WE WANT MUSLIMS TO TURN AGAINST ISLAMIST TERRORISTS. WE WANT CATHOLICS TO TURN AGAINST PRIEST CHILD MOLESTERS. MOST JEWISH PEOPLE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF THIS RAT, SOLOMON DWEK OF NEW JERSEY AND HIS COTERIE OF CRIMINALS WEARING SKULL CAPS AND BEARDS AND USING THEIR RELIGION TO COMMIT CRIMES AGAINST THEIR OWN PEOPLE. BUT ONCE WE KNOW, WE SHOULD BE TELLING EVERYONE ABOUT THESE ROTTEN, CORRUPT ULTRA ORTHODOX JEWISH RABBI CROOKS.
American Greed - CNBC … Solomon Dwek was a real estate mogul, a philanthropist and a big shot in the close-knit Syrian community of Deal, New Jersey. He was the son of a rabbi. But Dwek had no intention of following in his father's footsteps. Instead, he preyed on his own people and was the mastermind behind a $400 million investment scheme and a $50 million bank fraud. Dwek's empire grew, but his luck began to run out. The feds caught on and to avoid a prison sentence Dwek agreed to become an informant in the biggest case of corruption and greed in New Jersey history.
Solomon Dwek, the Monmouth County man at the center of the state's largest federal corruption sting, was released from federal prison this week, after serving less than 30 months of a six-year sentence, officials said.
Dwek was transferred March 17 from federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland, into a local halfway house, U.S. Prisons Bureau spokesman Ed Ross said. He was placed in home confinement days later.
The 42-year-old real estate investor and son of a prominent rabbi was released due to good conduct and the 16 months he spent in jail after his bail was revoked, Ross said. U.S. District Court Judge Jose L. Linares revoked Dwek's $10 million bail in June 2011 and sent him to federal prison after he failed to return a rental car and lied to the FBI about it.
While in home confinement, Dwek will be under supervision, Ross said. He will be able to leave the house to go to work and attend certain community activities.
When Dwek was sentenced by Linares in October 2012, the U.S. Attorney's Office asked for a sentence of between three and four years for the admitted con man. Government officials cited Dwek's level of cooperation with the government, which made him "the most significant cooperator" the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey had in at least a decade, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark McCarren said.
Linares sentenced Dwek to six years in prison, and ordered him to pay $22.8 million in restitution to the bank, money that can be reimbursed in $300 monthly increments upon his release from prison. Linares also barred Dwek from seeking employment in the real estate industry, or buying and selling real estate as an investor.
Dwek, son of a prominent rabbi, lived in Ocean Township at the time of his 2006 arrest on federal bank fraud charges.
Dwek was a respected philanthropist and well-known real estate investor and developer in the Jersey Shore's Sephardic Jewish community before April 2006, when he deposited a $25.2 million bad check at a PNC Bank drive-thru branch in Eatontown. Dwek wired away $22.2 million from the account to HSBC bank, and another $600,000 to two other banks to pay off loans, before PNC realized that the check was bogus.
The next day, he attempted to deposit another $25 million check, which PNC rejected.
A judge took control of Dwek's assets - then estimated at more than $300 million - on May 3, 2006. On May 11, 2006, Dwek was arrested by the FBI on $50 million in bank fraud charges. He began cooperating with the FBI a short time later, wearing a wire and a hidden video camera and traveling throughout the state and New York City to meet with politicians and Orthodox Jewish rabbis.
His efforts as a government informant led to the arrests of 46 people on money-laundering and political corruption charges in a massive FBI sting operation dubbed "Operation Bid Rig."
Dwek pleaded guilty to bank fraud in October 2009.
The arrests — and Dwek's cooperation — created a sensation in a state long used to political corruption charges. Among those arrested were several rabbis and a man charged with selling black-market kidneys.
Dwek testified in several trials as the government's star witness. He described how he secretly recorded meetings with prominent rabbis and public officials. With public officials, Dwek posed as developer David Esenbach, who was willing to supply cash bribes to officials in return for approvals of various bogus development projects. Dwek approached the rabbis with requests to launder cash proceeds from a business he said sold counterfeit designer handbags. Dwek also told the rabbis he needed to hide cash from creditors involved in his bankruptcy.
Ultimately, 34 people pleaded guilty, four were convicted, two were acquitted and one died before trial.
Dwek's prominence in the Sephardic Jewish community in Deal gave him access to people like Rabbi Saul Kassin, the head of the Sephardic community in the United States, and Rabbi Eliahu Ben-Haim, a relative of Dwek's. Both pleaded guilty to charges related to money laundering.
Without Dwek's assistance, the government would not have had access to Kassin, Ben-Haim or Rabbi Mordchai Fish, a Brooklyn resident who also pleaded guilty for laundering close to $1 million for Dwek, Assistant U.S. Attorney McCarren said before Dwek was sentenced.
Dwek's lawyer, Charles Ulliano, had requested the judge take into account his client's history of mental illness. Dwek has been diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders.
On Friday, Ulliano declined comment about Dwek's release from prison.
Before sentencing Dwek in 2012, Linares said it was greed, and not mental illness, that motivated him.
"There are many people that have bipolar problems and have not committed these crimes," Linares said.
The judge pronounced sentence shortly after Dwek gave a rambling, emotional statement in which he described himself as a "piece of dirt," and choked up repeatedly while explaining the pain his wife, Pearl, and their six children have experienced after being ostracized from their Sephardic Jewish community in Deal.
Labeled a "moser," or snitch, after his actions led to the arrest and convictions of several prominent rabbis on money-laundering charges, Dwek's life has been threatened repeatedly, federal authorities have said. In 2012, they said he had been assaulted by other inmates while imprisoned.
His own parents disowned him, and his father Isaac, a prominent rabbi in Deal who founded the Deal Yeshiva for Orthodox Jewish children, denounced him in the synagogue.
The Deal Yeshiva has since closed, and Isaac Dwek has moved to Lakewood. In his statement, Dwek said that his father had counseled him not to cooperate with the authorities after his May 2006 arrest by the FBI on bank fraud charges.
But Dwek said he decided to cooperate the very day of his arrest, in part to repent for his crimes, and in part in an attempt to shorten his sentence so that he would not be permanently separated from his wife and children.
Dwek's efforts resulted in arrests in the third phase of Operation Bid Rig. The first phase of Bid Rig, an ongoing public corruption investigation, became public in 2002, when former Ocean Township Mayor Terrence D. Weldon pleaded guilty to extorting developers for cash in exchange for using his influence to gain approval for building projects.
Jean Mikle, (732) 643-4050, jmikle@app.com; Steph Solis: 732-643-4043; ssolis@app.com.
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