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N.J. scam artist turns star FBI informant--Convict's work in corruption probe spurs arrest of dozens
The Washington Times ^ | November 1, 2009 | Ben Conery

Posted on 10/31/2009 4:56:39 PM PDT by jazusamo

Solomon Dwek is the kind of guy who can get you a kidney.

He's also the kind of guy who authorities say knew how to get dirty money cleaned and could easily navigate the backrooms of New Jersey politics. He is, after all, a self-described member of the "green party," where "green is cash."

The FBI put Dwek's knowledge to use, and that has placed him at the center of a corruption case that is unprecedented by even New Jersey's notorious standards.

Relying largely on Dwek's work as an informant, authorities in July arrested 44 people — seven of whom have since pleaded guilty — on corruption and money-laundering charges. Those arrested included the mayors of three cities, two state lawmakers and several rabbis.

And in the most bizarre case: A rabbi was charged with brokering black-market sales of kidneys for transplant.

"The list of names and titles of those arrested today sounds like a roster for a community leaders meeting," Weysan Dun, head of the FBI's Newark office said the day the arrests were made. "Sadly, these prominent individuals were not in a meeting room but were in the FBI booking room this morning."

Dwek was the common thread and none of the cases would have been possible without him.

He appeared to have a perfect pedigree to become a persuasive police informant: He is, after all, a convicted con man who pleaded guilty Oct. 20 to bilking a bank out of millions.

Not everyone is enamored with Dwek's work as an informant.

Robert Fuggi, an attorney for one of the public officials charged, Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, called Dwek's plea agreement in the bank-fraud case, which calls for him to receive decades less time in prison than he could have faced, a "sweetheart deal."

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; Politics/Elections; US: New Jersey
KEYWORDS: democrats; dwek; informant; moneylaundering; newjersey

1 posted on 10/31/2009 4:56:40 PM PDT by jazusamo
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To: All
Please bump the Freepathon and donate if you haven’t done so!

2 posted on 10/31/2009 4:58:36 PM PDT by jazusamo (But there really is no free lunch, except in the world of political rhetoric,.: Thomas Sowell)
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To: jazusamo

Book ‘em Danno! :)


3 posted on 10/31/2009 4:59:12 PM PDT by RowdyFFC (The opinion of a wise Welshtino woman...)
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To: jazusamo

Syrians


4 posted on 10/31/2009 5:27:47 PM PDT by frithguild (Can I drill your head now?)
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To: Condor51; Just mythoughts; CutePuppy
My God, Christians, let’s have a little pity for our Jewish brethren.

Poor "disadvantaged" Solomon Dwek’s "scraping by" on $15,000 per month. Among luxuries enjoyed by Dwek and his family following his February 2007 bankruptcy:

>> $113,000 in life insurance premium payments paid over just three months.

>> upkeep for Dwek's Jaguar and three Lexus vehicles.

>> Dwek and his wife made $42,000 in payments to credit card accounts in just 5 months,

>> the Dweks took two trips to Florida, another trip to a luxury resort in Arizona,

>> they spent $3,000 on clothes in one day,

>> they made $2,000 in ATM withdrawals over an eight-day period,

>> The Dweks spent $3,010 monthly for food and household items

>> the Dweks spent $1,290 for clothing and shoes.

>> Poopa Dwek, his wife, spent $2,500 at a wig shop,

>> Dwek spent $600 on New York Yankees tickets.

===========================================

WHO IS SOLOMON DWEK? Dwek is the guy who cashed a fraudulent $25,000,000 check at a bank drive-in window in 2005. Then went to a 2nd drive-in window to cash another phony check.....to keep his real estate-tax evasion empire afloat.

Dwek and his multi-millionaire real estate investors are considerd "disadvantaged minorities" Designated under Lyndon Johnson's 1968 Great Society, these "disadvantaged" millionaires pocket endless federal community development funds. Federal assistance over the years included CETA, Section 8 housing, school meals, Head Start, HUD grants, and low interest govt loans. In 1984, federal aid was expanded when a priority group of six disadvantaged minorities were recognized by all federal agencies, and eligible for even more government grants..... ALL PAID FOR BY WORKING CLASS TAXPAYERS.

Could be millions of tax dollars subsidizing these disadvantaged millionaires who summer in lavish beachfront mansions in posh Deal, winter in luxury Palm beach estates (and many of the "disadvantaged" have a third home in sunny Brooklyn).

Dwek and his wife earn hefty salaries working at the Deal Yeshiva (founded by his father, Rabbi Dwek). The Deal Yeshiva fraudulently received $1 million from a mortgage Dwek forged. The Deal Yeshiva insists the money transfer was a "charitable contribution."

