Corruption probe:Mayors, rabbis arrested
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| Fri, 07-24-2009 - 9:49am |
I expected to see the Soprano name mentioned.
Mayors, rabbis arrested in corruption probe
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/23/new.jersey.arrests/
NEWARK, New Jersey (CNN) -- The New Jersey officials and their associates charged in a federal probe of public corruption exchanged hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in parking lots, restaurants, boiler rooms and bathrooms, an acting U.S. attorney said Thursday.
The investigation netted 44 defendants -- 29 on corruption charges and 15 for alleged money laundering, acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra Jr. said at a news conference.
Defendants were to begin appearing Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Newark.
Among the 15 are five rabbis, including the national leader of the Syrian Jewish community. They are alleged to have laundered more than $3 million in a "high-volume, international money-laundering conspiracy," Marra said. Their alleged dealings stretched to Israel and Switzerland.
"These complaints paint a disgraceful picture of religious leaders heading money-laundering crews, acting as crime bosses. They used purported charities ... as vehicles for laundering millions of dollars in illicit funds," Marra said.
The rabbis named in the criminal complaints are accused of setting up charitable tax-exempt organizations at their synagogues that they used to launder money.
According to the criminal complaints, a confidential witness working for federal authorities approached the rabbis and offered to make donations to the charities in return for the rabbis writing back a check to the undercover agent. The rabbis collected a fee for the service by writing a smaller check back, sometimes returning $45,000 for a $50,000 donation to the charity, the complaints said.
Charges against the rabbis include bankruptcy fraud, bank fraud and trafficking in counterfeit goods.
Marra said more than $650,000 in bribes was paid to those accused in the criminal complaints. "And the politicians willingly put themselves up for sale," he said.
"The complaints show that for these defendants corruption was a way of life. They existed in an ethics-free zone, and they exploited giant loopholes in the state's contribution rules."
Watch the prosecutor detail the alleged corruption »
Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III and New Jersey Assembly members Daniel Van Pelt and L. Harvey Smith were among those arrested, he said.
Investigators charged one man with conspiring to broker -- for a fee of $160,000 -- the sale of a human kidney for transplant.*
Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, New York, offered to obtain a kidney -- in return for the fee -- for an undercover FBI agent and confidential witness working for authorities, a criminal complaint said.
One of the complaints alleges that Cammarano, 32, took about $25,000 in bribes from a government witness posing as a real estate developer. The U.S. attorney's office said Smith, 60, and an aide took $15,000 in bribes "to help get approvals from high-level state agency officials for building projects."
Another complaint alleges that Van Pelt, 44, accepted $10,000 in cash as "consulting fees" after an FBI official posing as a real-estate executive asked him to help fast-track a real estate project in Waretown, New Jersey, a section in Van Pelt's district.
Others arrested in the public corruption portion of the investigation include Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, 64, who is president of a family-owned trucking company; Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez, 42; and Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, 74, the U.S. attorney's office said.
Learn more about some of the officials taken into custody »
The arrests for public corruption and money laundering underscore "the pervasive nature of corruption in this state," Marra said.
Investigators searched about 20 locations in New Jersey and New York to recover "large sums of cash and other evidence of criminal conduct," prosecutors said in a news release. They also executed 28 seizure warrants against bank accounts that they believe were involved in laundering money.
The arrests should be "a clarion call that prompts significant change in the way business and politics are conducted in the state of New Jersey," said Weysan Dun, special agent in charge of the FBI's office in Newark.
"The list of names and titles of those arrested today sounds like a roster for a community leaders meeting," he said in a statement. "Sadly these prominent individuals were not in a meeting room but were in the FBI booking room this morning."
In a statement, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine said, "Any corruption is unacceptable -- anywhere, anytime, by anybody. The scale of corruption we're seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated."
Cammarano, a former city councilman at large in Hoboken, was elected mayor in June and inaugurated July 1. He pledged to "lower taxes, reform government and deliver real change for Hoboken," according to his campaign Web site.
