Money-laundering rabbis

For Solomon Dwek, being an FBI informant was a full-time job. His life as a high rolling real estate king crashed in 2006 when he bounced a $25 million check. From that day forward, he was the FBI’s newest informant. Telling them he could infiltrate a ring of prominent rabbis laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, he worked overtime becoming their friends and partner in crime. Sometimes he had as many as three meetings a day while taking international phone calls and exchanging faxes. On any given day, he found himself passing dirty money to rabbis in their Brooklyn homes and synagogues, dealing with corrupt officials in greasy spoon diners or greasing development wheels at Atlantic City confabs. The probe eventually included a black market kidney broker and a rogues’ gallery of bribe-taking dirty politicians in New Jersey. In all, five rabbis and three Jersey mayors — from Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield — were charged. Things grew really bizarre when he started meeting with Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, who offered to sell him a kidney. His chain of deceit started when Dwek, the son of a rabbi, went to defendant Eliahu Ben Haim, rabbi of Congregation Ohel Yaacob in Deal, N.J., where Dwek lives. In June 2007 at Ben Haim’s house, he gave him $50,000 to launder through his charitable group, to be repaid at a later day minus a 10% fee. In August 2007 Dwek met with Rabbi Edmond Nahum at his office in Jersey to discuss the best way to launder $45,000, court papers say. Nahum recommended he turn to Rabbi Mordchai Fish of Brooklyn, because he “can do millions of dollars under the ground. Fish is good.” Fish was good for Dwek. Next, they started laundering more than a million dollars together. In January, 2008, Dwek met Fish in his car which was parked outside his house in Brooklyn, to trade cash and talk about deals. A day later, Dwek met with defendant Schmulik Cohen outside his home in Brooklyn to collect $300,000 in cash. Two days later, he met defendant Arye Weiss in his Brooklyn home and left with $50,000 cash.