The Pride of Lakewood: Trumpscum Jew Sewer Rat Alan Dershowitz, Paid Friend of Ponzi Scheme Recidivist Eli Weinstein
David Shasha
Convicted Lakewood Ponzi schemer Weinstein, freed by Trump, charged with new fraud
By: Jenna Calderon
NEWARK - The Lakewood Ponzi schemer who was freed from prison by former President Donald Trump after being twice convicted of fraud was charged Wednesday along with four other men, accused of committing new crimes, including conspiring to defraud investors of more than $35 million, and with conspiracy to obstruct justice, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced.
Eliyahu "Eli" Weinstein, 48; Aryeh “Ari” Bromberg, 49; and Joel Wittels, 57; all of Lakewood, along with Shlomo Erez, 55, a citizen and resident of Israel, and Alaa Hattab, 34, of Ottawa, Canada, were each charged with one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, Sellinger said.
Weinstein, Bromberg and Erez were all arrested and scheduled to make their first appearances Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Tonianne Bongiovanni in Trenton federal court, according to Sellinger. Wittels and Hattab remain at large.
"These were brazen and sophisticated crimes that involved multiple conspirators and drew right from Weinstein’s playbook of fraud," Sellinger said. "No matter how many times someone attempts to prey on innocent investors, my office will dedicate whatever resources are necessary to root out and punish fraudsters."
See the full complaint at the bottom of this story.
Weinstein was convicted two times in federal court in New Jersey for defrauding investors. His first case involved a real estate Ponzi scheme that spanned from 2004 through 2011 and the second case stemmed from additional fraud he committed while on pretrial release in 2014, according to court documents.
These crimes resulted in approximately $230 million in combined losses to investors, and Weinstein was sentenced to 24 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, the documents said.
On Jan. 19, 2021, after Weinstein had served less than eight years, Trump on the day before his presidential term ended commuted Weinstein’s term to time served, eliminating the rest of his sentence.
After his release, Weinstein began a new scheme to solicit money from investors through a company called Optimus Investments Inc., Sellinger said. Under the alias "Mike Konig," Weinstein ran Optimus with Bromberg and Wittels, who kept Weinstein's true identity hidden because, as Weinstein acknowledged in a secretly recorded conversation, investors wouldn’t give them “a penny” if they learned of Weinstein’s involvement.
Weinstein, Bromberg and Wittels received most of the investor money through a second company, Tryon Management Group LLC, which was owned and controlled by two other conspirators, according to court documents. Tryon promised these individual investors — consisting mostly of friends and family — lucrative opportunities to invest in deals involving COVID-19 masks, scarce baby formula and first-aid kits supposedly bound for wartime Ukraine.
Posing as Konig, Weinstein provided the information for these supposed deals, and investors gave money to Tryon, believing the deals were legitimate and not knowing about Weinstein’s involvement. In turn, Tryon transferred those funds to Weinstein, through Optimus.
'I finagled, and Ponzied and lied'
In February 2022, almost immediately after Tryon and Optimus started receiving investor money, Tryon was unable to pay its investors, Sellinger said. Instead of telling investors, Weinstein, Bromberg and Wittels agreed with Tryon’s owners to pool money from existing investors of both Optimus and Tryon and use it to make monthly payments to other investors in a Ponzi-like fashion. Bromberg, Wittels and the Tryon owners hid this arrangement from investors by falsely telling them the payments came from legitimate investment returns, not other investors’ money.
In late August 2022, Weinstein revealed his true identity to the Tryon owners in a secretly recorded meeting, Sellinger said. In another recorded August 2022 meeting, Weinstein admitted to embezzling Tryon investor money and making false statements about the alleged Optimus deals. Weinstein acknowledged that he was conducting a Ponzi scheme, stating, “I finagled, and Ponzied and lied to people to cover us,” Selinger said.
Erez claimed to be Weinstein’s attorney and helped conceal Weinstein’s true identity, partly by receiving and managing money on Weinstein’s behalf, the documents said. Hattab served as a broker for Optimus and helped conceal Weinstein’s involvement from investors and his business activities from the United States Probation Office.
When the Tryon owners learned that Konig was actually Weinstein, they agreed with the defendants to continue concealing Weinstein’s identity from investors and to raise additional money to pay off existing Tryon investors, all to stop the Ponzi scheme from falling apart and to cover up the fraud, the documents said.
