A plan to massively beef up federal prison rehabilitation programs being pushed by President Donald Trump and congressional leaders from both parties will cost taxpayers roughly $346 million over the next 10 years, according to a report released Friday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
It is expected to reduce the number of federal prisoners by 53,000. The Bureau of Prisons estimates there are roughly 180,000 current federal inmates. Most reductions would occur in the first year, due to the laws retroactive sentencing changes.
Texas implemented similar reforms to its state prison system more than a decade ago, saving more than $4 billion between 2006 and 2016, according to according to the criminal justice reform advocacy group Right on Crime.
Those savings — after an initial investment of $241 million in rehabilitation programs — have served as the inspiration for similar reform efforts in states like Kentucky, Georgia and South Carolina.
“This all started because people wanted to save money,” Mark Holden, general counsel for Koch Industries, which has been a major proponent of the reforms, said at a press conference about the bill Friday.
“They came for the savings but they stayed for the salvation,” Holden said of the states that followed Texas’ lead.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who serves as his party’s vote counter, describes changes to a plan he crafted based on reforms passed by Texas more than a decade ago, Tuesday, Dec. 11, 3018.
Senators are expected to discuss and vote on the plan, called the First Step Act, early next week.
Though it’s expected to pass with the help of Republicans and Democrats, some of the plan’s biggest detractors have complained about not having seen an estimate of the costs.
Friday’s CBO report chalked the price tag up to the release of federal prisoners who could soon take advantage of government programs.
“Under current law, prisoners are generally are ineligible to receive benefits from several federal programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the health insurance marketplaces, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” said the report. “By accelerating the release of prisoners, CBO estimates that the legislation would increase the number of people receiving benefits from those programs.”
Right on Crime’s Marc Levin told the Star-Telegram Friday that while states’ savings estimates would not have accounted for newly eligible federal benefits, the CBO’s report did not factor in federal taxes the released prisoners would pay if they get jobs.
The CBO also did not assess savings from recidivism reduction, something Texas and other states have experienced since implementing their reforms, said Levin. He suggested as well that fewer prison staffers could be necessary after incarceration rates decrease.
President Donald Trump announced on November 14, 2018 support for the first major rewrite of the nation’s criminal justice sentencing laws in a generation: H.R. 5682 or the “First Step Act.”
By The White House
In Texas, lawmakers from both parties implemented the reforms in 2007 after the state’s Legislative Budget Board estimated it would need an additional $2 billion by 2012 to fund its prison system.
The results helped it shutter eight prisons, with several more expected to close in the coming years, according to Right on Crime.
Between 2006 and 2016, the state’s incarceration level dropped more than 20 percent, while the crime rate has dropped roughly 30 percent, the group says.
The plan Senate leaders expect to vote on next week would put money toward anti-recidivism programs such as job training, education and faith-based classes in federal prisons. Prisoners who participate could earn credits to be released from prison early and serve the remainder of their sentence in home confinement or halfway houses.
The plan also gives judges more discretion when sentencing nonviolent offenders, particularly for drug offenses, aimed at keeping reducing incarceration levels.
TOMS RIVER – Four men arrested in sweeping raids targeting welfare fraud in Lakewood pleaded guilty to theft and tax charges Wednesday, agreeing to repay every penny they stole or face prison time.
Tzvi Braun, Yisroel Merkin, Samuel Serhofer and Eliezer Sorotzkin took turns quietly walking from the back bench of an Ocean County courtroom to the witness stand.
Each spoke just a few words, admitting to Superior Court Judge Wendel E. Daniels that they filed false tax returns and under-reported their incomes, allowing them to obtain Medicaid and other government assistance benefits worth between $54,000 and $74,000.
They agreed to repay the benefits they received as part of a pretrial intervention program, a year-long probation-like program commonly offered to low-level, first-time offenders. If they make full restitution and follow other terms of the program, the charges against them will be dismissed.
The 40-minute hearing marked the first resolutions of the 26 cases brought against Lakewood residents in multi-agency raids in June and July of 2017.
