Jewish
Tribal Review
DRUGS AND
DRUG MONEY LAUNDERING WITHIN JEWISH NETWORKS:
THE ‘RUSSIAN MAFIA,' 'ULTRA-ORTHODOX' CORRUPTION, AND OTHER CRIMINALS
Jews in America have
been prominent in the narcotics underworld since the early twentieth century.
As Rich Cohen notes:
"The first
major American drug dealer was probably Arnold Rothstein ... [COHEN, R., 1999,
p. 131] ... In the mid-nineteenth
century, when the government started to ban certain narcotics, drugs were
smuggled in from Europe and the Far East. But it was a slapdash affair -- not a
business. Rothstein changed all that. He saw Repeal coming and knew drugs could
fill the void left by alcohol ... So in the late [19] twenties Rothstein
retooled a mechanism he had built to carry booze. It would now carry, among
other things, heroin and cocaine ... [It became] a blueprint for smuggling
drugs into America." [COHEN, R., p. 132]
"By 1926,"
notes Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway,
Rothstein's
right-hand man was Louis Lepke, who took over the drug empire when his boss
died in 1928. In the 1930s associate Yasha Katzenberg journeyed to Shanghai,
China, contacted underworld figures there, and "taught them how to make
heroin." "In the last
thirties," says Cohen, "when officials at last figured out what
Katzenberg was up to, the League of Nations declared him an international
menace. A few years later Yasha was indicted, along with Lepke and twenty-eight
others, for violation of narcotics laws." [COHEN, R., p. 133-134] In the late 1940s, there were still
"dozens of Jewish drug dealers roaming New York City, the remnants of
Rothstein's machine." [COHEN, p. 139] Particularly noteworthy were Solly
Gelb, Solly Gordon, Tudi Schoenfeld, Artie West, Niggy Rutkin, Harry Koch, Sam
Haas, Moe Taubman and Harry Hechinger. Tolly Greenberg even invented a machine
to turn liquid heroin into pill form. [COHEN, p. 139-140] Harry Strauss, "Philadelphia's
gambling czar," later became involved in smuggling "heroin into the
United States from France. He reportedly earned $20 million a year from the
trade." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 33-34]
An important foundation of the old opium trade was the Jewish
Sassoon family (of which famous hair mogul Vidal Sassoon is an heir):
"The legend of the Jewish clan can
be traced back to David Sassoon (1792-1864). Born into a Sephardic Jewish
family in Baghdad, Iraq, David Sassoon set up the Sassoon company in
Bombay, India, in 1833. In 1844, he set up a branch in Hong Kong, and a
year later, he set up his Shanghai branch on the Bund to cash in on the
opium trade. At that time, about one-fifth of all opium brought into China
was shipped on the Sassoon fleet. They brought China opium and British
textiles and took away silk, tea and silver." [SHANGHAI STAR, 5-10-01]
Today's drug dealing
is probably the world's most profitable crime; profit margins can range from
200% for cocaine to 1,200% for heroin. The Colombian international drug cartel,
"Kali," which monopolizes the trade in Los Angeles and Miami, is
estimated to distribute over 80% of the world's cocaine and a third of its
heroin. Illegal drug syndicates are estimated to take in about $25 billion a
year in the United States alone. In 1998, 59 tons of cocaine and 770 pounds of
heroin were confiscated by American police authorities.
Daily transactions
of huge sums of money -- including interstate and international -- is part of
the diamond business (as is backroom secrecy, based on "personal
acquaintance and trust," [KAPIT, p. 2]; boxes, large packages, and armored
trucks come and go regularly under heavy security. All this provides a
convenient front for the laundering of massive amounts of drug money, most of
it in $10 and $20 bills. "One of
the most popularly successful ways to launder money," notes Kapit, "is through Jewish religious
institutions, such as yeshivas and synagogues. Since the majority of the 47th
Street gold and diamond merchants are religious Jews, the process is made
easier." [KAPIT, p. 4]
"Today,"
noted Newsweek in 1977, "the Japanese give diamond engagement rings
nearly as often as American, and wealthy Arabs who once eschewed diamonds for
the more colorful stones, have become insatiable diamond buyers ... Little
wonder, then, that tampering robberies and even murders have come to haunt the
business, not only along West 47th Street in New York -- where the mostly
Jewish dealers see an 'Israeli mafia' behind the murder last month of one of
their numbers -- but the world's other diamond centers as well." [ATLAS,
p. 95] "The robberies that plague
the diamond districts of New York and Tel Aviv," notes David Koskoff, "are almost always perpetrated by people
from within the diamond community." [KOSKOFF, p. 191] In 1990, the Jerusalem Post,
paraphrasing the Los Angeles County Sheriff, Sherman Block (also Jewish), noted
that "Los Angeles' small but potent 'Israeli mafia’ has spread across
America, graduating in the last two decades from extorting poor Jews -- often
concentration camp survivors -- to major drug-dealing and fraud schemes against
the rich ... Cocaine is the favored product of the mafia's drug dealing, and
their clients tend to be affluent people who demand the highest quality."
[DERFNER, 9-9-90, ONLINE]
U.S. Federal agents
have identified, says Kapit, what it calls "the Cocaine Triangle.
Its sides are: Colombian drug barons, Israeli-Jewish money launderers, and
Jewish-Russian mafiosos ... You need only look at the list of arrests and
indictments of the past three years in order to grasp the enormous scope of
Israeli involvement in the field." [KAPIT, p. 3] There are numerous murky criminal interfaces
between these Israeli drug dealers, the so-called "Russian" mafia,
and some of the most pious Jewish Orthodox religious circles. The link between Israeli weapons dealing and
South American underworld organizations is also deep. In 1988, for example, an Israeli paramilitary
training company called "Spearhead," directed by a former senior army
officer, Yair Klein, was hired to train members of a drug cartel in Colombia.
Klein was eventually fined all of $13,000 by Israeli authorities for
"exporting defense know-how not covered in his permit." [HIRSCHBERG,
p. 13] In 1990 the Jewish Week
reported that "three United States officials were in Israel ...
investigating possible Israeli connections to the Colombian drug cartel"
and that earlier NBC had reported that "Israeli reserve officers.... [were
providing] military training to drug-cartel gunmen." [GOLBERG, A, p. 51]
An associate of
Klein, Israeli Arik Afek, known publicly as a "flower importer," was
found dead in the trunk of a car at the Miami airport in 1990. The Washington
Post noted that "Afek's name
first surfaced last summer when NBC News broadcast film allegedly showing
foreign mercenaries training Medellin cartel gunmen in ambush assassinations
and other paramilitary activities." [ISIKOFF, p. A14]
Still, in May 2000,
Colombian authorities busted four Israelis and one Colombian citizen in an
"arms trafficking ring" that sought to funnel weapons into the
country. [XINHUA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE, 5-27-2000] Itzik Richter, Ofer Zismanovich,
David Birnbaum and Yaron Cohen with known links to the Cali drug cartel, were
arrested, also on charges of a scheme to counterfeit dollars. A few weeks
earlier another Israeli, Amos Shimoni, had been arrested in Panama on similar
charges. [KRAU, 5-29-2000]
"Among the
recent items of news that failed to make more than passing mention," noted
R. T. Naylor in 1989, "... is the scandal over the chummy relations senior
members of Israel's military maintain with both the Colombian cocaine barons
and their Panamanian affiliate, General Manual Noreiga." [TAYLOR, p.
136] Noreiga's alleged "right hand
man" was a Mossad agent, Mikhail Harari. In 1988 the Jewish Week
reported that "[U.S.] Senate investigations have turned up information
linking Panama's recently indicted military strongman, General Manuel Antonio
Noreiga, to the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence agency." [WAGMAN,
p. 5] Jose I. Blandon, a former influential Noreiga adviser and Panamanian
counsel in New York, told Congress that Michael Harrari, "described as a
former Israeli army general who later worked for Mossad," lived in close
contact with Noreiga for 5-7 years and trained "Noreiga's private guard --
a unit separate from the Panamanian army. Guard officers report to Noreiga through
Harari." [WAGMAN, p. 5] Brandon also noted that "Harrari often acts
as a middleman in weapons purchases that Noreiga makes in Europe," and
that "when Noreiga travels in Europe, Harari arranges for his protection
by Israeli military intelligence and Mossad personnel."
"Investigators believe Panama," reported the Jewish Week,
"a kind of Switzerland of the Caribbean, has become a center of Israeli
financial dealings and for so-called front companies -- corporate shells
operating for secret owners, in this case the Israeli government. Investigators
believe another of Harari's functions is to oversee bank accounts and shell
companies ... Panama [functions] ... as a haven for shadowy financial
transactions." [WAGMAN, p. 5] Secret reports were also in Noreiga's
possession of various United States politicians, from Senators Edward Kennedy
to Jesse Helms; "Some [Senate investigators] speculate," said the Jewish
Week, "the files may have come to Noreiga through Harari."
[WAGMAN, p. 5]
In 1985, Israeli
Shmuel Targan, who used a fake shoe store in New York City as the front for his
drug operation, was arrested for cocaine and heroin smuggling. Rudolph
Giuliani, then the U.S. District Attorney for Southern New York, noted that
Taragan's store "was one of a 100 Israeli-operated legitimate businesses
in the city that disguised illegal operations." [FISHER, A.] In 1986 five
Israelis were arrested in New York for a million-dollar-a-week heroin and
cocaine operation. In 1988 five more Israelis were busted in Boston for drug
running by the FBI. Also in 1988, in Los Angeles, Israelis Abraham Zarchia and
Yitzhak Edvi received ten year prison sentences for drug trafficking -- $22
million over a five month period. [HUNTER, LINK, p. 4, 6, 7]
In 1985, Max
Mermelstein, described by his lawyer as "just a nice Jewish guy who got
into the wrong industry," [MURPHY, pt. 1, p. 3] became a government
witness against a number of former accomplices in Colombia's international
Medellin drug cartel. Over seven years, Mermelstein was himself responsible for
the smuggling of 55 tons of cocaine, worth $360 million, into the United
States. (Curiously, the town of Medellin was actually founded by Spanish Jews
in 1616).
Elsewhere, a pioneer
in the laundering of Colombian drug money (particularly that from marijuana and
cocaine) was Isaac Kattan-Kassin, son of a Sephardic Jewish family that had
fled Hitler's Germany in the 1930s. In the late 1970s, over $100 million a year
of the tainted bills passed through his family's currency exchange business in
Cali, Colombia, although Kattan established business offices in New York and
Miami, where he spent most of his time. In 1977, he "went to work full
time for several cocaine organizations" [POWIS, p. 34] and he eventually
became known as "the most famous of the money launderers of this
period." [POWIS, p. 32] Another prominent drug money launderer in this era
was Beno Ghitis, who also headed a Colombian currency exchange business founded
by his father, Alter. Victor Eisenstein was also a crucial partner in the drug
money ring, and Abel Holtz, president of Capital Bank in Miami, was a
participant as the American depository. [POWIS, p. 74]
In 1993 an FBI sting
operation arrested an Israeli in New York City, Zion Ya'akov Eveheim, who had
both Israeli and Colombian citizenship. In less than a year he and his
associates laundered $22.5 million in drug money through a fake corporation
called Prism. Other Israelis arrested with him were Raymond Shoshanna, Daniella
Levi, Binyamin Hazon, Meir Ochayan, and Alex Ajami. "Many other
suspects," says Kapit, "escaped to Israel." [KAPIT, p. 3] One of
the interviewers in Hebrew for the FBI was a Jewish New Jersey resident, Neil
Elefant. He was disturbed to discover an Israeli friend in trouble. He went to
his rabbi, Elazar Teitz, who recommended "that it was his religious duty
to warn [Elefant's Jewish friend]." Elefant did so, and upon his own
exposure for aiding a drug criminal to escape, Elefant claimed he did it
because of "the zealousness, almost approaching anti-Semitism, which he
found among the FBI agents trying to involve Israel in drug affairs."
[KAPIT, p. 3] Among those Israelis who escaped, thanks to Elefant's warning,
were Adi Tal, David Va'anunu, Yishai Ya'anunu, and Ya'akov Cohen. "Most of
them," says Kapit, "came out of the affair with a lot of money they
took to Israel. The Americans know that the chances of any of them being
extradited to the United States are close to nil." [KAPIT, p. 4]
In another drug
laundering case, in 1990 Aharon Sharir, "undoubtedly the major Israeli
launderer," in America [KAPIT, p. 5] was busted; he subsequently confessed
to laundering $200 million. Sharir's testimony led to 35 other Jewish
launderers, including American Stephan Scorkin, "the biggest laundering
shark in the history of the United States." Scorkin was accused of
laundering $300 million. Sharir's partner, Lihu Ichilov, fled back to Israel.
[KAPIT, p. 6] "Even with automatic money counting machines,"
testified Sharir, "it was difficult to count the money. It arrived in
bills of five, ten, and twenty dollars. The bills, most of which had been to
sniff cocaine, had a strong odor of coke. A real stink. My employees could not
stand it. Every 2-3 hours they had to take a break, go out for some fresh air,
so as not to get high." [KAPIT, p. 5]
Another Israeli drug
laundering ring, led by Adi Tal, a former El-Al airline security guard, was
broken up by American authorities in 1988. Eleven members were arrested.
"An important member of Tal's laundering ring," notes Kapit,
"was Rabbi Shalom Levitin, a Lubavitch Hassid, head of the Chabad branch
in Seattle. It is assumed that all the considerable political power of these
Hassids were exerted in favor of that laundering ring." [KAPIT, p. 4]
"I was motivated by my desire to help my brethren in need," explained
Rabbi Levitin, "with funds being transferred to Israel." "People
in the community know that he is only concerned about helping Jewish
people," said Mark Goldberg, President of Congregation Shareiev
Telfilah-Lubavitch." [Degginger, C., p. 12] Levitin got off easy with a $10,000 fine and
a 30-day sentence in a half-way house.
In 1984 the oldest
yeshiva [Jewish Orthodox religious studies center] in New York City, Tifereth
Yerushalayim, was also busted for drug laundering. "The yeshiva's
representative," says Kapit, "was a very pious Hassid, Mendel
Goldenberger, who daily received cash ... and deposited the money in the
yeshiva's account ... Nine persons were convicted in the affair, including Rabbi
Israel Eidelman, Vice President of the yeshiva, and some of its
dignitaries." [KAPIT, p. 4] "Laundering money is extremely beneficial
to the yeshivas and other Jewish institutions," Kapit was told, "...
The attitude of the pious Jewish community ... is drugs are sold anyway. As
long as it does not harm our community and only does good for it, it doesn't
matter if we benefit from drug trade." [KAPIT, p. 5]
In 1990 another
rabbi, Yosef Crozer, was arrested by FBI agents; he had in his possession prayer
books, five passports, and $280,000 in cash in the trunk of his car."
[KAPIT, p. 1] In another 1990 case, a group of Hassids in the Orthodox
community of Williamsburg, New York, was investigated for drug laundering
operations. The accused included Naftali, Miklosh, Yitzhak, and Ya'akov
Shlesinger, and Milton Jacoby. Money was laundered "on checks drawn from
the account of Camp Yereim (Camp of the Pious) -- a Hassidic summer camp in the
Catskills." [KAPIT, p. 5] The next year, in an unrelated case, a 38 year
old Israeli -- Uri Mizraci -- was murdered in Manhattan; investigators
suspected he was smuggling hashish and heroin into the United States. He was also suspected of being a "hired
executioner" from an Israeli organized crime group. [JAMES, p. B4] Earlier, in 1986, Daniel Whitman and
"cocaine dealer Robert Cohen were arrested for conspiring to murder
Raymond Cohen, no relation to Robert, allegedly to keep him from testifying in
[a National Football League] ticket scalping investigation." [MOLDEA, 1989,
p. 396] In 2001, Israel drug dealer Alen Amor, living in the U.S. on a tourist
visa, was arrested in Los Angeles. Police found 30 pounds of marijuana at his
home, as well as cocaine and heroin. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 10-17-01, p. B5
And, as Alan Block
notes,
"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, [Jewish]
Russian-émigré Vladimir Beigelman, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was known to be involved
in cocaine trafficking with the Cali cartel. On December 2, 1993, Beigelman was
fatally shot in the face while exiting a van in Queens, N.Y. Witnesses
described the assailants as two Hispanics. Evidence indicates Beigelman was
murdered in a dispute over a large quantity of missing cocaine." [BLOCK,
A., 1996, p. 193]
Further indictments
against "Russian" immigrant criminals cited by Block include David
Podlog and Alexander Moysif, "on charges of distributing heroin and
cocaine," "four Russian émigrés ... indicted for the manufacture of
crack cocaine vials at factories in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," and
various heroin smuggling charges against Boris Nayfield, Shalva Ukleba,
Alexander Mikhailov, Simon Elishakov, and Valery Krutiyl. [BLOCK, A., 1996, p.
193-194]
In 1994 still
another Hasidic rabbi, an especially prominent one, Abraham Low, of the Mogen
Abraham synagogue in Los Angeles, was arrested with a Jewish businessman, Alan
Weston, and an African-American woman, Charlesetta Brown, on charges of a drug
laundering project worth about $2 million. It involved elements of the usual
scenario: Hasidic diamond dealers in New York City and the bank accounts for
Orthodox Jewish religious charities. [DE LAMA, 1, 10] "The cash would be delivered to Hasidic
diamond dealers known to the rabbi." [MALNIC, A16] Brown also offered to
sell an undercover FBI agent "assault rifles, pistols, bullet proof vests,
and knives -- "any quantity ... on a regular basis." [MALNIC, A16]
When the FBI received the tip about Rabbi Low's drug laundering activities, he
was already under investigation in a $189 million "check kiting"
scheme and a "promissory note scheme in which the Bank of America might
lose $70 million." [WEINSTEIN, B9]
A request was made
by Low's lawyers to the court to dismiss the charges because of alleged
"outrageous government misconduct" by an FBI investigator and
"anti-Semitism." Efforts to have the case dismissed against Low
included the accusation that an FBI agent cursed at one of the rabbi's
associates and that an FBI informer had spoken an "anti-Semitic slur"
to Low and "declared that the Torah was a piece of toilet paper."
[WEINSTEIN, B9] The prosecutor in the case argued that the claim that Rabbi Low
"had been singled out because he is Jewish is a smokescreen to divert
attention from his lawbreaking." [WEINSTEIN, B11]
The rabbi was
subsequently convicted of a felony: good for five years in prison.
