U.S. Indicts 4 Rabbis in Kidnap-Divorce Plot
A U.S. grand jury has indicted four Orthodox Jewish rabbis and one of their sons for allegedly plotting to kidnap men to force them to divorce their wives.
The indictment follows an undercover FBI investigation into the kidnapping and assaulting of Orthodox Jewish men to extract religious divorces in operations that could cost $70,000.
All five have been charged with conspiracy, as well as specific kidnapping and attempted kidnapping charges, U.S. attorney Paul Fishman announced in New Jersey on Thursday.
The conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and each count is also punishable by a $250,000 fine.
Rabbis Mendel Epstein, 68, Martin Wolmark, 56, Jay Goldstein, 60, and Binyamin Stimler, 38, have been charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping in October 2013.
In a meeting with undercover agents at his New Jersey home in 2013, Epstein allegedly laid out plans to bundle a particular target into a van and assault him with an electric cattle prod.
Epstein priced the kidnapping at $60,000-70,000 -- $10,000 for a rabbinical court to approve the operation -- and the rest for "tough guys" to beat up the husband, court documents said.
Two months later in October, Goldstein and Stimler allegedly traveled with others from New York to a warehouse in New Jersey to carry out the kidnapping.
They arrived in two minivans shortly after 8:00 pm, wearing ski masks, Halloween masks and bandanas, and carrying rope, surgical blades, a screwdriver and plastic bags.
Members of the kidnapping ring were then arrested.
Four other people, including two sons of Goldstein, have pled guilty to extortion charges.
23 May 2014, 23:04
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These people distort Jewish law and are a threat to it. Since Takanas Rabbeinu Gershom, over 1,000 years ago, both men and women can refuse a divorce because marriage is sacred and should be protected. Eida HaChareidis have ruled that such coerced divorces are invalid and the children of such second marriages could be mamzerim. Epstein is nothing more than a thug who has disgraced Judaism in ways that Judaism's worst enemy could not. The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot and their leader Hershel Schachter have done similar things, in tandem with the Beth Din of America, both are being investigated by the FBI, together with a so-called rabbi in the South, Rabbi David Lehrfield, whose gittin have been ruled to be highly questionable and his conversions are not accepted. (the local rabbonim advise using Rabbi Mendel Senderovic, Rabbi Twersky's Rosh Kollel, who travels to the South every month instead). Schachter and Lehrfield are facing similar investigations
