Suky (and through him, apparently by Pinto) was threatened and allegedly falsely arrested by a NYPD detective, Eric Patino, who is close to Pinto and Suky. The detective wanted all the incriminating evidence against Suky and Pinto. If not, he allegedly threatened to arrest Shohat and did so when Shohat refused to give the evidence to him. The charges against Shohat were later dropped, and he is suing Pinto, Suky and the NYPD detective.
To Violently Extort
Rabbi Martin "Mordechai" Wolmark, 56, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson in Trenton federal court to an information charging him with conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce to commit extortion as part of the Rabbi Mendel Epstein ring.
The USDOJ press release:
Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Admits Conspiring To Travel To New Jersey To Violently Extort Divorce Consent From Reluctant Husband
TRENTON, NJ - An Orthodox Jewish rabbi today admitted conspiring to travel to New Jersey to coerce a Jewish man to give his wife a religious divorce – referred to as a “get” – through threats of violence, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.Martin Wolmark, 56, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson in Trenton federal court to an information charging him with conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce to commit extortion.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
On Aug. 7, 2013, Wolmark, an ordained Orthodox Jewish rabbi, spoke with a woman and her brother about obtaining a Jewish divorce from the woman’s recalcitrant husband. A get is a divorce document which, according to Jewish Law, must be presented by a husband to his wife to effect their divorce. Unbeknownst to Wolmark, the woman and the brother were actually undercover FBI agents. During the conversation, which was recorded by law enforcement, Wolmark informed the agents that there were two ways to go about obtaining a get from such a recalcitrant husband, one of which was to “nail him.” Wolmark also told the agents that coercing the husband into giving a get could be expensive. He then recommended that the agents speak with his colleague, Mendel Epstein, who he knew had previously used violence to coerce recalcitrant husbands into giving gets to their wives. Wolmark then initiated a conference call with the agents and Mendel Epstein.
On Aug. 14, 2013, the agents met with Mendel Epstein at his home to discuss the case further. On Oct. 2, 2013, Wolmark convened a rabbinical court (a “beth din”) with Mendel Epstein and Jay Goldstein in his office in Suffern, New York. The purpose of this proceeding was to determine whether there were grounds under Jewish law to coerce the husband into giving the get. The female agent also attended and recorded the meeting. During this meeting, Mendel Epstein discussed openly the plan to kidnap and assault the purported husband in order to obtain the get.
On Oct. 9, 2013, a group of Wolmark’s conspirators – including Jay Goldstein, Moshe Goldstein, Avrohom Goldstein, Simcha Bulmash, Ariel Potash, Binyamin Stimler, and Sholom Shuchat – traveled from New York to a warehouse in Edison, New Jersey, with the intent of forcing the purported husband to give his wife a get by means of violence and threats of violence. Six of these coconspirators previously pleaded guilty to traveling to New Jersey to commit extortion.
The conspiracy count to which Wolmark pleaded guilty carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense. Sentencing is scheduled for May 18, 2015.
U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Aaron T. Ford in Newark, for the investigation leading to today’s guilty plea.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys R. Joseph Gribko and Sarah Wolfe of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Trenton.
The pending charges and allegations against related defendants are merely allegations, and they are considered innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Related Posts:
All Rabbi Martin "Mordechai" Wolmark Posts.
All Rabbi Mendel Epstein Get Extortion Posts.
How To Bribe
Brooklyn men admit funding money-laundering in N.J. corruption sting
Former Jerusalem mayor arrested in Holyland affair
Uri Lupolianski suspected of taking some NIS 3 million in bribes in return for advancing Holyland real estate project; implies his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, was responsible for affair. Court extends his remand by five days Former Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of taking a bribe and money laundering as part of the Holyland affair.
Lupolianski is the most senior public figure to be questioned in the affair so far.
Upon entering the courtroom he told reporters, "I feel good, thank God. I find it strange."
