And of course, the claim that the arrests are motivated by anti-semitism follows, like a bad broken record.

Anti-Semitism was behind the highly publicized arrests last week of rabbis, including three from the Aleppo-Syrian Jewish community in New York and New Jersey, according to Yitzhak Kakun, editor-in-chief of the Shas weekly Yom Le'Yom.
Shas MK Nissim Ze'ev.

Shas MK Nissim Ze'ev.
Photo: The Knesset

"There is a feeling here that the FBI purposely attempted to arrest as many rabbis as possible at once in an attempt to humiliate them," Kakun said in a telephone interview Sunday.

"Regardless of the details of the case - I am not familiar with the precise charges and the evidence - you would never see the FBI and police behaving that way with Muslim sheikhs or Christian priests. It is so obvious that the whole thing is motivated by anti-Semitism," he said.

Link.

Where Did The Kidney's Come From

Interesting stuff on the Kidney smuggling ring headed by the New Jersey Rabbi. It appears some sleuths knew about his activities well in advance.

And those activities were pretty ugly.

The Brooklyn man arrested Thursday for dealing in black-market kidneys was identified to the FBI seven years ago as a major figure in a global human organ ring.

Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum's name, address and even phone number were passed to an FBI agent in a meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan by a prominent anthropologist who has been studying and documenting organ trafficking for more than a decade.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley, was and is very clear as to Rosenbaum's role in the ring.

"He is the main U.S. broker for an international trafficking network," she said.

Her sources include a man who started working with Rosenbaum imagining he was helping people in desperate need. The man then began to see the donors, or to be more accurate, sellers, who were flown in from impoverished countries such as Moldova.

"He said it was awful. These people would be brought in and they didn't even know what they were supposed to be doing and they would want to go home and they would cry," Scheper-Hughes said.

The man called Rosenbaum "a thug" who would pull out a pistol he was apparently licensed to carry and tell the sellers, "You're here. A deal is a deal. Now, you'll give us a kidney or you'll never go home.' "

More atnydailynews


Interestingly, the original report was met with skepticism at the state house.

She waited and waited for something to be done. The FBI may have been following the lead of the State Department, which dismissed organ trafficking as "urban legend."

"It would be impossible to conceal a clandestine organ trafficking ring," a 2004 State Department report stated.

OTHER INFO

The probe also uncovered Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who is accused of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. According to the complaint, Rosenbaum said he had been brokering sale of kidneys for 10 years.


"His business was to entice vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000," said Marra.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3751358,00.html

Rosenbaum allegedly responded by noting the hospital would rigorously screen the potential donor for diseases -- but that he could make everything work out.

"I'm doing this a long time," the document quotes Rosenbaum as saying. "It's illegal to buy or sell organs. You can't even mention it."

The parties to the deal then allegedly hammered out a price: $160,000, the first $10,000 of which was to be paid by checks drawn up by the informant's invented real estate company. The checks would be laundered through what Rosenbaum initially decided would be a "congregation," but later switched to a "charitable organization."

After stalling in November by telling Rosenbaum the supposedly sick uncle had a "mini-stroke," the FBI agent and informant met in Rosenbaum's basement during July 2009. Rosenbaum shored up his credentials, according to the criminal complaint, saying he had spent 10 years brokering deals that numbered "quite a lot," including one only two weeks earlier.

At one point, the undercover agent asked how much money the donor would receive.

Link

No Regrets

You would think someone who exposed a Kidney smuggling operation would be considered a hero. Apparently not in the Sephardic Jewish community:

Rabbi Israel Dwek, the spiritual leader of the Sephardic Jewish community in the wealthy Monmouth County suburb of Deal, took to his pulpit on Saturday to cite the Talmudic Law of Moser that prohibits a Jew from informing on another Jew to a non-Jew. Rabbi Dwek then renounced his son, Solomon Dwek, the failed real estate developer whose 2006 indictment on bank fraud charges motivated him to cooperate with federal prosecutors in a sting operation that led to the arrests of 44 individuals on Thursday. The group included three mayors, two state legislators, a multitude of local officials, and several Rabbis. As explained to PolitickerNJ.com, Rabbi Dwek will sit Shiva for Solomon Dwek, observing the Jewish custom of mourning for an immediate family member who has died.

Do other Jewish communities have the same outlook?

Link

Rabbi Brokered Black Market Kidney Trade

This is just plain horrific. It says the Rabbi got the donners from Israel. It would obviously be interesting to see if the donators were Jewish or Arab.

Yesterday in New Jersey, 44 people, including a rabbi, were apprehended in a large corruption investigation of arranging the private sale of kidneys from donors in Israel.

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum described himself to an uncover FBI agent and a cooperating witness as a “matchmaker” who could set up to hire a donor in Israel to come to the U.S.A. to donate a kidney in exchange for a $10,000 fee, according to a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney. Those kidneys are in turn sold for as much as $180,000 to transplant recipients who otherwise may die. The operations were done in US hospitals.

Rosenbaum, 58, is a member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, where he told neighbors he was in the construction business.

