Released from prison, black market kidney broker in NJ sting avoids deportation

[Clark]

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/12/released_from_federal_prison_black_market_kidney_broker_in_nj_sting_avoids_deportation.html

Released from federal prison, black market kidney broker in N.J. sting avoids deportation
By Ted Sherman

After pleading guilty two years ago in a bizarre scheme brokering the sale of black-market kidneys, Levy Itzhak Rosenbaum was looking at the possibility of deportation to Israel following his release from federal prison in New Jersey.

On Wednesday, however, Rosenbaum—the first person ever convicted in this country of trafficking in human kidneys for profit—walked out the door of the federal correctional facility at Ft. Dix and was back home in Brooklyn, his lawyer said, after federal immigration officials decided his crimes were non-deportable offenses.

“He is reunited with his wife and looking forward to enjoying freedom and to start living life again,” said attorney, Edward Shulman of the Shulman Law Group in Paterson.

Immigration officials had no comment.

Rosenbaum, 63, is an Israeli citizen, but had been living legally in the United States before being caught up in a wide-ranging federal corruption and money laundering sting operation in New Jersey that led to the arrests of 46 people in July 2009.

The case, known as Bid Rig III, ensnared three mayors, two legislators and more than 20 candidates for public office, who were charged with taking cash bribes to help green-light questionable development projects. Separately, five Orthodox rabbis from Brooklyn and the Jersey Shore were charged with laundering millions of dollars through various religious charities.

The two parallel investigations were all tied together by a single informant—failed Monmouth County real estate investor Solomon Dwek—who began secretly cooperating with prosecutors after he was caught passing a $25 million bogus check at a bank drive-through window in an unrelated real estate Ponzi scam.

Rosenbaum was perhaps the strangest part of the three-year investigation, spearheaded by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, in a part of the story that garnered international headlines.

Dwek, according to court documents, knew Rosenbaum as the “go-to” guy with connections for those with kidney disease who did not qualify to be placed on a transplant list, or did not want to wait, and were willing to spend as much as $160,000 to secure a donor willing to give up a kidney for transplant. And according to criminal complaints in the case, the informant set up Rosenbaum by claiming a desperately ill uncle of his secretary needed a kidney transplant, and that he was willing to pay for one.

The patient turned out to be fictitious and the supposed secretary was actually an FBI undercover agent. The kidney sale was never allowed to proceed beyond an initial deposit paid by Dwek, who is now serving time in federal prison himself.

Rosenbaum, who had bragged on surveillance recordings that he had participated in many such black market deals, pleaded guilty not only to the illegal transaction, but also admitted arranging transplants for three other New Jersey patients with failing kidneys—all of whom underwent surgery in out-of-state hospitals after paying Rosenbaum, who was charged under a 1984 law prohibiting the black market sale of human organs from paid donors.

None of the patients or hospitals were charged in the case.

During sentencing in July 2012, one of the donors recruited by Rosenbaum told the court that he felt betrayed. Elahn Quick, who had lived in Israel, had responded to an ad offering money to potential donors. But he said when he expressed misgivings as he was awaiting the transplant surgery, he lapsed into unconsciousness and awoke without his kidney.

Donors were typically paid about $10,000.

But the daughter of a recipient who paid Rosenbaum $150,000 to find a donor, called him a “hero” for saving her father’s life.

“My father was dying, and the system was failing us,” she testified, referred to a five-year wait on a transplant list that never produced a suitable organ.

U.S. District Judge Anne Thompson, noting that “no one from the transplants that this defendant promoted or assisted suffered an ill result,” handed down a 30-month sentence. He was also ordered to forfeit $420,000 in payments received for his services.

While Rosenbaum faced the possibility of deportation at the end of his sentence, his attorney said his crime was not considered one of “moral turpitude,” and he never had to face an immigration judge.

“He was brokering a deal with two willing participants,” said Shulman, a specialist in immigration law.