Lupolianski said Ehud Olmert, who served as Jerusalem mayor before him, was responsible for the affair. "The mayor is the one who decides; he is the navigator," he told Channel 10.
Lupolianski, who served as Olmert's deputy at the time, said that "the deputy mayor has no responsibility. This means good things and bad things. There is no responsibility. It's nothing. It's just a title to take care of it, to make it nice. The mayor is the one who decides, and that's the truth."
The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court accepted the police's request to extend Lupolianski's remand by five days. He is suspected of taking a bribe, money laundering, conspiring to commit a crime, fraud, breach of trust and tax offenses.
Lupolianski served as chairman of the local planning and construction committee in Jerusalem when the Holyland project was approved.
According to the police, during his term in different roles at the Jerusalem Municipality, Lupolianski demanded and received bribes and money from the Holyland project's entrepreneurs through a third party.
The sums were allegedly received as donations to the Yad Sarah association. By 1999 he had taken some NIS 1.5 million (about $405,000) and from 2000 to 2006 he took an additional NIS 1.4 ($378,000) million.
In addition, Lupolianski is suspected of receiving $30,000 for his personal use and in order to pay political activists during the Jerusalem mayoral elections in 2003, as well as $100,000 in 2005 as a donation to an advanced Judaic studies program run by his son.In exchange for the bribe, Lupolianski allegedly worked to advance the Holyland project in accordance with the entrepreneurs' demands.
During his tenure as deputy mayor from 1993 to 2003, and later as mayor from 2003 to 2008, Lupolianski allegedly worked to speed up the discussion and approval of the city construction plan in the local planning and construction committee, to postpone the hearing of nearly 1,000 objections, to prevent lowering the buildings by two floors, to lower the land betterment taxes and to support the project's city construction plans.
The police suspect that thanks to Lupolianski's activities, Holyland's entrepreneurs saved millions of shekels. He also helped boost the project and increase the entrepreneurs' income significantly.
'He did not disrupt investigation'
Judge Abraham Heiman explained that he decided to extend Lupolianski's remand for fear of a disruption of the investigation.
"The initial suspicions have become stronger. The investigation material contains more and beyond a reasonable doubt. The case I am dealing with is extremely serious," he said.
The police representative, Superintendent Lior Rice, said that "the suspect betrayed the public's trust while taking a bribe. We suspected him from the start of the investigation."
Rice added that apart from the donations, Lupolianski had received additional funds and that receipt had been issued for the donations.
Lupolianski's lawyer, Attorney Yair Golan, claimed that his client "never took a brine or even one penny and cooperated fully with his investigators." According to the lawyer, "There is not one piece of evidence that Lupolianski tried to disrupt the investigation since it became public."
Golan added that "the family of entrepreneur Hilel Cherny donated to Yad Sarah for 20 years, and not only in the past few years. All the donations were legal. Nothing went into his pocket. Indeed, he founded and volunteered in Yad Sarah, but this is his only connection to the association. He is completely clean."
Yad Sarah said in a statement that the association "has nothing to do with the Holyland affair and never received bribes. If required, Yad Sarah will cooperate with the law enforcement authorities as needed." Earlier Wednesday, Olmert's media advisor said the former prime minister has decided to cut short his stay in Europe and will land in Israel on Wednesday night on the backdrop of the Holyland corruption scandal he has been implicated in, even though he denies any connection or involvement with the affair.
The remand of six of the suspects detained in the Holyland case was extended by five days. Jerusalem Municipality's legal advisor received a request to halt construction on the Holyland real estate project. He promised to give the case priority.
Eli Senyor and Shmulik Grossman contributed to this report
illegally transferred up to $1.4 million
Pleads Guilty To Money Laundering - a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison
Forfeit Jewish Charity's Assets
Forfeit Jewish Charity's Assets
Feds Move To Forfeit Jewish Charity's Assets Linked To Dwek Money Laundering
Solomon DwekAny property used to facilitate a crime -- including clean money used to disguise dirty money and businesses that are fronts for money laundering operations – is subject to outright forfeiture.
