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One year after welfare arrests, what's the holdup?
LAKEWOOD - Shock swept through the township one year ago when law enforcement officers over several days raided numerous homes, arresting more than two dozen in a welfare fraud probe that trained an unflattering spotlight on members of an insular community for weeks.
The starkest images from the arrests, of husbands and wives being led from their homes and then, their mugshots, may have receded in memory but the legal matters are not yet resolved.
Criminal welfare fraud charges filed against 26 of the township's Orthodox Jewish residents remain pending — somewhat unusual under the circumstances. The cases have taken about three times longer than normal to be considered by a grand jury. Typically four months pass between an arrest and grand jury indictment in Ocean County, according to state court statistics, but for the fraud cases it's been 13 months.
Meanwhile the state comptroller, who created a controversial amnesty program in the wake of the arrests, has collected most of the $2.2 million that participants agreed to repay. About $1.9 million has been collected so far, state officials said.
The raids in June and July 2017 were a flash point in Lakewood, fueling social media vitriol against the township's majority Orthodox Jewish community and, community leaders said, concern and even fear about participating in welfare programs.
While state officials reported an approximately 2,600 person drop in enrollment in the months after the arrests, countywide enrollment has increased year over year. Lakewood Mayor Raymond Coles said demand for housing programs is unchanged. A third of township residents live below the poverty level, according to 2016 U.S. Census estimates.
Also unchanged is a perception of some Lakewood residents, like 62-year-old Mami Quinonez, that the amnesty program was special treatment for Lakewood's Jewish community. The Puerto Rico native said Thursday she still encounters people in town who are angry and who believe other minorities would not have gotten such a deal from the state.
"There ain't no justice for all," she said. "There’s no such thing in this town."
Year-long wait
Fourteen residents, including a prominent rabbi, were arrested when the FBI and other agencies raided their Lakewood homes in June 2017. Twelve more residents were arrested in July. You can see last year's raids in the videos with this story.
The defendants — 13 Orthodox Jewish couples — allegedly under-reported their incomes, or shifted money between accounts, so they appeared to qualify for benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps and Section 8 low-income housing assistance. The value of the benefits they subsequently stole nears $2 million, officials have said.
One couple, for example, received $1.8 million income in 2013 while receiving benefits worth $178,000 through the following year, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office.
At the time of the initial arrests, a source involved in the case said law enforcement tracked illegal transactions through a Lakewood beeper store, private school tuition records and withdrawals from a state fund that pays medical fees for sick children to identify the fraud.
More: Lakewood rabbi, others arrested in alleged million-dollar welfare fraud
More: 6 more couples face Lakewood welfare fraud charges
Few more details of the investigation are publicly known today, as none of the cases have gone to trial. In fact, they're still in an early stage of criminal prosecution: Awaiting indictment.
On average, the time between arrest and indictment in Ocean County is 124 days, according to New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts statistics. Yet these cases have extended beyond a year, about three times the average, without indictment.
Yosef Jacobovitch, a lawyer representing several of the people facing theft charges, said he did not know the reason for the delay.
"We look forward to resolving these cases," he said. "We’re ready to resolve them. The ball is in the prosecutor's court at this point."
The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office said the complex cases require more time to prepare.
"Financial crimes cases are complicated matters with voluminous discovery, often thousands of pages of reports and documents, for both the state and defense to consider," prosecutor's spokesman Al DellaFave said. "As a result, it takes considerably more time and preparation for these cases to go through our usual pre-indictment process and be presented to the grand jury."
But one defense lawyer says the delay shows his client is innocent.
Edward Bertucio, the attorney for Rabbi Zalmen Sorotzkin, said he had turned over to prosecutors hundreds of pages of financial records that show Sorotzkin did not receive benefits he did not qualify for. Sorotzkin runs the synagogue Congregation Lutzk and businesses linked to the synagogue.
"The one-year hiatus between the initial execution of the search warrant and today speaks louder than words that the government does not have a case," Bertucio said.
"Our documents show he did not commit any criminal wrongdoing."
Four of the cases include a charge of conspiracy to steal government funds and are being handled in federal court. Those cases have been postponed eight or nine times as lawyers work on resolving them before a trial, court records show.
Amnesty program
RAW VIDEO: Shimi and Yocheved Nussbaum are arrested and taken out of their Hadassah Lane home in Lakewood. Alex Gecan
After the arrests, state Comptroller Philip J. Degnan formed a controversial amnesty program allowing families who improperly received Medicaid benefits to come forward, repay the benefits plus a fine of typically $1,000 and avoid prosecution. The families also had to go a year without receiving government assistance.
The offer was open to all Ocean County residents, but prompted national media and online speculation that the state was favoring Lakewood's Orthodox Jewish community. Degnan said limited manpower to investigate additional fraud cases prompted the amnesty program, and noted that criminal fraud prosecutions rarely result in jail time for first-time offenders.