Many super-rich "disadvantaged" synagogue members accused Dwek of defrauding them of well over $100 million in his various “real estate investment-tax evasion” schemes. Dwek’s tax-evasion investors also financially supported The Deal Yeshiva, which reported some $10 million income just in 2004.

===================================

Among The Deal Yeshiva's generous supporters was Jack Adjmi, Dwek's mentor in real estate. Adjmi Apparel, NYC, is a Reebok licensee and employs Dwek’s Uncle Joseph (Joe said he gave Dwek $60M to "invest" WITHOUT a receipt).

Alex Adjmi served time in federal prison for laundering Colombian drug cartel money. Adjmi was a key target of a federal sting operation----Adjmi helped wash $22.5M through a bogus Connecticut brokerage (an undercover operation run by the feds in early 1990). Arrested in 1993, Adjmi pleaded guilty to five felonies. "He was bringing us cash from a number of Colombian narcotics dealers. There were some pretty significant people out of Colombia involved," said the FBI.

Adjmi spent 44 months in federal prison (released in October 2000) for laundering bags of cash for drug dealers, according to public records. In 1992, Adjmi ran for, and lost, an election bid in Deal. Adjmi, 47, now lives in a luxurious Greek Revival mansion in Allenhurst (bought in 1996 for $2.8M).

=============================================

The FBI should check out The New York division of Israel Bonds and the United Jewish Appeal connected to the head of Tishman Construction Corp, 666 Fifth Ave. New York, NY, an internationally known building firm. Tishman Construction Corp earned hundreds of millions of dollars as "construction adviser" after he hired Mossad agent Golan Cipel----then-Gov McGreevey's boytoy. McG had the power to OK the Tishman deal.

Authorities should investigate politicians traveling to Israel......the only place in the world where an individual can fly-in, go to a bank with a suitcase full of cash, and nobody asks where it came from, or whether taxes were paid on it.

5 posted on 11/01/2009 4:49:02 AM PST by Liz (ALL FOX---ALL THE TIME---24/7)
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To: Liz
The FBI should check out The New York division of Israel Bonds and the United Jewish Appeal connected to the head of Tishman Construction Corp, 666 Fifth Ave. New York, NY, an internationally known building firm. Tishman Construction Corp earned hundreds of millions of dollars as "construction adviser" after he hired Mossad agent Golan Cipel----then-Gov McGreevey's boytoy. McG had the power to OK the Tishman deal.

I've dealt with Tishman *in my past*. They'd chew you up and spit you out to save a Dime on a project if they could - for the Bldg Owner, naturally. So 'you' learned Contract Law pretty darn quick. Letter writing and documentation of everything became your 'Job One'. I pity anyone who ever did anything on a handshake(1). And when they moved into the Chicago Area Construction Industry, 'everyone' said, 'Who are these NY MFers? And who do they think they are?'

(1) In the 'good old days' multi-million dollar contracts were finalized during a three hour 'lunch' (I seem to recall food being served) and a handshake, or on a Bar Napkin after 'work'. Now a drinking is 100% verboten and even taking a Construction Manager to lunch is looked at as a form of bribery.

Glad I'm O-U-T. And so is my liver :-)

6 posted on 11/01/2009 5:42:38 AM PST by Condor51 (The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits)
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To: Liz

Where do the kidneys come from?


7 posted on 11/01/2009 5:51:47 AM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Just mythoughts
New Deli

'La bonne cuisine est la base du véritable bonheur.' - Auguste Escoffier
(Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.)

LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

8 posted on 11/01/2009 5:59:45 AM PST by LonePalm (Commander and Chef)
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To: LonePalm
New Deli

That is just plain sick.

9 posted on 11/01/2009 6:16:08 AM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Liz

Thanks for your great post.


10 posted on 11/01/2009 8:08:30 AM PST by jazusamo (But there really is no free lunch, except in the world of political rhetoric,.: Thomas Sowell)
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To: Just mythoughts; Condor51
Where do the kidneys come from?

Who knows? They “said” (cough) they bought them in the Phillipines.

Can’t believe anything these crooks say.

There's BIG MONEY in selling body parts. Probably a doctor took them without permission from a dead patient, put them in an igloo cooler, then rerouted them to Israel, and hand-delivered them here, to disguise the origin.

These Body Snatchers have been operating awhile---we first heard of the infamous 2007 Body Parts Scandal that involved several New Jersey funeral homes....which segued into this body-snatchers connection (these snatchers also have residences in Brooklyn).