Feds battle charity over $500,000 linked to corruption probe
TED SHERMAN • NJ STAR-LEDGER
A charitable fund that surfaced in a massive federal money laundering and corruption sting, which led to the arrests of dozens of elected and religious officials and others last summer, is now trying to recover more than half a million dollars seized by the FBI.
But federal authorities are seeking permanent forfeiture of the money used -- they say -- to help fuel a long-running scheme.
The fund, Gmach Shefa Chaim, was one of several charities the government said figured in the lengthy criminal investigation.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the charitable fund was used to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks into cash at the behest of Solomon Dwek, who had agreed to work as an undercover informant for the FBI after being charged in a $50 million bank fraud.
It all began, say the criminal complaints filed in the case, in the Union City office of Moshe Altman, a real estate developer from Monsey, N.Y., where Dwek talked of trying to take money out of his bankrupt holdings.
"Question is, if I bring in money, how many of these guys can convert it?" he asked Altman, according to transcripts of surveillance tapes attached to the criminal complaints.
During that March 2007 meeting, recorded by Dwek in Altman's Union City office, Shimon Haber -- another developer who had worked with Dwek in the past -- said to talk to Altman. "He has washing machines," he said, according to the transcript.
The washing machines, say federal authorities in their filings, referred to Gmach Shefa Chaim, a free-loan society that served the Hasidic Jewish community.
Within hours after Haber and Altman were arrested with more than 40 others last July, the FBI moved to seize the organization's bank account as well. Some six months later, the organization says it wants the money back, arguing that the $508,985 taken by the agents was improperly seized. Attorney David Liston of Hughes Hubbard and Reed, who is representing the gmach, said Altman did not run the organization and did not have control over it.
"I don't know what the basis was for seizing the money," he said. "There is nothing in those complaints to suggest the gmach was knowingly involved or intentionally involved in the acts alleged by the government."
In the complaint, Altman is quoted as assuring Dwek that he would conceal the transaction "from anyone at the organizational front and all others." But the U.S. Attorney's Office maintains in its filing that the society was used by Altman as a mechanism to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars over a two-year period.
"Altman's "washing machines' were accounts held by the Gmach," stated Assistant U.S. Attorney Bradley Harsch in a recent filing on the case in federal court. He declined comment on the matter.
In his response brief, he said when Dwek wanted to launder checks from his business, Altman told him to write out "sizable checks" to Gmach Shefa Chaim. It says Dwek's checks would subsequently be returned to him in cash, less a 15 percent fee for the transaction. According to Harsch's brief, of 15 alleged money laundering transactions that Altman handled for Dwek, 10 went through the gmach fund, totalling $357,500. The remainder, he said, were made out to what he called "other purported charities." Some of the checks were drawn on the account of BH Property Management, which the government revealed to be an FBI undercover company, according to the criminal complaints.
When Altman's office in Union City was searched on July 23 after the arrests, the brief said FBI agents seized approximately eight bundles of blank checks from Gmach Shefa Chaim accounts, as well as four hard drives and a laptop computer that officials said contained the organization's books and records.
Harsch said attorneys for the gmach have made no attempt "to explain or defend the use of its accounts." At the same time, he said in his brief to the court that any property used to facilitate a crime -- including "clean" money used to disguise dirty money and "businesses that are fronts for money laundering operations" is subject to outright forfeiture.
Liston said the gmach is an entity that values its privacy for religious reasons, providing help to those in need, and doing so anonymously.
Money Laundering Indictments
Money-Laundering Rabbi Case in Los Angeles Echoes N.J. Scandal
By Linda Sandler and David Voreacos
Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Prosecutors in Los Angeles leveled charges in 2007 that sound like headlines in a fresh New Jersey corruption scandal: Rabbis in Brooklyn, New York, laundered money for an undercover informant, arranged phony charitable gifts and used secret Israeli bank accounts.