'I hid money. Get it?'
Additionally, Sellinger said the defendants also conspired to obstruct justice by helping to hide Weinstein’s assets that should have been used to pay over $200 million in restitution that he still owes his previous victims. The defendants also concealed Weinstein’s myriad business activities, which he was required to disclose to the court and which weren't allowed by the terms of his supervised release.
In multiple secretly recorded conversations, Weinstein discussed his intent to conceal his various assets from the government. During one conversation, Weinstein referenced hidden assets that he “can’t touch” while on supervised release because he’d otherwise “go to jail," then boasted, “I just told you something that no one in the world knows because I hid money. Get it?”
The wire fraud conspiracy charge is punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison, according to Sellinger. The obstruction conspiracy charge is punishable by a maximum of five years in prison. Each count is also punishable by a maximum fine of either $250,000 or twice the gain or loss from the offense, whichever is greatest.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also filed a civil complaint against Weinstein, Bromberg, Wittels, Hattab and two other individuals based on the same and additional conduct, according to the announcement.
From The Asbury Park Press, July 19, 2023
A pardon for Lakewood's Eliyahu Weinstein? Alan Dershowitz is talking to Trump
By: Charles Stile
Among the names jumping out of the speculation mill for a possible last-minute pardon from President Donald Trump is one of the most notorious Ponzi-scheme swindlers in New Jersey history.
The New York Times reported last month that Alan Dershowitz, the celebrity law professor and Trump ally, is exploring applying for a pardon on behalf of Eliyahu Weinstein, a Lakewood man who was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2014 for running a real-estate scam that cost investors more than $200 million in losses.
Weinstein's sentence was later extended for two more years for orchestrating a fraud amid Facebook's initial public offering in 2012.
I reached out to Dershowitz about the story and asked him to explain how he came to know of Weinstein's case, why he believes Weinstein was worthy of clemency, and if he actually approached Trump.
In an email to the USA TODAY Network, Dershowitz, the retired Harvard law professor, replied, "I have not spoken to the president about a pardon or commutation ... ."
The scale of Weinstein's crimes was breathtaking. Authorities alleged that Weinstein ran a real-estate investment scam that began in June 2004 and ran through August 2011, in which he used false and misleading statements to induce victims to invest.
Weinstein initially targeted victims in the Orthodox Jewish community to which he belonged, exploiting his standing in and knowledge of the customs and practices of the community to further the scheme. He abused the community’s practice of engaging in transactions based on trust — without paperwork — to obtain money from victims and did not keep substantial records, authorities said.
Throughout the scheme, Weinstein lied to investors, telling them their money was used to purchase property and that the profits were being rolled into new investments, authorities said.
Weinstein used a portion of the proceeds to fund charitable and religious contributions — an effort to boost his reputation within the Orthodox Jewish community. But, prosecutors said, he used the proceeds of his fraud to fund a lavish lifestyle, which included gambling in Las Vegas and elsewhere, leasing luxury cars and buying jewelry worth millions.
Among the team of federal prosecutors who brought the case against Weinstein was Gurbir Grewal, the current New Jersey Attorney General. I reached out to Grewal for his reaction to the possibility that presidential clemency is being pursued for Weinstein; he did did not immediately reply.
Paul Fishman, the United States Attorney for New Jersey at the time, declined to comment.
The Times reported that Dershowitz was also considering seeking a pardon on behalf of Greg E. Lindberg, a North Carolina businessman who was sentenced in August to more than seven years in prison for his role in a bribery scheme that shook the state’s Republican Party.
From North Jersey.com, December 11, 2020
The Road to Clemency From Trump Was Closed to Most Who Sought It
By: Kenneth P. Vogel
WASHINGTON — Eliyahu Weinstein got word that two-thirds of his 24-year sentence for investment fraud was going to be commuted by President Donald J. Trump after the White House chief of staff called a well-connected Washington lobbyist who had been hired to lead his clemency push.
Lawrence McCarroll learned that the petition he had filed with the Justice Department and the letter he had sent to the president had failed to win him a commutation of the remaining six years on his 33-year sentence for a nonviolent drug offense when his mother emailed from her home in Kenosha, Wis., to tell him his name had not appeared in news reports about Mr. Trump’s final round of clemency.