"Low," noted Israeli journalist Kapit, "is married to the niece
of the Satmar [Hasidic sect] Rabbi, Moshe Teitelbaum, who wields enormous
political power in New York state." [KAPIT, p. 5] (Three years earlier, another pious Hasidic
Teitelbaum -- Hanoch -- was sentenced in Rockland County, New York, to
20-months to five years in prison for stealing $1 million in mortgages, loans,
and welfare payments). [NYT, 12-6-91]
From prison, Low later filed a law suit, demanding special privileges,
including housing with other Jews. Rabbi Low "also wanted the prison to
buy him a $30,000 Torah, about 200 religious texts, and to build a separate
prayer room with a special sink." [HOUSTON] Incredibly, the government agreed to a
settlement in which it paid $270,000 in Low attorney fees, as well as to let
him leave prison for ten days on Passover, and to spend further time in a
half-way house for the "High Holy Days." [HOUSTON] No wonder that in 1997 the London Observer
ran an article about American prison consultants who offer "advice to
nervous white-collar criminals on how to survive a spell in the slammer."
Among the advice for better prison treatment is "pretend to be
Jewish." [HELMORE, p. 17]
Another example of
this kind of special treatment was the newsworthy 1996 case of Sholam Weiss, an
ultra-Orthodox Jew, who was serving a seven-month prison term. He "conned
his jailers into giving him permission to spend Passover with his family, then
took off for a high-rolling trip to an Atlantic City casino." [SMITH, G.,
5-22-96, p. 24] In 1998 Neil Lederman (sentenced to prison for 11 months for
writing a bad $60,000 check) made Washington DC-area news for the results of
his request for kosher food from his jailers. To save the hassle of providing
it, Lederman was released from jail and allowed "detention" in his home. Earlier, jail officials had even
"allowed him to go to work during the day. At night, he returned to the
jail." [JACKMAN, T., 10-8-98, p. B12]
In 1994, New York
state began offering Jews "hot kosher meals" at a cost 30% higher
than all other inmate meals. In 1997 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer also
noted that "Oregon authorities are expecting rampant conversion to Judaism
in the state prison system, thanks to a judge's ruling that a convicted
murderer [Daniel Lee Holterman] must be served kosher meals." These meals
would cost the prison $4-6 apiece, whereas regular inmate meals cost $1. In
Colorado, in 2000 Jewish prisoners Charles Beerheide, Sheldon Pearlman, and
Allen Isaac Fistell won their lawsuit "for kosher meals to Jewish
prisoners at no charge." [ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 3-12-94, p. A19; SEATTLE
POST-INTELLIGENCER, 10-1-97, p. C2; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1-29-2000]
In 2001, a convicted murderer and
convert to Orthodox Judaism, Hbrandon Lee Flagner, won the right to sue the
state of Ohio. His grievance was that the prison had forced him to conform to
its rules and cut his beard and sidelocks. "Ohio leaders argued that the
case could provoke thousands of lawsuits ... Attorneys for [20] states said if
exemptions are allowed 'the ability of prison officials to maintain security
will inevitably falter, thereby placing the safety and welfare of prison staff,
inmates, and the general public at risk.'" [HOLLAND, G., 12-10-01]
In June 2000, in Las
Vegas, after numerous complaints from a car-packed neighborhood, city officials
made nine trips over a three-month period to a private residence used by
Orthodox Jews for Saturday religious services. Orthodox rabbi Moshe Omer (an
Israeli with an "English name" of Michael Essence) was handcuffed and
arrested after refusing to sign a zoning violation citation. The rabbi
explained that, under Jewish Orthodox law, he couldn't work on Saturday -- and
this included signing a piece of paper. Nor could he ride in a car, but he was
driven by an officer to jail anyway. The Jewish mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar
Goodman, later offered a formal apology for the incident. The rabbi in turn
declared that "the way he was treated brought images of Nazis and the
Holocaust to mind." [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6-22-2000]
Charged with the
lead role in an alleged scheme that skimmed $1 million from a synagogue bingo
series, Stanley Aronson described the view of his rabbi being led by police
back to the (Akron, Ohio-area) synagogue "reminiscent of Europe in
1938." Ten people were indicted on a total of 21 counts, but a bungled
investigation left "six defendants plead[ing] to a string of minor misdemeanors."
Aronson and his wife then sued the city of Akron for $30 million. [EWINGER, J.,
2-20-94, p. 1B; EWINGER, J., 2-26-94, p. 4B]
In 2002, Robert Noel made the news when
he complained that San Francisco police "chose a time when we were out of
town to come over and kick down the doors of a Jewish home. My relatives went
through this in Germany." [ESKENAZI, J., 1-16-02] Noel and his
fellow-lawyer wife Marjorie Knoller, also Jewish, were charged with a crime
when their dog mauled to death a neighbor. As the case dragged on, "a
judge opened the door to testimony on allegations they were involved in
everything from animal sex to racist prison gangs." [QUINN, A.]
"Several [Holocaust] survivor advocates questioned Noel's rationale for
raising accusations of anti-Semitism considering he and his wife recently
adopted a 38-year-old inmate at Pelican State Prison, who prison officials
believe is one of the leaders of a white-supremacist prison gang called the
Aryan Brotherhood." [ESKENAZI, J., 1-16-02]
It is also not bad
to be a Jewish, particularly a "pious" one, if one is a criminal
seeking to avoid getting caught. In January 2000, the Village Voice
noted the difficulties local police faced in penetrating an ultra-Orthodox
community to bring a murderer to justice. Jacob Blum, son of a local rabbi, was
being sought for bludgeoning to death his grandmother's 61-year old part-time
(non-Jewish immigrant Polish) cleaning lady. As a doctor noted, "The
victim was missing a large part of her brain." "[Police] precinct
sources," reported the Voice, "say it is rare for cases
[against ultra-Orthodox hasids] to
end in arrests. One cop bitterly recalled an incident in which a young hasidic driver who had accidentally run
over an elderly black woman was not even cited for leaving the scene of an
accident. 'He did not summon an ambulance or police and left the scene because
he wanted to get home in time for Sabbath,' the source alleged." [NOEL,
P., 1-18-2000, p. 45]
In yet another drug
case, an Orthodox Jew (a mashgiah:
"a religious officer who sees that kosher restaurants maintain their
Jewish dietary codes"), David Bright, was arrested at New York's La
Guardia airport in 1996 with a briefcase containing $200,000 in cash. He was
arrested and accused of laundering $2 million for drug cartels. Upon release,
he "disappeared." [GROSSMAN, p. 1] At the same time, Bright's
brother, another Orthodox rabbi -- Alan Bright -- also disappeared. This second
Bright, notes the Chicago Tribune, "was a rabbi in Medellin,
Colombia -- a South American city that is home to the notorious Medellin drug
cartel." [GROSSMAN, p. 18]
In 1994, in
Montreal, Canada, Rabbi Meyer Krentzman, a former director of the Canadian
Zionist Federation, a former director of the Jewish National Fund of Montreal,
and a former director of the Jewish Educational Council, was arrested for
selling heroin and cocaine to an undercover police officer. An associate, Andor
Galandauer, a voluntary official at the Beth Zion Congregation synagogue, was
also arrested; Galandauer's past included activism with the Jewish Defense
League. [FISHKOFF, p. 1] "As
recently as the fall of 1992, Krentzman was hired to preside over the
synagogue's auxiliary service during the High Holidays, Rosh Hoshannah and Yom
Kippur. Galandauer acts in a voluntary capacity as the synagogue's gabbai -- the person who chooses people
for honors during services." [BLOCK, I., p. A3]
In 1999, another
rabbi, Eli Gottesman, this one in Montreal, was charged with smuggling cocaine
and marijuana into a federal prison where he served Jewish inmates. In 1988 he
was named "chaplain of the year" by the New York Board of Rabbis. He
has dual citizenship and is the author of Who's Who in Canadian Jewry.
Rabbi Gottesman "had been under investigation for several months by prison
officials, as well as the Justice Department, the FBI, and state police."
[THE GAZETTE, MONTREAL, p. A4] He eventually got off easy, pleading guilty only
to a fraud charge and getting less than a year of prison time. [AP, 4-7-99]
In 1990, Linda
Leary, a former local chapter president of the National Council of Jewish
Women, was extradited from her "luxurious lifestyle" in Austria to
stand trial in Indianapolis with her two sons -- Paul and Richard Heilbrun, and
31 others -- for running a smuggling ring which brought at least 250,000 pounds
of marijuana into America. Leary "pleaded guilty to charges of
racketeering and conspiracy for her part in the ring. She was accused of hiding
drug money in bank accounts in the Cayman Islands." [UPI, 2-22-90]
In Michigan, in 1998
Mindy Brass, described by an Oakland County prosecutor as "a manipulator
and a major drug dealer" was trying to get out of prison with claims of a
bad heart. She had been arrested in 1992 with more than a pound of cocaine.
[MCCLEAR, J., 7-2-98, p. C4] And in 1995, Jewish drug addict Alan Hurwitz,
described by the Detroit News as a once "respectable Michigan
proponent of social justice and educational reform," and formerly the
Deputy Director of the Peace Corps in Kenya, was arrested as "the
notorious Zombie Bandit," a man who had robbed 18 Midwestern banks. [MARTELLE, S., 8-1-95]
In 1989 Jack
Myers (a former son-in-law of Lew Wasserman, the mogul of major Hollywood
agency/studio MCA) was convicted of
being a courier in a drug money laundering network. As Dennis McDougal notes:
"In exchange for three years probation, Myers
testified against [California] Governor Jerry Brown's Chief of Staff Richard
Silberman [also Jewish], the millionaire husband of San Diego County Susan Golding.
Silberman was sentenced to forty-six months in federal prison and fined $50,000
for directing a scheme to launder $300,000 that an undercover FBI agent
identified as the profits of Colombian cocaine dealing." [MCDOUGAL, p.
523]
In 1996 the Canadian
ambassador to Israel, David Berger, was presented evidence that a Canadian
embassy official in Tel Aviv, Douglas Wardle, was using diplomatic mail to
smuggle Colombian cocaine. Two Israelis -- Meir Hazor and Ya'acov Sternheim --
were also arrested in the case. [CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS]
A news item in
October 1999 noted the breakup of an international ring specializing in the
illegal drug "ecstasy." Israeli police announced that 49 suspects
around the world had been detained; 24 were Israelis, most of the others were
ultra-Orthodox Jewish Americans. [KILEY, S.] The Detroit Free Press
noted that "ultra-Orthodox Jews served as couriers for a major
international drug ring that operated in the Netherlands, Belgium, France,
Israel, and the United States ... The syndicate, led by two Israelis living in
Europe, was one of the world's largest producers of the synthetic drug
ecstasy." [DET FR PRESS, 10-13-99, p. 59] The ring circulated tons of
drugs, including cocaine and heroin. [DUDKEVITCH, M., p. 1] A few months
earlier, "seven men were indicted in Brooklyn for allegedly operating an
international drug ring that relied on Hasidic couriers dressed in black hats,
dark suits, and side curls." [HAYS, T., 7-23-99, p. A8] The key six Israelis arrested in this
Ecstasy ring included Igal Malka, Yariv Azulay, Oshri Ganchrski, Eyal Levy,
Robert Levy, and Oshri Amar. They were caught with 300,000 tablets on-hand,
worth an estimated $7.5 million; 100,000 pills a week were funneled by the gang
into the New York metropolitan area. [HENRY, M., 2-25-2000, p. A1]
As a Miami newspaper
noted:
The next year, in
2000, 25 people (including Las Vegas strippers and cocktail waitresses) were
arrested in another Ecstasy drug ring, which smuggled the drugs from Paris into
the United States. This group was headed by Jacob Orgad, an Israeli living in
Los Angeles. "His people seemed to have a presence in every major city
where Ecstasy is the rage," noted U.S. Customs investigating agent Fred
Walsh. [JERUSALEM POST, 6-15-2000, p. 5] "Prosecutors," noted the New
York Post, "charge Jacob Orgad, 45, sold hundreds of thousands of
pills to Israeli national Ilan Zarger." [FRANCESCANI, C., 6-28-01] The
same year the Associated Press noted the results of a survey by
Partnership for a Drug-free America which found, the "use of ecstasy...
has doubled among [American] teens since 1995 ... One in 10 teens had
experimented with the drug." [MCSHANE, L., 11-27-2000, p. 3A]
In 2001, it was reported that "an Israeli [Oded Tuito] described
as a major international smuggler of the drug Ecstasy is in custody in Spain
awaiting a court decision on an American request for his extradition ...
Spanish newspapers reported that Tuito ran a massive smuggling operation in
Europe, Israel, and the United States ... Israeli crime syndicates with links to
Russian mobs are the primary source of Ecstasy smuggled into the United States,
according to the DEA." [ASSOCIATED PRESS/HAARETZ, 5-23-01]
The New York Post noted that
Tuito hired strippers to ferry drugs to America from Europe:
"Scores of of nude dancers
from across the country were recurited as couriers in Tuito's
ecstasy-smuggling army ... An Israeli national named Sean Erez, allegedly tutored
by Tuito in ecstasy smuggling, had risen through the ranks of Tuito's drug mob
... [Erez] hired Hasidic high school boys ... These are kids who spend hours a
day in the synagogue ... Federal Judge Leo Glasser ... sentenced nearly a dozen
local Hasidic men ... In March, Miami authorities busted a 71-year old retired
Queens tailor [also Jewish: Machloof Ben-Chitrit] allegedly ferrying more
than 36 pounds of pills from Paris in his luggage." [FRANCESCANI, C.,
5-5-01]
In July, 2001, yet two more Israeli
ecstasy kingpins were busted in America. David Roash and Israel Ashkenazi were
arrested "in Manhattan on drug possesion charges after police seized more
than a million Ecstasy tablets, the largest drug bust in New York City
history." [Emphasis added] The pills weighed 450 pounds and had a
street value of $40 million. [RADLER, M., 7-20-2001] In November 2001, German
police "arrested two Israelis [Uzi Gutman and Yosef Raphaelovitz]
unloading a truck that contained 1.5 milion Ecstasy pills, capping a long drug
investigation by German, Dutch, Australian, and Israeli police into
international Ecstasy trafficking by Israelis." [SOMMER, A., 1-22-01]
Marijuana? In the
1990s Howard Marks (NOTE: a Jewish identity here is very speculative. Marks,
from a Welsh mining town, has a daughter, Myfanwy, who lives in Israel)
[CAMPBELL, D., 4-26-95, p. 12] was released from an Indiana prison after only
serving seven years of a 25-sentence for his role as a major international drug provider. "At the height of his
smuggling operation," noted a British newspaper, "Mr. Marks was
reputedly responsible for the majority of the marijuana smoked in the western
world in the 1970s and early 1980s." [HULL DAILY MAIL, 2-7-2000, p. 4] The
head of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency in Miami once called Marks
"the Marco Polo of drug trafficking." He is believed to have
successfully shipped about $2 billion-worth of cannabis into the United States
in Britain from a variety of countries, including Lebanon, Afghanistan,
Columbia, Pakistan, Thailand, and Vietnam. [DENING, P., 9-7-96, p. suppl. 1]
Marks once had "43 aliases and 25 companies worldwide as a cover for his
drug empire." [AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 5-4-99]
In 2000, after
jumping a $1 million bail in 1988, Steven Wolosky and Mark Gayer were captured
and arrested. Both men were on the Justice Department's 15 Most Wanted Men
list. "The Marshal's office considered these two men to be two of the most
wanted people in the country," said the government investigator and
Supervisory Inspector Andre LaBier, "They were major international maritime
narcotics traffickers." The two fugitives were responsible for the
importation of over 400,000 pounds of marijuana and hashish into America. Upon
bail, the Wolosky and Gayer tried to fake their deaths with a fabricated
boating accident. "When the government questioned why Wolosky's mother had
never held funeral services for her son," noted one newspaper, "the
woman's attorney submitted a declaration from her rabbi suggesting it would be
contrary to Jewish faith to hold services without a body." [MINTZ, H.,
3-9-93, p. 3; HAYWARD, M., 6-10-2000, p. A4; WALLACE, B., 6-22-2000, p. A1]
Elsewhere, San Francisco-based Steven Kalish (alias
"Frank Brown") was a partner in Panama strongman Manuel Noriega's
1980s drug empire. [DINGES, 1990, p. 11-12] In 1984, he had "grossed $20
million from drug smuggling in the past year." [DINGES, 1990, p. 14]
Kalish, notes John Dinges,
"had started selling grass in the sixties at his high school
in Bellaire, Texas, a Houston suburb. By 1983 he had a Ferrari, a BMW, a Chevy
Blazer and more money than he could handle. That summer he and his partners had
arranged the largest marijuana-smuggling operation of their careers. An
oceangoing tug named the Bulldog pushed a refrigerated barge loaded with 280,000
pounds of marijuana from Colombia on a circuitous route that ended in Louisiana
... Kalish was in charge of the logistics of the operation, which involved
more than one hundred people. That operation netted $15 million to $20 million;
other smaller deals that summer brought in another $15 million. The money had
stacking up in Kalish's lakeside house on St. Charlotte Drive in
Tampa." [DINGES, J., 1990, p. 156]
Kalish even became involved in Panama's politics,
economically supporting a presidential candidate he expected would be helpful
to Kalish's drug networking. [DINGES, J., 1990, p. 170]
In 1987, a New Zealand citizen,
Lorraine Cohen, was sentenced to death in Malaysia for "trafficking in
140.76 grams of heroin." Her son, Aaron was sentenced to life imprisonment
for 34.14 grams. International human rights groups protested the harsh
sentences and after a few years in prison, they were both released. [SHUIB, S.,
9-2-87] In 2001, in England, Philip Lyons was sentenced for "laundering
the proceeds of numerous heroin and ecstasy deals and then send[ing] the money
to Spain." Just between February and March 6, 2001, Lyons laundered two
million pounds. [KAYE, J., 11-26-01]
In 1997, Agence
France Presse noted a now common pattern of Jews, diamonds, and drugs in
Belgium:
"The Flemish city of Antwerp has lost some of
its sparkle as the world's diamond capital after a series of financial scandals
linked the trade here with the murky underworld of drugs and mafia. The scandal
came to light after one of the diamond merchants' most reputed banks, the Max Fischer, went bust last January ... amid allegations of fraud and
laundering of drug money." [PINON]
Others caught in the
scams included three executives at United
Diamonds, four directors of a company called EetH, and a "Lebanese" diamond dealer. "The spate of
scandals," noted the Presse, "fueled persistent rumors that
the Russian mafia had infiltrated Antwerp." [PINON] "The rumors are
mixing up unrelated events in a way that could be damaging to the diamond
sector," insisted an Antwerp lawyer (who requested anonymity), "...
