Two former insurance brokers for the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty were each sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution.
Solomon Ross and William Lieber, who together with the nonprofit’s former CEO, William Rapfogel, stole approximately $9 million in a 20-year scheme, will also surrender their broker’s licenses, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced on Feb. 13.
Both Ross and Lieber, insurance brokers for the now defunct Century Coverage Corporation, pleaded guilty to grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and conspiracy.
Met Council’s main funding comes from government sources, but it also receives support from individual philanthropists and is a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York. The Jewish social service organization assists poor and elderly New Yorkers of all backgrounds.
In the scheme, Met Council knowingly paid inflated insurance premiums to the company in exchange for cash kickbacks. In July, Rapfogel was sentenced to 31⁄3 to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $3 million in restitution. — jta