What happened in the small, wood-paneled courtroom was largely routine. But what has transpired outside of the courthouse since the raids has been much bigger.
The early morning arrests came amid a years-long investigation targeting welfare fraud in the township, and prompted thousands of people to withdraw from government assistance programs.
And the office of state Comptroller Philip J. Degnan crafted an amnesty program, allowing others to come forward and repay benefits to avoid criminal prosecution. That program ultimately recovered less than half of what it was supposed to, prompting additional controversy and an ongoing lawsuit.
Lawyer Yosef Jacobovitch, who represented Braun, Merkin, Serhofer and Sorotzkin, on Wednesday decried the investigation in its entirety saying it targeted the Orthodox Jewish residents of Lakewood.
“The fact that no one outside the community was arrested, charged or placed into amnesty was quite telling that this was a targeting,” he said. “If everybody would be upset or angry that would be rightfully so. But I believe today we resolved the cases in the best way that we can.”
What’s worse, he said, was the investigation led by the New Jersey comptroller treated people even within the Orthodox Jewish community unfairly. He said his clients were picked at random by a former comptroller staffer to face the harshest penalties.
“Just the sheer bad luck of having been the ones that were picked for arrest versus the ones that were picked for amnesty” has had a devastating impact, he said.
The comptroller’s office says Jacobovitch has it wrong.
“There was no purposeful targeting of any specific community in Ocean County,” said C. Andrew Cliver, the lead attorney in the comptroller’s investigations division and an office spokesman.
“This was not an investigation designed to target the Jewish community or any other community,” he added, denying Jacobovitch’s claim that certain residents were “picked” to face criminal prosecution. “It was an investigation where investigators followed the evidence to where it took them. And it took them to those 20-some defendants that were arrested.”
The Ocean County Recipient Voluntary Disclosure Program, the formal name of the amnesty offer, was open to all residents of Ocean County who chose to come forward, Cliver said.
“The program was designed in a way it could not target anybody,” he said.
Braun, Merkin, Serhofer and Sorotzkin each must pay half of their restitution before entering the pretrial intervention program. If they are unable to pay the remaining amount, they will face prison terms of up to 10 years.
We have no doubt that the same financial fraud and evasive practices described in this presentation are happening in the United States and in other parts of the world. Miriam describes, with precision and accuracy, a process whereby she earned extraordinary money while collecting public welfare benefits. The same is undoubtedly happening within the Haredi community in the United States.
The Satmar, for example, boasts tremendous assets under management as far as the community at large is concerned and yet, Kiryas Joel in New York, is listed as one of the, if not the poorest city in the United States. That is simply not logically consistent.
With respect to the ritualistic behavior, the radical ultra-Orthodoxy that is described in this audio is not mainstream Judaism. The personal marriage related practices described are followed by only the most religious within the greater Jewish community, and a rabbi or rebbe’s involvement is not the same within all sects, something which we felt needed to be emphasized.
We believe that the community from which Miriam escaped is more like a cult than Judaism.
Authorities tell The Asbury Park Press that’s because the cases are complex. Normally, indictments follow the filing of charges by about four months.
Prosecutors say the accused, which includes 12 couples, illegally obtained nearly $2 million in benefits by misrepresenting their income and failing to disclose income from numerous sources on applications for Medicaid, housing, Social Security and food assistance benefits.
The arrests raised tensions in the town of Lakewood, which has seen a large influx of ultra-Orthodox Jewish families. Among those arrested were a rabbi and the former leader of a Jewish religious school.
Incidents of vandalism were reported after the charges were announced in late June 2017. Flyers posted on cars around the town cited the arrests, and someone posted a banner containing an anti-Jewish slur on a Holocaust memorial in front of a synagogue.
Local officials said the arrests also created fear among some residents about participating in welfare programs. But while state officials reported a decrease in enrollment of about 2,600 people in the months after the arrests, Lakewood Mayor Raymond Coles told the newspaper that demand for housing programs remains the same. The U.S. Census estimates about one-third of township residents live below poverty level.
Edward Bertucio, an attorney representing Rabbi Zalmen Sorotzkin, told the newspaper the length of time since the arrests indicates “the government does not have a case.”