If this climate persists [diamond dealers] could be tempted by the advantage
offered by the Tel Aviv market [and leave Belgium]." [PINON]
As Guy Dunn, a
scholar on organized crime, notes:
"Antwerp's port
has a reputation for being a major smuggling base. The city's diamond dealers,
many of them Russian Jews, have links to many Russian gangs and are allegedly
among the world's most experienced in the art of laundering money and dodging
taxes. Several Russian groups have been uncovered recently, among them a group
head by Boris N. [Nayfield?], a leading mafia boss, who was charged with
racketeering, drug trafficking, conspiracy to murder, and association with
Russian Jewish criminal groups. In 1989-93 N's group was centered on companies
owned by Antwerp Russians, as well as affiliates in Moscow, Berlin, Odessa, and
Warsaw. He was heavily involved in laundering money illegally obtained through
drugs and arms smuggling." [DUNN, G., 1996, p. 81]
In 1998, the
(London) Independent, noting that the year before "police made a
series of raids on diamond businesses suspected of tax evasion and money
laundering," announced that
"the Orthodox
Jewish community [in London] has been shocked by a series of arrests of its
members for alleged heroin smuggling. Police and customs inquiries are
centering on a drugs link between Israel, Antwerp, and London ... Evidence of
the new drugs link follows the professional execution on an Antwerp street last
week of a Jewish jeweler and leading figure in the Russian mafia. A Talmudic
scholar was also accused in Tel Aviv this month of laundering drug money."
Dror Hazenfratz --
carrying both an Israeli passport and a Belgian identity card -- was arrested
with 15 kilograms of heroin worth well over a million dollars. He appeared in
British court "wearing traditional dress and carrying the Talmud ... The
ultimate destination of the drugs was reputedly David Santini, a Glaswegian
who, at the time, was Scotland's leading heroin dealer." [LASHMAR, p.
3] Santini was arrested earlier. Other
Jews arrested included
"a young man from Antwerp with 10 kg of heroin
allegedly concealed in his hire-car. He is awaiting trial. Shortly before, an
older man had been arrested at Coquelles at the French entrance to the Channel
Tunnel.
British customs
allegedly found quantities of heroin and cocaine. The man was an American
Orthodox Jew living in Stamford Hill. British drug officers suspect they are
seeing the beginning of a new drug operation involving Antwerp Orthodox Jews
and the Russian mafia." [LASHMAR, p. 3]
The man who was murdered in Antwerp was
Rachmeil Brandwain, "a Jewish trader in precious metals" and
"also reputed to be a leading figure in the Russian mafia." [LASHMAR,
p. 3] Brandwain was noted by a British newspaper as "Antwerp's gangland
boss" and "the Antwerp connection to the mobsters of Moscow."
Born in the Ukraine, he was raised in Israel. He was also a philanthropist to
the ultra-Orthodox Chabad organization. [HELM, S., 4-21-96] Brandwain ran a
company called M&S International
and, noted George Weisse, the Commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service,
"was a close
associate of Boris Nayfeld, a well-known [Russian-born] criminal who operated
out of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, New York ... In the late 1980s, Brandwain
was the middleman who helped corrupt Soviet Army officials stationed in East
Germany, siphoning more than a billion dollars in illegal deals ... Boris
Nayfeld and a number of people associated with Brandwain and his companies were
arrested smuggling heroin into the United States." [WEISSE]
In 1999, a newspaper
in Scotland noted that a giant earthworks machine had been stolen from a
construction site in Glasgow and found in Israel:
"Detectives believe the JCB digger was stolen to
order as part of an illegal multi-million pound international trade in which
drug dealers use the profits to fund major purchases of hard drugs like heroin
and cocaine. Around 30 pieces of heavy machinery have disappeared from British
sites during the past two years and the National Crime Squad was called in to
lead an inquiry which traced the centre of operation to Israel." [HERALD,
2-1-99]
From Australia, we
have the noteworthy case of Nachum Goldberg, an Orthodox Jew in the Addas
Israel congregation, who was busted and sent to prison in 1997. (A Jewish
associate, also charged with tax fraud, died before sentencing). Member of an
international ring that included diamond merchants in Israel, Belgium, and
Sydney, Australia, Goldberg laundered "dirty money" to Israel: an
estimated $90 million over 13 years through a bank account set up for a fake
organization called United Charity. "Nachum Goldberg," noted the Sydney
Morning Herald, "was a master money launderer, who was helping some of
Sydney's and Melbourne's ultra-Orthodox Jewish businessmen evade taxes ... Most
of the money that he laundered came from the sale of diamonds that had been
imported illegally into Australia." Tens of millions of dollars were sent
to his brother, who managed a Bank Leumi branch in Jerusalem. "The strict
religious faith of the defendants," noted the Herald, "was one
of the main elements of the plea that the sentences should be lenient and it
was one of the main reasons why the judge went easy on the Goldberg
family." Goldberg was given a reduced prison sentence, and his wife and
two sons, active players in the scam, were given suspended sentences. [BARRY,
P., 10-14-2000]
Joseph Gutnik, a Chabad rabbi and one of the richest men in Australia,
even filed "a libel suit against the magazine Barons and its mother
company, Dow Jones. The magazine published an article linking Gutnik's
name with that of Nahum Goldberg, a businessman accused of using an Israeli
charity fund to launder money. The article claimed that $24 million had been
laundered -- Goldberg was found guilty and sentenced to five years in
prison. In October 2000 The Age reported that the judge in
the Goldberg case had criticized the Israeli government for not being more
cooperative with the Australian investigators who were trying to follow the
trail of funds through the local banks." [HANDWERKER, H., 5-15-01]
Elsewhere, in 1997, in Miami, Ludwig Fainberg
was accused of especially noteworthy drug-related crimes. A dentist in Russia,
he immigrated to Israel, served in its army, and then moved to the United
States where he owned Porky's strip-tease joint. He was arrested for underworld
drug activities with suspected middlemen for a Colombia drug cartel. Plans even
included a $5 million purchase of a Soviet submarine to smuggle drugs to the
United States. A New York Times article did not identify Fainberg as a
Jew, nor as an Israeli, but as a "Russian." "A new element has
been added to the [Miami] region's celebrated mix of two-bit con-artists and
Colombian drug lords," wrote Times reporter Mireya Navarro,
"law-enforcement officials say: Russian mobsters are engaged in nationwide
illegal activity running from extortion to financial fraud." Twenty-six
such Russian crime organizations have been identified in America by Federal
officials, mainly located in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. Fainberg was
believed to head one of them, a man "who was a typical member of the
Russian criminal elment that in recent years has spread ... form its cradle in
New York City." "The Russian criminal mobsters," one U.S. drug-enforcement
offical told the Times, "are eager for 'every way to make a
dishonest dollar." Another said, "They're good at networking."
[NAVARRO, p, A22]
The international
scope of the "Russian mafia" is reflected in recent headlines about
the problem: Russian Mafia Making Austria Its Haven (San Francisco
Chronicle, 1996), Swedes Face a Russian Invasion (New York Times, 1993),
and Russia's Notorious Mafia Spreads Tentacles of Crime Around the
Globe (Christian Science Monitor, 1995).
A large number of these Russian crime groups are Jewish in control. In
the United States one of their bases is located in the Brighton Beach area of
Brooklyn. [ROSNER, p. xi, xii] A 1986
Presidential Commission on Organized Crime report, noted the New York Times,
"warned that the Jews from the Soviet Union were among several
ethnic-organized crime groups to have emerged recently in this country."
[RAAB] "Some [Russian immigrants to
America] find the free enterprise system difficult to understand," wrote Newsweek
in 1985, "Others end up in the 'Russian mafia.'" [NEWSWEEK, Ag 19,
85] "In the 1990s," says Rita
J. Simon, "there are reports of extensive organized criminal activities
within the Soviet Jewish community, especially in the Los Angeles and Brighton
Beach areas of Brooklyn ... [SIMON, p.
137] ... Terms such as 'Soviet Jewish Mafia' are widely used in print and
electronic media [This is not true. This
author's extensive research has yet to run across any such term that highlights
Jewish involvement. The common nomer is 'Russian Mafia' which disguises any
Jewish dimension] to describe the activities of these recent immigrants to
the United States (especially New York and Los Angeles), parts of Western
Europe, and Israel, and of criminals in post-communist Russia. They are
believed to be involved in drugs, prostitution (especially in Israel),
racketeering, and various forms of illegal activities." [SIMON, p.
145] "Russian" control of
prostitution even exists in Romania. [TANNER]
"It may be too soon," cautiously wrote
Joseph Bensman back in 1986," to tell whether the ... crime [Russian
immigrants to the United States] engage in is a means towards gaining the
wherewithal to become respectable citizens and white collar criminals, or
whether it is to become the base for a new, permanent underclass in American
society." [ROSNER, p. xvii] One informant told a researcher that
"more than 50% of the people who live in Brighton are involved in criminal
things." [ROSNER, p. 106] The worst end of criminal activity includes
"protection rackets, gambling, confidence schemes, counterfeiting, forgery
and sales of license and travel documents, smuggling, burglary, armed robbery,
drug and weapon sales, and murder." [ROSNER, p. 119] "Brighton Beach," noted Agence
France Presse in 1997, "... has long been home to ... the Russian
mafia ... The Russian mafia has been putting roots down in Brighton Beach since
the early 1970s, when then-Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev decided to allow
Jewish emigration, said Raymond Kerr, who specializes in Russian organized
crime for the FBI." [BICHON, ONLINE]
"A high level of communication" also exists between
"criminals in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and northeast Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania." [NEW YORK STATE ORGANIZED CRIME TASK FORCE, 1996, p. 180]
In 1986 UPI
noted the case of Boris Davidov, who was arrested with $3 million in stolen
property. "He had been in this country for seven years," noted FBI
agent Joseph Koletar, "If you come to this country and don't know many
people and don't know the language and culture and manage to set up a fencing
operation of that size, it suggests that he hit the ground running and had some
experience before he got to these shores." [UPI, p. c2]
The reason so many Russian Jews are able to
quickly get established in crime in America is that they were experts in this
field in the Soviet Union. As scholar Louise Shelley notes:
"In many
countries, where organized crime is dominated by different ethnic groups that
are precluded from legitimate social mobility, the Jews and Asian groups were
significant figures in the shadow economy." [SHELLEY, L., 1999, p.
85]
This "shadow
economy" was the clandestine and illegal goings-on in the Soviet communist
world. Shelley's apologetic myth, that Jews were somehow forced into this realm
because of a marginalized existence in Soviet communism, is an expression of
the usual Jewish victimhood myth. Jews, as this volume amply evidences, have
been omnipresent in the upper echelons of power throughout the Soviet communist
hierarchy. And as a 1996 (New York and New Jersey) state investigation into the
growing "Russian" crime problem in America noted about
"Russian" immigrants to America,"
"Russian
émigrés tend to be highly educated. Those who engage in crime are very
resourceful and sophisticated in their methods of operation ... Unlike the farmers and unskilled laborers
who comprised the majority of earlier immigrations to this country, Russian
émigrés are generally urban in origin, well-educated, and industrially and
technologically skilled. Despite a language barrier, they have marketable skills
and have not been closed off from the legitimate ladders of upward mobility.
... [Yet] they engage in a variety of frauds, scams and swindles because those
are the kinds of crimes that most closely build upon their previous experience
in the former Soviet Union. Unlike their ethnic predecessors in crime, Russian
émigrés do not have to go through any developmental or learning process to
break into the criminal world in this country. They are able to begin operating
almost immediately upon their arrival." [NEW YORK STATE ORGANIZED CRIME
FORCE, 1996, p. 180, 184-185]
The above
description of an urbanized, educated, entrepreneurial group, prone to
unethical economical activity towards self-advancement, is a classical
explication of the historical Jewish strata.
Among the various "ethnic" groups
that are members of the "Russian" mafia are those from the former
Soviet area called Georgia. Jews are well-represented among this group too,
and, with a long tradition of criminal underworld behavior, were primed to
continue this in other countries. Menachem Amir notes what happened when these
Jews from Georgia moved to Israel:
"These new immigrants arrived by the thousands
in the mid-1970s. In 1980-82 there were repeated reports in the [Israeli] media
and in police statements that among the Georgian Jews were 'special' types of criminals,
engaged in 'big and serious' crimes, which they had previously practiced in
Georgia ... What became a hallmark or specialty of Georgian criminal
organizations, however, was their control, by the use of violence, of carting
and hauling services at air and sea ports. They used this position for
large-scale theft of passengers' luggage, as well as theft from cargo planes
and anchored ships. In addition, there were reports of grand scale thefts from
warehouses, sophisticated frauds of religious objects and diamonds,
counterfeiting of money and documents (drivers' licenses and professional
diplomats), and large-scale fencing." [BLOCK, A., 1996, p. 28]
Amir further notes formal Israeli
anthropological studies into the Georgian Jewish crime community. These
investigations concluded that the Georgians' "original normative
system" of crime "favored their immediate entrance and persistence
into organized criminality and organized crime." The results of fifteen
years of Israeli efforts to dissuade Jewish Georgians from crime were a
"success" only to the degree that they left Israel and had
"continued their criminal activities in their new 'places' while
maintaining criminal relations with their brethren who remain in Israel (e.g.,
contraband goods, drugs, laundering money or distributing counterfeit money,
produced in Israel [and] in Europe." [AMIR, M., 1996, p. 29-30]
In explaining to the United States Senate the
workings of the "Russian Mafia," two of the top three crime groups
cited by an undercover police agent were expressly noted to have links to
Israel:
"1)
Izmailovskaya organization. This is based in Moscow and is several thousand
members strong. Its leaders reside in Russia and Israel. The group uses
quasi-military ranks and is very strict in disciplining its members. It is
involved extensively in murder-for-hire, extortions, and infiltration of
legitimate businesses.
2) Solntsevskaya
organization. This is based in Moscow. Its leaders reside in Russia, Central Europe, and Israel.
The group is active in extortion, infiltration of legitimate businesses,
counterfeiting, and the trafficking in illegal drugs." [US, COMM, PERM, p.
201] This crime gang is "the largest mafia organization in Russia."
[DUNN, G., 1996, p. 81] It is headed by Jewish mogul Sergei Mikhailov. [BONNER,
B., 11-16-00]
In 1997 Agence France Presse reported that in
Geneva "suspected Mafia godfather, Sergei Mikhailov, had been questioned
for four hours by a Russian police officer, prosecutors said here Friday ...
Before the interrogation, Mikhailov was questioned for 11 hours by two Israeli
police officers about illegal immigration to the Jewish state ... 'Mikhas' was
carrying an Israeli passport when he was arrested in Switzerland. He is said to
be linked to the Solntsevskaya, an organization named after a Moscow
neighborhood." [AGENCE FRANCE, 1997]
It may be that the aforementioned
Senate testifier merely neglected Jewish/Israeli pre-eminence in the third
Russian crime family. As the New York Review of Books noted in November
2000 in a review of the book The Russian Mafiya:
"'Of all the nations where the Russian mob has established a
presence, none has been more deeply compromised than the State of Israel,'
[author Robert] Friedman writes, adding that the Russian mafia has 'become a
grave threat to the stability of Israel.' Although this may be a bit
hyperbolic, the Russian mafia does have a strong, safe base in Israel -- a
story that American and Israeli journalists have largely overlooked. One FBI
report observes, for example, that most members of [Jewish crime boss Semion] Mogilevich's
criminal organization have Israeli passports. And Jonathan Winer told Friedman
(when Winer was still the State Department's crime expert), 'There is not a
major Russian organized crime figure whom we are tracking who does not also carry
an Israeli passport.'" [BONNER, R., 11-16-01]
Another testifier
before the Senate subcommittee, an Italian "Colombia family" Mafioso
figure, described his crime contacts with the Russian Mafia, represented to him
by Michael Markowitz, David Bogatin, and Lev Persits, men "in a position
of leadership [who] had about 200 other Russians working under them in various
capacities. They were also continuously assisting other Russians in immigrating
to the United States." [US, COMM, Perm, p. 39] Another, a
representative of the Italian Mafia Lucchese family, noted that "I know of
Russian criminals in this country who ship guns and cocaine back to Russia.
These men have beautiful offices in Rockefeller Center and Beverly Hills and
look like legitimate businessmen. They run import-export businesses funded by
the mafia over in Moscow." [US, COMM, Perm, p. 51] Two New York
City police detectives, Daniel Mackey and Ralph Cefarrello, testified that
"Brighton Beach is also a hub for Russian-born criminals with a
well-deserved reputation for extreme violence. Their criminal activities
include vicious murders and assaults, extortion of Russian-owned businesses,
prostitution, illegal gambling, and a vast collection of frauds and schemes
that ravage the economy, causing government, businesses, and consumers millions
of dollars." [US, COMM, Perm, p. 54]
The aforementioned
Markowitz, Bogatin and Persits were partners in a range of criminal activities,
particularly a noteworthy enterprise in fuel racketeering (collectively, a scam
that costs the U.S. government about $1 billion a year). [NEW YORK STATE
ORGANIZED CRIME TASK FORCE, 1996, p. 185] Markowitz, originally from Rumania,
eventually immigrated to Israel and later to the United States. Bogatin came
from Russia. Persits "was one of the important 'Russian' gangsters from
the now notorious Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn." "The most
important broker" that bonded the Bogatin-Markowitz relationship was also
Jewish, lawyer Marvin Kramer, "a Brooklyn attorney with a reputation for
gritty personal injury litigation." An associate of Kramer's, Phil
Moskowitz, had about a dozen arrests going back to 1947. An accountant for Moskowitz,
Shelly Fishman, "created false financial assessments." Joe Skolnik
also became an associate in the ring. "Corrupt banker" David Goldberg
was also on Persits' payroll. [BLOCK, A., 1996, p. 161-162, 164]
Persits, notes Alan
Block,
"primarily
worked with Marat Balagula, once called the Russian 'Godfather' ... [He]
sprinted to the top of the émigré underworld in Brighton Beach ... He formed a
fuel distributorship called Mallard with Lev Naum, originally from Kiev, Efram Nezhinski,
and Carlos Orsini. [BLOCK, A., 1996, p. 165]
Other Jewish
associates in this criminal netherworld include Boris (a "fairly typical
heroin dealer") [BONNER, R., 11-16-01] and Benjamin Nayfield, Evsei Agron
("the most notorious Russian organized crime figure in New York until he
was gunned down"), Ilia Zeltzer, Michael Vax, and Efim Laskin. [Block, A.,
1996, p. 166] Jewish lawyer Robert Eisenberg became a "sort of
'consigliere'" for Marat Balagula. Another player, also Jewish, in this network
was Brooklyn Surrogate Court Judge Bernard Bloom, "who was both corrupt
and close to [New York governor] Cuomo." For $50,000 Bloom's office helped
mob boss Balagula untangle from some restrictive legalities. [BLOCK, A., 1996,
p. 172]
Then there is Shabtai Kalmanovich, who, in
Russia, "has a reputation as a major mobster." [BLOCK, A., 1996, p.