“The allegations about an organ trafficking ring in the United States are appalling,” said John Davis, CEO of the National Kidney Foundation. This is the first documented case of organ trafficking in the U.S.

The deficit of organs accessible for donation from dissociated donors has led to the grim black market that lives today. Gruesome underground kidney markets are nothing new. National Geographic covered a story on poor neighborhoods in India known as “kidney village”, because residents illegally sell their kidneys for approximately $800, far less than the $160,000 Rosenbaum allegedly charged. A completely new industry – transplant tourism – has emerged to meet the needs of the wealthy patients creating demand.

Group of Rabbi's involved in NJ corruption scandal

While many elasticities were involved in the corruption in NJ, the Rabbi's represent the leadership of their communities and thus are far more troubling.

It does seem that crime, while not everything, is a significant part of their method of operation, which is troubling indeed.

We also saw this with the Kosher Iowa meet plant, in which a meth lab was uncovered during an immigration bust.

Religious leaders allegedly acted like 'crime bosses' in a massive money-laundering and illegal organ trading case that broke this week, New Jersey District Attorney Ralph Marra said Saturday.

"For these defendants, corruption was a way of life," Marra said, adding "Politicians had willingly put themselves up for sale ... the existed in an ethics-free zone."

Solomon Dwek, a failed real-estate entrepreneur and an FBI informant, is the man behind the arrests week. Dwek's identity was revealed in documents submitted to the court Saturday.
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On Friday, some of the 44 suspects were released on bail.

Some New Jersey residents said they feared the investigation was motivated by another mob that wanted to "clear the ground" for its own operations. Others sought comfort in the diversity of the suspects.

"It's nice to see people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds working so closely for corruption and fraud. Syrian Jews, Italian Americans, Afro-American, Hispanics ... it's equal-opportunity corruption," one person said.

The investigation began in 1999 with two local corruption cases, but only genuinely took off in May 2006, when Dwek, a real-estate businessman from the Syrian Jewish community in Deal, New Jersey, was arrested while trying to cash a $25 million bad check.

Due to his debts and the evidence against him, he agreed to cooperate with the FBI. Armed with a microphone, an unfounded reputation as a real-estate mogul and envelopes thick with cash, Dwek was sent to scores of meetings with politicians, officials and rabbis. He tried to convince them to help him "promote his business" and launder money.

The investigation became public last Thursday, when more than 200 FBI agents stormed the suspects in their offices, arrested them and searched the premises. Twenty-nine people were arrested on charges of corruption, and 15 were held on suspicions of money laundering, including the "kidney trade middleman," Levi-Yitzhak Rosenbaum. There were so many detainees that a bus was used to transport them.

The arrest of five rabbis, whose pictures were splashed across the front pages of U.S. newspapers, led some to dub the affair "Kosher Nostra."

The rabbis, including two synagogue leaders, are suspected of organizing a money-laundering network that allegedly worked through charities in Deal, Brooklyn and Israel.

The money came from a variety of sources, from a fraudulent bankruptcy claim to profits from selling fake Gucci bags.

The FBI set up a shell company to trap one suspect, Eliyahu Ben Haim, rabbi of the Ohel Yaakov synagogue in Deal. Ben Haim allegedly accepted a $50,000 check from Dwek from the straw company's account, addressed to one of the rabbi's charities. The rabbi agreed to keep 10 percent of the money, and to return the remainder to Dwek, "cleaned up."

On another occasion, Dwek is said to have brought the rabbi a cereal box stuffed with $97,000 in cash to be laundered. Rabbi Edmond Nahum, also among the detainees, allegedly told Dwek "to spread it among as many rabbis as possible," in order to better cover his tracks.

The District Attorney's office stressed that the suspects' religion was irrelevant, and that all the suspects knew the money they were laundering came from illegal sources.

"These rings, led by clergymen, cloaked their extensive criminal activities behind a facade of rectitude," Marra said, describing a disgraceful picture of religious leaders leading money-laundering crews and acting as crime bosses.

Senior politicians, mostly Democrats, were also no strangers to Dwek's envelopes, especially when campaigning. The mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield; a New Jersey City deputy mayor; and others all allegedly took money from Dwek for their campaigns, while promising to help him.

Hoboken Mayor Peter J. Cammarano III, who took office on July 1, two weeks before his arrest, allegedly promised Dwek that he would be be "treated like a friend."

Dwek, while allegedly giving a bribe to New Jersey assemblyman Daniel Van-Pelt, made sure no one could suspect him of political bias.

"I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican," he is said to have told Van-Pelt. "I'm a member of the Green party. Green is cash."

Most of the suspects have been released on bail and tagged with electronic tracking devices. Meanwhile, it is becoming clear that these arrests were only the beginning.

Cammarano's spokesman said the mayor was "totally innocent" and intended to fight the charges. And pundits and commentators already began guessing what repercussions the affair will have for the upcoming gubernatorial campaign of the incumbent, Jon Corzine, who took office four years ago on a corruption fighting platform.