Semen Gomnitse (Daniel Shapiro)
FIENDISH: This Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, basement was one of the locations used by a Holocaust scam group, abetted by Dora Grande and run by Semen Domnitser, feds say. (Paul Martinka)
This scheme was as twisted as a swastika.
The feds yesterday charged 17 people who allegedly stole more than $42.5 million by scamming the organization that doles out German reparations to Holocaust survivors.
The inside job was allegedly masterminded by Semen Domnitser, who oversaw two compensation funds at the Manhattan office of the Conference on Material Claims Against Germany.
Five other employees are charged with helping Domnitser perpetrate the massive fraud, in which more than 5,600 falsified applications were rubber-stamped in exchange for kickbacks over 16 years, authorities said.
“That the schemes . . . were carried out for so long is an indicator of how well-planned and precise they were,” Manhattan FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Janice Fedarcyk said.
The schemers submitted paperwork with bogus information that made it appear the “victims” had either fled the Nazis or had been incarcerated in concentration camps, the feds charged.
The brazen scam led to about $18 million in false “hardship” payments of $3,600 each to almost 5,000 ineligible recipients — many whom were born after World War II.
The “hardship” program is available to Jews who fled their homes in advance of Nazi invaders and can document their identities.
Another $24.5 million in crooked, $411-a-month pensions were awarded to more than 650 applicants who falsely claimed to have spent at least six months in a concentration camp or 18 months in a Jewish ghetto, the feds said.
Authorities said many of the applicants were recruited through ads in Russian-language newspapers and some were unwitting participants in the fraud.
For the hardship program, the schemers allegedly created phony dates of birth for these “applicants” to make it as if like they were born before or during World War II.
They even submitted numerous applications using the same passport photo but under different names, officials said.
For the pension program — limited to those earning less than $16,000 a year — the alleged ruse was a little more sophisticated.
It involved falsifying documents with bogus ID, places of birth and heartbreaking, but fake, tales of either having fled the Nazis, having been forced into hiding, or having survived concentration camps, authorities said.
Dora Grande, a licensed notary public, allegedly dummied up most of the fraudulent applications from a Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, office.
When reached today, Grande declined to comment.
The tax-preparation business, which caters to Russian immigrants, was raided yesterday as part of an FBI round-up of Grande, Domnitser and 10 other defendants in the case.
The scheme was uncovered by the Claims Conference in November after officials there noticed “very suspicious” applications “that didn’t make sense in terms of birth dates and what was being alleged,” Executive Vice President Gregory Schneider said.
After conducting an internal probe, the Claims Conference “promptly” contacted the feds, Schneider said.
The organization has cut off all bogus pension recipients and has also notified the more than 5,600 fraudulent applicants from both funds that they must pay back their ill-gotten gains.
Domnitser and two other charged employees were fired in February, while another was laid off in 2006, and the remaining two were fired yesterday.
Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara called it a “perverse and pervasive fraud” that was “as substantial as it is galling.”
Funding for the Claims Conference comes from the German government, which has paid more than $60 billion in “indemnification” for Nazi horrors since 1952.