Saturday, January 7, 2012

The former jailhouse rabbi who lost his job for granting favors to Jewish inmates has pleaded not guilty to charges that he scammed more than $220,000 in federal housing benefits

Rabbi Leib Glanz - who quit as a corrections chaplain after the public exposure of a bar mitzvah bash that he arranged inside the Tombs - is accused with his younger brother of running a 15-year fraud on the Section 8 rent-subsidy program for the poor. During their arraignment in Manhattan federal court, the bearded, yarmulke-wearing men said only two words: "Not guilty." Prosecutor Justin Anderson said that the evidence against them consisted of about 200 pages of documents, including bank statements, credit-card bills and employment records. Leib swindled up to $1,675 a month in taxpayer funds by illegally occupying a Brooklyn duplex that had been approved for his brother, Menashe, who actually lived in another home nearby. The politically connected leader of the Satmar Hasidic Jewish community pulled off the scam by signing a housing contract on behalf of the building's owner, the United Talmudical Academy, which he once ran. Meanwhile, Menashe paid the UTA less than $100 a month to cover the rest of the rent, in what the city Department of Investigation termed the the largest individual case of tenant fraud it has ever seen.

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