Fraud case conspirator gets 30 months
March 17, 2005
Kiryas Joel
Fraud case conspirator gets 30 months
A massive fraud case that stung Kiryas Joel four years ago with images of Hasidic men being led away in handcuffs quietly ended yesterday with the sentencing of the last of 14 the defendants.
Hershber Hirsch, 27, appearing before U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon in White Plains, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for conspiring to commit money laundering. He pleaded guilty last June after originally being charged with 29 criminal counts, among them racketeering and mail fraud.
Hirsch was accused of participating in a fraud ring led by Kiryas Joel resident Mordechai Samet that stole at least $5.5 million through various scams that included collecting fraudulent business loans and tax credits and holding phony lotteries.
Hirsch, who was living in Monsey at the time, went on the lam when federal agents rounded up the other suspects in March 2001 and eluded capture until the following June, when Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested him in Montreal.
Most of the suspects – many of them young Kiryas Joel men viewed within the Hasidic community as hapless collaborators – pleaded guilty. Samet and Chaim Hollender, one of his young lieutenants, both gambled on a trial and lost: Hollender, now 29, is serving 12 years and seven months in a Fort Dix, N.J., prison; Samet, now 44, is serving 27 years and three months at Otisville Federal Correctional Institution.
Chris McKenna
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