The FBI began the large operation three years ago. The public corruption and money-laundering probes were separate but linked by common players, a source close to the investigation said.
The source described the alleged public corruption as "straight bribery" -- cash-filled envelopes exchanged for political influence.
The other investigation centered on a group of rabbis who allegedly laundered tens of millions of dollars through their religious organizations for a fee, according to the source.
According to Newark's The Star-Ledger, the rabbis taken into custody are from the Syrian Jewish communities of Deal on New Jersey's northern shore and in Brooklyn, New York.
Federal prosecutors released criminal complaints that contained dozens of pages of detailed allegations.
One complaint said that Van Pelt, the state legislator, bristled when photographed with an undercover agent at a restaurant in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
"We don't want to get our picture taken," the complaint quotes the lawmaker as saying.
* Black-market kidney trafficking charge provides bizarre twist on N.J. corruption probe
Complete article at link........
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/blackmarket_kidneys_traffickin.html
>"According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Newark, an undercover FBI agent teamed with an informant -- who cooperated after a 2006 bank fraud charge -- to uncover the scheme. The document tells the story of how the partnership allegedly snared Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, a self-styled real estate dealer from Brooklyn. Over the course of about 18 months, the complaint says, Rosenbaum worked out a deal with the agent to obtain a kidney from an Israeli donor.
He planned to give the donor $10,000, federal authorities said, and charged his client a handsome fee: $160,000."<
Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, 58, of Brooklyn, N.Y, is taken into the back of the federal courthouse in Newark on corruption charges. He is charged with trafficking in illegal kidneys.



http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1912761,00.html
Every year about this time, bluefish school off the New Jersey shore. For fishermen in the right spot, it's often a stunning abundance of fortune. One minute they're waiting patiently for a bite, and the next they can hook a bluefish with live bait, lures, a piece of baloney on a hook. The fish just can't help themselves.
Federal agents must have felt like those fishermen during the investigation that eventually took down 44 people in one of the largest corruption stings in New Jersey's malodorous history. The FBI did what cops normally do when they catch a thief in the act and don't think he's acting alone — they make him an informant. The informant in this case was a failed developer turned bank-fraud artist named Solomon Dwek, who then hung out his shingle as a bankruptcy fraudster who would launder money or buy off politicians for a small fee. The feds threw Dwek in the water like chum and waited to see what else they could catch. (Read a 1973 TIME article on corruption in American politics.)
Soon enough, the feeding frenzy began. They got a mayor allegedly taking a bribe to get a construction permit. And then another. And then another. Do schools of corrupt mayors swim off the Jersey shore too? They got a rabbi picking up wads of cash in Brooklyn and laundering the money through a charity at his synagogue in Deal, N.J., on behalf of unknown persons in Israel. And as for petty officials of the Garden State — building inspectors, councilmen, deputy mayors and the like — you could imagine the FBI's relatively small office in Red Bank, N.J. frantically trying to arrange all the necessary surveillance to collect the evidence flooding in like the Navasink River at high tide. ("Hello, Radio Shack, I need 100 tape recorders. Yes, today.") In Thursday's big bust, more than 300 FBI agents were needed to make all the raids and arrests. They probably had to use temps.
This looks bad for my home state of New Jersey, but critics are failing to see the beauty in this bust. First of all, it shows how wonderfully diverse New Jersey has become. When I was kid, the Irish ran Hudson County and Jersey City, the Italians had Hoboken and Newark, and in later years Hispanics muscled into West New York and Union City. They did not share. Look at the names on yesterday's arrest list, and it's a beautiful rainbow of wretchedness. Italians, Jews and Irish; Hispanics, blacks and whites. Democrats and (one) Republicans. Men and women. People from age 33 to age 87.
Yet think about who's missing here in the Soprano State. That's right, none of those charged has been fingered by the feds as being a member of the Mafia. So many new groups are now involved in corrupting New Jersey that the Mob must have been crowded out of the market. We're talking progress, people.
I had a friend who used to live in NJ...called it the 'armpit of the East Coast'... ;-)