In Los Angeles, U.S. prosecutors charged Naftali Tzi Weisz, grand rabbi of a Brooklyn-based Orthodox Jewish group, seven other people and five charities with a scheme to evade taxes through use of phony donations. Weisz and four other defendants are scheduled to plead guilty today.
The case may prove a window onto New Jersey’s scandal. Defendants in California were charged with tax fraud, an accusation not yet made in New Jersey, and prosecutors in Los Angeles have targeted 100 more co-conspirators. Later indictments in California also provided enhanced details of illegal methods and of people and banks involved.
“The 2007 charges were the beginning of a much larger case we’re investigating,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel O’Brien, who is overseeing the Los Angeles case.
The organization charged has worked with related religious groups “to move money internationally,” he said.
Spinka Rebbe Agudah 7-28-09 Popper.jpg The Weisz scheme lasted at least from 1996 to 2007, according to his indictment. Staff of his religious organization, Spinka, gave donors back 80 to 95 percent of their donations, keeping the rest for charities in the U.S. and Israel, according to the indictment.
The cash repayment cycle began as Weisz or his aides wired money from Spinka bank accounts to Israeli entities, identified in Weisz’s plea agreement as Bircas Asher and Tzidkat Levy Yitzchak Ltd.
Israeli Banks
From there, the money went to couriers in the Los Angeles jewelry district and elsewhere. Then it went to contributors or to Israeli bank accounts controlled by the donors, according to the indictment.
Even after paying Spinka a 20 percent commission, a donor in a 30 percent tax bracket would come out ahead, keeping $80,000 of a $100,000 donation instead of netting $70,000.
The underground network maintained by Weisz and his associates also paid debts for clients, encouraging the smuggling of cash outside of legitimate banking channels, according to the indictment.
Weisz, born in 1948, will admit he conspired to obstruct the Internal Revenue Service by “allowing the charitable entities linked to the Spinka religious group to be used as a vehicle to generate false charitable deductions,” according to his plea agreement, filed July 9 in federal court.
Linked Guilty Pleas
The Weisz agreement hinges on the guilty pleas of four people -- Yaacov Zeivald, Moshe Arie Lazar, Yosef Nachum Naiman and Alan Jay Freidman -- as well as a Spinka school, Yeshiva Imrei Yosef. The four other Spinka organizations charged in the indictment also signed a “case disposition agreement.”
A Weisz aide, Rabbi Moshe Zigelman of Brooklyn, previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to two years in prison. A Tel Aviv-based banker with United Mizrahi Bank, Joseph Roth, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to time served. A third man, a donor, also pleaded guilty.
Sefardic Rabbi Arrested FBI 7-23-09 The rabbis charged in Los Angeles are Hasidic, part of a movement founded in the Ukraine by Ashkenazi Jews. The New Jersey case involved rabbis and co-conspirators who are Sephardic with ancestors from Syria. [Hasidim and Sefardim were charged in the Brooklyn-Deal arrests.]
“People always knew you could go to rabbis to get advice, financial or spiritual,” said Sam Antar, a Syrian Jew who served six months of house arrest for his role in Crazy Eddie Inc.’s securities fraud in the 1980s.
The electronics retailer used an Israeli hospital to generate phony charitable tax deductions, he said.
New Jersey Scandal
On July 23, U.S. prosecutors in Newark, New Jersey, charged five [sic] Syrian Jewish rabbis with using payments to charitable groups to launder money. The five [sic] Syrian rabbis charged in New Jersey were among 44 defendants in a case that involved people charged with political corruption, including three mayors and two state assemblymen. [I believe the actual number is four Syrian rabbis, one hasidic rabbi and 14 other haredim, mostly hasidim.]
The Syrian rabbis’ financial network laundered “at least tens of millions of dollars” through charitable entities in New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said in a statement last month. Some of the money moved through Israel, prosecutors said. One defendant recorded by investigators said he’d been laundering money for 30 years, according to his criminal complaint.
