Well, just when you thought the state of Illinois and Louisiana had New Jersey beat as the most crooked state…Now we have mayors and assemblyman and rabbis involved in a major league scandal. Oye.
Newark Star-Ledger NEWARK –– Federal authorities arrested 44 people in New Jersey and New York today in a broad-ranging corruption and international money laundering investigation that led to charges against two N.J. assemblyman and the mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield.
Politicians accused of taking bribes include Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith (D-Hudson), Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt (R-Ocean), Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez, Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell. The FBI and IRS investigation also ensnared rabbis from the Syrian Jewish communities in Deal and Brooklyn.
The wide-ranging investigation also charged Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, of Brooklyn, with “conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant, at a cost of $160,000 to the transplant recipient,” according to federal authorities. The connection of they kidney sale to the other aspects of the investigation, however, has not been made clear.
Rosenbaum began meeting with the FBI informant and a female undercover agent in 2008. The pair– who were posing as a businessman and his secretary– told Rosenbaum they were willing to pay to find a donor for the woman’s fictitious critically ill uncle.
Some of the Criminal Complaints
Fish, Schwartz, Pollock, Weber Complaint
