N.J. scam artist turns star FBI informant

Solomon Dwek is the kind of guy who can get you a kidney.

He's also the kind of guy who authorities say knew how to get dirty money cleaned and could easily navigate the backrooms of New Jersey politics. He is, after all, a self-described member of the "green party," where "green is cash."

The FBI put Dwek's knowledge to use, and that has placed him at the center of a corruption case that is unprecedented by even New Jersey's notorious standards.

Relying largely on Dwek's work as an informant, authorities in July arrested 44 people — seven of whom have since pleaded guilty — on corruption and money-laundering charges. Those arrested included the mayors of three cities, two state lawmakers and several rabbis.

And in the most bizarre case: A rabbi was charged with brokering black-market sales of kidneys for transplant.

"The list of names and titles of those arrested today sounds like a roster for a community leaders meeting," Weysan Dun, head of the FBI's Newark office said the day the arrests were made. "Sadly, these prominent individuals were not in a meeting room but were in the FBI booking room this morning."

Dwek was the common thread and none of the cases would have been possible without him.

He appeared to have a perfect pedigree to become a persuasive police informant: He is, after all, a convicted con man who pleaded guilty Oct. 20 to bilking a bank out of millions.

Not everyone is enamored with Dwek's work as an informant.

Robert Fuggi, an attorney for one of the public officials charged, Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, called Dwek's plea agreement in the bank-fraud case, which calls for him to receive decades less time in prison than he could have faced, a "sweetheart deal."

"It's interesting that those who are righteous and have laws on their side would stoop to such a level to use one of the most vilified defendants in New Jersey in the past 10 years," he said. "I definitely think the integrity of the investigation has to be questioned, and it has to be challenged."

Mr. Fuggi said the government should use informants to expose ongoing criminal activity, which he said is not the case here.

"Dwek was the criminal activity," Mr. Fuggi said. "He instigated and precipitated much of what occurred in this case."

Overall, the individual cases Dwek worked have little relation. Broadly, about half the cases involved purportedly crooked politicians, while the other half involved rabbis who are accused of running separate money-laundering schemes.

He wore a wire and secretly recorded conversations that allowed investigators to build cases against each of the defendants. Like most informants, Dwek came into the employ of the FBI in a last-ditch effort to get out from under his own serious legal problems.

Dwek, an observant Jew and the son of a rabbi, was charged in 2006 with trying to pull off a $50 million check-cashing scam.

"There's always a question that the government has to ask themselves which is: Do the ends justify the means?" said Michael Weinstein, who represents the congregation of one of the rabbis arrested. "Does using someone like Solomon Dwek provide the government enough of an opportunity to clean up corruption and money laundering that they want to be in bed with him for the greater good?

"I think the answer in this case is yes."

Dwek's path to becoming an informant began when he walked into a PNC bank branch on April 24, 2006, and tried to deposit a $25 million check drawn on one of his accounts at the bank into another account he kept there, according to court records. The problem was that the account the check had been drawn on had previously been closed.

Authorities say a bank employee pointed out this dilemma, but Dwek was able to convince the employee that higher-ups at the bank planned to reopen the account. He also told the employee that he planned to make a wire transfer once that account was reopened that would cover the $25 million check.

Court records indicate everything Dwek told the bank employee was a lie — no other bank employee had agreed to reopen the account and Dwek was not going to receive a wire transfer to cover the check.

But as a result of his fast talking, according to court records, the bank employee let Dwek deposit the check. And, because the check was deposited into another account at the bank, PNC made the money available the next morning.

That morning, according to court records, Dwek transferred $2.3 million out of the account. Later that day, he went to a different PNC branch and tried to deposit another $25 million check the same way he did the day before.

But by then, court records stated, the bank was onto Dwek. They refused to deposit the second check.

The bank also notified law enforcement, despite Dwek's insistence that a wire transfer was forthcoming to cover the check. He even went so far as to have someone call the bank and pretend to be the person who was planning to send the wire transfer.

Court records indicate Dwek's account remains overdrawn by more than $20 million.

Facing the prospect of significant jail time, Dwek decided to offers his services to the FBI.

