Rabbi Saul Kassin, the 89-year-old leader of the Syrian Jewish community in the United States, was sentenced June 1 to two years of unsupervised probation for using a charity he controlled to funnel money illegally to Israel.
U.S. District Judge Joel Pisano spared Kassin a prison sentence, citing his old age, but fined him $36,750, in addition to the nearly $370,000 Kassin agreed to forfeit after he was caught up in New Jersey’s largest-ever corruption bust. Kassin appeared frail and confused in the Trenton, N.J., court.
The chief rabbi of Congregation Shaare Zion in Brooklyn, N.Y., Kassin pleaded guilty in March to one count of unauthorized money transmitting. According to the criminal complaint, he had used the Magen Israel Society, a charity he controlled, to deposit thousands of dollars in checks from Solomon Dwek, the son of another New Jersey rabbi. Kassin then issued checks to other organizations at Dwek’s behest, taking a 10 percent commission.
Dwek had become a cooperating witness for the FBI after pleading guilty to a $50 million bank fraud, wearing a wire as he presented the illegal deal to Kassin as part of a federal sting that resulted in the arrests of 46 people in 2009. — ap