LAKEWOOD – Jewish Orthodox civic leaders had exclusive access to state officials during the planning of a controversial county-wide Medicaid fraud amnesty offer — a program critics say caters to Lakewood’s Orthodox community, the Asbury Park Press has learned.
State officials on Thursday said the only community group they met with as they formed the amnesty program was the Vaad, Lakewood’s politically influential council of local Orthodox Jewish religious and business leaders. Local African American and Latino groups told the Asbury Park Press that they were not asked for their views on amnesty.
The meeting’s disclosure comes as criticism has intensified about the amnesty program that was launched after 26 in Lakewood were charged in June and July in a public assistance fraud sweep.
The defendants — accused of taking more than a combined $2 million in public assistance they weren’t entitled to — include a rabbi and his brother, business owners, students and housewives from the township’s religious enclave.
After plans were announced to rent out the 3,200-seat Pine Belt Arena in Toms River to hold an amnesty “informational” program, the Vaad publicly endorsed the program.
But fewer than 40 people showed up for that Sept. 12 session, and State Comptroller Philip Degnan, who is overseeing the program, demurred when asked by an attendee if he had “reached out to rabbis” for their support.
“We have reached out to a number of community groups. We have had meetings with a number of community groups. I’m not going to talk about which ones,” Degnan replied.
On Thursday, Degnan in an emailed statement said his office’s Medicaid Fraud Division “was solely responsible for conceiving of and developing what has become the Ocean County Medicaid Recipient Voluntary Disclosure Pilot Program.”
ADVERTISING
Degnan said officials met with the Vaad and also had meetings with the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, the Ocean County Board of Social Services, and representatives of other prosecutor’s offices and law enforcement agencies.
No religious restrictions
The Medicaid amnesty reprieve doesn’t have race or religious restrictions but is only open to residents of Ocean County.
Leaders of non-Orthodox groups in Lakewood say the amnesty opportunity came as a surprise to them.
“Nothing to us at all. No one reached out,” said Alejandra Morales, president of La Voz Latina, which supports immigrant rights.
Pastor Glenn Wilson, whose church in Howell has a congregation of largely black and Latino worshipers who come from neighboring Lakewood, said state officials didn’t contact him nor church members – and he called the amnesty “a slap in the face to all people of all groups.”
Wilson also heads Lakewood UNITE (United Neighbors Improving Today’s Equality), a group that advocates for the township’s public school students.
“Amnesty is something you give to people who don’t know they were making a mistake. I have the same sense that the general public has that Medicaid fraud is probably not often done by mistake,” he said. “I know of people who were denied services for programs just by being over an income limit by a few dollars. The rules weren’t bent for them or by them.”
Degnan in his statement said his office “is willing to attend informational meetings with interested community groups in Ocean County at any time during the 90-day program.”
Vaad leaders in an emailed statement didn’t address questions about the group’s role in planning.
“The program continues to have the Vaad’s support as another tool to encourage greater compliance with the program’s rules,” said Vaad spokesman Rabbi Moshe Weisberg.
State officials concede it’s the first time such an undertaking has been targeted to a specific area.
“We’ve offered this program because, based on our Medicaid fraud investigations in Ocean County, we believe there may be a larger problem in that county,” said Degnan, a 2015 appointee of Gov. Chris Christie. “This is an opportunity to bring a significant number of people into compliance. That’s our goal.”
“We have not seen it in any other state,” he said. “As far as we know, it’s a fairly unique program.”
Degnan’s office audits government finances, programs and contracts and has a Medicaid Fraud Division.
‘We would be hung’
Lakewood resident Mami Quinonez, 61, is among critics who say the program selectively gives a pass to Orthodox Jews at a time when New Jersey has the nation’s highest racial disparity in incarceration rates.
Quinonez, 61, a native of Puerto Rico who describes herself as a “community activist,” said allowing others in the township who’ve wrongly received Medicaid benefits to avoid criminal charges is being done “because there are so many of them and their votes give them influence.”