167] Kalmanovich, continues Jewish scholar Alan Block, is a "mysterious
Russian/Israeli gangster and KGB spy, who was ... wanted in the United States
for a bank fraud in North Carolina ... He took over [the African country of]
Sierra Leone, which had a fairly large Russian Jewish community since the days
when the country had aligned itself with the Soviet Union ... All that was really
left [in Sierra Leone] were diamonds, Sierra Leone's most profitable natural
resource. And Kalmanovitch and his cronies looted them with abandon.
Kalmanovich's relationship with [fellow Jewish Russian gangster] Balagula was
leavened through his association to some other strange bedfellows who were
close to the Hasidic community in New York's Rockland County, the heart of
[Jewish senator Benjamin] Gilman's district. Rabbi Ron Greenwald was one, Bill Davidson
another. Davidson's wife was Balagula's secretary." (Greenwald was also an
agent for worldwide Jewish American criminal Marc Rich). [BLOCK, A., 1996, p.
166-167]
In 2000, the Jerusalem Post noted another Russian Jewish
criminal kingpin: "recently, there were reports that the FBI had
identified commodities trader Semyon (Sam) Kislin, a generous donor to Jewish
and Israeli causes and to the campaign of [New York] mayor Rudolf Giuliani, as
a member of a Brooklyn-based Russian crime syndicate." [HENRY, M.,
1-13-00, p. 3]
In 1995, the Official
Kremlin International News Broadcast reported on a press briefing by the
Interior Ministry about the Russian Mafia. Vladimir Ovichitsky, identified as a
Russian "expert on organized crime busting" noted that, in terms of
the ethnic dimensions of the problem, "when mention is made of the Russian
mafia in the United States, reference actually is made to the Jewish community
on Brighton Beach." [OKINB]
In 1983 Mike
Mallowe described the growing American problem in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
He calls the Russian criminal elements "a new mafia," and
"Malina": "It is an
international conspiracy that will engage in any crime for the right price ...
In the early 1960s, according to one top secret FBI analysis, members of the
Malina began to emigrate from Russia to Israel, where they re-established their
criminal networks. Over the years these Israeli hoods branched out from Tel
Aviv to other cities, including London, Paris, Antwerp, Vienna, Rome, New York,
and Los Angeles. Some members of the Malina brotherhood really are Russian
Jews. Others have merely purchased false identities of Russian Jews ... Most
... are first class international criminals." [ROSNER, p. 120]
"The
Organizatsiya," the Commissioner of U.S. Customs told Congress in 1996,
"has been in operation in the United States since the middle 1970s with
the first influx of Jewish émigrés from the FSU. The true structure, size, and
operational components of the Organizatsiya are not entirely known since there
is limited available intelligence, investigative and source information."
[WEISSE] In 1986 Daniel Burstein wrote
in New York magazine about the home of the "Russian" mafia in
America, Brighton Beach:
"Over 100,000 Soviets have come to the United
States. The overwhelming majority were Jews ... By and large, the Russians ...
favor ... white-collar crimes like credit card fraud, counterfeiting, and gas
bootlegging." [BURSTEIN, p. 40]
"One of the
foundations on which the Russians are believed to have built their foreign
operations," noted London's Independent in 1996, "are the old
criminal structures run by mostly Jewish émigrés from the Soviet Union living
among Russian communities in cities like Antwerp, New York and Tel Aviv."
[REEVES, p. 11]
Veiling the Jewish
crime element, in 1982, United Press International reported that
"spies and criminals" were flooding into the United States
"disguised as Jewish immigrants."
[BARABAK] The New York Times
noted that Jewish organizations were "angered by a police report
speculating that the Kremlin was sending hardened criminals to the United
States through abuse of the Soviet Jewish refugee quotas." [NY TIMES, p.
A14] This is one way to spare the Jewish
community unwanted (but very merited) attention for their very serious share of
this "Russian" Mafia problem
(i.e., asserting that leading criminals living in the tightly-knit
Russian Jewish community are somehow not Jewish). A 1996 investigation
(co-sponsored by the New York State Organized Crime Task Force, the New York
State Commission of Investigation, and the New Jersey Commission of
Investigation) dismissed popular myths that Russian officials had intentionally
implanted criminals into the Jewish immigration rush to America, that the KGB
had interests in sowing Jewish migration with non-Jewish Soviet criminals, or
that "members of organized crime groups in Odessa, Ukraine, had smuggled
themselves out of the country by assuming the identities of Soviet-Jews who
were either dead or in jail." As the report noted: "For several
reasons, all of these explanations proved inadequate ... The actual number of
known Russian-emigre criminals who entered the United States in the 1970s and
1980s, either with or without the consent of Soviet officials, was relatively
small and, in general, their crimes have been very localized.... History has
shown that the growth of organized crime in any community is invariably linked
to the recent migration into that community by ethnic groups having weak ties
to the dominant political culture." [NEW YORK ORGANIZED CRIME TASK FORCE,
1996, p. 183]
Another way to spare
the Jewish community attention for its contribution to a new form of American
crime network is to vaguely and generically call Brighton Beach, as one
reporter did, simply an "ethnic neighborhood." [GIBSON, p. A1] The old reliable standby too, is the American
mass media's blanket injunction against naming Jewish criminals who largely
function within Jewish networks
as Jewish criminals. Another way to guide public attention away from Jewish criminality
was the way it was attempted in March 1997 when
"Russian American leaders" in Los Angeles called a press
conference to argue that there is no such thing as a "Russian mafia"
and that it only reinforces negative stereotypes. Principal complainants
included Si Frumkin, chairman of the Southern California Council for Soviet
Jews, and Eugene Levin, President of the Association of Soviet Jewish
Emigres. [GOLD, B13]
Meanwhile, also in
1997, the "Russian mafia" that doesn't exist was creating such
criminal havoc in Israel that an Israel Radio poll found that a third of the
Israelis surveyed were "frightened" by Russian immigrants to Israel;
60% of those questioned even believed that further immigration from Russia
should be discouraged. Natan Sharansky, former poster boy for American Jewish
demands upon the Russian government to allow Jews to move to the Jewish state,
called the poll "the saddest thing that's happened to me in the ten years
I've been in Israel." [COHEN, A.] In 1996, the Israeli government
"identified a list of 35 major crime bosses from Russia and Ukraine who
had established a presence in Israel and were laundering the proceeds of their
European operations." [TRENDS IN ORGANIZED CRIME, SUMMER 1999]
Incessant Jewish strangleholds used to veil
the profound Jewish significance in the "Russian" mafia and other
organized crime in the western world may be discerned in an obscure 1986 news
item when the President's Commission on Organized Crime issued a 250 page document
supposedly detailing "the full scope of organized crime in America."
[SANTOS] Both the UPI and Reuters
wire services took note of an extraordinary crack in the Jewish lobby's seams
by half of the document's creators, after the formal report was issued: "In
a departure, nine of the 18 commissioners issued a critical statement charging
the commission's history 'is a saga of missed opportunity.' It criticized the
commission for poor management of time, money, and staff and said it ignored many areas, including the
roles of American blacks and Jewish organizations in organized crime." [SANTOS]
A defender of this
final report was the commission's Jewish chairman: Irving Kaufman. [MOLDEA, p.
348]
As always, Jews --
even here -- are afforded a hiding place, at least partially, in the underclass
Black man's shadow. Why -- and how -- such an important issue as international
Jewish crime (widespread crime even networked through distinctly Jewish religious institutions) was forcibly
"ignored," we can well understand. But it is amazing that the
censorship was so great and meaningful that half the commissioners felt the
moral need for this public complaint, however muffled, and little passed on.
One of the dissenters
on the commission cited a nine-hour meeting held before releasing the final
report, and said: "Leaving [Jewish Hollywood-based lawyer connected to the
criminal underworld Sidney] Korshak out of the final report was no accident. A
conscious decision was made to leave out any reference to him, and we were told
about it at the meeting. It was too late to do anything about it. We [the
commissioners] really never had a chance to see a final version of the report
before it was released ... I felt there was some pressure to keep Korshak out.
And where that pressure came from, well, your guess is as good as mine."
[MOLDEA, p. 197]
This veiling of
Jewish crime comes in various guises. In 1995 a Jewish author, Stephen
Handelman, wrote a book about the Russian mafia. He concedes that "a
number of prominent black marketeers and businessmen were Jewish and police
found evidence tying international gem swindlers to joint ventures owned by
Russians who had immigrated to Israel. A former Russian who became an Israeli
citizen had signed the shipment of Colombian cocaine that was discovered at
Vyborg in 1993 and, according to police, the ikon-smuggling trade was dominated
by Russian Jewish émigrés in Vienna and Frankfurt." [HANDELMAN, p. 301]
But Handelman argues that most of the Russian mafia are Slavs, never addressing
the Jewish prominence in the upper echelons of the Mafia and the fact of its
enormous Jewish overrepresentation (Jews make up merely one percent of the
Russian population). Handelman routinely dismisses the comments he garnered in
an interview with former KGB official Aleksander Sterligov, an expert on the subject of
Russian crime, one of the "senior experts in counterintelligence,"
and chief investigator of "corruption in the Ministry of Internal Affairs,"
as merely expressions of anti-Semitism: "General Sterligov told me that
Jews were responsible for the corruption of local governments. 'They are always
trying to push out the Russians and seeking the dominant positions ... Even an ancient
Russian city like Nizhni Novogorod has been completely destroyed because it is
run by a Jewish administration." [HANELMAN, p. 301]
"As corruption
and crime spread through post-communist society," decides Handelman,
"it became easier to blame the nation's problems on the traditional
scapegoats of Russian nationalism -- Jews and other ethnic minorities."
[HANDELMAN, p. 301]
This is a curious
accusation, given the fact that Handelman himself feels comfortable in
addressing an introductory senior mafia figure in the book by the criminal's
supposed nickname: "the Armenian," hence slurring an entire
community. (Might we imagine such a parallel character to introduce a book on
world crime addressed as "the Jew?" On a much lesser level, a rare
fluke: in 1998 "one of five mob figures" in Youngstown, Ohio, was
noted by the Associated Press with his nickname: "Bernard 'Bernie the Jew'
Altshuler.") [WELSH-HUGGINS, 11-29-98] The essence of Handelman's
worldview, however, like virtually any Jewish author on such a subject, may be
understood by glancing at his volume's index for a moment. There we find that
all pages (p. 300-303, 310, and 311) under the heading "Jew" exactly correspond to those under the
heading "Anti-Semitism." In other words, one way or another, the
subject of the Jewish relationship to the Russia mafia, no matter what the
evidence, is never discussed without the standard contextual qualifier to
diffuse Jewish responsibility: anti-Semitism, i.e., virtually anything anyone said
to the author about Jews involved in the Russian crime world must be ultimately
framed as baseless, prejudicial, irrational, and wrong. And the notion of some
kind of "conspiracy," which is of course central to organized crime, is categorically dismissed.
In 2000, the Houston
Chronicle published a frank appraisal of an unusually honest new book, the Red
Mafiya, by author Robert Friedman. As the Chronicle noted, "An
American of Russian Jewish descent, Friedman is remarkably well positioned to
report on the [Russian] Mafiya, since most Mafiya members are themselves
Russian Jews. This curious fact owes its origin to the efforts, during the
Nixon administration, of Democratic Senator Henry 'Scoop' Jackson to link trade
concessions with Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union ... While the Italian
Mafia has a singular link between Italy and America, the Russian Mafiya is more
international. Ironically, in a Jewish transit camp near Rome, many
Russian-Jewish career criminals met, exchanged information and departed ... The
Russians seem crazier in their violence than do the Italians. While the Mafia
uses violence to punish enemies surgically, the Mafiya will kill the enemy, his
wife, his children, and his friends, both as a theatrical warning to
competitors and for the sheer joy of bloody, tyrannical violence ... Now 30
Russian crime syndicates are operating in at least 17 U.S. cities."
[ALFORD, S., 5-14-2000, p. 15]
And public examination
of this very criminal core through expressly Jewish networks? It is
systematically hidden by Jewish lobbying pressure and media influence,
carefully defaming "Russians" at-large as corrupt. As Robert Friedman
notes, "Because the Russian mob is mostly Jewish, it was a political hot
potato, especially in the New York area." [ALFORD, S., 5-14-2000, p. 15]
"Is there a
Russian mafia?" asked Lt. Robert Cook, commander of the Los Angeles County
Sheriff Department's organized crime unit, in the article about Jewish
complaints about Russian Jewish stereotypes in Los Angeles, "I think
that's been well documented." [GOLD, B13]
So well documented that eight months later the Los Angeles Times
noted that "the Colombians are finding their most reliable drug partner in
Europe is the Russian mafia ... 'The Russian mafia has set itself up on the
Caribbean islands so as to be able to contact the Colombians,' said General
Rosso Serrano, commander of the Colombian police ... More than two dozen
Russian banks have offices on the island of Antiqua, raising questions about
why so many faraway financial institutions would have so much interest in such
a small island." [DARLING, p.14]
The Jerusalem
Post had this observation about Antigua in 1991: "Take a small
Caribbean island, add an unscrupulous Israeli adventurer with a melon farm, and
sprinkle it with Israeli ex-army types, including a brigadier general. Have
them take over the place by bribery and corruption, then use the island to sell
small arms to Colombian drug dealers. These are the embarrassing findings of
the recently published Official Report of the Commission of Inquiry by the
Governor General of Antigua and Barbuda, Sir Wilfred Jacobs."
[MORGENSTERN]
In 1989, a Colombian
presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Gallin, was assassinated by members of the
Medellin drug ring. Only months earlier the Colombian government had lodged
protests to the Israeli government about Israeli Yair Klein, who had been found
to be training the drug cartel in paramilitary techniques. The Colombian
government, notes the Jerusalem Post, "could not have imagined
that, as they were making the complaints, a plot was being hatched to supply
100 Uzis, 400 Galil rifles, and 200,000 rounds of ammunition to the drug
cartels [by the Israeli Military Industries (IMG) company -- the commercial
wing of Israel's Defense Ministry]." [MORGENSTERN] An August 1989 Reuters report noted that
"Colombian drug
traffickers ... declared 'total' war on the Bogota government Thursday and blew
up the offices of the country's two main political parties in the drug capital,
Medellin. As the group known as the 'Extraditables' also threatened
journalists, judges, business and trade union leaders, Israel Thursday
dissociated itself from its citizens, reported to be working for the Medellin
drug cartel." [KARP]
The president of the
Russian Jewish Congress, Vladimir Gusinksy, also owner of another prominent
Russian bank called Most, is widely reported (even in Israel) [COHEN, A.] to have likely Russian crime
connections. [Gusinsky is also a major Russian media tycoon and will be further
discussed in a later section]. The
chairman of the board of Gusinsky's bank is Boris Hait, who is also a
vice-president of the Russian Jewish Congress. (In 2001, another deputy of the
Russian Jewish Congress, Mikhail Mirlashvili, was "arrested in St.
Petersburg and charged with kidnapping two people.") [COCKBURN, P.,
1-25-01] Mikhail Friedman, chairman of Russia's Alpha Bank and Vitali Malkin,
president of the Rossiiski Kredit Bank, are Russian Jewish Congress
vice-presidents. Andrei Rappoport, chairman of Alpha Bank, is also an RJC board
member. Of these RJC officials, Gusinsky, Khait, Friedman, and Malkin were
listed in 1995 by a Moscow newspaper as among the twenty richest men in Russia.
[KRICHEVSKY, Around, p. 1] Other Jewish bankers and financiers at the
very top of Russian society include Mikhail Khodorovsky and Pyotr Aven, among
others. With the fall of communism and the resultant struggles for power, the
nature of the banking business in Russia is extremely precarious, deeply
embedded in organized crime. Over a four
year period in the 1990s there were assassination attempts upon 116 bankers; 79
were killed and 36 wounded. [HOFFMAN, D., Russian, p. A1] Gusinsky alone has a 1,000-man "private
security force," directed by a former general in the KGB. [COHLER-ESSES,
p. 13]
As Phil Williams notes about the scope of the
"Russian" mafia: "In August 1995 the MVD All-Russian Scientific
Research Institute estimated that criminal groups control over 400 banks and 47
exchanges. An even more pessimistic assessment was made by professor Lydia
Krasfavina, head of the Institute for Banking and Finance Managers, who
estimated that 70 to 80 percent of private banks in Russia are controlled by
organized crime." [WILLIAMS, P., 1996, p. 1-27]
In 1999, Edmond
Safra, fabulously wealthy and secretive Jewish banker/financier and owner of
the international Republic Bank,
died in a fire of suspicious circumstances. Although the cause of the blaze was
determined to have been an employee, the London Daily Telegraph noted
that there had been "reports that the Russian mafia had issued a contract
for his murder." [GRAVES/NUNDY, p. 13]
In testimony during
hearings before a subcommittee of the United States Congress in 1996, one
expert on Russian crime said "I would reiterate that Russian organized
crime is more involved in the banking sector than most other organized crime
groups. Research within Russia reveals a very high presence of organized crime
in either the organization of [the] banking sector, the management, or in
influencing the banking sector." [US, COMM, INT'L, p. 35]
"'Organized crime groups in Russia,' another expert told Congress, 'have
more control over the banking sector than their compatriots in other countries.
Hundreds of banks are controlled by organized crime facilitating money
laundering abroad for Russian groups and providing a service for foreign crime
groups. Organized crime's domination of the banking industry is the biggest
impediment to economic growth..." [US, COMM, INT'L, p. 77]
Banking throughout
the world, and throughout history, has always had a high Jewish involvement.
Among the most sinister Russian Jewish thugs today is Semion Mogilevich, who
the Village Voice headlined in 1998 as the "world's most dangerous
gangster." Mogilevich, with a base in Brighton Beach, has also acquired
Israeli citizenship and reportedly runs international "torture,"
prostitution, and drug rings. He heads a criminal group called the Red Mafia,
of which "many of the organization's 250 members are his relatives."
