26 jul 2009

MASSIVE CORRUPTION BUST: Mayors, Rabbis, Politicians, and More

FBI agents in Newark lead arrested suspects in the corruption probe onto a bus.

As the buses pulled up to our Newark office yesterday morning carrying 44 prominent political and religious leaders—including mayors, assemblymen, and rabbis—it would have been easy to mistake them as a group of visiting VIPs.

Instead, they were the defendants in a two-track criminal investigation, arrested by our agents during an early morning sweep and charged with political corruption and high-volume international money laundering.

“The list of names and titles of those arrested today sounds like a roster for a community leaders meeting,” said Weysan Dun, special agent in charge of our Newark office. “Sadly, these prominent individuals were not in a meeting room but were in the FBI booking room.”

Three New Jersey mayors, two state legislators, numerous political operatives, and five well-known rabbis from New York and New Jersey were among those arrested. Charges include politicians accepting cash bribes and rabbis laundering millions of dollars through their tax-exempt charitable organizations. One defendant allegedly conspired to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant at a cost of $160,000.

With the assistance of a cooperating witness, we infiltrated a money laundering network that operated internationally between New York, New Jersey, and Israel and laundered tens of millions of dollars through charitable non-profit groups controlled by the rabbis.

In one method of laundering, our undercover witness would write a check to the rabbi’s charitable organization—anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to more than $150,000—and the rabbi would then return the amount of the check in cash, less a 10 percent cut for himself. Defendants in Israel provided large sums of cash for these transactions. The money was kept in “cash houses” in Brooklyn.

When our witness was later introduced to a Jersey City public official, it led to the discovery of a network of corruption that became the second phase of our investigation.

Among those arrested:

  • The newly elected mayor of Hoboken, charged with accepting $25,000 in cash bribes, including $10,000 last week from an undercover cooperating witness.
  • A New Jersey assemblyman and recent mayoral candidate in Jersey City, charged with taking $15,000 in bribes to help get approvals from high-level state officials for building projects.
  • The chief rabbi of a synagogue in Brooklyn, charged with laundering proceeds derived from criminal activity.

Most of the defendants were arrested by agents from our Newark office and from the Internal Revenue Service, who were working in collaboration with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey. Search warrants were executed at approximately 20 locations in the region to recover large sums of cash and other evidence. The investigation produced hundreds of hours of video and audio recordings documenting much of the money laundering and bribe-taking.

At a press conference yesterday in Newark, Special Agent in Charge Dun said of the arrests, “We hope that our actions today will be the clarion call that prompts significant change in the way business and politics are conducted in the state of New Jersey. Those who engage in this culture of corruption should know the cross hairs of justice will continue to be focused on them.”

ADL Applauds Senate's Passage of Hate Crime Legislation




New York, NY, July 21, 2009 …The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) applauded the Senate's passage of legislation that enhances the federal government's ability to address hate crimes.

The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) provides new authority for federal officials to work in partnership with state and local law enforcement to more effectively address hate violence. The long-delayed legislation was extended further by a flurry of unnecessary and unwelcome last-ditch efforts by policy opponents to amend it.

Glen S. Lewy, ADL National Chair, and Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

We applaud the Senate's approval of this important measure to address violent, bias-motivated crime. Hate crimes tear at the fabric of society and are disturbingly prevalent in America. It is crucial that mechanisms are in place for law enforcement to respond effectively when they occur.

A confluence of factors, including the economic crisis, an immigration system in disrepair, and the election of the first African-American president, have contributed to the expansion of hate groups and those looking to act out on hateful ideologies.

Now, with the support of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr., we have our best chance ever to secure enactment of this crucial legislation.

The League also praised the leadership of the sponsors of the hate crime amendment, Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), author of the Defense Department bill. The House of Representatives passed their version of this legislation, HR 1913, in April 2009.

HCPA was attached as an amendment to the FY 2010 Department of Defense Authorization Act. The key vote, 63-28, was on a motion to proceed -- ending the possibility of a filibuster by the bill's opponents.


For more than 10 years, ADL has led a broad coalition of civil rights, religious, educational, law enforcement and civic organizations working in support of the legislation. Last month, ADL presented
testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the HCPA.

ADL has been a pioneer in advocating for hate crimes legislation since the first ADL model hate crimes statute was drafted almost 30 years ago. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws based on or similar to the ADL model.


The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.



Lighthouse Patriot Journal(QUAERE VERITAS IN SALUM SUBJECTIO) has another message: Hate Crime Laws are Wrong for America!


Hate crime. The movement by the sociocrats to initiate into legislation and law, added to the myriad of laws that are nonsensical, continues, but their movement is beginning to see more opposition. It has been adopted officially by our government.

Hate crime laws have to do with acts of violence, for now. It is a socialist ideology that opens a can of worms against an eventual transgression against freedom of speech – the freedom that the politically left whine about as they spew their political diatribe mimicking the Communist Manifesto and the basics of socialism, pretending they have come up with a new political ideology/philosophy, merely an Americanized version of the historically proven failed socialist system.