“If an Afro-American, Puerto Rican, Mexican or Caucasian did what they did, we would be hung,” Quinonez said. “We would have went straight to the federal prison.”
Lakewood’s population topped 100,000 in the most recent U.S. Census estimate and Orthodox residents now account for more than half of that figure, community leaders say, though no official statistics are available.
Shimi (left) and Yocheved (behind) Nussbaum were arrested Monday in connection with a public-assistance fraud scheme. Their arrest was part of a larger operation, led by federal and state authorities, that netted the arrests of six others. Peter Ackerman
Author Monique Judge wrote, “Religious leaders in the town support the program because it will let participants avoid prosecution. … Will this happen in a predominantly black town in New Jersey as well, or nah? Asking for black people everywhere.”
Author Helen Leshinsky wrote that reactions to the program on social media “seemed to come in three categories. There were those who decried the program on ‘Law and Order’ grounds, claiming all criminals should be charged. Then there was the downright anti-Semitic response, clamoring that Jews are getting preferential treatment.
“Finally, there was the double standard argument coming from people of color, to whom the law has never been this lenient and humane. The first two can be dismissed, but the latter cannot be ignored.”
There were 3,803 arrests for fraud in New Jersey in 2015 — the latest year available from the State Police Uniform Crime Report — with 55 percent of persons arrested white, 42 percent black, and 3 percent other races. The Hispanic ethnic origin accounted for 20 percent of the arrests.
Residents of Newark, Camden, Paterson and other cities “where the racial makeup of the populations are very different” could use a similar boost with “not amnesty, but stepped-up state support for things like prisoner reentry programs and transition shelters,” said Fred Rush, president of Ocean County’s NAACP chapter.
“In the cities where you have a different racial makeup, they might have gun buyback programs, but those are open to anybody,” Rush said. “To be honest, when I heard there was Medicaid fraud amnesty for Ocean County, I thought it was a scam. Why would they do that? And why does it seem it’s geared to one religion?”
Self-reporting vs. court cases
NJ FamilyCare, a Medicaid insurance program funded by both federal and state dollars, covers children 18 and under who have no other insurance in families with incomes up to 355 percent of the federal poverty level – as an example, in a family of four the income limit would be $87,336 year, but the income limit for parents to qualify is $33,948.
Degnan said having public assistance cheaters self-report makes more sense than pursuing court cases, which can tap the government’s limited manpower for investigations.
The amnesty terms of settlements call for full restitution payments, plus additional penalties, and voluntary withdrawal from Medicaid for a one-year period. After the amnesty offer expires Dec. 12, prosecutions will resume as needed, Degnan said.
Degnan noted that prosecuting public assistance cheats doesn’t typically result in jail time. First-time offenders in many instances are offered pre-trial intervention, a probationary program that results in dismissal of charges upon completion, he said.
On Sept. 12, at the Pine Belt Arena in Toms River, an information session on how to apply for amnesty attracted only about three dozen people. Degnan spokesman Jeffrey Lamm said applications to the program can be submitted online, but information about the number of applicants won’t be available until the program is over in December.
LAKEWOOD – Jewish Orthodox civic leaders had exclusive access to state officials during the planning of a controversial county-wide Medicaid fraud amnesty offer — a program critics say caters to Lakewood’s Orthodox community, the Asbury Park Press has learned.
State officials on Thursday said the only community group they met with as they formed the amnesty program was the Vaad, Lakewood’s politically influential council of local Orthodox Jewish religious and business leaders. Local African American and Latino groups told the Asbury Park Press that they were not asked for their views on amnesty.
The meeting’s disclosure comes as criticism has intensified about the amnesty program that was launched after 26 in Lakewood were charged in June and July in a public assistance fraud sweep.
The defendants — accused of taking more than a combined $2 million in public assistance they weren’t entitled to — include a rabbi and his brother, business owners, students and housewives from the township’s religious enclave.
After plans were announced to rent out the 3,200-seat Pine Belt Arena in Toms River to hold an amnesty “informational” program, the Vaad publicly endorsed the program.