[FRIEDMAN, THE WORLD'S, p. 43] They also
trade in illegal nuclear materials and legally purchased "the entire
Hungarian armaments industry." [FRIEDMAN, THE WORLD'S, p. 43] He also "bought a string of nightclubs
in Prague, Riga, and Kiev known as the "black and white clubs' which
became notorious centres of prostitution ... After the breakup of the Soviet
Union [he] is reputed to control almost everything that passes in and out of
Sheremetyero Airport, Moscow's principal international terminal." [BINYON]
In 1999 Mogilevech
turned up again in the news. The International Monetary Fund was embroiled in
controversy when it was discovered that billions of dollars lent to the
Russian government had been laundered into private hands. The Wall Street
Journal called it "one of the biggest money-laundering schemes to be
uncovered in the United States." [WSJ, 8-30-99, p. 8] The Jewish-centered
scandal (never publicly named as such) broke at the Bank of New York where Lucy
Edwards (originally named Ludmilla Pritzker; married to Jewish Russian banker
Peter Berlin, a "reputed Mogilevech lieutenant" [GOLDBERG, JJ,
9-3-99]) and Natasha Garfinkel Kagalovsky were placed "on unpaid leave
while investigations continued. Both women are beloved to work in the bank's
Eastern Europe department and are married to Russians. The central character in
the investigation [is] Mogilevech." [GARTH, A.]
"The IMF,"
notes Jonathan Steele, "found itself pouring millions into Russia simply
to protect the value of the ruble and western banks ... Konstanin Kagalovsky
[also Jewish] served from 1992 to 1995 as the link man [for the Russian
government] to the IMF. Now vice-president of Yukos oil, he has been in the
news this month because it was through the accounts which his wife managed at
the Bank of New York that millions of dollars from Russia flowed."
[STEELE, p. 8] Kagalovsky was a former executive at Bank Menatep, "one of
Russia's largest banks." This bank was controlled by Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
also Jewish (whose "internet bank" based in Antigua was called by
some regulators "a scam"). [O'BRIEN/BONNER, 8-18-96, p. 32]
Mogilevich, noted
the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, is "the central suspect
in an international bank-fraud that investigators term the biggest in
money-laundering history. ... Mogilevich's mob is said to be the largest and
most dangerous criminal organization to emerge from the backdrop of the Soviet
Union ... Most of its members are Jewish ... Cash movements began just before
the August 1998 ruble devaluation that led to Russian financial crisis ...
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." [GOLDBERG, JJ,
9-3-99] (Those noted by the Journal were Jewish tycoons Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky, and Vladimir Goussinsky. More about them, their
links to the "Russian mafia," and their influence in the Russian mass
media, in the Mass Media chapter. In 1998, Berezovsky's daughter Yelizaveta was
arested for cocaine possession St. Petersburg). [BADKHEN, A., 5-15-98] (In 2002,
Catya Sassoon, daughter of famous Jewish hair mogul Vidal Sassoon, "died
of a suspected drug overdose after a New Year's Eve party.") [AKBAR, A.,
1-5-02]
"All told, Mogilevich's mob may
have looted as much as $15 billion from the Russian economy in the last few
years." [GOLDBERG, JJ, 9-3-99]
Another Jewish
link in the gigantic economic bleeding of Russia is Israeli-born Bruce
Rappaport. As the New York Times noted, "At the intersection of
illicit Russian money and the Bank of New York is Bruce Rappaport, a Swiss
banker who has had brushes with governmental investigators in the past ... Most
recently, Mr. Rappaport's bank [Bank of New York-Inter Maritime] was sued by
the Justice Department in 1997, to recover proceeds that the Government
asserted was from drug sales that had been deposited in the Bank of New York-Maritime
in the Caribbean Island of Antigua by a known money-launderer ... Rappaport ...
was recently appointed Antigua's Ambassador to Russia. Antigua ... has been a
major center of Russian money-laundering for years." [O'BRIEN/BONNER,
8-22-99]
In the late
1980s, Rappaport's wife, Ruth, was head of the Geneva chapter of the Women's
International Zionist organization. [GREENHOUSE, S., 2-4-1988, p. 16]
Central
involvement in the spectacular theft of vast sums of Russia government money
was not a first for Jewish swindlers, even in the 1990s. The Jerusalem
Report, in 1993, noted that "A Jewish businessman, an alleged spy [for
Israel], is in the middle of a scandal that is shaking Moscow's fragile
regime." The man in question was Boris Yosefovich Birshtein, head of the Seabeko Group. As the Israeli journal
noted:
"Seabeko, according to a KGB report
obtained by the Jerusalem Report, was used by leaders of the former
Soviet Union as a conduit to steal millions." [LESSER, A., 9-23-93]
Stolen money was
deposited in Switzerland accounts. Past Bershtein business partners included
Jewish Americans David Katz and David Tzebel. Among Bershtein's more recent
associates was Dmitry Yakubovsky, also Jewish, who lives today in a $5.2
million home in suburban Toronto. Israeli Binyamin Keret, the head of a company
called Trade Links, was also a
Birshtein partner. "Birshtein, according to the KGB report, is a Mossad
[Israeli spy] agent, as was Keret ... Diplomatic sources quote government
officials as saying he was being run on the Russian side by Mikhail Poltoranin,
one of [Russian prime minister Boris] Yeltsin's closest aides." [LESSER,
A., 9-23-93]
Moving along, in
1987, Israelis Moshe Shtrowise, Ishack Ferman, and Asher Sivan were arrested
for smuggling drugs into England. [HUNTER, LINK, p. 6] In 1995, Barry Rider, a Jew, the dean of
England's Jesus College at Cambridge University, and "an academic who has
been involved for the last ten years in crime research," presented a
controversial "anti-Semitic"
paper to Great Britain's Houses of Parliament. The (Jewish) Forward
noted that the report
"highlighted a
rising tide of organized crime among Britain's Jewish community -- much of it
connected with Israelis living in Britain.
According to the
report, English Jews are helping to launder Mafia money. It also claims that
some Jews are involved in racketeering and protection rackets and that they are
ready to resort to criminal violence.
Many observers are
coming to accept that there is a growing class of Jewish criminals in Britain,
particularly among the 27,000 Israelis now settled in the country ... Israeli
drug gangs ... have carved out a large slice of the narcotics trade ... in
recent years." [SHAMASH, p. 2]
An unnamed senior
government prosecutor told the Forward that "some of the biggest
drug dealers in Britain are Israelis based at London's most prestigious
addresses" and are involved "in importing millions of pounds of
heroin and cocaine." [SHAMASH, p. 2] In 2001, on another front, Philip
Lyons and Abraham Israel were charged in London with "money-laundering
charges, including the handling of proceeds from drug trafficking."
[ROCKER, S., 3-9-01]
In 1997, the French
Montreal La Presse newspaper, attracted Canadian Jewish Congress and
B'nai B'rith Canada condemnation, cries of anti-Semitism, and a demand for an
apology when the paper ran a headline stating" "RCMP [Royal Canadian
Mounted Police] strike a Deadly Blow to a Jewish Criminal Organization."
The Jewish lobbying organizations argued that it was inappropriate to note
criminals by ethnicity (although the common nomer, "Russian mafia," garners little complaint from anyone), and
that only seven of 31 arrested members of the gang smuggling drugs were Jewish.
Claude Masson, the assistant publisher of La Presse, noted in response
to the Jewish attack that all the leaders
of the criminal group had been identified by police as Jews, and added:
"I think we're playing with words a bit. I think we should be careful
about being so politically correct that we can no longer say what is happening
in our society." [EISENTHAL, p. 4] (In 2001, Jacob Cohen-Shiri was
arrested in Montreal for a drug-related murder. A year earlier he had pleaded
guilty to a case of armed-robbery). [CHERRY, P., 5-8-01]
Antonio Nicaso and Lee Lamothe, in their 1995 book Global
Mafia. The New World Order of Organized Crime, noted that "In Toronto, Soviet gangs
practiced extortion, gambling, loan-sharking, and drug trafficking, much of it
in conjunction with the Paul Volpe group of the Buffalo La Costra Nostra crime
family. During the 1970s and 1980s, various police investigations turned up
Soviets, many of whom said they were Jews who had immigrated from Israel. The
men were treated as run-of-the-mill bandits and the cases never got beyond the
basic investigations. In retrospect, police believe the Russian mob was behind
many of the crimes. The same held true in New York City, where Russian gangs
conducted ongoing crimes within the ethnic community, and expanded beyond its
borders into partnerships with the New York La Cosa Nostra to whom they paid
'an operating tax.' It wasn't until the breakup of the USSR that thousands of
gangsters flooded into North America, many of them turning to the criminals
living there who already knew the ropes, the law, and the language. The
immigrants connected with the local former Soviet mobs and were quickly
absorbed into the underworld. They often formed their own more violent
networks, demanding a larger piece of the criminal pie." [NICASO/LAMOTHE,
1995, p. 45-46]
In 2001, the Jewish Chronicle noted another
Jewish drug story in Australia:
"Sydney's Jewish community has
been embarrassed about publicity in the city's two major newspapers about gang
warfare to control the drug trade in the Eastern Suburbs, where the majority of
Sydney's Jewish population live.
In a dawn raid last week, 40 police
swooped on homes across the city, taking in for questioning youths who were
later charged with kidnapping, extortion and robbery. The victims were
described in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph as
being members of wealthy Jewish families. The leader of one of the gangs is
also Jewish ... Stephen Rothman, president of Sydney's Board of Deputies, told
the JC: 'We've told both papers that we are totally against ethnic labelling of
any kind. The Herald removed the Jewish tag in later editions, but the Telegraph
persisted and we will be taking this up with the paper." [BENJAMIN, H.,
4-20-01]
In Vilnius,
Lithuania, in 1995 Boris Dekanidze was arrested for the murder of a journalist
who consistently exposed a local arms smuggling, drug dealing, and money
laundering ring called the Vilnius Brigade. "It was a political
trial," Dekanidze told the state television network about his eventual
death sentence, "It's a clear attack on the Jewish businessman."
[KAMINSKI, p. IV] "The
government," noted the London Financial Times, "... although
sensitive to charges of anti-Semitism, ... says Boris Dekanidze has a criminal
past and proven contacts with shadowy figures among the émigré community in the
U.S., Europe, and Israel ... But a recent terrorist threat against the world's
largest nuclear power plant in Ignalina, in the east corner of Lithuania --
German intelligence received a tip that the plant might be bombed if Boris
Dekanidze was not released -- casts doubt on who truly governs the
country." [KAMINSKI, p. IV]
In 1998 and 1999,
Ukraine reversed the usual "Jews flee to Israel" scenario by kicking
two prominent Jewish businessmen/racketeers out of the country. First, Leonid
Vulf, a Ukrainian with Israeli citizenship, was banned from entry into the
former Russian republic because he is "an alleged leader of a gang
suspected of contract killings in Ukraine." [KRICHEVSKY, L., 6-30-99, p.
11] A few months later, yet another
Ukrainian Jew, Vadim Rabinovich, also possessing Israeli citizenship and also
with known ties to the Russian mafia, was banned too from Ukraine for five
years for causing "considerable damage to Ukraine's economy." Given
the fact that one of Rabinovich's harshest critics is the Chief Rabbi of the
Ukraine, Ya'akov Bleich, it was difficult to completely dismiss his case as one
of irrational anti-Semitism. Rabinovich,
noted the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, with "assets of $1 billion,
mak [es] him one of the wealthiest men in the former Soviet Republic," and
a member of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's "inner circle."
[KRICHEVSKY, L., 6-30-99, p. 11]
In 1995, another
Jewish Mafioso, Monya Elson, was arrested in Italy. The Associated Press
noted that "law enforcement officials long ago identified Elson as a boss
in the Russian mafia, a national network of criminal enterprises based in the
Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. He had been described as the highest
ranking member not behind bars." [AP, 3-8-95]
In 1996, the California
State Attorney General, Don Lundgren, announced that there were
"approximately 300 former Soviet Union crime figures and associates in the
San Francisco Bay Area" involved in extortion, money laundering, loan
sharking, auto theft rings, and gas tax fraud schemes. The Jewish Bulletin
of Northern California interviewed Rabbi Ben Pil, an immigrant from
Uzbekistan, identified as likely the only Russian-speaking rabbi in the San
Francisco area. Pil told the paper that Jews are "the brains of the
mafia" in the Soviet Union and "here, it could be the same."
[STRASSER, p. 96] For Rabbi Pil's part, the state of California investigated
his Jewish charity organization for fraud the next year and a San Francisco
judge ordered the rabbi's prominent local Jewish "charity"
organization, the Jewish Educational Center, and two subsidiary businesses run
by Pil and his wife, to be shut down. Ostensibly created to aid new immigrant
Jews from Russia and sick children, the organization was charged with fraud,
false advertising and tax violations. In widespread appeals for donations of
used cars, the Jewish Educational Center had become one of the largest used car
dealerships in America. [SF CHRON, 7-2-97, p. A13; 6-14-97, p. A1]
In the insurance
fraud world, in 1997 the Keystone Medical ring was busted by police
authorities, indicting over 30 people in four states and "13 different
sham medical clinics."
Approximately 120 accidents were faked and 600 bogus insurance claims
filed. "Peter Rivelis, who helped run Keystone Medical," noted the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, "had extensive contacts among Russian Jewish émigrés
because of his own Jewish background and recruited from that group of
acquaintances, according to documents." [PITZ, p. A1] In 1995, a scam
"orchestrated by Alexander Zaverukha" cheated insurance companies out
of over a $1 million. Indicted were Zaverukha, Victor Tsan, and six others.
[NEW YORK ORGANIZED CRIME TASK FORCE, 1996, p. 188]
In 1993, two Jewish Russian immigrants, David and Michael Smushkevich,
were "accused of orchestrating the biggest health care fraud in United
States history," worth a stunning $1 billion dollars. Earlier, in 1987,
David had been convicted of Medicare fraud. Both brothers lost a $17 million
lawsuit accusing fraud filed by an insurance company in 1988. [MOFFAT, S.,
3-16-93, p. B1] In 1995, Russian Jews Bella Jakubovicz and Asya Drubich were
indicted in Brooklyn for stealing $35 million from a Manhattan jewelry company.
In 1996, Lev Breskin, Alexander Korogodsky, Yakov Portnov, and George Yosifian
were indicted for stealing $5.7 million from a charity set up to help victims
of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster. [NEW YORK STATE ORGANIZED CRIME TASK
FORCE, 1996, p. 189, 190]
In 2001, "two executives from a
World Trade Center brokerage have been charged with plotting to steal $100
million from investors -- a theft discovered days after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks." Indicted were Andre Koudachev (Jewish?), owner of First Equity
Enterprises, and Gary Farberov (Jewish), former First Equity president.
[GUARDIAN, 11-20-01]
In 2000, reporter Mike Tobin found
himself under attack by Jews for an article he had written for Cleveland
Scene magazine about local Russian immigrants involved in crime,
particularly those in computer sales. "The story also makes clear,"
complained the Cleveland Jewish News, "that in addition to being
Russian, most of the immigrants to Cleveland it is highlighting, are also
Jewish." [OSTER, M., 11-5-2000, p. 3] Tobin's article, said the News
in a follow-up piece,
"singled out Russian operations,
identified them as Jewish-owned, and implied that these were just a few of many
Russian Jewish computer companies engaging in scams and illegal business
practices ... Tobin, who is Catholic, said he 'thought long what to do with the
information' when he realized that the computer companies were all owned by
Russian Jews. 'I'm not saying that Jewish people sell bad computers. But what
do the companies have in common? The same geographic area, the same ethic and
religious background' ... Contacted after the television show taping [on local
Russian TV, where he defended his article], Tobin said since the article
appeared, he has received 40 e-mail messages from former employees of computer
companies and law enforcement officials who told him, 'You have just scratched
the surface.'" [KARFELD, M., 11-19-2000, p. 22]
In 1996, the Cleveland Plain Dealer named
Martin Goldfarb and William Sawchyn, co-owners of Allstate Vending, as
"two of the principal figures in [a car insurance] conspiracy"
involving 130 vehicles. A network of 38 people were eventually indicted in the
ring. In one case, noted the Plain Dealer,
"Goldfarb
leased a retagged 1990 van to the Jewish Family Services Services Home, a home
in Woodmere for retarded children, and then had Sawchyn steal it. Goldfarb then
filed a false insurance claim for the van he had leased to the Jewish Family
Services Home for a nominal fee." [ROLLENHAGEN, M., 9-20-96, p. B1]
With the cooperation
of Russian police agencies in 1997, another Jewish fraudster, Vladimir Levin,
was imprisoned in New York for a spectacular innovation in white collar crime.
He was charged with having "masterminded
[from St. Petersburg, in Russia] the first bank raid ever carried out on the
Internet, withdrawing more than $10 million from bank accounts in a country he
had never set foot in... Levin was allegedly able to arrange the transfer of
large sums from Citibank customers to accounts in countries as far apart as
Israel and Finland, Colombia and the Netherlands ... The assumption was [by
police] that the Russian mafia had muscled in on the scam."
(In 2000, the giant
Microsoft computer software computer notified the FBI that a computer hacker
had gained entrance into its system and downloaded material at "an email
account in St. Petersburg, Russia." The perpetrator was unknown.)
[BRIDIS/BUCKMAN, 10-27-2000]
In another computer
case, also in 2000, an Israeli woman, Sandra Elazar, and an Italian national,
Giuseppe Russo, were "accused of using thousands of American credit-card
numbers snagged off computer lists to place $750,000 worth of on-line lotto
bets." They also went on an "on-line buying spree." [JERUSALEM
POST, 3-5-2000] In 2001, four Israeli high school students confessed to
unleashing the "Goner" computer worm. [COPANS, L., 12-8-01]
There is even an
entire book (subtitled "America's Most-Wanted Computer Outlaw")
written about notorious Jewish computer hacker Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick was
hunted down after a multi-year search by the F.B.I. He was jailed for nearly
five years. [BLANGGER, T., 12-26-96, p. D1; BRIDIS, T., 3-3-2000, p. B1]
Ever wonder where the computer
pheonomenon of "spamming" came from? :
"One of the earliest examples of
[Internet] spamming was actually done by lawyers. Laurence Canter and Martha
Siegel, former practitioners in Florida, in 1994 invented 'spamming.' They
advertised that they would prepare the documents for the INS lottery, which
permitted non-residents of the U.S. to enter a lottery for a green card. Their
advertisement was posted across the Internet. And the Internet was outraged. To
understand the outrage of the Internet community, you need to understand the
origins of the Internet.
In 1994, roughly one year after the
World Wide Web came into use, the Internet was primarily populated by
academics, scientists and students.
Commercialism was
frowned upon and violated the terms of service for most of the Internet service
providers then in existence (including the terms of service of the provider
used by Canter and Siegel to spam the Internet).
Many Usenet groups, inundated with the
spammed message, crashed or were forced offline ... . Notwithstanding the furor
caused by their spamming, in 1995 Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel
published How to Make a Fortune on the Information Super Highway, a book
that became the 'spamming bible' to the next generation of spammers.