“I cried and cried and cried myself to sleep,” said Mr. McCarroll’s mother, Judy McCarroll. She said she was left with the impression that the clemency process favored people who “paid thousands, maybe millions, or probably did favors for Trump,” adding: “You had to be connected. You had to be in that inside clique. And if you weren’t, you don’t have anything coming.”
The contrast between the treatment of Mr. Weinstein and Mr. McCarroll underscores the two very different systems for determining who received clemency during Mr. Trump’s presidency.
In one system, people like the McCarrolls mostly hung their hopes on the regular process run by the Justice Department, which often took years to produce a response, if one came at all.
In the other system, people like Mr. Weinstein skipped the line and got their petitions directly on the president’s desk because they had money or connections, or allies who did. The team working for Mr. Weinstein’s release included Alan M. Dershowitz, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers during his first impeachment.
It is this latter system through which Mr. Trump awarded the vast majority of his pardons, which wipe out convictions, and commutations, which reduce prison sentences.
Of the nearly 240 pardons and commutations issued by Mr. Trump, only 25 came through the rigorous process for identifying and vetting worthy clemency petitions overseen by the Justice Department, according to a tally kept partly by Margaret Love, who ran the department’s clemency process from 1990 to 1997 as the United States pardon attorney. The system has a backlog of 14,000 applications, including one from Mr. McCarroll.
The other pardons and commutations came through an ad hoc White House process that favored applications benefiting or pushed by Mr. Trump’s allies, friends and family.
In addition to rewarding people like Mr. Weinstein whose allies could afford to buy access to the highest levels of the administration, the results included pardons for people with direct personal relationships with the former president, such as his longtime adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., his former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner.
The Justice Department had recommended against clemency for some of the people granted it by Mr. Trump. Other beneficiaries of Mr. Trump’s commutations, including Mr. Weinstein, had only recently filed petitions with the department that were listed as pending. And some pardon recipients — including Mr. Stone, Mr. Bannon and Mr. Manafort — would not have been eligible under the department’s rules, which require people to wait five years after being released from confinement to apply.
Presidents are not obligated to heed any rules or guidelines on granting clemency, which is among the most unchecked and unilateral of executive powers.
But legal scholars, pardon lawyers and advocates for greater use of clemency say Mr. Trump’s approach exacerbated flaws in the process, and extended the inequality that pervades the justice system to a constitutional power that is intended to be a check on that system.
“This is the ultimate corruption of a system that was set up to serve a public purpose, but has been privatized to allow anybody who has connections to get to the front of the line,” said Ms. Love, who now represents clients seeking pardons.
While criminal justice reform advocates say the Justice Department’s clemency process should be expedited and improved, some praise the approach taken by former President Barack Obama, who issued more than 1,900 clemency grants, mostly to people who had been recommended by the Justice Department.
“When we worked on clemency during the Obama administration, it was based on objective criteria, not recommendations of some political ally or some celebrity,” said Kevin Ring, who served time in federal prison for his role in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and is president of the criminal justice reform group FAMM, formerly known as Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
The group runs a closed Facebook forum for 7,000 family members of inmates, which filled with anxious but excited messages of prayer and hope for the release of loved ones in the run-up to Mr. Trump’s final round of clemency grants, issued 12 hours before he left office.
“And I was incredibly sad, because I thought you really have next to no chance, because he is not using the process that your loved one would even be in the mix for,” Mr. Ring said.
Even some beneficiaries of clemency grants by Mr. Trump concede that the process is not equitable.
There are “so many thousands of inmates that never get a chance to even have their names put in there, so that’s just so unfair,” said Barry Wachsler, who paid legal fees associated with Mr. Weinstein’s court appeals and clemency push. “Does it help if you have money and the right connections? You know, I guess it does. It definitely does.”
A Long Island businessman, Mr. Wachsler said he met Mr. Weinstein by chance five years ago when he went to visit a friend in federal prison who introduced the two men.
Mr. Weinstein, 45, had pleaded guilty in 2013 to charges related to a Ponzi-style real estate scheme that caused $200 million in losses, much of which came from investors from an Orthodox Jewish community in New Jersey with which he was associated.