But fewer than 40 people showed up for that Sept. 12 session, and State Comptroller Philip Degnan, who is overseeing the program, demurred when asked by an attendee if he had “reached out to rabbis” for their support.
“We have reached out to a number of community groups. We have had meetings with a number of community groups. I’m not going to talk about which ones,” Degnan replied.
On Thursday, Degnan in an emailed statement said his office’s Medicaid Fraud Division “was solely responsible for conceiving of and developing what has become the Ocean County Medicaid Recipient Voluntary Disclosure Pilot Program.”
Degnan said officials met with the Vaad and also had meetings with the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, the Ocean County Board of Social Services, and representatives of other prosecutor’s offices and law enforcement agencies.
No religious restrictions
The Medicaid amnesty reprieve doesn’t have race or religious restrictions but is only open to residents of Ocean County.
Leaders of non-Orthodox groups in Lakewood say the amnesty opportunity came as a surprise to them.
“Nothing to us at all. No one reached out,” said Alejandra Morales, president of La Voz Latina, which supports immigrant rights.
Pastor Glenn Wilson, whose church in Howell has a congregation of largely black and Latino worshipers who come from neighboring Lakewood, said state officials didn’t contact him nor church members – and he called the amnesty “a slap in the face to all people of all groups.”
Wilson also heads Lakewood UNITE (United Neighbors Improving Today’s Equality), a group that advocates for the township’s public school students.
“Amnesty is something you give to people who don’t know they were making a mistake. I have the same sense that the general public has that Medicaid fraud is probably not often done by mistake,” he said. “I know of people who were denied services for programs just by being over an income limit by a few dollars. The rules weren’t bent for them or by them.”
Degnan in his statement said his office “is willing to attend informational meetings with interested community groups in Ocean County at any time during the 90-day program.”
Vaad leaders in an emailed statement didn’t address questions about the group’s role in planning.
“The program continues to have the Vaad’s support as another tool to encourage greater compliance with the program’s rules,” said Vaad spokesman Rabbi Moshe Weisberg.
State officials concede it’s the first time such an undertaking has been targeted to a specific area.
“We’ve offered this program because, based on our Medicaid fraud investigations in Ocean County, we believe there may be a larger problem in that county,” said Degnan, a 2015 appointee of Gov. Chris Christie. “This is an opportunity to bring a significant number of people into compliance. That’s our goal.”
“We have not seen it in any other state,” he said. “As far as we know, it’s a fairly unique program.”
Degnan’s office audits government finances, programs and contracts and has a Medicaid Fraud Division.
‘We would be hung’
Lakewood resident Mami Quinonez, 61, is among critics who say the program selectively gives a pass to Orthodox Jews at a time when New Jersey has the nation’s highest racial disparity in incarceration rates.
Quinonez, 61, a native of Puerto Rico who describes herself as a “community activist,” said allowing others in the township who’ve wrongly received Medicaid benefits to avoid criminal charges is being done “because there are so many of them and their votes give them influence.”
“If an Afro-American, Puerto Rican, Mexican or Caucasian did what they did, we would be hung,” Quinonez said. “We would have went straight to the federal prison.”
Lakewood’s population topped 100,000 in the most recent U.S. Census estimate and Orthodox residents now account for more than half of that figure, community leaders say, though no official statistics are available.
The offer runs until Dec. 12. Degnan said it’s a “pilot program” and that it could be available in other counties in the future.
Author Monique Judge wrote, “Religious leaders in the town support the program because it will let participants avoid prosecution. … Will this happen in a predominantly black town in New Jersey as well, or nah? Asking for black people everywhere.”
Author Helen Leshinsky wrote that reactions to the program on social media “seemed to come in three categories. There were those who decried the program on ‘Law and Order’ grounds, claiming all criminals should be charged. Then there was the downright anti-Semitic response, clamoring that Jews are getting preferential treatment.
“Finally, there was the double standard argument coming from people of color, to whom the law has never been this lenient and humane. The first two can be dismissed, but the latter cannot be ignored.”
There were 3,803 arrests for fraud in New Jersey in 2015 — the latest year available from the State Police Uniform Crime Report — with 55 percent of persons arrested white, 42 percent black, and 3 percent other races. The Hispanic ethnic origin accounted for 20 percent of the arrests.
