The Rabbi Lineup

Last month, five rabbis from New Jersey and New York were arrested on charges of money laundering. Last week, The Grand Rabbi of Spinka, a religious group within Orthodox Judaism, pleaded guilty to a criminal conspiracy charge and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.

Grand Rabbi Naftali Tzi Weisz, 61, of Brooklyn, New York, will be sentenced in November.

The five Brooklyn Spinka charitable organizations solicted charitable donations with secret promises to refund donors 80 to 95% of the money they “donated.”

In some cases, the contributors received cash payments through an underground money transfer network involving various parties, some of whom operated businesses in and around the Los Angeles jewelry district.

Yaacov Zeivald, 44, of Valley Village, California; Yosef Nachum Naiman, 57, of Los Angeles; Alan Jay Friedman, 45, of Los Angeles; and Moshe Arie Lazar, 62, of Los Angeles, have entered into plea agreements in which they admit their roles in the illegal money transfer network. These four defendants are scheduled to plead guilty this afternoon.

Other money was routed through Spinka-controlled organizations and bank accounts.

Los Angeles businessman Robert Kasirer, who had helped raise money for Spinka, first tipped off investigators about the scam in October 2004, when he turned state’s evidence in exchange for a reduced sentence on civil fraud charges stemming from his health care business.

The beauty of the scheme was that the money-laundering donor not only laundered his money, he got a tax break for doing so. From Bloomberg News:

Even after paying Spinka a 20 percent commission, a donor in a 30 percent tax bracket would come out ahead, keeping $80,000 of a $100,000 donation in cash and getting $30,000 because of the offset of the tax deduction.

It'd make a great Saturday Night Live skit if that program was funny anymore.