A frail and elderly rabbi who leads the nation’s Syrian Jewish community from a synagogue on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, pleaded guilty today to using a religious charity to launder illegal cash.
Saul Kassin, 79, was among 43 rabbis and politicians apprehended during a shocking morning of arrests in July 2009 — a spectacle that was the culmination of the biggest federal sting operation ever in New Jersey.
He had vowed to fight the charges but gave that up in Trenton federal court today.
Kassin pleaded guilty to one count of running an illegal money-transmitting business and agreed to forfeit $367,500 seized by the feds after his arrest.
As part of a plea bargain, the feds agreed not to seek a prison sentence for the rabbi, although a judge could send him to jail for up to five years. Kassin also faces up to $250,000 in fines.
“Few financial crimes offend our sensibilities like those that hide illegal activities behin the curtain of charity,” said New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.
Kassin confessed to using the Magen Israel Society he ran to launder money that was given to him by federal informant Solomon Dwek, the failed real estate magnate at the center of the massive case. For his efforts, Kassin and the charity kept 10 pecent.
Dwek, the son of another prominent Syrian rabbi, turned informant in exchange for leniency after the feds arrested him in 2006 for a $50 million bank fraud. That deal was personally OK’s by then-US Attorney Chris Christie, who is now the New Jersey governor.
Kassin is only one in a long line of people to plead guilty since the July 23, 2009, sweep that required an army of 300 FBI and IRS agents. But he has the highest profile among the Orthodox Jews taken into custody that day. He is an internationally renowned figure who has long led the wealthy but cloistered Syrian Jewish community based in Brooklyn and along the Jersey Shore in Deal, NJ.