A huge corruption investigation leads to a string of arrests in New Jersey

A MAYOR, a rabbi, and an organ trafficker sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. But the mayors of the New Jersey cities of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield, a council president, two state assemblymen, numerous other public officials and political operatives, and five rabbis are not laughing. They are among 44 people charged in criminal complaints filed on Thursday July 23rd. The arrests were part of a ten-year federal investigation of both public corruption and an international money-laundering conspiracy. And, indeed, some organ selling.

The operation was huge. Three hundred federal agents of the FBI and Internal Revenue Service were spanned across New Jersey and New York to make arrests and raid homes and offices. The alleged money-laundering conspiracy seems especially shocking as it involved several high-ranking religious leaders, including the chief rabbi of America’s Syrian Jews. With the help of an informant, who was charged with bank fraud in 2006, the federal agents infiltrated existing money laundering networks that operated between Brooklyn, New Jersey and Israel according to Ralph Marra, New Jersey’s acting United States attorney. …