Semen Domnitser, the former Claims Conference director who was found guilty of leading a $57 million fraud scheme at the Holocaust restitution organization, was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Domnitser, 55, was sentenced Nov. 4 in Manhattan federal court. He also was ordered to pay restitution of $57.3 million.
Since 2010, 31 individuals have been charged with participating in the scheme to defraud the Article 2 Fund and Hardship Fund programs directed by Domnitser. Of those defendants, 28 pleaded guilty. Three — Domnitser, Luba Kramrish and Oksana Romalis — were convicted in May after a four-week trial.
Kramrish was sentenced on Sept. 20 to 37 months in prison. Romalis is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26.
The fraud was discovered in 2009 and dated back to 1993. It involved falsifying applications to the Hardship Fund, an account established by the German government to provide one-time payments of approximately $3,360 to those who fled the Nazis as they moved east through Germany, and the Article 2 Fund, through which the German government gives pension payments of approximately $411 per month to needy Nazi victims who spent significant time in a concentration camp, in a Jewish ghetto in hiding or living under a false identity to avoid the Nazis. — jta