Inevitably, given the low cost and ease of mass mailings online, spamming
caught on." [CYBERANGELS]
In 1987, Israeli Zvi
Gafnis was arrested in Hong Kong. Gafni was involved in international arms
dealing, cocaine smuggling into Mexico and the U.S., counterfeit U.S. dollars,
and illegally transporting computers into the Soviet Union. [HUNTER, LINK, p.
5] In 1997, in an article entitled Specter
of Russian Mafia Scares Dutch After Latest Killing, Vadim Rosenbaoum -- a Jewish importer-exporter -- made news as
a murder victim in the Netherlands. Agence France Presse suggested that
he had been slain for informing authorities about local "Russian"
Mafia activities.
In 1978, New York
City's famous Studio 54 disco nightclub was raided by the Organized Crime
Strike Force for tax evasion and drug dealing. Owners Steve Rubell and Ian
Shrager were both Jewish. Shrager's father, nicknamed "Max the Jew,"
was a former associate of gangster Meyer Lansky. Among the objects confiscated
were lists of famous visitors who were provided complimentary drugs by the
proprietorship. [GAINES/CHURCHER, p. 276-277]
In 1999, Thailand
authorities asked Israel for help in capturing Israeli Peres Esat who murdered
another Israeli, Shimon Benhamo, in Bangkok. Another arrested Israeli, Shimon
Ofer Skriki, also confessed to the killing over an argument about the price on
a cocaine shipment from Brazil. [DEUTSCHE PRESSE] That same year, the Jerusalem
Report noted the cases of four Jews serving life sentences in Thailand's
Bangkwang prison for smuggling heroin. With money provided by friends and
relatives, they have approached prison employees and "bought
themselves into the same cell, then bribed the guards to have only 10 other
inmates in their 215-square-foot quarters, not the standard 20, and allow them
sleeping mats, bottled water, and a diet of meat, fruit and vegetables. Two
years ago, the four 'leased' a $500-a-year cell for their 'Jewish House.' It's
an exclusive club equipped with tables and chairs, bookshelves and a color
TV."
Among those Jews
imprisoned is Stephen Roye, once an Emmy-winning TV producer "who had
several anti-drug documentaries in the 1980s" but was caught when he
"volunteered to run heroin from Bangkok to his native Los Angeles."
[KRAUSZ, T., 12-20-99]
In 1996 the (London)
Times noted the case of Iosif Kobzon, who "from humble Jewish
roots" had attained
In 1990, Israeli
Amiram Nir was killed in a mysterious plane crash in the Mexican state of
Michoacan. Ostensibly, he was visiting a large avocado plantation -- Nucal -- owned by fellow Israeli Avraham
Cohen and Swiss-Jewish millionaire Nessim Gaon. "A week after Nir's
death," noted the Jerusalem Post,
"Newsday
reported that U.S. intelligence sources in Mexico believed he was the middleman
for a large arms deal of Israeli weapons via a port in Vera Cruz on the eastern
coast of Mexico. It quoted American Drug Enforcement Agency officials as saying
that there had been a steep rise in the efforts of cocaine smugglers to
transport drugs from Michocacan to the U.S. and that three days prior to Nir's
visit a captain in the Mexican army confirmed that a 'large shipment' of
Israeli-made weapons arrived at the Vera Cruz port and was transported to
Mexico City." [BAINERMAN]
In 1994 a bomb
exploded on a Panamanian commuter plane, killing 21 people. 12 of them were
Jews (included four Israelis). Suspicions grew that the target of the attack
was Saul Schwartz, a passenger on the plane who was under investigation by
Italian police and known to have links to the Medellin Columbia drug cartel.
Robert Eisenmann, the Jewish publisher of La Prensa, noted that
"Saul Schwartz was definitely in the hanky panky business ... Most of the
Jewish community would prefer to call [the bombing] an anti-Semitic act than to
accept that one of their own was involved in drug trafficking." [LUXNER,
p. 2]
In 1997 an alleged
"Russian mafia kingpin," and immigrant to Israel, Grigori Lerner
(a.k.a. Zvi Ben-Ari) was put on trial for bank fraud and bribery in the Jewish
state. In Russia he was wanted for "murders ... of a banker and a popular
Moscow TV broadcaster, the attempted murder of several other bankers, and the
embezzlement of $85 million from three Russian banks" [GROSS, N., 1997, p.
22] but Israeli law forbids extradition of its citizens. Born of "highbrow Jewish parents,"
as early as 1981 Lerner was convicted of stealing large sums of money from a
government agency. The Jewish Week noted that there were those in Israel
who "insisted that anti-Semitism was a primary Russian motive in the
Lerner affair." [DERNFNER, p. 24] Lerner's wife, Olga Zolovenskaya (who
became Ilena Rubinstein in Israel), was formerly married to Sergei Timofayev,
"a major mafia don." [GROSS, N., 1997, p. 22]
Regarding
Lerner's case, the Christian Science Monitor noted that:
"Crime experts
say there is a more general problem of Russian expatriates using Israel as a
base for international money laundering and trying to infiltrate or influence
Israeli economic, political, and security establishments. And their reach does
not stop at the [Israeli] border ... Reformers say that it is relatively easy
to buy influence in Israel because there are few restrictions on contributions
to individual candidates ... But magnifying the international aspect of
organized crime in Israel are its even more liberal banking laws -- which
police and other critics say make money laundering easy ... Police say $2.5
billion to $4 billion in criminal money has been brought into Israel since the
collapse of the Soviet Union ... 'Now you can bring money here, deposit it,
whenever you like, no questions asked,' says a Jerusalem-based police ministry
special investigator of international crime ...
Attempts to infiltrate Israel's political and economic system represents
a 'strategic threat' because Mafia figures have been hiring former security or
police officers to learn how Israeli investigators operate." [PRUSHNER, p.
18]
"Many
countries in the West," noted the Jerusalem Post in 1996,
"have
regulations forcing disclosure of sources of investment to both banks and
private developers. No such rules, however, exist in [Israel]. The most
commonly stated for this situation is the authorities' desire to make it easy
for Jewish immigrants to transfer their money here with 'no questions asked.'
But there is another reason. By looking the other way when money from even
questionable sources is transferred into this country, the authorities
encourage the flow of much-needed foreign currency." [HUTMAN, p. 10]
In 1994, Russian
government officials advised Israeli police on 34 known "Mafia
chiefs" who had immigrated to Israel. [INTELLIGENCE NEWSLETTER,
5-29-97] Among them was Anton Malevsky,
who received his Israeli passport in 1994. Malevsky, noted the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency, "reportedly
heads one of Moscow's most notorious organized crime groups." [KRICHEVSKY,
1-26-98] Hebrew University criminologist Menachem Amir estimates that there are
5,000-6,000 Russian-born criminals in Israel and that "90% of the
prostitutes here are Russian -- many of them brought over by organized
prostitution rings -- and most of the money brought here from Russia was
criminally tainted." [PRUSHNER, p. 18] By 1987 the tiny country of Israel
had an existent narcotics-dealing business of $1 billion and 15,000-20,000 of its
own home grown addicts, not including another 30,000 or so less addictive drug
users. In 1995 Israeli news highlighted
two horrific murders in which the victims had been decapitated and their heads
carried away. "The most brutal system of cutting off the head," said
police commander David Cohen, "is practiced by a very particular sector of
organized crime in Russia." [REUTERS NA]
Menachem Amir notes
that it was not the Israeli government that alerted the public to the presence
of the "Russian" mafia in that country, but the Israeli press. [AMIR,
M., 1996, p. 21] And it wasn't until 1978 that an Israeli government commission
(the Shimron Commission) noted the "corruption [that] existed in the form
of 'social relations' and 'mutual help' between prominent businessmen, national
political leaders and high-ranking military officers." [AMIR, M., 1996, p.
25]
In 1994, 23 people
were arrested in a drug laundering gang that included Borough Park (New York)
rabbis Alexander Schwartz and Menashe Leifer, lawyers Harvey Weinig and Robert
Hirsch, policeman Michael Kalanz, retired fireman Richard Spence, a Swiss
banker, and the Honorary Consul in New York for Bulgaria. "The key
destination for the cocaine money was Zurich," noted the (London) Daily
Telegraph, "where it was allegedly fed into Swiss accounts by husband
and wife bankers Leon and Rachel Weinmann." [LAURENCE, p. 19] The New
York Times noted that the ring was "one of the biggest drug-money
laundering operations the authorities had ever uncovered in New York." Rabbi
Schwartz was captured with $267,830 in cash stuffed inside a money vest in San
Juan, Puerto Rico. [TREASTER, J., 12-1-94, p. B1]
Two years
earlier, the Village Voice had highlighted yet another Jewish gangster,
this one American-born: Murray Wilson. Wilson, said the Voice, is
In still another
recent major drug laundering case in America, in 1997 two more New York
City-area Orthodox rabbis, Bernard Grunfeld (an "administrator" at a
yeshiva) and Mahir Reiss, both of the Bobover Hasidic sect, were indicted with
ten other men on charges of laundering $1.75 million in drug money; they even
helped buy the Colombian drug cartel an airplane. Rabbi Reiss, a frequent
visitor to Israel, was described by the New York Times as the "most
senior player in the case." His brother Abraham (who "collected cash from a stash house
operated by the drug dealers in Manhattan" [GOLDMAN, A16] was also
arrested as was Israel Knoblach, a yeshiva "associate." Abraham Reiss the philanthropist also sat on
the Board of Directors of the Orthodox girls school Manhattan High, rubbing
elbows with fellow Board member Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of
the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations. [KAHN, G, p. 2]
Jack Pinski, "from one of Colombia's wealthiest Jewish families,"
[KAHN, G, p. 2] remained a fugitive. [GREENBERG, p. 9] Between August 1995 and
May 1996 $19 million was deposited in bank accounts using the address of a
yeshiva, Mesivta Eitz Chaim.
And as the London Observer
observed about U.S. governmental favoritism towards Jews in this case:
"In a bizarre
twist, the judge put ... defendant Abraham Reiss under house arrest when it
emerged that his brother was serving a prison sentence for the same offenses,
and that to have a both sons in jail would be 'a double hardship' for the
parent." [OBSERVER,
"Money
launderers are the indispensable partners of major drug traffickers,"
Zachary W. Carter, a federal prosecutor, told the press regarding the
Grunfeld-Reiss case, "The cynical act of using religious institutions to
conceal drug proceeds is particularly reprehensible." [GOLDMAN, A16]
"These cases don't seem to be dramatically different from those involving
other ethnic groups," noted Assistant U. S. Attorney Lee Dunst, chief
prosecutor in the case, "Except, that is, for allegations that the bank
accounts of religious institutions are used for money laundering. That seems to
be unique." [GOLDBERG, Thou, p. 41]
But there were other noteworthy
peculiarities. The Jewish Week, for instance, noted an Israeli newspaper
report that "the Reiss brothers recently bought land in Israel's West Bank
for tens of millions of shekels ... The paper reported there is suspicion that
some of the money for the land deals came from Columbian drug profits ... The
attorney representing the two settlements [where the rabbis bought land] was
Shlomo Deri, brother of Arye Deri, the head of the [Israeli] Shas Party who is
under indictment for a corruption scandal that touched Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu." [GREENBERG, E, p. 9]
The 20,000 Bobover
Hasids, of which Grunfeld and the Reiss brothers were leaders, is the largest
Hasidic community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, which is known for its Orthodox
populations. The arrests of the rabbis was particularly bewildering, said the New
York Times, because "in the pious Bobov community drug addiction is
virtually unheard of." "Everybody in this community is a rabbi,"
Dov Hiskin (the Democratic Assemblyman who represents the largely Hasidic
district that includes Borough Park) sarcastically told reporters, "If you
have a beard, they call you a rabbi." [NYT, JUNE 17, 18] Hiskind -- a
former member of Rabbi Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League -- is a well-known
personality in New York City, described by the Times as "one the
most ardent and visible advocates of Jewish causes on New York City's political
scene." FRIED, B1 "[The Bobov Hasids] are completely shocked by the
terrible allegations," Hikind announced the next day, "and hope and
pray they are not true." [GOLDMAN]
It is doubtful if
Hiskind's own prayers will help. Two months later Hiskind himself was facing
serious legal problems of his own, eventually being charged with crimes by a
Federal Grand Jury in Brooklyn, facing up to ten years in prison for taking at
least $40,000 in payoffs from officials of the government-funded Council of
Jewish Organizations of Borough Park. The Assemblyman was charged with
misappropriation of funds, criminal conspiracy, fraud, and corrupt solicitation
and acceptance of funds. Hikind was charged with using the money to pay for his
children's tuition, for supporting illegal fund-raising activities, as well as
financing trips to France and Israel. Officials of the Jewish Organizations of
Borough Park, Rabbi Elimelech Naiman, Director of Employment and Training, and
Paul Chernick, Director of Operations, were earlier charged with stealing up to
$600,000 from federal grant monies. (Yet another rabbi, Elliot Amsel, a
"key fund raiser for Assemblyman Hikind," and president of Syrit
College, was also charged by federal agents with putting $419,000 intended for
the college into his personal bank account. [COHLER-ESSES, ORTHODOX, p. 9]
Federal investigators charged Hikind with taking payoffs from them in exchange
for funneling state grants -- up to five million dollars a year -- their way.
In a press conference about the charges against him, Hikind asserted "that
the Federal charges were part of an attempt to silence him. He declined to identify
who was trying to silence him, but made reference to 'self-hatred, jealousy,
and self-interest among Jews.'" [SULLIVAN, B3 FRIED, 9-27-97, SULLIVAN,
B3, FRIED, 8-8-97, FRIED, 3-28-97]
Related to the
Hiskind case, in 1998 a Brooklyn rabbi, Elliot Amsel, who heads the Syrit
College in Brooklyn, was charged with stealing over $700,000 from government
funds intended for education. He was also accused of money laundering, filing
false income tax returns, and lying to investigators. The money he stole, noted
the New York Daily News, "was diverted to private bank accounts in
New York and Israel." [PETERSON, p. 61]
Such wheelings and
dealings in the Jewish Orthodox religious community go on and on:
In 1990, the editor
of a Hebrew-language weekly newspaper in Brooklyn was arrested on charges of
extortion from an official of the Satmar Orthodox community. Chaim Shaulson,
the son of a Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, was accused of accepting $50,000 to
avoid writing critical articles about the Satmar group in his paper. [BIRNBAUM,
p. 26]
In 1996 the
"largest case of voter fraud in the history of New York state" was
discovered in the Satmar hasidic communities of Brooklyn and Kiryas Joel. In a
check of 1,134 voting records of names linked to an address at the local United
Talmudic Academy, the Times Herald-Record of Middleton, New York, found
121 cases of voter fraud, double-voting in two New York localities, a state
felony. [GREENBERG, E. CITY, p. 1] In 2001, in England, two Hassids were
"convicted of the biggest vote-rigging conspiracy ever brought before a
British court." Isaac Leibowitz and Zev Lieberman, "two local
government politicians in north London," represented both the Conservative
and Liberal Democrat parties. [DAVIS, D., 3-11-01] They were sentenced to only
six and four months in jail, respectively, causing six members of the British
Parliament to protest that the sentences were "absurdly lenient."
[ROCKER, S., 4-27-01, p. 1]
In 1989 Rabbi
Abraham Friedlander was found drowned in Brooklyn's Gowanus Bay. The Jewish
Week noted the cloud of suspicion around his death: "There were some
speculating that Friedlander ... was being hounded by people from whom he had
borrowed money, including Satmar Jews, some of whom have been implicated in
other loan-sharking cases that have ended violently." [MARK, J, RABBI, p.
5]
In 1991 another
hassidic rabbi, Nochum Sternberg, and his wife Esther, were jailed for contempt
of court for refusing to testify, on religious grounds, against fellow Jews in
a tax-fraud scheme involving $20 million. The Jewish Week noted that
their attorney, Nathan Lewis, argued that "Jewish law has a strong
religious prohibition against informers who testify against other Jews in a
secular court." Both Sternbergs had already served prison terms themselves
years earlier in another tax fraud. [JW, 8-2,8-91, p. 8]
In 1999 Rabbi
Bernard Freilich, "who holds a $76,000--a-year political patronage in the
[New York governor] Pataki administration" was charged with "witness
tampering in a case of an alleged incest victim, raped by her (unnamed) father.
George Messner, Mates Fisher, Richard Finkel, Sam Lustigan and Baruch Weiss
were also indicted for attempting to keep the victim from testifying."
[LIFF, 7-15-99]
Howard Jacobson
noted in 1993 the first conversation he had with British lawyer Martin Braum
(both men are Jewish), who was active in fighting London's Jewish Orthodox
community:
"The molesting
of a child and the community's ring of secrecy around the molester are merely
the surface of the problem. Things are deeply wrong within Orthodox Judaism,
and have been going wrong for a century. Chief among the problems are the
[Jewish] Germans. Although a minority in Stamford Hill, the German Orthodox are
assertive and assured, and are easily able to sway the less sophisticated. They
have brought over from Germany methods they acquired from the Nazis -- crowd
control, propaganda, hatred." [JACOBSON, H., 1993/1995, p. 19, 23]
"They -- the
ultra-Orthodox ones," said Braum, "contaminate our religion.
They have no honour, no generosity, no prettiness. They come to the court --
yeah, yeah, to the trial -- in those plant-pot wigs, to put off people with
open minds. They're there first thing, so they can take all the seats, staring with
hostility at whoever isn't one of them ... Child-molesting doesn't bother these
people, it isn't seen to be an enormous sin, it can't be grasped by them as
such, because they cannot conceive of any innocence to be molested, and because
the very idea of molesting a young person is so close to what they do anyway in
their educational methods." [JACOBSON, H., 1993/1995, p. 23]
In 1993, 21 New
York-area Orthodox institutions were being investigated for fraudulently
obtaining $300 million in education grants. Two Brooklyn-based Orthodox
schools, Bais Fruma, a hasidic academy, and Yeshiva Toldos Yaakoor Yosef, were
indicted, including senior officials of the Village of New Square, an Orthodox
township north of North York City. [GOLDBERG, THOU, p. 40] (A group of prominent Jewish leaders met with
the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, seeking to get the New
Square defendants off lightly. Lobbyists included Abraham Biederman, a former
official under former New York City mayor Ed Koch; Israel Singer, Secretary
General of the World Jewish Congress; Richard Stone, Chairman of the Orthodox
Union's Institute of Public Affairs; and George Klein, a wealthy real estate
baron. [FORWARD, 6-6-97, p. 3]) Four men from New Square were sentenced to
prison terms. "When I visited New Square shortly after the
indictments," says Jewish author Joseph Berger, "there was universal
support for those charged." [BERGER, J., 2-28-2000]
Later, in 1999,
"the New York city schools chancellor removed three Chasidic school board
members in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, [because of] a $6 million scam that involved
Rabbi Hertz Frankel, the principal of perhaps the largest girl's yeshiva in the
nation. Frankel pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the federal government
and the New York City school system of millions of dollars in remedial
education aid for his school's children." [GREENBERG, E., It's, p.
