Sweeping federal probe nabs crooked politicians & black-market kidney peddler

[okarol]

Sweeping federal probe nabs crooked politicians & alleged black-market kidney peddler
BY Matthew Lysiak and Carrie Melago
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Updated Friday, July 24th 2009, 4:59 AM
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A developer-turned-snitch brought down mayors, rabbis and dozens of others in a stunning probe of money laundering, bribery - and trafficking in black-market kidneys and fake Gucci bags.

Hundreds of federal agents on both sides of the Hudson River - in Brooklyn and Jersey - raided the homes of 44 suspects targeted in the two-year probe, collaring high-ranking politicians and trusted religious leaders.

A dozen at a time, defendants were walked in with wrist and ankle shackles for arraignment in federal court in Newark. Bail was set as high as $3 million.

Aside from the wide-ranging political ramifications of the arrests in Jersey - shocking even in the ethics-challenged Garden State - the takedowns of five rabbis left Jewish communities in Deal, N.J. and Brooklyn reeling.

Most of the Jewish leaders busted were accused of laundering the snitch's dirty money through their charities, which they also used to mask ill-gotten gains from the sale of fake Gucci and Prada bags.

The most outrageous arrest was that of Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, 58, of Brooklyn, who authorities say would buy kidneys from vulnerable people in Israel for $10,000, then turn around and sell them for $160,000.

"It is a shonda," said one Orthodox Jewish leader, using the Yiddish word for shame. "If the allegations are true, it is not the best day we ever had. ... The sordidness is an absolute disgrace."

The takedown can be traced back to one man, a confidential informant identified in published reports as developer Solomon Dwek, who was charged with defrauding a bank of millions in 2006.

Dwek apparently offered the feds to turn on rabbis - who stunningly still dealt with him even though it was well known in their community that he had been charged by the government.

Dwek told the targets he was in bankruptcy and interested in hiding his assets. He laundered $3 million since June 2007.

One of the launderers introduced Dwek to a Jersey City building inspector who, authorities say, took a $20,000 bribe and kicked off the public corruption portion of the probe.

Over and over, politicians and candidates solicited and accepted bribes to grease the wheels for Dwek, who claimed he needed building permits and other approvals, authorities said.

It was in the course of the money-laundering prong of the probe that the informant came across Rosenbaum, 58, who was purportedly in the real estate business but actually makes money trafficking kidneys, officials said.

For a decade, prosecutors said, Rosenbaum would buy kidneys from vulnerable people abroad - in Israel and elsewhere - for $10,000, then turn around and sell them for $160,000.

Dwek introduced Rosenbaum to an undercover agent posing as his secretary, who claimed her uncle needed a kidney transplant, according to the criminal complaint.

Starting in February 2008, the undercover spoke with Rosenbaum about setting up a transplant, which would involve a donor from Israel and take place at a hospital outside of the area.

"I'm doing this a long time," Rosenbaum assured an undercover agent, the complaint said. "I am what you call a matchmaker."

For months, he explained how her uncle's blood samples would be sent overseas to find a match, and how they would fabricate a story to throw off medical authorities.

Rosenbaum, who was arrested at his massive Borough Park, Brooklyn, home covered in security cameras, reminded the undercover to be discreet and repeatedly explained that the cost was so high because of the risks involved, court papers said.

He also asked for half of the money up front and repeatedly tried to meet the uncle, only to be told he had a medical setback.

Still, he bordered on arrogant at times in the complaint, saying he had a decade of experience in the field and had brokered "quite a lot" of transplants.

"I've never had a failure," he said.

Congregants at synagogues in Brooklyn and New Jersey were coming to grips with the allegations last night that their religious leaders "cloaked their extensive criminal activity behind a facade of rectitude," in the acting U.S. attorney's words.

Rabbi Saul Kassin - the son of Jacob Kassin, the onetime chief rabbi of the Syrian Sephardic community in Deal - allegedly laundered more than $200,000, stunning his community at Sharee Zion in Brooklyn.

"I couldn't believe it," said Itzik Kohen, 13, who is to have his bar mitzvah there in August. "It's going to affect the reputation of the shul. My family prays here every Sabbath."

Many worshipers stood by Kassin, including David Ben-Hooren, publisher of the Jewish Voice, who said, "I believe we will find out that these rabbis never broke the law and they will be vindicated."

Raids also went down at smaller "cash houses" run by associates of the rabbis throughout Brooklyn, such as a beeper store and a charity called Bnoth Jerusalem above a paint store in Williamsburg.