Ultimately, 159 people participated in the amnesty offer, agreeing to repay sums typically in the tens of thousands of dollars, according to copies of the agreements.
Comptroller's office spokesman Jeffrey Lamm said there were delays in finalizing some agreements with participants, and while $1.9 million has been repaid to date, his office expects to recoup $2.2 million through the amnesty program. The program is formally called the Ocean County Recipient Voluntary Disclosure Program.
BACKGROUND: Lakewood fraud: 159 granted amnesty, $2 million to be recovered
Jacobovitch, the defense lawyer who has also assisted other residents seeking amnesty, said he believed some residents repaid benefits they rightly received. Their choice to give up government assistance was motivated by fear they'd be subjected to early morning raids like those that swept through the township last year, he said.
Those people chose to "pay everything back for a promise that the FBI's not coming to their door," he said. The comptroller's office did not verify amnesty program participants' eligibility to receive Medicaid benefits, Lamm said.
Through Lamm, Degnan declined an interview for this story. When announcing the program last year, Degnan billed the amnesty program as a pilot that could be used elsewhere. Whether that will happen is uncertain.
“Final determination has not been made at this point about offering a similar program elsewhere," Lamm said.
Lasting impact
After the raids, community groups and advocates rallied to educate Lakewood residents about who qualifies for government assistance programs. One law enforcement official said last year that hundreds of people called the township with questions and dozens called Ocean County Social Services to cancel their assistance payments or update their income information.
MORE: Lakewood welfare fraud: How did the scheme work?
In an October email, the state's supervising investigator of Medicaid fraud said that Medicaid enrollment in Ocean County dropped by 2,565 people between June 2017 — when the arrests started — and September 2017.
A decline like that had not happened before and saved about $12 million, Andrew Poulos wrote in the email to federal, state and local officials who worked the case. The email, obtained via a public records request, was first reported on by the blog Ocean County Politics.
Yet year-over-year, enrollment in government assistance programs in Ocean County has increased slightly. Between June 2017, just before the first arrests were made, and June 2018, an additional approximately 1,300 residents were enrolled in Medicaid and NJFamilyCare programs, according to state Department of Human Services statistics.
About 121,400 county residents were enrolled as of June 2018, the statistics show.
Mayor Coles said he's seen no change in demand for housing assistance programs.
"The waiting list for Section 8 subsidies is as long as it has ever been," he said. The lasting impact of the raids, he said, was awareness about what it takes to qualify for government assistance.
"Folks are now aware that there are a lot of rules and regulations that may not be readily aware on first glance," the mayor said.
Nine community education events were held in the months after the arrests and about 2,500 people attended, according to Aaron Kotler, a member of the Lakewood Vaad and president of Beth Medrash Govoha Talmudic college in the township. The Vaad is a council of rabbis and businessmen who advocate for the Orthodox Jewish community.
"The thinking of the nine events was to keep speaking to different groups about different aspects of compliance, of the intricacies of various programs," Kotler said, adding that the awareness programs were especially important after public attention on the arrests died down. "The organizations want to continue those."
The events were a partnership of Orthodox advocacy group Agudath Israel of America, social services organizations the Lakewood Resource and Referral Center and the Lakewood Community Services Corp., and the Vaad.
What's next
As education efforts continue, so too will the criminal cases.
About half of the residents who were charged will seek entry into diversion programs that could allow them to avoid jail time and criminal convictions if they complete conditions, which could include repaying the benefits. Those programs are available to first-time offenders and more than 1,000 people participate each year in Ocean County.
Whether or not they will be accepted into the probation-like programs is on hold, pending grand jury indictments being issued.
The following individuals are facing the below-listed charges in the case, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office:
- Third-degree theft by deception: Eliezer and Elkie Sorotzkin; Samuel and Esther Serhofer; Yisroel and Slava Merkin; Jerome Menchel; Mottel Friedman; Tzvi and Estee Braun; Moshe and Nechama Hirschmann.
- Second-degree theft by deception: Zalmen and Tzipporah Sorotzkin; Mordechai and Jocheved Breskin; Yitzchock and Sora Kanarek; Chaim and Liatt Ehrman; William and Faigy Friedman
- Conspiracy to steal government funds (federal counts): Mordechai and Rachel Sorotzkin; Shimon and Yocheved Nussbaum
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One of the plants is owned by Koch Foods Inc., which bills itself as one of the largest poultry processors in the U.S. with more than 13,000 employees. Forbes ranks it as the 135th largest privately held company in the country, with an estimated $3.2 billion in annual revenue, according to Fortune.
Another plant raided Wednesday is in Canton, Miss., and is owned by Peco Foods Inc., based in Tuscaloosa, Ala. It is the eighth-largest poultry producer in the U.S., according to the company's website.
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"Terrible things are happening outside... poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared."
- Anne Frank (Jan 13, 1943) - - - We said #NeverAgain
^ Originally posted by the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect
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