rid

Scammed

Sadness and disbelief engulf Syrian Jewish enclave.

Debra Rubin
New Jersey Jewish News

Antebi also defended Rabbi Saul Kassin,
87, the religious leader of Congregation
Sharee Zion in Brooklyn and chief rabbi
of the Syrian community in the U.S..
Authorities said he laundered more than
$200,000 with the government's cooperating
witness between June 2007 and December
2008.
Antebi described the elderly Kassin as
being "naive and very trusting',' and said he
may have been misled.

Deal, N.J.

D

r. Morris Antebi, the president of
Ohel Yaacob Synagogue, was over-
whelmed by a mixture of shock,
disbelief and sadness upon learning that his
rabbi had been swept up in a federal corrup-
tion raid on July 23.
"When I heard the news, I almost got
paralyzed," Antebi said.
Rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim, the principal
religious leader at Ohel Yaacob, was among
the five rabbis in the tightly knit Syrian-
Jewish community accused of participating
in a multimillion-dollar money-laundering
operation in Deal, N.J., Brooklyn, N.Y., and
Israel.
Authorities say the rabbis accepted large
checks made out to tax-exempt charitable
organizations associated with their syna-
gogues, usually keeping 10 percent of the
money and returning the rest to the donor
in cash.
There are an estimated 75,000 Syrian Jews
in Brooklyn and 10,000 in Deal. Antebi's
feeling of disbelief was evident both in the
insular Syrian community and general
Jewish community as they absorbed reports
of a range of charges, from a Brooklyn man
charged with trafficking in human organs
to allegations that the rabbis used a web of
charitable organizations to launder money
they knew to be ill-gotten.
"We are saddened by this, of course,' said
Howard Gases, executive director of the

U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra Jr. called the indicted rabbis "a group of criminals hiding

behind a facade of being religious leaders."

Jewish Federation of Monmouth County,
which until recently had its offices at the
Jewish Community Center in Deal."We hope
if they are found guilty they are punished,
but this is not at all reflective of the Syrian
community, which is a wonderful Jewish
community"
Gases emphasized that the charities
involved "had nothing to do with federation:'
At the Deal Yeshiva on Norwood Avenue,
FBI agents were seen on July 23 seizing
boxes of evidence and documents.
The yeshivah was featured prominently

Organ Donation
Incentives

New York/JTA

T

he Jewish community in the New
York metropolitan area, and to a
degree around the world, is grap-
pling with how to respond to last week's
high-profile corruption arrests there.
While money-laundering and bribery
charges are nothing new, unfortunately, the
charges against Levy Izhak Rosenbaum
seemed most shocking. He was arrested for
conspiring to broker the sale of a human
kidney for transplant, a "business" he

privately claimed to be in for
many years.
The American system
of organ donations, which
forbids any incentives for
donation, has created a niche
market for just this type of
wrongdoing.
The statistics are over-
whelming. Some 102,640
patients are waiting for an organ donation
in the United States, according to the United
Network for Organ Sharing. More than

in reports of the probe: Solomon Dwek, the
real estate developer whose cooperation
with investigators is said to be the key to the
cases, is the son of one of its founders, Rabbi
Issac Dwek, who also heads the Synagogue
of Deal.
Antebi, the president of Ohel Yaacob, and
attorneys for the rabbis accused Solomon
Dwek of "trying to alleviate his own situa-
tion" by using his connections to the com-
munity. Dwek was charged by the FBI with
defrauding PNC Bank of $50 million in 2006,
but he has never been tried.

7,000 people died last year while
they waited; and over 2,000 have
died this year. These deaths are
entirely preventable. But the cur-
rent system, which is based on
pseudo-moralistic concerns, actu-
ally creates incentives for black
markets, rewards only the wealthy
and punishes the poorest.
If morality matters, what could
be more immoral than all these
unnecessary deaths?
The shortage of organs avail-
able for donation from unrelated
donors has led to the macabre
black market that exists today. Gruesome
underground kidney markets are noth-
ing new National Geographic reported on

Mayors, Rabbis
Authorities said the network that laundered
"at least tens of millions of dollars through
charitable, nonprofit entities:" Those arrested
included the mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus
and Ridgefield, state Assembly members and
city council members from various parts of
New Jersey.
They face corruption charges unrelated to
the arrests in the Jewish communities, but in
most cases are linked by their alleged asso-
ciation with Dwek, who offered bribes and
recorded damaging conversations in his role
as government mole.
Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra Jr.
announced the arrests.
According to the criminal complaints, the
rabbis laundered approximately $3 million
between June 2007 and last month on behalf
of Dwek.
Marra called the corruption "widespread
and pervasive."
The 87-year-old Kassin is accused of traf-
ficking in counterfeit Prada and Gucci hand-

Scammed on page 18

a poor neighborhood in India known as
"kidney village" — residents illegally sell
their kidneys for about $800, far less than
the $160,000 Rosenbaum allegedly charged.
Now it is emerging that Israel also is
becoming a black market hot spot. A whole
new industry — transplant tourism — is
meeting the needs of the wealthy patients,
creating demand.
Patients now face a choice between two
extremes: Wait for a fundamentally broken
system and risk death, or venture into the
unregulated Wild West of the black market
for organs. There is a better and more ethi-
cal alternative.

Organ Donation Incentives
on page 18

August 6 2009

17

