rigorousintuition.ca

[2012 Countdown]

Feds bust mayors, others in big N.J. sweep
Rabbis also among the 30 held in corruption, money-laundering probe

NBC News and news services
updated 5 minutes ago
NEWARK, N.J. - The mayors of two New Jersey cities, a state legislator and several rabbis were arrested Thursday in connection with a major corruption and international money-laundering conspiracy probe. Some of the suspects were also allegedly involved in an illegal human organ-selling ring.

Among about 30 people arrested Thursday were Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, former Jersey City Council President L. Harvey Smith and state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt.

Van Pelt is accused of accepting $10,000 from a government witness posing as a developer seeking permit help.

Smith, a former state assemblyman and Jersey City mayoral candidate who served four years as the city's council president, and several other current and former Jersey City public officials also are accused of accepting money to help the fake developer gain permits and approvals.

In separate money-laundering complaints, several individuals from Brooklyn and New Jersey were charged with offenses ranging from the trafficking of kidneys from Israeli donors to laundering proceeds from selling fake Gucci and Prada bags. It was not immediately clear how the money-laundering arrests were connected to the corruption arrests.

NBC affiliate WNBC reported that the kidney trafficking involved patients paying middlemen to find willing donors in Israel. Investigators allege that the suspects had donors and patients lie to hospitals by saying that they were related. Hospitals would do the operation unaware that cash payments were part of the deal.

'High-volume' laundering alleged
An FBI spokesman told WNBC that the investigation involved a "high-volume international money-laundering conspiracy."

Several rabbis in New York and New Jersey were also taken into custody, federal prosecutors said.

At one point, cars were backed up four deep with suspects outside the FBI's Newark office. One agent slowly walked an elderly rabbi into the building.

FBI and IRS agents made the roundups in what is being described as one of the biggest investigations of its kind in state history, according to WNBC.

The probe is said to have been launched when money transfers drew the interests of federal investigators.

Citing court papers, WNBC reported that investigators also made secret recordings of some of the defendants.

According to those documents, Cammarano, after meeting with a developer who had allegedly promised him a bribe of several thousand dollars, said: "I wanna make sure that I, you know, you, you’re my man," emphasizing that he was a proponent of redevelopment.
Defendant Michael Schaffer, a commissioner with the North Hudson Utilities Authority, said he was told by Cammarano that "the way I operate politics, anybody who helps me, I help them. That’s the way I operate. And if you’re not there the first round, I don’t need ya’ the second round."

In another case, an undercover FBI agent and a cooperating witness allegedly spoke with defendant Issac Rosenbaum about procuring a liver for the undercover agent’s sick uncle.

"Let me explain this to you," Rosenbaum allegedly said in the taped conversation. "It’s illegal to buy. It’s illegal to sell. They are going to investigate him [the donor], not you, not your uncle. He’s going to speak to a social worker and a psychologist to find out why he is doing it … and it is our job to prepare him."

Rosenbaum allegedly set the cost at $160,000 — half of it up front, according to court papers.

Two of the Rabbis involved, Mordchai Fish and his brother Albert Schwartz, also had conversations taped, according to court transcripts.

Synagogue raided
Authorities on Thursday also searched a synagogue in Deal, N.J.

Mike Winnick was praying inside the Deal Synagogue when it was raided by FBI, IRS and Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office agents.

"Everyone was looking at each other, like, 'What's going on here?' " he said.

Nearby, FBI and IRS agents removed several boxes from the Deal Yeshiva, a school that educates the children of Sephardic Jews.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who has fought corruption in New Jersey's largest city, said it's "an unbelievable morning so far."

A news conference was scheduled for 12:30 p.m. ET at the U.S. attorney's office in Newark.

In recent years, New Jersey has seen more than 130 corruption-related convictions of public officials.


Earlier this month, prosecutors alleged that Assemblyman Joseph Vas, a former Perth Amboy mayor, engaged in a scheme with a political adviser to funnel money through people who were given funds to make contributions.

