The spiritual leader of the Syrian Jewish community in the United States has been sentenced to two years of unsupervised probation for using a charity he controlled to illegally funnel money to Israel

U.S. District Judge Joel Pisano spared Rabbi Saul Kassin a prison sentence, but fined him $36,750, in addition to the nearly $370,000 Kassin agreed to forfeit after he was caught up in New Jersey’s largest-ever corruption bust. The chief rabbi of Congregation Sharee Zion in Brooklyn, N.Y., Kassin pleaded guilty in March 2011 to one count of unauthorized money transmitting. According to the criminal complaint, he had used the Magen Israel Society, a charity he controlled, to deposit thousands of dollars in checks from Solomon Dwek, the son of another New Jersey rabbi. Kassin then issued checks to other organizations at Dwek’s behest, taking a 10% commission. The judge seemed most surprised at a brazen request by Kassin to have the $367,500 he forfeited returned to him. “I want that money back, to donate it,” Kassin said. “They kept it for two years almost — it’s enough.” Pisano quickly snubbed that request, saying that Kassin bore the blame for any misfortune that befell the beneficiaries of his charity as a result of his knowing participation in an economic crime. Though Kassin lives in Brooklyn, he appeared before a federal court in New Jersey because the illegal money transfer took place in Deal, N.J., an insular enclave of the Syrian Jewish community where many of New York’s Syrian Jews vacation in the summer. Two other rabbis from Deal were among the people arrested in 2009 as part of the federal sting.