Residents of Newark, Camden, Paterson and other cities “where the racial makeup of the populations are very different” could use a similar boost with “not amnesty, but stepped-up state support for things like prisoner reentry programs and transition shelters,” said Fred Rush, president of Ocean County’s NAACP chapter.
“In the cities where you have a different racial makeup, they might have gun buyback programs, but those are open to anybody,” Rush said. “To be honest, when I heard there was Medicaid fraud amnesty for Ocean County, I thought it was a scam. Why would they do that? And why does it seem it’s geared to one religion?”
Self-reporting vs. court cases
NJ FamilyCare, a Medicaid insurance program funded by both federal and state dollars, covers children 18 and under who have no other insurance in families with incomes up to 355 percent of the federal poverty level – as an example, in a family of four the income limit would be $87,336 year, but the income limit for parents to qualify is $33,948.
Degnan said having public assistance cheaters self-report makes more sense than pursuing court cases, which can tap the government’s limited manpower for investigations.
The amnesty terms of settlements call for full restitution payments, plus additional penalties, and voluntary withdrawal from Medicaid for a one-year period. After the amnesty offer expires Dec. 12, prosecutions will resume as needed, Degnan said.
Degnan noted that prosecuting public assistance cheats doesn’t typically result in jail time. First-time offenders in many instances are offered pre-trial intervention, a probationary program that results in dismissal of charges upon completion, he said.
On Sept. 12, at the Pine Belt Arena in Toms River, an information session on how to apply for amnesty attracted only about three dozen people. Degnan spokesman Jeffrey Lamm said applications to the program can be submitted online, but information about the number of applicants won’t be available until the program is over in December.
It was the dramatic kickoff of a series of well-publicized raids that since late June have netted 26 suspects on charges of stealing $2 million in government benefits. Prosecutors say that the suspects understated their income to get free healthcare, food stamps, rental subsidies and other benefits.
All of those arrested — 13 men and 13 women — were ultra-Orthodox Jews. The charges have tapped into a well of festering hostility toward an insular and eccentric minority.
nce a backwater at the edge of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, Lakewood is now home to one of the largest concentrations of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside of Israel. They are a fast-growing population with a high birthrate; the population of Lakewood has exploded from 45,000 in 1990 to more than 100,000 today. Many of the newcomers are from large families priced out of Brooklyn by gentrification.
At first glance, little sets Lakewood apart from any number of other suburban communities on the fringes of the New York metropolitan area. But the differences are there. Signs are commonly in Hebrew and Yiddish. The Shop-Rite has closed and was replaced by Glatt Gourmet, a kosher supermarket. New subdivisions have Jewish-themed street names, like Hadassah Lane.
Like the Amish, these strictly observant Jews are instantly recognizable by their modest dress — the women in long skirts and wigs that cover their hair, and the men with yarmulkes or black fedoras and tzitzit, the strings hanging out of their shirts that remind them of their religious obligations. Instead of buggies, though, they mostly drive SUVs or minivans to fit large broods of children.
Around New York, there are a handful of similar towns that are dominated by ultra-Orthodox Jews, but only in Lakewood have federal and state authorities laid down the gauntlet so definitively.
Many young families are heavily dependent on government benefits. Couples marry and bear children young, usually in their early 20s while the fathers are full-time students in religious schools, the mothers working part-time doing office work.
With five or more children, many of them with special needs — a result attributed to women having multiple births until late in life and genetic disorders in a relatively closed population — families cannot survive without government assistance, especially to buy health insurance.
In Lakewood, 65,000 people — more than half the town’s population — are on Medicaid, the government health program for low-income families, according to state data. Lakewood has more children with two parents receiving government benefits than any other municipality in New Jersey, including large, chronically depressed cities such as Newark and Camden. A report by the Asbury Park Press found that Lakewood had received 14% of the money from a $34-million state fund for catastrophic illnesses in children, despite having only 2% of the state’s children. It also found that the town had 29 times more grant recipients than any other town in New Jersey.