PONDER THIS Mmmmmm.......think of the numerous lucrative organ market scams popping up once health records are nationalized under Obamacare. Now that the economy is totally destroyed, carving up dead bodies and selling organs and body parts will have enormous appeal as a gov’t money-maker.

REFERENCE "Embalmer Granted Separate NYC Trial in Body Parts Scandal"

SOURCE http://defendourfreedoms.net/2007/12/29/embalmer-granted-separate-nyc-trial-in-body-parts-scandal.aspx

11 posted on 11/01/2009 8:27:35 AM PST by Liz (ALL FOX---ALL THE TIME---24/7)
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To: Liz
*** There's BIG MONEY in selling body parts. ... These Body Snatchers have been operating awhile ... think of the numerous lucrative organ market scams popping up once health records are nationalized under Obamacare. ***

Yep. When I first read of these Death Panels in HR 3200, that's the first thing I though of.

From Hospital ICU's to Nursing Homes, Transplant Surgeons will be hovering over patients like Vultures, just waiting for that Life Support Switch to be turned off. Or, doing it themselves - with blanket approval of the Death Panel - to have a more viable organ (waiting to long after death makes the organs useless for transplant).

But this assumes that Obama Deathcare, in any form, actually comes to fruition. In every version I've seen one thing seems to be missing - authority pursuant to the US Constitution. So the moment Barry signs 'it' into law, the first Lawsuit can be filed in Federal Court and the whole thing put on hold(1) until it reaches SCOTUS and is ruled Unconstitutional.

So in that respect I hope this does happen (pass) fairly quickly, while we still have Justice Kennedy and a 5-4 majority.

(1) just like the pro-abort groups did with the Federal, Partial Birth Abortion Ban.

12 posted on 11/01/2009 8:59:10 AM PST by Condor51 (The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits)
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To: jazusamo; Condor51; Just mythoughts; CutePuppy
Dwek and his wife earn hefty salaries working at the Deal Yeshiva (founded by his father, Rabbi Isaac Dwek). The Deal Yeshiva fraudulently received $1 million from a mortgage Dwek forged. The Deal Yeshiva insists the money transfer was a "charitable contribution."

The Deal Yeshiva reported some $10 million income in 2004 alone---donations from congregants who are Dwek (cough) investors. Now they accuse Dwek of defrauding them of well over $100 million in Dwek's various “real estate investment-tax evasion” schemes.

DUH.

The super-rich congregants reside in lavish beachfront mansions in nearby Deal, winter in luxury Palm beach estates (and many of the "disadvantaged" have a third home in sunny Brooklyn).

PALM BEACH? Let us hope these are not the self-same "investors" who got wiped out by the Madoff affinity scam (/snic).

=========================================

P> The tax-exempt dimension to Dwek’s fraud is as fishy as Madoff’s fraud. Madoff was pocketing millions from numerous so-called tax-exempt religious instititions, charities, and family foundations: The Picower Foundation, The Chais Family Foundation, Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, Steven Spielberg's tax-exempt Wunderkind Foundation, tax-exempt Yeshiva University, the Kehilath Jeshurun synagogue, the Maimonides, Ramaz and SAR day schools---and more---all “invested” with Madoff.

The landscape is littered with these "foundations and charities." Investigators need to determine why Brooklyn, NY residents registered some 800 tax-exempts in Lakewood-----a small flea-bitten central New Jersey town.

=======================================

The IRS has asserted that tax-exempt "foundations and charities" are the locus classicus for tax evasion and IRS fraud.

Investigators may be looking at the legal parameters of prosecutable crimes including making false statements to state and federal officials, filing falsified documents, obstruction of proceedings before state and federal agencies, fiduciary negligence, and obstruction of US justice.

The tax-exempt's might have facilitated IRS fraud by integrating:

1. Secret control over tax-exempt fund-raising committees.

2. Requiring only one signature on tax-exempt bank checks.

3. Utilizing pre-signed tax-exempt bank checks.

4. Using secret bank accounts to keep secret the actual financial position of the tax-exempt.

5. Assigning bank deposit and account reconciliation functions of tax-exempts to one person.

6. Conspiring to hide oversight of expenses and supporting vouchers from public view.

7. Having no outside auditor to review tax-exempt statements.

8. Cashing unusually large amounts of tax-exempt checks.

9. Having no official tax-exempt’s deposit and withdrawal control system.

10. The Biggest Fraud---tax exempts writing checks to other tax exempts (siphoning off tax-free money for themselves).

Authorities should investigate investors in Dwek's realty schemes connected to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva's US Postal Service mailings, wire transfers, computer transfers, electronic submissions, and unregulated money transfers, and all bank transfers connected to secret tax-exempt bank accounts.