Prosecutors in New Jersey used a cooperating witness, Solomon Dwek, to infiltrate the money-laundering network, according to three people familiar with the matter. Dwek is a rabbi’s son and New Jersey real estate developer charged in 2006 with scheming to defraud PNC Bank out of $50 million.
Undercover Agent
In Los Angeles, prosecutors used a California businessman charged in a separate criminal case, Robert Kasirer, to help gather evidence secretly, according to court documents. Kasirer laundered $1.65 million through Spinka for a 7.5 percent fee, or $123,750, using an Israeli bank, court records show.
Matthew Umhofer, Kasirer’s lawyer, didn’t return a call and e-mail requesting comment. Brian Hennigan, a lawyer for Weisz, said his client wasn’t available for comment. Michael Himmel, a lawyer for Dwek, didn’t return calls or e-mails requesting comment.
The cases in both Los Angeles and New Jersey brought soul- searching in the Jewish community. In a court filing before his March 30 sentencing, Zigelman, a son of Holocaust survivors, said he pleaded guilty even as the Spinka leadership fought the charges. “Mr. Zigelman continued his courageous attempt to atone for his actions by repeatedly telling his story to others in the Hasidic and Jewish community,” according to his sentencing memo. “While others might have tried to hide their shame, Mr. Zigelman saw it as an opportunity to educate, and help, others in the community.”
The case is U.S. v. Weisz, 06-cr-775, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles)
Based on what I've been hearing, I'd expect these investigations to widen and, perhaps, join. As I've noted before, money laundering and related crimes are allegedly very common in the haredi community, as are other various types of fraud, including frauds that target government programs, and the government knows this.
But knowing is not the same as proving. Proof takes time and work – even more time and more work than I understood.
The question is how much of that work has already been done.
If the answer to that question is a lot of it has been done, expect another wave of arrests this Fall.
Tax evasion in the United States
Under the federal law of the United States of America, tax evasionor tax fraud, is the purposeful illegal attempt of a taxpayer to evade payment of a tax imposed by the federal government. Conviction of tax evasion may result in fines and imprisonment.[1]
Tax evasion is separate from "tax avoidance", which is the legal utilization of the tax regime to one's own advantage in order to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. Tax evasion is illegal while tax avoidance is legal.
In Gregory v. Helvering the US Supreme Court concurred with Judge Learned Hand's statement that: "Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes." However, the court also ruled there was a duty not to illegally distort the tax code so as to evade paying one's legally required tax burden. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion_in_the_United_States
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Публичный позор Лендлордам в Нью -Й орке
http://gothamist.com/2014/09/23/landlord_shaming_nyc.php
"But in the grand scheme of housing in New York City, the idea that a tenant has the right to take their landlord to housing court over the neglected repairs, threats, or any number of things, is a relatively new concept."
If you're wondering what happens to your rent money after you reluctantly pry it from your bank account every month, it is probably not going towards paying taxes—apparently, landlords collectively owe the city over $555 million in bills and back taxes. And yet no one's taping an eviction notice to their doors! Nothing will make you like your landlord.
The Post reported today that the owners of 20,898 buildings across the city have fallen behind on taxes, water bills and emergency repair bills, collectively owing the city a hefty chunk of change. According to the Department of Finance's most recent 60-day lien sale list [pdf], Brooklyn landlords are unsurprisinglythe biggest offenders, owing $212.8 million to the city; one Clinton Hill building alone owes $9 million, having neglected to pay taxes or water bills for the last 20 years.
And it turns out that landlords owe the city less money than they owed last year, noting a 24 percent decline in owed bills and taxes since May 2013 [pdf]. Apparently the property owners managing those fancy new developments are more capable of covering taxes and repairs, which makes sense if you'recharging $3,000 for a studio in Bushwicksburg.http://gothamist.com/2014/03/13/nyc_landlords_amirite.php
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