In 2015, the New Jersey state controller’s office flagged the disproportionate sums of government money being absorbed by Lakewood. The town didn’t look poor by any conventional yardsticks of poverty.
“You have a family or six or seven or eight, somebody is paying the mortgage, somebody is paying the taxes, they have two cars in the driveway, they’ve got food for all the kids … and they’re reporting their total income at $10,000,’’ said Joseph Coronato, the Ocean County prosecutor who took the lead in the case. “You have to ask — what is going on here?’’
In one case unsealed by the court in June, a couple with six children are alleged to have reported their income at $39,000 per year — low enough to qualify for Medicaid — when in fact they were getting more than $1 million annually from a limited liability corporation.
Members of the religious community say that cases of deliberate fraud are rare. For the most part, they say, the couples caught up in prosecutions had failed to report money they’d gotten from parents who were either paying the tuition for children in private schools or helping with the mortgage.
“The rules are very confusing. You have to be a Talmudist to figure out which program treats gifts from family as ordinary income,” said Rabbi Moshe Weisberg, the Lakewood head of what is called the Vaad, a self-governing council for the ultra-Orthodox community.
People most often got in trouble with their Medicaid applications, motivated by their inability to afford market-rate health insurance, which he said ran as high as $30,000 annually for a large family. Several of the families have disabled children, he noted.
“None of these people used any of this welfare money for an extravagant lifestyle. They were struggling to make ends meet and trying to pay medical bills,” said Harold Herskowitz, a businessman who runs a toy store in Lakewood. He believes the prosecutions were motivated by hostility toward the ultra-Orthodox.
“I’m the child of Holocaust survivors; I don’t appreciate Jewish people dragged out in public early in the morning,” Herskowitz said.
The initial arrests in June received extensive news coverage, with television crews tipped off in advance to film the scenes of couples in handcuffs being led away. Following complaints, the prosecutors have made subsequent arrests more discreetly, but still the publicity rankles.
The case has tapped into a wave of hostility toward the community. Last month, somebody hung an anti-Semitic banner on a Holocaust memorial in Lakewood, and fliers were distributed on the windshields of cars with photos of those arrested under the caption, “Thieving Jews Near You.”
Under fire from many sides, the observant Jews of Lakewood are trying to burnish their reputation in New Jersey. They’ve hosted outreach programs between the community and the police — Bagels, Lox & Cops, as the meetings have been called. Other public programs have been designed to advise ultra-Orthodox families on how to stay on the legal side of public assistance programs.
Lakewood, about 50 miles from New York City, was a resort town for the New York elite beginning in the late 19th century, attracting luminaries such as Mark Twain and members of the Rockefeller family. Their fancy retreats were later turned into kosher hotels catering to working- and middle-class Jews, the town becoming an extension of the Catskills’ Borscht belt across the border in New York state.
In 1943, the Rabbi Aharon Kotler, a Holocaust survivor who fled Lithuania, picked the town for his Beth Medrash Govoha, a yeshiva — religious school — that is now one of the world’s largest with 6,500 students, all men. That would in turn attract other yeshivas, along with Jewish primary schools, kosher delicatessens and shops.
“It was an idyllic little town with a strong Jewish flavor,’’ said Aaron Kotler, the founder’s grandson and current head of the yeshiva, in an interview in his sprawling suburban ranch house, the walls proudly displaying oil paintings of previous generations of bearded rabbis. “My grandfather chose Lakewood because it was quiet, which is ironic because people complain the yeshiva has ruined the quiet.’’
Kotler describes Lakewood today as one of the most attractive destinations for young religious Jews to study and raise families, making the demographics similar to other university towns.
“I like to think of Lakewood as poor by choice,’’ said Kotler.
The community has shown itself to be unusually adept at navigating the intricacies of politics and government.
“Their lives depend on knowing everything about how Section 8 [subsidized rental housing] works and getting into WICs,” the government Women, Infants and Childrenfood assistance program, said Samuel Heilman, a sociology professor at Queen College who has written several books on the community.