Vas had previously been accused of using his political influence to further a real estate deal that netted him nearly $300,000.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32103250/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts?GT1=43001

[marshwren]

Very amusing stories, but i have to entertain a doubt or two--according to the NYT, the investigations began two years in the US Federal Attorney's office, then headed by Chris Christie, a sleazy, lying, scum-bag GOP hack who--earlier in his career--pleaded guilty to libeling two opponents in a successful Freeholder (the NJ equivalent of county commissioner) race. In '06 (?), Christie allowed then GOP-US senate candidate Tom Keane JR (stupid spawn of SR, former guv. and 9/11 Comm. cover-up artist) to quote Christie as having an active investigation of Keane's Dem. rival, then Rep. Bob Menendez. Christie is also one of the few Fed. Att. NOT fired by Bush, because he was over-zealous in prosecuting Democrats (note that the officials busted are mostly Dems). And i'm sure it's just a coincidence that Christie is the GOP nominee in this years governors race against incumbent (and GoldmanSucks alum) Jon Corzine...yeah, NJ is a run-of-the-mill corrupt state (16th to 38th on the various lists of such, depending on the criteria), but as much as i'm certain there's a grain of truth to the indictments, i still smell a Republican rat...

[jingofever]

Butchers: The hidden truth about Israel's kidney theft ring.

[marshwren]

move over, Italian and Russian mafia's; the ghost of Meyer Lansky has returned as the Kosher Nostra...

[seemslikeadream]

Levy Rosenbaum was brought to the FBI's attention by anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes in 2002
_________________
The US elites have lost the Mandate of Heaven

[8bitagent]

Israel: proud exporter of ecstacy drugs, child prostitution rings,
black market organ selling, mall kiosks and mossad moving vans!

[8bitagent]

[justdrew]

Rogue kidney brokers resell organs from poorest nations on black market
BY Brian Kates and William Sherman
Daily News Staff Writers
Sunday, July 26th 2009, 4:00 AM

The international black market for kidneys — preying on the desperate and run by a shadowy network of greedy organ brokers — is flourishing, a Daily News probe found.

The arrest of a Brooklyn man Thursday on organ trafficking charges sheds a new spotlight on an underground business where wretchedly poor foreigners — particularly in India — are paid $2,000 to $10,000 for kidneys.

Those kidneys are ultimately sold for as much as $180,000 to transplant recipients who otherwise could die.

More than 80,000 Americans were waiting for kidney transplants as of last week, the United Network for Organ Sharing said.

The wait for a suitable legitimate donor is as long as three years, which drives many to the underground market, experts said.

Lungs for transplant are also available on the black market, but the vast majority of the organs in play are kidneys, they said.

The majority of the black market kidneys are transplanted in hospitals and clinics overseas, but some have been done in New York, apparently without the knowledge of hospital officials, medical ethicists and the leading expert in the black market say.

“In India, China, Africa and Latin America the poor are selling their kidneys to wealthy buyers through an underground set of networks,” said Dr. Steven Post, professor of Bioethics at Stony Brook University.

Transplant recipients generally travel to those countries for their operations, he said.

“The donors make enough money to buy a house or put their kids through college and the doctors do the transplants overseas, in India for example, at perfectly legitimate hospitals, where nobody cares about the buying and selling of organs,” he said.

A previous News investigation into organ trafficking disclosed that one link in the underground network was smuggling live donors into the United States from Moldovia, one of the poorest countries in the former Soviet Union.

The donors entered the United States — generally at Kennedy Airport — on false student or tourist visas and were whisked to hospitals, where their organs were removed and given to recipients, government sources said.

The man arrested Thursday — part of a massive FBI probe of money laundering and bribery that brought down 44 people, including prominent New Jersey politicians — is also accused of arranging for organ transplants inside the United States.

“The price with what we are asking here is $150,000,” Levy Izhak Rosenbaum told an undercover federal agent, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint.
Rosenbaum was referring to the base price for a black market kidney for the agent’s fictitious uncle.