Prosecutors said he gained trust from potential victims by enlisting rabbis to vouch for him and making donations to Jewish organizations with his ill-gotten gains.
In 2014, he pleaded guilty to charges related to defrauding additional investors, including by falsely claiming to have access to coveted Facebook shares in the company’s forthcoming initial public offering, using the funds to pay legal fees related to his earlier indictment.
“Weinstein shamelessly exploited investors’ trust, using doctored documents for properties he didn’t own — including in a town that doesn’t exist — and continued to commit crimes while out on bail,” Paul J. Fishman said in a statement issued while he was overseeing the case as the United States attorney in New Jersey. Mr. Fishman added that Mr. Weinstein spent proceeds of his fraud “on fancy cars, jewelry and gambling trips,” as well as Jewish artifacts.
After becoming convinced that Mr. Weinstein was poorly served by his lawyer at trial, resulting in too harsh a sentence, Mr. Wachsler, who said he visited Mr. Weinstein 150 times in prison, hired new lawyers to appeal the case. Mr. Dershowitz joined the legal fight, explaining that he was retained by a “prominent” Jewish organization that he declined to identify.
After Mr. Trump lost his re-election, the strategy shifted to winning clemency from the departing president. Mr. Dershowitz, who also was paid to assist others who got commutations, advised on how to make the case for Mr. Weinstein. A clemency petition was filed with the Justice Department by the lawyers paid by Mr. Wachsler, who said he spent “a lot of money” to help Mr. Weinstein because he wanted to remedy what he saw as a grave injustice. He also hired the lobbyist Nick Muzin, paying him at least $75,000 last month, according to lobbying filings, to work his contacts in the administration.
A former top political aide to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, both Republicans, Mr. Muzin had known Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, since Mr. Meadows’s first campaign for Congress as a Republican from North Carolina in 2012.
Mr. Muzin said he emailed Mr. Meadows on Dec. 28 in an effort to take Mr. Weinstein’s appeal directly to Mr. Trump. “I’ve never asked you for anything since you’ve been in the big job,” Mr. Muzin said he wrote to Mr. Meadows. “I’m asking you for this.”
Mr. Meadows responded, and they set up a 20-minute phone call with one of Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers the next day, after which Mr. Meadows agreed to bring the case up for priority review with the White House’s ad hoc clemency team.
Mr. Muzin, who paid another lobbyist to collect letters of support for Mr. Weinstein from members of Congress, provided Mr. Meadows with those letters, as well as others from several of Mr. Weinstein’s victims and rabbis from his hometown, Lakewood, N.J.
Mr. Dershowitz said he thought the degree to which connections greased the process for Mr. Weinstein or other recipients of clemency from Mr. Trump was “way exaggerated.”
While he represented Mr. Trump during his first impeachment trial and advised the White House on criminal justice issues, Mr. Dershowitz said his connections “had little effect” on whether any of his clients got clemency.
“I gave advice to the clients about how to frame the issues, but it was the facts and the way they were presented that got the attention of the president or didn’t,” he said, though he conceded that connections could be useful in getting in the front door.
“I prefer to live in a world where all important services were allocated in a completely fair and egalitarian manner,” he said. “We don’t live in that world.”
In Mr. Weinstein’s case, Mr. Meadows called Mr. Muzin with three days left in Mr. Trump’s term to share the news: The president would commute Mr. Weinstein’s sentence to time served.
“We were in tears,” Mr. Muzin said, saying he was pleased to have played a role in giving Mr. Weinstein a second chance.
Mr. Wachsler said he was “proud of the way that we did it,” calling it “the right way” and adding, “I can’t even describe the euphoric moment of having such a thing come down, the decision from the president.”
Prosecutors who worked on Mr. Weinstein’s case saw it differently.
“I’m disgusted,” tweeted Gurbir S. Grewal, who represented the Justice Department in the case as an assistant United States attorney.
He added in a statement that he would “be hard-pressed to come up with someone less deserving of executive clemency. The man stole and stole, and then stole some more.”
Mr. Grewal said Mr. Weinstein used stolen money to finance “contributions to individuals and groups to lobby for leniency on his behalf,” and “left a trail of victims in his wake, many of whom lost all they had and were revictimized by President Trump’s decision last week.”
From The New York Times, January 26, 2021