Authorities took that cooperation into account when reaching a plea agreement with Dwek, which calls for him to plead guilty to bank fraud and money laundering and receive a prison sentence between nine and 11 years. He could have faced 40 years in prison if convicted at trial of bank fraud and money laundering.

The agreement also gives Dwek a free pass for other crimes he may have taken part in during the past decade, including financial scams, money-laundering schemes and bribing corrupt officials.

He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 9 in federal court.

The same day he appeared in federal court, Dwek pleaded guilty in state court to fraud charges stemming from a separate case.

In that case, according to the Associated Press, Dwek pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a $10 million loan in 2005 that he told the bank would be used to buy real estate in Manhattan. The money actually went to pay other businesses and people to whom he owed money.

State prosecutors in that case asked that Dwek receive a four-year sentence that would run with his federal sentence.

But all those charges had been put on hold when the bureau put Dwek to work as an informant.

And he turned out to be a natural.

In February, according to court records, Dwek met with Mr. Van Pelt, a Republican assemblyman who had previously introduced a bill that would strip convicted corrupt public officials of their pensions, to discuss developing real estate in Mr. Van Pelt's district.

Mr. Van Pelt told Dwek that because the land he wanted to develop was near the coast, a permit from the state's environmental protection agency would be necessary in order to develop it. According to court records, Mr. Van Pelt told Dwek he would help him.

Dwek said he wanted Mr. Van Pelt on his "team," and, court records indicate, Mr. Van Pelt laughingly suggested that Dwek hire him as a consultant.

That's when Dwek made his political allegiances explicit.

According to court records, Dwek said he was neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but a member of the "green" party and that "green is cash."

Authorities said Dwek meant to indicate he was willing to pay cash for Mr. Van Pelt's help. Dwek's particular brand of politics resonated with dozens in the state, including, according to the FBI, a young mayor who met — and took bribes from — Dwek even before he took office.

Peter Cammarano met Dwek in April, two months before he'd be elected mayor of Hoboken, a city across the Hudson River from New York City that has in recent years become popular among artists and young professionals.

Mr. Cammarano, who was a 32-year-old Democratic city council member when the meeting took place at a diner in Hoboken, told Dwek that he was a lawyer specializing in "election law."

More importantly to Dwek — and the FBI — Mr. Cammarano also explained "to the extent there's a pro-development person in this [mayor's] race, that's me," according to court records.

Dwek quickly got to the point, asking Mr. Cammarano what help he would offer if Dwek wanted to develop land in Hoboken. "I wanna make sure that I, you know — you, you're my man," Dwek said.

Mr. Cammarano told Dwek what he wanted to hear. Mr. Cammarano essentially promised Dwek that any project applications he submitted to the city would be sped through the approval process.

"I promise you … you're gonna be treated like a friend," Mr. Cammarano said, according to court records. At the end of the meeting, according to court records, Dwek told Mr. Cammarano that he would give him $5,000 through an intermediary then and another $5,000 should he win the mayoral election in June. "OK," Mr. Cammarano said, according to court records. "Beautiful."

All told, authorities said, Mr. Cammarano accepted $25,000 from Dwek.

"Expedite my stuff when it comes in front of you," Dwek said, according to court records. "That's all I ask."

The court records also provide a glimpse into the political philosophy of Mr. Cammarano, who had been considered an up-and-coming political hot shot. Mr. Cammarano had been among a pool of six candidates to run for mayor in May, but because none of the candidates received more than 50 percent of the vote, the top vote-getters — Mr. Cammarano and Dawn Zimmer — had to face each other in a runoff election in the following month.

Before the runoff election, according to court records, Mr. Cammarano told Dwek that if elected he would be "breaking down the world into three categories.

"There's the people who were with us, and that's you guys. There's the people who climbed on board in the runoff. They can get in line," Mr. Cammarano said, according to a court records. "And then there are the people who were against us the whole way. They get ground … they get ground into powder."

And Mr. Cammarano appeared pretty assured of victory.

"Right now, the Italians, the Hispanics, the seniors are locked down," he said, according to court records. "Nothing can change that now … I could be, uh, indicted, and I'm still gonna win 85 to 95 percent of those populations."

Mr. Cammarano never had a chance to test that assertion.

