NEW YORK — The Brooklyn man arrested for organ trafficking in
connection with a massive federal corruption and money-laundering
sting is described a “thug” who reportedly pulled a gun on kidney
“donors” who were getting cold feet, according to a Daily News report Friday.
Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum allegedly bought kidneys from impoverished
people overseas for $10,000 and turned them around for $160,000
in the US, according to the newspaper. His operation was first brought
to the attention of the FBI seven years ago by Nancy Scheper-Hughes,
a University of California, Berkeley anthropologist who studied human
organ trafficking.
She described Rosenbaum to the Daily News as “the main US broker
for an international trafficking network.” One of her sources, a man
who worked with Rosenbaum, said he would pull a pistol on nervous
kidney sellers, telling them “You’re here. A deal is a deal. Now, you’ll
give us a kidney or you’ll never go home.”
Rosenbaum became part of the federal corruption probe, which netted
more than 40 people, including rabbis and elected officeholders from
New Jersey and New York, after an FBI informant crossed paths with
him and learned of his organ trafficking operation.
The informant introduced Rosenbaum to an undercover agent whose
uncle supposedly needed a kidney transplant. According to the report,
Rosenbaum described himself as a “matchmaker” who pulled off “quite
a lot” of transactions.
Arrests are headline news in Israel
The scope of the probe extends well beyond Rosenbaum’s trafficking
operation, though. Tens of millions of dollars were allegedly laundered
through religious charities and bribes were allegedly passed to New
Jersey politicians, including three mayors, for shady development deals.
Local officials decried the 44 arrests Thursday as a remarkable number
even for New Jersey, where more than 130 public officials have
pleaded guilty or have been convicted of corruption since 2001.
“New Jersey’s corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst,
in the nation,” said Ed Kahrer, who heads the FBI’s white-collar and
public corruption division. “Corruption is a cancer that is destroying
the core values of this state.”
Gov. Jon Corzine said: “The scale of corruption we’re seeing as this
unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated.”
The arrests were headline news in Israel on Friday morning, with
the front pages of all three of the country’s mass-circulation dailies
featuring pictures of bearded ultra-Orthodox Jews being led away
by law enforcement officials.
Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Israel’s national police force, said
Friday that Israeli police were not involved in the investigation. He
would not comment further.
Tens of millions laundered through Jewish ‘charities’
Federal prosecutors in the US said the investigation focused on a
money-laundering network that operated between Brooklyn, N.Y.;
Deal, N.J.; and Israel. The network is alleged to have laundered tens
of millions of dollars through Jewish charities controlled by rabbis in
New York and New Jersey.
Prosecutors then used the informant in that investigation to help
them go after corrupt politicians. The informant — a real estate
developer charged with bank fraud three years ago — posed as a
crooked businessman and paid a string of public officials tens of
thousands of dollars in bribes to get approvals for buildings and
other projects in New Jersey, authorities said.
Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken,
Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City’s deputy mayor, and two
state assemblymen. A member of the governor’s cabinet resigned
after agents searched his home, though he was not arrested.
All but one of the officeholders are Democrats.
Five rabbis among those arrested
Also, five rabbis from New York and New Jersey — two of whom lead
congregations in Deal — were accused of laundering millions of dollars,
some of it from the sale of counterfeit Gucci handbags and bankruptcy
fraud, authorities said.
Others arrested included building and fire inspectors, city planning
officials and utilities officials, all of them accused of using their
positions to further the corruption.
The politicians arrested were not accused of any involvement in the
money laundering or the trafficking in human organs and counterfeit
handbags.
Hours after FBI agents seized documents from his home and office,
New Jersey Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria resigned.
Federal officials would not say whether he would be charged. Doria
did not return calls for comment.
Authorities did not identify the informant, described in court papers
as a person “charged in a federal criminal complaint with bank fraud
in or about May 2006.” But the date matches up with an investigation
that led to charges against Solomon Dwek, the son of a Deal rabbi.
$25-million bounced check
The younger Dwek was charged at the time in connection with a
bounced $25-million check he deposited in a bank’s drive-through
window. He has denied the charges. Dwek’s lawyer did not immediately
return a call for comment Thursday.
Most of the defendants facing corruption charges were released on bail.
The money-laundering defendants faced bail between $300,000 and
$3 million, and most were ordered to submit to electronic monitoring.
Among those ensnared by the informant was Hoboken Mayor Peter
Cammarano III, prosecutors said. The 32-year-old Cammarano, who
won a runoff election last month, was accused of accepting money
from the developer at a Hoboken diner.
“There’s the people who were with us, and that’s you guys,” the
complaint quotes Cammarano saying. “There’s the people who climbed
on board in the runoff. They can get in line. … And then there are
the people who were against us the whole way. … They get ground
into powder.”
Cammarano was accused of accepting $25,000 in cash bribes. His
attorney Joseph Hayden said his client is “innocent of these charges.
He intends to fight them with all his strength until he proves his
innocence.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/24/national/main5185902.shtml