The feds say Mordchai Fish, a rabbi at Congregation Sheves Achim, and his brother, Lavel Schwartz, laundered nearly $600,000 for the informant, accepting his check and giving him cash after taking a 15% cut.

Fish's lawyer, Michael Bachner, said the informant "used his closeness and the sterling reputation of his family to manipulate my client, who trusted him."

cmelago@nydailynews.com

With Simone Weichselbaum, Michael Roberts, Jan Ransom, Ben Chapman and Jake Pearson

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/23/2009-07-23_2_new_jersey_mayors_arrested_in_sweeping_money_laundering_probe.html?print=1&page=all

[Tinah1968]

this just made my blood boil... might have to copy and paste the link

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6546551.html


Edited: Topic merged- okarol/admin

[David13]

Brooklyn man accused of buying and selling kidneys
By DAVID PORTER and CARLA K. JOHNSON (AP) – 10 hours ago

NEWARK, N.J. — Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn called himself a "matchmaker," but his business wasn't romance. Instead, authorities say, he brokered the sale of black-market kidneys, buying organs from vulnerable people from Israel for $10,000 and selling them to desperate patients in the U.S. for as much as $160,000.

The alleged decade-long scheme, exposed this week by an FBI sting, rocked the nation's transplant industry. If true, it would be the first documented case of organ trafficking in the U.S., transplant experts said Friday.

"There's certainly cross-national activity, but it hasn't touched the United States or we haven't known about it until now," said University of Pennsylvania medical ethicist Arthur Caplan, who is co-directing a U.N. task force on international organ trafficking.

Rosenbaum was arrested Thursday, 10 days after meeting in his basement with a government informant and an FBI agent posing as the informant's secretary. The agent claimed to be searching for a kidney for a sick uncle on dialysis who was on a transplant list at a Philadelphia hospital.

"I am what you call a matchmaker," Rosenbaum said in a secretly recorded conversation. "I bring a guy what I believe, he's suitable for your uncle." Asked how many organs he had brokered, he said: "Quite a lot," the most recent two weeks earlier.

As part of the scheme, the organ donors were brought from Israel to this country, where they underwent surgery to remove the kidneys, authorities said. Prosecutors did not identify which hospitals in the U.S. received the donors and their kidneys.

"The allegations about an organ trafficking ring in the United States are appalling," said John Davis, CEO of the National Kidney Foundation.

Israel Medical Association spokeswoman Orna Cohen said the organization had no reports there of Israelis selling organs. "If it's true, then it's shocking," she said.

Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Israel's national police force, said Israeli police were not involved in the investigation, and he would not comment further.

Under 1984 federal law, it is illegal for anyone to knowingly buy or sell organs for transplant. The practice is illegal just about everywhere else in the world, too.

But demand for kidneys far outstrips the supply, with 4,540 people dying in the U.S. last year while waiting for a kidney, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. As a result, there is a thriving black market for kidneys around the world.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, an anthropology professor at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of an upcoming book on human organ trafficking, said that she has been tracking the Brooklyn-connected ring for 10 years and that her contacts in Israel have called Rosenbaum "the top man" in the United States.

Scheper-Hughes said she was told Rosenbaum carried a gun, and when a potential organ seller would get cold feet, Rosenbaum would use his finger to simulate firing a gun at the person's head.

Scheper-Hughes said she was also told that some of the kidney transplants using sellers procured by Rosenbaum were performed at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

The hospital said it is aware Rosenbaum has been charged but that its transplant screening process is rigorous and that it assesses each donor's motivation.

"All donors are clearly advised that it is against the law to receive money or gifts for being an organ donor," spokeswoman Brenda Perez wrote in an e-mail. "... The pre-transplant evaluation may not detect premeditated and skillful attempts to subvert and defraud the evaluation process."

Rosenbaum was arrested in a sweeping federal case that began as an investigation into money laundering and trafficking in kidneys and fake designer bags. It mushroomed into a political corruption probe, culminating in the arrests this week of 44 people, including three New Jersey mayors, various other officials, and five rabbis. The politicians and rabbis were not accused of involvement in the organ trafficking.

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

For someone who was not a surgeon, Rosenbaum seemed in his recorded conversations to have a thorough knowledge of the ins and outs of kidney donations, including how to fool hospitals into believing the donor was acting solely out of compassion for a friend or loved one.

He was recorded saying that money had to be spread around liberally, to Israeli doctors, visa preparers and those who cared for the organ donors in this country. "One of the reasons it's so expensive is because you have to shmear (pay others) all the time," he was quoted as saying.

"So far, I've never had a failure," he bragged on tape. "I'm doing this a long time."

