USA: Heavy imprisonment to Hareidi Rav who traded in organs

A ruling in the organ trading affair which caused a storm in the USA Jewry: Harav Levi Yitzchak Rosenbaum was sentenced yesterday (Wed.) for two and a half years of imprisonment in a court in New Jersey.

Harav Levi Yitzchak Rosenbaum was born in Israel, and is 61 years old. He admitted three cases of mediation for selling kidneys of Israelis to ill Americans, between the years 2006-2009.

Rosenbaum admitted also conspiring to perform another deal for which he was arrested in the framework of a sting campaign of the FBI.

The prosecutors in Rosenbaum's case mentioned that each one of the buyers, citizens of New Jersey, paid a sum of 120 to 150 thousand dollars, but the sellers only received a sum of 10,000 dollars each.

According to Judge Anne Thompson, Rosenbaum presented his deeds as a noble act but actually placed most of the money into his pocket.

"Arrest is the fitting sentence for Rosenbaum, for he illegally abused the distress of others," the judge claimed. "Rosenbaum presented himself as a noble person, but the profits from the criminal deal went straight to his pocket".

Rosenbaum was caught in the framework of a large wave of arrests in New York and New Jersey, which included more than 40 suspects with different transgressions, who were extradited by Shlomo Duek in the "Deal Affair".

One of the relatives of those who received the organs went out in public to defend Rosenbaum in a hearing which was held yesterday at a district court in New Jersey, and said that he was a hero who saved his father's life.

The maximal punishment according to law for Rosenbaum's actions are 5 years of arrest for each clause of conviction.

This is the first conviction of its sort under the federal law which relates to the issue.

He is destined to start serve his sentence on the 12th October, and with his release it is possible he will be expelled to Israel.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!