Rosenbaum told the undercover agent he has been an organ broker for 10 years and that his latest deal with a successful transplant in the United States had taken place two weeks earlier.

The cost, later upped to $160,000, would cover finding a suitable kidney donor in Israel, including blood samples to insure a match, payment to the donor, and travel expenses to get the donor to the U.S.

A down payment was made, but there were no discussions as to the hospital where the transplant would take place, and Rosenbaum was arrested before things went further.

Rosenbaum was a middleman in a “kidney mafia” that includes doctors in Israel, a worldwide network of organ hunters, and brokers who match patients and donors with doctors who do the transplants, said Nancy Schepper-Hughes, founder of Organ Watch, which investigates trafficking.

She said the network is headed by criminal businessmen — “think of them as the Madoffs of kidney scams” — who use money raised through bogus charities to pay doctors to perform the transplants.

Rosenbaum worked through doctors at a major medical center outside Tel Aviv, whose patients were given a choice of where to have the operation, said Schepper-Hughes, who said she has been investigating his operation for 10 years.

She said illicit transplants are relatively rare in the U.S. but that Rosenbaum “was the man to go to in New York.”

One Israeli who received a kidney transplant through Rosenbaum described the rabbi to Schepper-Hughes as “very Orthodox but jolly and very off-color. He loved to tell dirty jokes.”

She said the patient told her Rosenbaum was unable to arrange a transplant for him at a New York Hospital but set one up at a Philadelphia hospital.

Schepper-Hughes described the underground organ network as a pyramid with at least three countries involved in every transaction.

“The illegal enterprise is centered in Israel,” she said. “Donors are found in poor countries like Moldovia, Romania, China, all over. Operations are conducted in several countries. For a long time the main place was Turkey.”

For example, last year, in Gurgaon, India, local authorities said a ring of four doctors and five nurses working at three local hospitals had performed more than 400 kidney transplants over the previous nine years.

Impoverished donors were recruited for as little as $1,000 for a kidney, said Mohinder Lal, a Gurgaon cop investigating the racket.

Typically, brokers like Rosenbaum would deal with hospital transplant coordinators, usually nurses, who would make all the arrangements.

“Some of these coordinators I suspect are corrupt, others were simply trying to do good for desperate people,” Schepper-Hughes said.

[8bitagent]

Yeah but these are still coaxed poor African/Bangledeshi/Indian/etc people.
An eye here, a kidney there.

The real truth is that A LOT of the black market organ world is FORCED
organ removal. Whole lungs, eyes, hearts, you name it. China is notorious for strapping down Falun Gong or political prisoners and extracting their organs in mobile extraction vans to the highest rich white bidder.

Like the global child sex trade, drugs, arms smuggling and Islamic terrorism; its another racket by the global elite.

Also it should not shock anyone some of this is centered in Israel.
Some of the MOST unspeakable crimes(which I wont even mention)
are committed in the name of sick jollies for the elite. For all the "God" loving, Israel is a pretty Satanic nation with all their Palestinian/Lebanese genocide, child sex slavery, and things even more horrifying.
_________________
"We should not be here. I'm scared, this is creepy. You know what I mean? This could go very deep, Carol. This could be like, you know, like with the Warren commission, or something. I don't like it."-Woody Allen, Manhattan Murder Mystery(1993)

[marshwren]

bumping for new development: political consultant arrested in sweep found dead in his apartment--the cover-up begins?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/nyregion/29jersey.html?th&emc=th

[smallprint]

[2012 Countdown]

[marshwren]

I suspect most of the media silence is related to the Israeli role in the human organ black market ring; we all know how easy it is to be slimed as anti-semetic these days just for reporting objective facts that are uncomplimentary to Israel. I would also suggest that at the core of the political-bribery scandal is the role of R/E developers, who have been running NJ for decades--too much publicity about their theiving ways won't be good for business, now would it?