At a 2008 meeting with the undercover agent, Rosenbaum claimed he had an associate who worked for an insurance company in Brooklyn who could take the recipient's blood samples, store them on dry ice and send them to Israel, where they would be tested to see if they matched the prospective donor, authorities said.

Four checks totaling $10,000, a down payment on the fictitious uncle's new kidney, were deposited in the bank account of a charity in Brooklyn, prosecutors said.

An after-hours phone call to Rosenbaum's lawyer, Ronald Kleinberg, was not immediately returned Friday.

Dr. Francis Delmonico, a Harvard professor, transplant surgeon and board member of the National Kidney Foundation's Board of Directors, said similar trafficking is going on elsewhere around the world. He said an estimated 10 percent of kidney transplants — 5,000 to 6,000 each year — are done illegally. Hot spots are Pakistan, the Philippines and China, where it is believed organs are obtained from executed prisoners, he said.

Caplan, the University of Pennsylvania ethicist, said he expects the U.N. task force to make recommendations in October that would hold hospitals worldwide accountable for establishing the origins of each organ they transplant and whether it was freely donated without compensation.

"There is a black market, almost exclusively in kidneys," Caplan said. "All international medical groups and governments ought to condemn any marketing in body parts. It's simply too exploitative of the poor and vulnerable. The quality of the organs is questionable. People lie to get the money. The middle men are irresponsible and often criminals. They don't care about the people who sell."

Scheper-Hughes said her research has uncovered hundreds of cases of illegal organ transactions brokered by and for Israelis in Israel, South Africa, Turkey and other countries, with sellers recruited from poor communities in Moldova, Brazil and elsewhere.

In 2003 and 2004, 17 people were arrested in Brazil and South Africa on suspicion of participating in an international human organ trafficking organization. Investigators said Brazilians who passed a medical checkup were flown to South Africa, where their kidneys were extracted.

A few transplant surgeons support changing the law to allow a system of regulated compensation to increase the pool of donor kidneys.

Arthur Matas, a transplant surgeon who directs the kidney transplant service at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said donors could be compensated with some combination of lifetime access to medical care, life insurance, a tax credit, help with college and a small direct payment.

"It would minimize the extraordinary black market and exploitation of impoverished people internationally," Matas said.

Martin Weinfeld, who lives around the corner from Rosenbaum in Brooklyn, said the allegations bring shame on the community.

"It puts a bad name on good people," he said. "Religion is supposed to be about God, helping others, not about the cash."

Johnson reported from Chicago. Associated Press Writer Colleen Long in Brooklyn, N.Y., contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


Edited: Topics merged - okarol/admin

[Phraxis]

Anyone else following this story on Rosenbaum?

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-14/1248451507284500.xml&coll=1

what are your thoughts on paying for a kidney?

PS If I have broached a 'taboo' subject, please accept my apologies and blame it on my naivete.



Edited: Topics merged - okarol/admin

[Stoday]

I think that ALL kidney transplants from a living person are morally wrong.

However, the purchase of a living kidney is more honest than the psychological coercion of a living donor.

I'd like to say that I know my views differ from the majority; I would not dream of even advocating them to others. It's just a personal view.

[okarol]

http://unos.org/news/newsDetail.asp?id=1278

OPTN Statement Regarding Federal Investigation of Corruption in New Jersey

Federal investigators have announced a series of arrests of individuals in the state of New Jersey. Among the various criminal allegations made by authorities is that an individual offered to arrange living donor transplants in the United States in return for compensation, and that this individual would instruct potential living donors to falsely portray their motivation to donate.

This is the first time that such specific criminal allegations have been made, with the potential to involve transplants in the United States. This is highly troubling to the entire transplant community. We hope that all facts are fully and swiftly uncovered, in the interest of maintaining public trust in the transplant system.

These allegations are properly addressed by law enforcement and the judicial system. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), operated by United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) under federal contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), is not in a position to comment on the specifics of the investigation.

All transplant hospitals and organ procurement organizations are bound by federal law and regulation, which explicitly prohibits any exchange of "valuable consideration" for transplantation as outlined in the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984.

The OPTN is responsible for monitoring compliance with OPTN policies regarding organ allocation and the reporting of donation- and transplant-related data. The OPTN is also obliged to investigate potential infractions of the OPTN Final Rule, the regulatory framework of the national transplant network. If in its established reviews of these activities the OPTN were to discover evidence of any threat to patient or public safety, or potential violations of federal law or regulation, it would immediately report this information to HRSA for referral to the appropriate legal authority. If asked, the OPTN will fully cooperate with any request from federal law enforcement authorities to assist in their investigation.