{"id":809,"date":"2012-07-12T16:04:26","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T20:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/?p=809"},"modified":"2020-07-28T09:42:46","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T13:42:46","slug":"2012-07-12-rabbi-takes-a-sabbatical-to-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/2012-07-12-rabbi-takes-a-sabbatical-to-jail\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabbi Takes A Sabbatical To Jail"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_9599\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9599\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/marco-secchi-Vk-3Wkvmtak-unsplash.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9599\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/marco-secchi-Vk-3Wkvmtak-unsplash-300x191.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"191\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/marco-secchi-Vk-3Wkvmtak-unsplash-300x191.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/marco-secchi-Vk-3Wkvmtak-unsplash-768x488.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/marco-secchi-Vk-3Wkvmtak-unsplash-1024x651.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/marco-secchi-Vk-3Wkvmtak-unsplash-472x300.jpg 472w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9599\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hung out to dry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Rabbi Mordchai Fish, of Brooklyn, New York, has been sentenced to<a title=\"N.Y. Rabbi, Mordchai Fish, Sentenced in N.J. For Laundering Scheme\" href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/07\/03\/mordchai-fish-ny-rabbi-sentenced-in-nj-for-laundering-scheme_n_1647003.html?utm_hp_ref=new-york&amp;ir=New%20York\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> 46 months in prison for laundering nearly a million dollars.<\/a> \u00a0In early 2008, Fish accepted checks to charities in New York and New Jersey from admitted Ponzi schemer and FBI informant Solomon Dwek. \u00a0The charities, including Boyoner Gemilas Chesed, Beth Pinchas, and Levovous, are called &#8220;gemachs&#8221;, groups intended to give money to people in need. \u00a0Instead, the cash went straight back to Dwek, freshly laundered, with Fish keeping a nice 10% commission for himself in the process. \u00a0Too bad Dwek was wired up and handing Fish bait money provided by the FBI. \u00a0Over two years, Fish and Dwek, with the latter informing all the while, laundered more than $900,000, a crime punishable by a maximum 20 years in prison and fines up to $200,000. \u00a0Fish swam by the recommended 57-month sentence from Judge Joel Pisano, receiving a lower sentence because of his work in the Orthodox community.<\/p>\n<p><!--more Read more--><\/p>\n<p>Fish claims that it had been hell for him everyday and that he had been living in shame with this guilt, worried that he would get caught. \u00a0I don&#8217;t know how worried he was, profiting 10% commission\u00a0and slipping it right under the noses of his supposed charitable foundations. \u00a0If I were a money laundering Rabbi, I would almost be proud of my elaborate scheme and elongated success. \u00a0Though, this is apparently not the first time Rabbi Fish has been in trouble with the law: he was sentenced to home confinement in 2001 for bank fraud. \u00a0You would think he learned his lesson the first time, but it looks like he just moved on to bigger and more sophisticated crimes when granted grace in the eyes of the government.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An influential Brooklyn Rabbi was convicted of using several charitable organizations to launder money for his criminal friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[548],"tags":[174,408,597,51,627,595,598,626,72,71,596,188,628,594],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lawsuits","tag-brooklyn","tag-charity","tag-fbi","tag-fraud","tag-informant","tag-jewish","tag-money-laundering","tag-mordchai-fish","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-orthodox","tag-ponzi","tag-rabbi","tag-solomon-dwek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9600,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions\/9600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}