Fraudulent tax-exempt activities might have involved using checks passed from one account to another in multiple conspiracies to launder monies.

The stratagem could have been international in its scope due to Dwek's worldwide connections.

Authorities need to determine the extent to which donors to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva colluded in schemes that may have included misusing reserve bank accounts, concealing transfers, inflating asset values and improperly accounting for transactions.

A formal inquiry should be conducted into investors in investors in Dwek's realty schemes connected to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva and their financial activities with officers of publicly-held companies, including (1) Enron-style accounting frauds by manipulating tax-exempt records, (2) bundling contributions into the pockets of politicians, (3) the extent to which networks of companies are financing political candidates in the names of business partners without their knowledge or consent, (4) the extent to which officers of publicly-held companies used accounting fraud to hide illegal campaign contributions, and, (5) the extent to which campaign donations exceeded campaign-finance limits.

Charges might include tax-exempt accounting managers misappropriating funds to cover personal expenses, fraudulently overcharging for management services, diverting non-profit funds, then converting them to campaign accounts, or in the style of WorldCom greed spending thousands of non-profit dollars on organization credit cards for personal expenses.

A formal inquiry should be undertaken with respect to investors in investors in Dwek's realty schemes connected to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva, their relatives, associates, co-conspirators or subsets of them, and donors (particularly officers of publicly-held companies), the business dealings between recipients, employees and elected and appointed officials and the extent to which influence-peddling is taking place, and more specifically the extent to which relatives, associates, and principles of investors in Dwek's realty schemes connected to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva and their co-conspirators or subsets of them, directed political activities from tax-free non-profit organizations in illegal arrangements.

The BIGGEST FRAUDS are between TAX-EXEMPT AND TAX-EXEMPT.....writing checks to each other (the MO for laundering tax-exempt monies).

Authorities need to determine the extent to which investors in Dwek's realty schemes connected to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva and whether they illegally used philanthropic transactions, such as:

(1) loans, the (2) sale, (3) exchange or (4) leasing of property to related organizations, and donors, and the extent to which organizations reported (5) "excess benefit transactions" on Form 990, and, (6) the extent to which executive pay was properly accounted for with the IRS.

Investors in investors in Dwek's realty schemes connected to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva need to reveal the dimension of contributions these organizations that may have been illegally redirected to political activity and be requested to explain:

(1) how investors in Dwek's realty schemes connected to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva solicited contributions,

(2) how donations are made, and,

(3) the manner in which donors (particularly officers of publicly-held companies allocated company assets) are solicited.

Investors in Dwek's realty schemes connected to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva should be asked for details about who inside, and outside, these organizations is soliciting contributions, how the various subcommittees are funded, and the extent to which investors in Dwek's realty schemes connected to the tax-exempt Deal Yeshiva, (particularly officers of publicly-held companies) are colluding to perhaps finance political campaigns surreptitiously, and are engaging in other illegal transactions.

13 posted on 11/01/2009 9:32:38 AM PST by Liz (ALL FOX---ALL THE TIME---24/7)
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To: Liz

Liz, with all that money, one might think that Dwek and Company could at least afford a few more vowels.


14 posted on 11/01/2009 10:05:20 AM PST by Kenny Bunk
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To: Liz
And don't forget Rahm Emanuel and his wife's Tax Exempt Foundation which just happens to own the Chicago NW Side 'mansion' they live in.

But all that's neither here or there. Everything you posted could be proven in court as a crime and the Feds would do nothing. Because the minute they started looking at all the books and any 'funny' money transfers to Israeli Banks or other Foundations, Abe Foxman and his ADL plus AIPAC would scream .. ANTISEMITISM, and that would be that. Case closed.

And I'd bet a shiny new nickel that's how Bernie Madoff got away with his Ponzi Scheme all these decades. Or it at least helped. The SEC was afraid of being labeled antisemitic and accused of 'targeting Jews'.

15 posted on 11/01/2009 1:19:40 PM PST by Condor51 (The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits)
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To: Condor51; Liz
I've dealt with Tishman *in my past*. They'd chew you up and spit you out to save a Dime on a project if they could - for the Bldg Owner, naturally.

If you are into karma, schadenfreude or the dish that's best served cold, here is a little bit of it:

Tsk, tsk, Tishman - NYP, 2009 October 22, by Kaja Whitehouse

A Tishman default in LA - NYP, 2009 October 24

Rent, interrupted - NYP, 2009 October 30, by Kaja Whitehouse


16 posted on 11/01/2009 6:14:49 PM PST by CutePuppy (If you don't ask the right questions you may not get the right answers)
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