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.' "

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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.

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