8] Rabbi Frankel got off with three years unsupervised probation. The school
had to pay a fine of $1 million. "If you had a secular organization that
bilked a public school out of $6 million," professor Marci Hamilton of
Yeshiva Benjamin Cardorzo Law School told the Jewish Week, "you
would see [the responsible perpetrator] either going to prison or paying a
hefty fine ... [This is] a light slap on the hand [that] could be attributed to
the government favoring an influential religious group." [COHLER-ESSEL,
4-23-99, p. 24]
"Publicly most
[Orthodox religious leaders] contend that corruption scandals are isolated
incidents," noted the Jewish Week, "... But privately, some
Agudah officials make other determinations. 'Yes, there is a problem. We know
it,' whispered one.'" [GREENBERG, E. It's]
In 1998 Zelman
Manela, the "son of Holocaust survivors," and the head of Chevra
Kadisha, an Orthodox mortuary in Los Angeles, was sent to prison for two years
for forgery and grand theft. The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles noted
that "Manela's
mortuary was one of only a few in town run by Orthodox Jews strictly according
to Jewish law ... At the sentence hearing ... about sixty observant Jews
appeared to support Manela and his family. They cried and prayed, reading
psalms while two rabbis urged Judge Michael Hoff to grant probation..."
[PFEFFERMAN, p. 10]
In 1998 the New York
Daily News named Abraham Gabbay, an Orthodox Jew, as "the new King
of deadbeat dads," who -- as a multi-millionaire -- preferred months in
jail than pay $45,000 owed to his ex-wife in child support. In jail, Gabbay
spent $2,500 on telephone calls to maintain his businesses. Meanwhile, noted
the News, "he also devoted time to prayer. A religious Jew, he
meets twice weekly with a prison chaplain, a rabbi who recently wrote the court
on Gabbay's behalf." [ARENA, p. 6]
From London, in
1990, property developer Michael Zebner absconded to America with a girlfriend,
leaving his Land Development Corporation in ruins. The secretary of the
company, Nathan Dony, said that
"The man was a
pillar of society and very highly thought of in the Orthodox Jewish community
in London. There was no warning that anything was wrong. He has left behind a
beautiful wife and four lovely children, who are totally devastated. He left
us, and a lot of other people, in a financial mess." [MANCHESTER]
In 1993 the New
York Times noted that in a "campaign sullied by charges of mischief
and wrongdoing" two rabbis in Israel were selected as Chief Rabbis for the
Ashkenazic and Sephardic divisions. The new Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi, Meir Lau,
was accused by "several women ... of trying to seduce them. He sued one
for libel." The Sephardic rabbi, Eliahu Bakshi-Doron, faced
"affidavits charging he once tried to bribe a Haifa city council member to
drop out of the race." "The atmosphere was so thick with accusations"
against the two rabbis, noted the New York Times, "that at one
point the incumbent Chief Rabbis publicly deplored the quality of the
campaign." [NYT, 2-22-93, p. A7]
In 1997, a rabbi
associated with Israel's Ministry of Religious Affairs, Mikhail Dushinsky, was
caught in a scandal when he was secretly filmed telling a young couple (two
news reporters posing as a Jewish man and his non-Jewish pregnant girlfriend)
that he would do a quick under-the-table conversion to Judaism for her (which
would expedite access to social services in Israel) for $15,000. [GUARDIAN,
2-22-97] " Don't tell her what's going on," Rabbi Dushinsky told the
undercover reporter, "She shouldn't think Judaism is something you buy
with money." [SCHOFFMAN, p. 23] After the tape was broadcast on Israeli TV,
"dozens of other converts and aspiring converts" came forward with
stories of "being subjected to the same sort of extortion." [DERFNER,
HIDDEN, p. 10] Rabbi Alan Lew notes a similar tale in America:
"When [a dying Jewish man's] wife
realized that she couldn't be buried next to him because she wasn't Jewish, she
decided she wanted to convert, but only on her terms. She wasn't willing to go
to the mikvah, she wasn't willing to study, she wasn't willing to be
interrogated by rabbis. 'I've been married to a Jewish man for forty years,'
she said. 'That ought to be enough.' I said I couldn't convert her under those
circumstances, so she found a rabbi who would, an Orthodox rabbi who agreed to
convert her for a large sum of money and no other requirements." [LEW, A.,
1999, p. 234]
Such "Judaism for sale"
stories echo that of the Israeli consular official -- Eliezer Yitzhaki -- in
Ethiopia who was recalled to the Jewish state for allegedly selling Israeli
tourist visas to Ethiopians for over $4,000 apiece. Many Ethiopians, Jewish or
not, seek a better economic prospects out of the African Third World country.
[MELMAN, Y., 6-222-01]
The same year, Agence
France Presse announced that "Israeli authorities are investigating
Chief Rabbi Israel Lau in the latest corruption scandal to tarnish the
country's Orthodox Jewish community." [Renaudie] Lau was accused of
demanding $500-$2500 to officiate weddings on about a hundred occasions, a
service that was supposed to be free. An Orthodox community near Tel Aviv, Bnei
Brak, was also raided by police -- an area "where tax fraud has risen 30
percent." [RENAUDIE, ONLINE] In
1998, another Israeli rabbi was photographed in a nude bar. Claiming that he
went to the bar "to see if any of his students frequented it," he could
not explain why he was dressed in a Stetson hat and cowboy boots. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, p. 16]
Zev Chafets also
notes the case of a rabbi revered in Israel's Moroccan Jewish community. This
man, son of a particularly respected rabbi, is "a crook, whose activities
landed him in jail for fraud, bribe taking, counterfeiting court documents,
attempting to influence witnesses," and other crimes. "Out of
prison," says Chafets, "the son, Baruch Abu Hatzira, became 'Baba
Baruch,' the new holy man of the town of Netviot." [CHAFETS, p. 155-156]
In 1991, a prominent
American rabbi, Levi Yitzhak Horowitz, was sued by the Empire Blue Cross and
Blue Shield for "having set up a network of sham companies that provided
health coverage for hundreds of Israelis." This man, "the Botoner rebbe,"
noted the Jerusalem Post, "who divides his time between Jerusalem
and Boston, is a member of Agudat Yisrael's Council of Torah Sages."
[KEINON] In 1994, Schloime Dachowitz,
who "told police he was a rabbi," was charged in a scheme to get $1.3
million in life insurance from a fictitious brother and defraud a bank of a
million dollars." [GEARTY, p. 4]
In 1999, one Rabbi
Schenkolewski of Lakewood, New Jersey, was accused of "accepting a
$500,000 donation to a school he runs in exchange for using his political clout
to help the donor get a co-generation plant built. The prosecutor at the trial
admitted he "botched" the case and the rabbi went free. [CASSIDY, p.
1] The same year, an Israeli, Yaron
Tishby, the president of the Florida-based All American Van Lines,
"pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, hiring illegal
aliens, conspiracy, and violation of federal transportation laws." [MZ
PRESSWIRE] Also, in an old intra-Jewish
theme, one recent news report (1998) noted that in that year alone there were
82 investigations of kosher fraud in the New Jersey area -- 30 resulted in
fines. [KENT, B., p. 4]
In 1993 Jewish
lawyer, Erwin Sobel, sued the State Farm insurance company in Los Angeles about
an internal company memo that listed lawyers who were to be treated in
insurance claims with special attention, because they were suspected of being
more likely to commit fraud. Claims from the lawyers on the list were to be
funneled for review by a new fraud unit.
According to Sobel, 123 of 161 names on the list were Jewish. [MULLIGAN,
p. D3] Confronted with an implication of
irrational "anti-Semitism," State Farm argued that the list merely
represented lawyers with large numbers of claims.
Protection from
unwanted attention and responsibility, thanks to claims of
"anti-Semitism," is a common Jewish tool. Also in 1993, the Los
Angeles Times noted the case of a particularly nasty Jewish Iranian
immigrant, Emanuel Sabet, who defrauded "dozens" of investors,
including his own relatives, out of millions of dollars. He was the defendant
in at least 29 lawsuits, primarily preying on people of his own --Jewish, and
Iranian -- community. But the Times also
noted that
"Sabet's
complex trail of deals and transactions extends beyond the Iranian-American
community. Before it went out of business, Sabet's Edmani Financial bought the outstanding loans of another company, Cable Busters Inc., which sold satellite dishes to residents in South Central
Los Angeles [the African-American ghetto] and other sections of the city who
were unable to receive cable television during the 1980s.
Lured by a promise
of one year of free viewing, residents bought dishes by the hundreds -- often,
according to county investigators, without realizing that they were
simultaneously taking out a second mortgage to pay for them. In effect, those
who failed to make their monthly payments ran the risk of losing their
homes." [KRAMER, p. J1]
The Times was
thereupon visited by a letter of complaint from Barbara Bergen, a lawyer for
the Anti-Defamation League, complaining that on two occasions in the article
Sabet was identified as a Jew. Bergen argued that it was appropriate to merely
identify Sabet to be Iranian. This is the same strategy by which Jews (despite
a common Jewish nationalist self-identity wherever they are as minorities in
cultures throughout the world) are routinely afforded a free hand in defaming
others -- for example, the many, many Jewish criminals from Russia who, largely
rooted in Jewish networks, are
cloaked in the veiled nomer: "Russian
Mafia." And largely direct it. In this case, the ADL feels comfortable
in defaming Iranians at-large, and thereby Islam -- the only Iranian
religion/identity known to most Americans. "Nothing in the article,"
demands Bergen, "appears to justify the reference to the religion of the
Iranian-Americans involved. Although reference is made to "affinity
fraud" aspects of the alleged scams, the affinity described appears to be
based on the victims' Iranian origins and still does not explain the references
to their religion. We would not expect a reference to the religion of the perpetrators
or victims of a crime to be highlighted unless the religion played some part in
the story. In this case the reference
appears gratuitous and inappropriate." [BERGEN, p. J6]
Meanwhile, in a New
York Times article about the notorious serial killer David Berkowitz
("Son of Sam"), it is apparently no problem to anyone when the Times
identifies him as a "born-again Christian," however incongruous this
is, given the fact that Berkowitz was raised Jewish. Likewise, the Times
diffuses his past identity as a Jew beneath the generic racial nomer of
"white" people, stating that in 1977 "the police seemed
powerless to stop [this] mysterious white man from killing." [HARDEN, p.
22]
On October 4, 1999, the New York
Observer had a pair of articles about the way that advertising mogul and
art collector Charles Saatchi scammed the New York art community to drive up
the art prices of works he owns. Charles and his brother Maurice are noted in
one piece as "a couple of Iraqis,' which is true only in the dissimulative
sense that they are fabulously wealthy Jews from Iraq who live in Great
Britain. [HOGREFE/KRAMER, 10-4-99] (This is the result of decades-long Jewish
lobbying. In the 1950s, for instance, "one of the [American Jewish]
Committee's staff members secured agreements from Time and Life
and several New York newspapers not to publish letters from readers commenting
on the Jewishness of accused Communists [despite the fact that Jews have always
been pre-eminent in that movement, and networks of Soviet espionage were
largely Jewish]. He also claimed to have prevented the summoning of 'at least
three prominent American Jews ... who shall be nameless' by the American
Un-American Activities Committee.") [NOVICK, P., 1999, p. 95]
In 1999, with no
looming multi-millionaire dollar Armenian
"defense agencies" to face, the Los Angeles Times even
felt secure enough to write a front-page article declaring that "A giant
rip-off of the California Medi-Cal system, centered in Armenian immigrant
neighborhoods of Los Angeles, may total more than $1 billion when it is finally
unraveled, making it one of the largest frauds against a state in American
history." [ELLIS/MAZINGO, 11-29-99, p. A1]
Double standard? Can
we imagine any such front page highlight in the American mass media centering
on an expressly Jewish culpability?
Or how about Jewish journalist Maura Lerner's article in a Minneapolis
newspaper in 1995 that stirred protest from some readers for naming a group of
college students involved in an insurance fraud as Pakistanis, which they, of course, were. [GELFAND, L., 4-9-95, p.
A21]
Take yet another
example of this double standard. Given the widespread evidence of Jewish
corruption, money-laundering, drug-dealing, et al throughout the world, within
expressly Jewish networks,
there has never been an article in the West that investigates this phenomenon
as a unified theme. It is institutionally forbidden to criticize the Jewish
community in such a manner. Yet, on the other hand, Fortune magazine can
freely impugn the heart of Catholicism with an "exclusive" feature
story, screaming in bold type across its cover, Scandal in the Vatican.
In reading the article, however, one discovers that the story's essence is really a Jewish
swindler named Martin Frankel, who remained a fugitive at the time of the
article. "In short," says Fortune, "Frankel ...
appear[ed] to be requesting that the Vatican front for him as a money launderer
in return for 10% of the funds (looted from his U.S. insurance
companies)." [BEHAR, p. 31] Why, one must wonder, does the "scandal
at the Vatican" merit a cover story and lurid attention, when not only was
the central criminal in the story Jewish, preying on the Catholic hierarchy,
but "money-laundering fronts" are a cottage industry throughout
Orthodox Jewish religious institutions and are occasioned -- as a Jewish issue -- as little publicity as
possible. Let alone the widespread activities of hardcore Israeli drug dealers,
couriers, and launderers, poisoning a variety of countries.
"Though
[Frankel] was raised Jewish and expressed fervently pro-Israel political views
to friends," noted the New York Times, "Mr. Frankel
aggressively courted the Catholic Church and the Vatican religious hierarchy
beginning last summer." [KAHN, J., 6-25-99, p. A1]
The International
Herald Tribune also ran a headline about the Frankel case, declaring
"2 Priests at Center of Insurance Scam." Again, reading the article,
we find the central culprit is Frankel, known to the Christian clergymen as
"David Rosse, a middle-aged tycoon who claimed descent from the Jewish
King David and said he was eager to give at least $50 million to the Roman
Catholic Church. They supported the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation, a charity
Mr. Frankel set up and then attempted to use to buy several insurance companies
in the United States." [Stanley, A., p. 13] "Together," said
journalist Alessandra Stanley, the two priests "provided a clerical cloak
of respectability for a Greenwich, Connecticut, money manager who authorities
suspect embezzled more than $300 million from a web of insurance companies
across the United States." [STANLEY, p. 13] Priest Peter Jacobs, whose father was Jewish,
noted the Fortune piece, "was Frankel's confidant (and, it seems,
his unwilling tool) for the past year." [BEHAR, p. 29] Fortune also
noted Frankel's scandal to possibly "be the biggest -- it is certainly the
strangest -- scandal in the history of the insurance agency ... News stories
are revealing details about Frankel's complex scam -- and the sordid life that
went with it." [BEHAR, p. 29] As
the New York Times noted,
"Pornography
and sexual fetishes were prominent features of the [Frankel] house. According
to police reports, during a search of the house following the death of Ms.
[Frances] Buge [whose death in 1997 by hanging was ruled a suicide despite
neighbors' testimony that they heard screams], the authorities discovered a
leather riding crop, ropes and sadomasochistic literature and videos."
[KAHN, J., 6-25-99, p. A1]
In May 1999,
Frankel's $3.5 million house burned down. "The firefighters," noted
the Baltimore Sun, "doused the flames and called the police, who
found strange notations on some of the charred documents. The top line on a
handwritten 'to-do' list poked from the fire read, 'Launder money.' The next
line: 'Get $ to Israel get it back in.'" [SCHNEIDER, G., 7-1-99, p. 1A]
(Are there financial
swindles in the religious Christian world actually instigated by Christians? Of
course. One "Rabbi Rudin," National Interreligious Affairs Director
for the American Jewish Congress, provided the public with his article in 1996
about the "embezzlement epidemic" that "plagues U.S.
Religion." Rudin cited four instances of such corruption in Christian
affairs that he found [one each from the Evangelical Lutherans, Episcopals,
Roman Catholics and United Methodists] -- he didn't bother to note any examples
of criminality in the Jewish community. [RUDIN, 9-28-96, p. D6])
Another Jewish
predator upon Christian churches has been Marcel Harpin (known to the Church of
Christ in Delaware, as evidence by a stolen passport, as "Felix
Schuster" of Switzerland). Harpin was a "con man" who
"roamed the country scamming churches" noted the Providence
Journal-Bulletin in 1994. He got in touch with the Church of Christ,
claimed that he was a medical student who had just been robbed of the last of
his money, said he was raised as an Orthodox Jew but was interested in
converting to Christianity, and was taken home by a church family. He
eventually absconded with $1,750 from them but was caught in Nashville,
Tennessee, trying the same scam at a church there. It was discovered that he
was also "wanted on similar charges in Washington and Atlanta." [RAY,
E., 6-23-94, p. D13]
The mere accusation
of anti-Semitism in the hands of a Jewish swindler, of course, has immense
potential. Apparently, decorating one's property with swastikas and burning it
down for the insurance is a mini-cottage industry. In 1990 a Maryland accountant, Joel Davis,
was convicted of arson and insurance fraud in arranging for a Jewish summer
resort to be burned down and covered with anti-Semitic slogans and signs to
disguise his own involvement. [VALENTINE, p. B1] In 1995, in Portland, Oregon, Dan Davenport,
a Jewish co-owner of an apartment building, was charged with two business
associates for "painting swastikas on their apartment building and later
setting it on fire in an insurance scam ... The FBI began a civil rights
investigation after the swastikas appeared last year on the building and
anti-Semitic phrases were scratched on Davenport's car." [ORLANDO, p. A18]
In 1996, in the Miami area, Al Rubin was sentenced to prison for three years
and his son, Steve, for eight, for covering the Hillel County Day School with
Nazi-like graffiti and destroying school buses. It was merely a scam to get the
school's repair orders. [GARCIA, M., 8-13-96, p. B1] In 1998, a 15-year-old
Jewish boy in affluent Huntington Beach, California, was one of four people
arrested for putting a burning cross on his parents' lawn "because his
parents wouldn't let him stay at a beach bonfire party two hours beyond his
usual 10 P.M. curfew ... The Jewish boy also admitted to using chemicals to
burn a swastika into his home's lawn because his mother wouldn't give him $3
for a pack of cigarettes." [JEWISH BULLETIN, 6-5-98]
The accusation of
anti-Semitism has even been used to effect very lucrative criminal dividends.