He was indicted on a bribery charge 23 days after taking office as Hoboken's youngest ever mayor. He resigned a week later.

But before Dwek started helping the FBI build corruption cases, authorities used his skills to bolster an existing money-laundering investigation into separate, though sometimes overlapping, rings that operated between Brooklyn; Deal, N.J.; and Israel.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, which is prosecuting the cases, the international rings had laundered tens of millions of dollars through several charities and nonprofit organizations run by rabbis.

Dwek appeared to easily infiltrate the rings, and in the process provided investigators with key insights and evidence into their operations, according to court records.

In the case of Eliahu Ben Haim, the principal rabbi of Congregation Ohel Yaacob in Deal, authorities said Dwek received $1.5 million for a score of money-laundering transactions.

The money actually came from the FBI, but Dwek told Mr. Ben Haim several cover stories to explain the source of it.

Dwek said the money was the fruits of an insurance scam in Florida or money he was hiding as part of bankruptcy proceedings "so the court doesn't know, the [bankruptcy] trustee doesn't know, no one knows nothing."

He said some of it was the proceeds of selling knockoff women's handbags. "I'm switching the labels … Prada, Gucci, boom, boom, boom," Dwek told Mr. Ben Haim, according to court records.

Mr. Ben Haim also provided Dwek a glimpse into the extent of the operation.

According to court records, Mr. Ben Haim said he owed nearly $500,000 in laundered money to another person who "has money in Hong Kong from the kickbacks from the factories."

Mr. Ben Haim said he laundered the money through a person in Israel, who is not named and was not arrested as part of this investigation, but who has been involved in money laundering for decades.

"He washes money for people," Mr. Ben Haim said, according to court documents. "He gives me a check. I deposit it … I wire [the money] to him."

Mr. Weinstein, who represents Mr. Ben Haim's congregrants, said Dwek "opened a door and shined a light on a community that the government wouldn't have otherwise had access to."

But doing so has made Dwek persona non grata among Deal's close-knit Syrian Orthodox Jewish Community. "To say he is not really being warmly embraced by the community would be an understatement," Mr. Weinstein said.

For all Dwek's work in helping the FBI, the one case likely to be best remembered is that of Levy Izhak Rosenbaum.

Mr. Rosenbaum is a Brooklyn rabbi who is charged with offering to sell a human kidney for $160,000. According to court records, Dwek and an undercover FBI agent posing as Dwek's secretary approached Mr. Rosenbaum about buying a kidney. They told Mr. Rosenbaum the kidney was for the undercover agent's uncle, who they said suffered from a disease that caused cysts to grow on his kidneys and has been on dialysis for a couple of years.

Mr. Rosenbaum said he'd been brokering such deals for "a long time," according to court documents. He said all the donors came from Israel and were identified through a complicated, and ultimately expensive, process that involved several middlemen.

He told them they needed to have blood samples from the fictitious uncle and a cover story to explain the relationship between him and the donor as it is illegal to buy and sell organs in the U.S. and Israel.

"You can't even mention it," he said.

Mr. Rosenbaum said he would think of a cover after "seeing your uncle … could be neighbors, could be friends from [synagogue], could be friends from the community, could be friends of his children."

He quickly dismissed a suggestion from Dwek that they say the donor is a family member because "it's really easy to find out if he's not."

"He's going to speak to a social worker and a psychologist to find out why he's doing it," Mr. Rosenbaum said, according to court records. "And it is our job to prepare him."

But, according to court records, Mr. Rosenbaum remained confident they could make the transplant happen without authorities finding out about the sale of the kidney. "So far, I've never had a failure," he said, according to court records.

Mr. Rosenbaum said he wanted half the money up front and preferred cash, according to court records. When the undercover agent asked whether the donor received "a good portion" of the payment, according to court records, Mr. Rosenbaum replied curtly: "Don't worry about it."

About the Author

Ben Conery

Ben Conery is a member of the investigative team covering the Supreme Court and legal affairs. Prior to coming to The Washington Times in 2008, Mr. Conery covered criminal justice and legal affairs for daily newspapers in Connecticut and Massachusetts. He was a 2006 recipient of the New England Newspaper Association’s Publick Occurrences Award for a series of articles about ...

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