Politically speaking, the ultra-Orthodox wield clout beyond their numbers, with adult members almost always turning out for elections and voting as a single bloc.
“They tend to vote like the Christian right, and they have learned to make their votes very important,” said Heilman.
In all of New Jersey, Lakewood had the highest concentration of Donald Trump voters in last year’s presidential election – 74.4%. With their children all in private religious schools, they are strong supporters of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary who has called for school vouchers. Charles and Seryl Kushner, the parents of Trump aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are benefactors of the Beth Medrash Govoha yeshiva, and the rotunda of the school’s 2-year-old main building is named for them.
Ultra-Orthodox votes are even more important in local political races. They have installed candidates who favor their interests on the Lakewood school board, township committee and zoning board.
Lakewood’s 30,000 ultra-Orthodox children are ferried to 130 private religious schools on public school buses — boys and girls separately, since they attend single-sex schools — while public schools with only 6,000 children, mostly Latino and African American, have been gutted by a lack of funding. (This is in part due to a quirk in New Jersey’s school financing formula that requires busing for private school students but reimburses the districts based on public school enrollment.)
Some 4,000 new units of housing have been approved in Lakewood in the last two years, making the township the fastest-growing municipality in New Jersey. Real estate developers catering to the ultra-Orthodox are carving new subdivisions lined with four- and five-bedroom townhouses for large families.
“When I moved here, there were trees. Now I wake up and I’m surrounded by high-density townhouses,” said Tom Gatti, a retiree who heads a coalition of senior citizens opposing the pace of new development in Lakewood. “Anytime you try to challenge anything the ultra-Orthodox are doing, they drop the anti-Semitic card on the table.
“They are not looking to assimilate into the community; they are trying to take over,’’ Gatti said.
The ultra-Orthodox Jews also face criticism from less religious and secular Jews.
“Being observant should, first and foremost, involve living and working ethically,’’ complained a hard-hitting editorial in the Forward, the Yiddish- and English-language Jewish publication based in New York. The editorial called the welfare fraud cases “a desecration of God’s name.’’
“It’s too simple to say that this is a problem with Jews,’’ said Heilman, the sociology professor. “It is not their Jewishness that has created the problems; it is the way they interpret the demands of being Jewish.’’
FBI agents and investigators with the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office’s Economic Crimes Unit knocked on doors at about 6 a.m. on Thursday, handing over charging documents and court dates for them to appear between now and Tuesday.
The most recently arrested are accused to scoring nearly $400,000 in elaborate schemes to get Medicaid, food and home energy benefits when they weren’t eligible for them.
“The nature of the criminal events investigated and basic charges allege that the defendants misrepresented their income, declaring amounts that were low enough to receive the program’s benefits, when in fact their income was too high to qualify,” according to a statement from Ocean County prosecutors.
“The investigations revealed that the defendants received income from numerous sources that they failed to disclose on required program applications.”
Ocean County prosecutors charged 14 Lakewood residents last week, accusing them bilking taxpayers of more than $2 million.
The 12 newly named defendants were:
Eliezer and Elkie Sorotzkin, 33 and 31, were accused of wrongfully collecting $74,960 in Medicaid funds between January 2011 and December 2013.
Samuel and Esther Serhofer, 45 and 44, allegedly pocketed $72,685 in Medicaid between January 2009 to December 2013.
Yisroel and Rachel Merkin, 37 and 34, are suspected of improperly taking home $70,557,51 in Medicaid, food and home energy benefits between January 2011 and December 2014.
Jerome Menchel, 33, and Mottel Friedman, 30, were accused of wrongly scoring $63,839 in Medicaid and food benefits between January 2011 and July 2014.
Tzvi and Estee Braun, 35 and 34, were busted for allegedly ripping off $62,746.74 in Medicaid, food and children’s medical benefits between January 2009 and December 2013.
Moche and Nechama Hirschmann, 30 and 27, are suspected of wrongfully collecting $53,418.39 in Medicaid and food benefits between January 2011 and December 2015.
A rep for the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office declined to say if the defendants know each other or worked in concert.
LOSTMESSIAH 