Clinton Pardons Four Felons
The truth be told, though, you and I and most Americans would never
have heard of these
criminals, were it not for former
President Clinton. In the final days of his tenure as President,
Clinton commuted their sentences, permitting them to leave prison
early.
The charges
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To the embattled Hasidim of
New Square,
a village of 6,000 Orthodox Jews in Rockland County, N.Y., the recent
federal indictments against members of their community for misuse of
government education money represent a cruel double standard.
The leaders of this New Square community are unfortunately not as
honest as their neighbors. Four of them had been “convicted of robbing
the government of $11,000,000, by setting up a fictitious yeshiva to
receive federal student aid money.” The school did not even exist. The
convicts and their attorneys justified their actions “on the grounds
that . . . the funds were channeled back into the community[, and not]
for personal gain.” (Yoffie)
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Issued by United States Attorney Mary Jo White, the indictments
allege, among other things, the fraudulent misuse over a 10-year
period of $10 million in federal Pell grants that were earmarked for
financially needy post-secondary students. The defendants are accused
of transmitting the funds through bogus schools of independent study
in which no real study took place, in which students did not meet
regularly with their mentors as required, and where very few degrees
were awarded, even to students who had been registered in the programs
for years.
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Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of our Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, has written that, “for Jews, this is not simply another
case of fraud and embezzlement. This is a case of religious people
inventing an imaginary Torah institution to steal from the government,
using the funds for other activities of their religious community, and
then defending their actions on the ground that the money did not go into
their own pockets. There is an implication that in some way, [their
actions were] religiously acceptable. But of course [they were] not. Their
actions are nothing short of a hillul Hashem, a desecration of
God’s name. Jews who break the law in God’s name and turn Torah into an
instrument of thievery are bringing Judaism into disrepute.”
The residents of New Square (named after the Ukrainian city of Skver,
where their sect originated) insist that nothing improper was done.
"Without going into the question of whether or not they were obeying
the letter of the law, the spirit of the law was always being complied
with," declares Rabbi Mayer Schiller, an unofficial spokesman for the
group, who lives in nearby Monsey. The purpose of the law was to
support education, says Schiller, and that's exactly what the money
was used for, even if the studies were not conducted in the formal
manner required by the Pell Grant Program.
Moreover, the Skveras are adamant in their claim that the funds were
not used to enrich anyone – "Nobody here owns a yacht," one resident
said to me sardonically – but only to support needy Talmud students in
a community whose sole reason for existence is mastery of Talmudic
law. "The entire community's only leisure-time activity is study,"
Schiller told me. "Even men who have regular jobs spend two or three
hours studying Talmud every evening."
New Square NY is a Hassidic town. Just about every family in New
Square (over 400 families) is getting a rent subsidy from the
federal government.
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The Town's Diamond Exchange
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Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of our Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, has written that, “for Jews, this is not simply another
case of fraud and embezzlement. This is a case of religious people
inventing an imaginary Torah institution to steal from the government,
using the funds for other activities of their religious community, and
then defending their actions on the ground that the money did not go into
their own pockets. There is an implication that in some way, [their
actions were] religiously acceptable. But of course [they were] not. Their
actions are nothing short of a hillul Hashem, a desecration of
God’s name. Jews who break the law in God’s name and turn Torah into an
instrument of thievery are bringing Judaism into disrepute.”
Meanwhile, New Square was coping
with a series of scandals in which top village officials were going to
jail or fleeing the country for swindling tens of millions of dollars in
federal education, housing and small-business subsidies in a decade-long
scam.
One widely publicized case included laundering money through a phony
yeshiva set up in Brooklyn.
Rabbi Twersky desperately wanted to win clemency for the four noted New
Square residents who on Jan. 25, 1999 were convicted of 21 charges
including conspiracy, embezzlement, and wire and mail fraud. Kalmen Stern,
42, was sentenced to 78 months; David Goldstein, 54, of Brooklyn, 70
months; Jacob Elbaum 40, 57 months; and Benjamin Berger, 30 months. They
were ordered to pay back millions of dollars.
Chaim Berger Fled To Israel
(In addition, two others fled the country: New Square founders Chaim
Berger, Benjamin's father, and Avraham David Friesel, son of Mayor
Mattus Friesel. Chaim Berger, who fled to Israel, is awaiting
extradition pending an Israeli Supreme Court hearing, while Abraham
Friesel is still listed as a fugitive, authorities said.)
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Were these commutations explicitly bought with votes? Probably not.
Did these thieves receive special treatment because of their town’s
overwhelming numbers of ballots for Senator Clinton? Perhaps. Did
President Clinton think he was being a friend to the Jewish people
when he commuted these sentences? Probably.
But according to a Justice
Department spokeswoman, Clinton's commutation does not dismiss the
court's order that they repay millions of dollars in restitution and
undergo several years of supervised release. Stern still owes the
government $11.2 million; Elbaum $11.1 million; Goldstein, $10.1
million; and Berger $522,977.
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