In a Canadian scam in 1998, a fraudulent group calling itself "The North
American Jewish News" began sending out invoices to major corporations,
billing them for ads they never ordered in a non-existent newspaper. The bills
were followed up with phone callers demanding payment, threats of legal action,
and accusations of anti-Semitism. An executive at Media Health Pharmaceutical
Services was told that "the reason he didn't want to pay, the reason he
didn't want to advertise, was probably because he was anti-Semitic."
[LAWTON, p. C1] "This is a very
powerful threat," said Annie Lalonde, director of communications at the
firm, "Most companies, just to keep quiet and not be accused of being
racist, they'll pay up." [LAWTON, p. C1]
In a twist of using
the accusation of anti-Semitism for criminal profit, in 1990 an Israeli court
convicted a messianic Jew of spraying anti-Semitic graffiti on 300 Jewish
tombstones in a cemetery in Haifa, calling for the extermination of the Jews. David
Goldner did it, he said, "to enlighten the Jewish nation and to unite it
against its enemies." [LA TIMES, 5-28-99, p. A4] In February 2000, for
whatever strange reason, Alan Jay Lorenz, a Jew, dumped medical waste decorated
with swastikas at two Connecticut synagogues with a message that it was "a
wake-up call to America to kill the Jews." [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2-11-2000]
In 1999, Sylvia
Wygoda, the Executive Director of Georgia's Commission on the Holocaust, wrote
a hostile letter to state legislators. The letter became local news. In it she
compared meticulous state auditors (of the Commission's yearly budgetary
records -- of which $250,000 was provided by the state) to Nazis. [MANTINI, P.,
12-10-99, p. 1E] Wygoda had been criticized for "budget and
allocation" vagueness. She "earns more than any other Holocaust
commission director in the country" and was "unable to produce
substantial minutes and records of commission meetings where money was
allocated and spent." [ATLANTA JEWISH TIMES, 6-18-99]
In March 2000, the Omaha
World-Herald reported that "a Canadian businessman [Jewish executive
Larry Weltman] who once accused gambling regulators in Nebraska and Washington
state of being anti-Semitic and anti-Canadian was indicted Friday in New York
City on charges that he and another man [Jack Banks] defrauded a bank of $32
million." During Weltman's accusations of anti-Semitism, he was the Chief
Financial Officer of the Gambling Lottery Co. Gambling regulators had insisted
that they were merely enforcing laws, and, as the Omaha paper explained,
"Gaming Lottery's chairman and other directors were Jewish." [TAYLOR,
J., 4-2-2000, p. 52]
In 1999, a former
chiropractor, David Becker, self-described as an Orthodox Jew, was convicted in
the San Francisco area of "three counts of statutory rape, four counts of
child pornography, two counts of furnishing marijuana to youngsters and two
counts of showing lewd material to minors." The next year he charged a
Contra Costa Deputy Probation Officer, Betty Maloney, with anti-Semitism
because she resisted his efforts to move to Florida. Becker had failed two drug
tests which were conditions of his current probation after only five months in
jail. Becker formally complained to the
court that Mahoney "implied that because I am Jewish I got special
treatment." (Both the prosecutor
and judge in his case were also Jewish). [HALLISSY, E., 1-12-00,p. A15]
Also in 1999, some
in the Argentine Jewish community accused the head of Argentina's central bank,
Pedro Pou, of anti-Semitism. Three Argentine banks -- all, as the (Jewish) Forward
notes, "controlled by Jews" -- were facing economic crisis and
imminent closure. The president (Ruben Beraja) of the largest of them (Banco
Mayo), was also president of the DAIA, the major Jewish organization in
Argentina. Beraja was soon, notes Joseph Goldman, being "investigated for
fraud and tax offences ... At least $160 million is accounted for. Some of that
money may have been diverted to pet Beraja projects -- like Israel's Bar-Ilan
University, the [Jewish] cable station Alef Network, and Fundacion Banco Mayo,
which supports cultural activities in the Jewish community." [GOLDMAN, J.,
1998, p. 34] Repercussions of the banks' collapse effected the whole
philanthropic structure of the Argentine Jewish community and Beraja looked for
a bail-out, filing a complaint of "religious discrimination" against
the Central Bank. Central Bank President Pou responded by saying that his
organization had "propped up Banco Mayo more generously than any other
bank, with $350 million in rediscounts," and that Catholic- and Arab-owned
banks had also went under. The (Jewish) Forward quoted a Jewish reporter
at Pagina 12 newspaper who said that "the allegation of
anti-Semitism may be a smoke screen for real problems at Banco Mayo."
"There is an attitude," said Horacio Verbitsky, "of some Jewish
community people [who] tend to disguise their mistakes behind the anti-Semitic
attitudes of other people." [STOLL, I., p. 1]
In March 2000,
"con man" Robert Friedland, facing a prison term "for writing
[$200,000 worth of] bad checks in connection with a scam to develop a marina
restaurant," embarked upon an especially innovative use of the accusation
of anti-Semitism. The judge in his case was Edward Turnbach. Friedland
eventually "filed a lawsuit against Turnbach, saying the judge's German
ancestry interfered with his ability to be fair to Friedland, who said in the
court document that he is Jewish." Friedland also "sued his victims
in the scam," as well as the judge, the prosecutor, and local reporters
who covered the case. [WILLIAMS, C., 3-10-2000, p. B3]
One of the ways the
Holocaust can be exploited by Jewish criminals as a manipulative tool -- both
as a convenient shield from justice and magnet for sympathy -- is described by
David Klinghoffer:
"The [New York]
Times reported that some Hasidim up in Rockland County had been indicted
on the charge that they had defrauded the federal and state governments in a
multi-million dollar scheme involving student loans and housing subsidies.
Subpoenas had been served at 6 AM to ensure that the subpoenaed individuals
would be on hand to receive the documents personally. Getting woken up at such
an early hour scared the children, the Jews claimed, and was 'remindful of the Holocaust
that many in this community endured decades ago.'" [KLINGHOFFER, p. 10-13]
In 2001, Jewish Los Angeles real estate
mogul Sam Menlo (worth $154 million) faced a court for a variety of slum lord
offenses (112 building-code violations and 34 criminal counts of violating city
codes: mushrooms coming out of the mildew in ceilings, etc.) Twenty years
earlier, at his nursing homes, "investigators found patients lying in beds
full of excrement and urine and one patient with bedsores infested by maggots."
Menlo's lawyer for the more recent offenses argued that, since Menlo was a
Holocaust survivor, "I can only imagine what lies in a concentration camp
versus someone who has a leaky faucet or someone who has a little bit of mold
or mildew building up on a bathroom wall. His minimum standard is lower than
mine." [YOSHINO, K., 12-30-01]
Then there are the
likes of lawyer Alan Mirman, who eventually received a two year prison
sentenced for swindling an elderly client out of $92,000 (she died broke).
Mirman's lawyer, in an appeal for court mercy, "hinted that Mirman, who is
Jewish, may have been tortured by the Nazis." [DAVIS, M., 8-21-99, p. B1]
Moving along in our
criminal overview, in February 1998, Rabbi Peter Hoffman and his associates
(Abraham Woldiger, Abraham Taub, David Abrahamson, Bella Schon, and Joseph
Sochaczewsky) were arrested on charges that "they pocketed millions of
dollars in government funds that were supposed to be used to maintain"
eight federally subsidized low-income housing projects that they owned in five
states. [See earlier section on Jewish slumlords] Over seven years, the owners had received $52
million in Housing and Urban Development funds.
"Much of the money that allegedly was skimmed," noted the New
York Daily News, "reportedly was spent on cars, homes and vacation
trips, but hefty amounts also were allegedly contributed to Jewish charitable
organizations and schools, including the United Institution of Israel, Chafetz
Chaim Heritage Foundation, Meesifta Sanz of Hudson County and the Children's
Torah Foundation. Court papers show than additional $30,000 was deposited into
the Chaim Shel Shulem Gemilas Chesed Fund in Borough Park, Brooklyn, which is
under investigation in the laundering of Colombian drug money." [PETERSON,
p. 38]
In 2001, in Toronto, Canada, Rabbi Leon
Edery "was sentenced to a year of house arrest and must pay a fine of
$32,229, in a tax evasion scheme that issued false receipts in the names of
three registered charities ... Rabbi Edery had been charged with 48 violations
of the Income Tax Act, but convicted on one that encompassed all the major
accusations ... Court heard that under the scheme, which ran from 1992 to 1997,
donors to three charities, two of which are synagogues, were issued tax receipts
by Rabbi Edery. However, the receipts were for much higher amounts than the
actual donations ... Edery's age and poor health saved him from prison."
[CSILLAG, R., 6-5-01]
Fraud upon others to
benefit the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community was perfected to a science by yet
another rabbi, the so-called "Robin Hood rabbi," Joseph Prushinowski.
This man, an ordained rabbi, and described as "an international economic
menace" and "one of the world's most wanted con men," was sought
for ten years by the FBI, Canada's Royal Mounted Police, Scotland Yard, the New
York Police Department, and the Dutch police. His media nickname stemmed from
the fact that he kept little of the money he scammed for himself; most went to
projects in his ultra-Orthodox community -- the Hasidic Tasch sect. He was
arrested most recently, in Israel, in 1998. He was the principal player in a
series of frauds that caused "banks, building societies and insurance
companies" to lose over $200 million; other fraudulent schemes stripped
the world's banks of another $200 million. Originally born in Israel,
Prushinowski emigrated to America but first fled the arm of the law in 1977
(because of a $1.5 million bank scam early in his crime career), rushing back
to Israel. He eventually returned to the U.S., however, and in 1981 began a
three year sentence in prison. He later settled in Canada, "running frauds
around the globe by telephone, fax and Telex." [GILLARD, M., 1-3-93, p.
A2] Prushinwski's main partner, Selig Waldman, also Jewish, in his most recent
frauds, "jumped bail [in 1990] and is now thought to be in South
America." [GILLARD, M., 11-8-98]
In 2000, Allen
Wolfson, a Salt Lake City business man and founder of a 50-person Orthodox
Chabad Lubavitch community (Bais Menachem) there, was arrested and charged with
"five counts of securities fraud, two counts of wire fraud and one count
of conspiracy to commit fraud." He had earlier served time in prison in
the 1980s for fraud and illegal political contributions. Originally from Brooklyn,
in Salt Lake City Wolfson had a one-hour business radio show and he
"promoted building a city, modeled after Jerusalem, and a religious theme
park dubbed 'City of Peace' in remote northwest Utah." [CEKOLA/MIMS,
6-14-2000]
Convicted Jewish American/Israeli terrorist
Era Rapaport (who bombed and maimed Palestinian mayors) recalls the sympathy he
had from the Hasidic community when he was a fugitive: "When I was in New
York, I found that a lot Jews were sympathetic to me. Satmarer hasidim offered
to hide me out if the police came looking for you. Ditto for Lubavitch [the
Chabad organization]. I had friends who said: 'Come hide in our basement till
it's safe. No one will find you there.' Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For
many people it was sort of a thrill to hide out a bandit type who they thought
was a good guy." [RAPAPORT, E., 1996, p. 269]
Then there is the ultra-Orthodox Tasher hassidism community in Canada.
"In 1999," notes William Shaffir, "the [Tasher] community was
the target of a federal revenue department raid by 25 agents and a Royal
Canadian police officer. Revenue Canada alleged that the college Rabbinique de
Montreal, Yeshiva Oir Hachaim D'Tash, was involved in fiscal fraud, mainly through the community's
charitable organization ..." [SHAFFIR, W., 2000, p. 77]
In March 2001, 14 members of the
ultra-Orthodox Hasidic enclave of Kiryas Joel, 40 miles north of New York City,
were indicted "for cheating individuals, banks, and insurance companies
out of millions of dollars ... The indictment alleges the group carried out 'a
myriad' of financial frauds since 1996, including soliciting individuals for
bogus lotteries, defrauding bankd with counterfeit checks, submitting false
death claims to insurance companies and using false information to get tax
refunds." A key member of the racketeer ring was Mordechai Sarret. [HA'ARETZ,
3-29-01]
In 1997 the Israeli-based Jerusalem
Report featured an article on widespread financial corruption and crime
among religious leaders and institutions of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups in
America. "The Jerusalem Report has learned of at least a dozen
current or pending civil allegations of financial misconduct against leaders
and institutions in the Ultra-Orthodox community in America," wrote J. J.
Goldberg, "Allegations of hasidic and non-hasidic groups included
drug-money laundering, banking and currency code violations, embezzlement of
federal and state funds, insurance investment and charity fraud, and misuse of
federal student aid, housing assistance and small business loans ... And more
charges may be coming." [GOLDBERG, Thou, p. 40]
The Jewish Week also noted in 1997 that "The term Orthodox
and all it stands for has been so besmirched and sullied lately that when most
people hear the word Orthodox, what comes to mind is not 'pious,' or
'God-fearing,' but 'crooked,' 'violent,' 'intolerant,' and 'coercive.' Hardly a
day goes by without the media noting another moral scandal involving Orthodox
Jews ... The New Times recently featured a story about an Israeli
politician who spends the entire morning, six days a week, absorbed in prayer
and Talmud study, and for the rest of the day is busy with activities that have
led to a series of indictments against him." [LOOKSTEIN, p.21]
With little changing
by the year 2000, the (Jewish) Moment magazine also addressed the by now
recurring theme of ultra-Orthodox corruption:
"Imagine then
the embarrassment that has regularly been rippling through the American Jewish
community as it reads headline after headline about Hasidim and other strictly
Orthodox persons being hauled off to court, or jail, for sordid crimes from
laundering drug money, sexually abusing children, and kidnapping to bribery,
theft of government money, and even attempted murder. While some crimes were
the work of aberrant individuals or idiosyncratic family disputes, others
entangled distinguished rabbis and bedrock community institutions in schemes
that involved dozens of accomplices." [BERGER, J., 2-28-2000, p. 50]
This Jewish magazine
also had the rare courage to list a number of possible reasons for the
avalanche of corruption in ultra-Orthodox circles, including this one:
"[Some critics] note fine distinctions in the Talmud: Jews behave one way
with Jews and another with non-Jews and secular governments." [BERGER, J.,
2-28-2000, p. 50] "One
scholar," noted the article's author, Joseph Berger, "notes that a
Jew is under no halachic obligation
to return a lost possession of a gentile but must do so for a Jews. 'They have
one moral standard within the tribe and one moral standard outside the tribe,'
says an Orthodox rabbi who requested anonymity ... Sometimes the talmudic
reasoning can be stretched so far it amounts to casuistry to justify an obvious
wrong." [BERGER, J., 2-28-2000, p. 50]
In 1997 too, the (Jewish) Forward
noted that "chasidim [ultra-Orthodox],
though commonly drawing upon their rights and prerogatives as American
citizens, have commonly been taught that they inhabit a culture and world that
is answerable to another, higher authority. They see the world often divided
between 'us' and 'them.' For insiders, everything; for outsiders, contempt ...
Chasidism therefore do all they can to insulate themselves from America and its
influence, which has led both to a contempt for American culture and its
normative rules as well as an attitude that encourages chasidim to take
themselves and vouchsafe their world and values." [HEILMAN, S, p. 1]
In the wake of President Bill Clinton's
controversial pardons of four Chasidic criminals, the Jewish Forward
noted the case of Assistant U. S. Attorney Deborah Landis of New York who
protested such leniency and had come under attack for smearing "all Jews
as potential criminals." As the paper noted:
"[Landis] reportedly urged the White
House in a January 16 letter not to commute the sentences of four chasidic men
convicted of stealing government student-aid and other funds, claiming clemency
would 'send a message to that worldwide community that its pursuit of its own
religious customs justifies fraud against the government.' The letter, obtained
by the Associated Press but not released, prompted angry retorts from two
groups that seldom agree with one another: the Jewish Council on Public
Affairs, a liberal-leaning coalition of national agencies, and Agudath Israel
of America, an Orthodox advocacy group. Both accused Ms. Landis of stereotyping
a group because of the actions of a few ...
In a possible reflection of the sensitive
nature of the dispute, however, no other Jewish organizations were willing to
comment on the Landis letter, including such normally outspoken agencies as the
Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress. The ADL had objected
once before to a federal investigation of student-aid fraud by Orthodox groups,
arguing that a 1993 probe risked creating an image that such fraud was
characteristic of a particular community, only to be told by federal officials
that it was ... [A 1993 congressional hearing on its investigations] prompted a
letter of protest to the subcommittee's chairman, then-Senator Sam Nunn of
Georgia, from ADL national director Abraham Foxman, who charged that the
largely Orthodox Jewish roster of institutions under investigation might create
the impression that Orthodox seminaries were particularly prone to these
student-loan frauds. Mr. Nunn replied in a letter to Mr. Foxman that the
investigation had found just such a pattern." [KLEIN, A., 2001]
The avalanche of
financial fraud and corruption in Orthodox Jewish circles also pushed the Jewish
Observer, a periodical of the Agudath Israel Orthodox organization, to
devote some space to the subject in its Summer 1997 issue. "What might the
sin of our day be?" wondered Rabbi Aaron Brafman of Yeshiva Derech Ayson
in Queens (which had itself come under investigation for embezzlement a few
years earlier), "... I submit that the new sins to be concerned about are
those of geeiva and gezeila (thievery and robbery) --
dishonesty in money dealing." [GOLDBERG, Thou, p. 40] Ironically,
one of Agudath Israel's featured speakers at a yearly gathering two years
before was David Schick, an Orthodox investment counselor, who lectured about
ethics in business. He also chaired that Agudath Israel of America national
convention. A year later he himself, notes the Jewish Week, "was
accused of swindling at least $150 million from hundreds of Orthodox Jewish
investors ... in a massive real estate investment scam... [His] potential
cooperation with law enforcement authorities is sending shivers throughout the frum [Orthodox] world because of
potential involvement by the Internal Revenue Service into investors who used
unreported cash in the investment scam." [GREENBERG, E., Schick,
p.6]
"Top Russian
Mafiosi from Russia, Europe, and the United States, convened in Israel three times
between 1993 and 1994 to decide upon their investment policies and to settle
disputes."
-- Alan Block, 1996, p.
33]
--Howard Sachar,
1985, p. 47]
"The Prohibition Act of 1920 allowed every American family up to ten
gallons of wine annually for religious or 'sacramental' purposes. Jews used wine
in the
--Robert
Rockaway, 2001, p. 113-
"I can't believe it. A rabbi stole my money. A rabbi
stole my money."
-- comments of prominent Jewish American mobster Joseph
"Doc"
Stacher, arrested over the years for
"atrocious assault and battery, robbery, burglary, larceny, bootlegging,
hijacking and murder," then an Israeli citizen after being deported from
America in 1965. These comments were made upon winning a lawsuit after
being swindled by Rabbi Menachem Porush of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat
Israel Party. [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 116-117)