Soccer Dad

Sy and dry

I hadn't really intended to write about this case, but after reading David Halbfingers' report in the NYT, I recalled a recent article about the Syria Jewish community. (via memeorandum) Halbfinger writes:

The authorities laid out two separate schemes, one involving money laundering that led to rabbis and members of the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn and in the Jersey Shore town of Deal, where many of them have summer homes. The other dealt with political corruption and bribery and involved public officials mostly in Jersey City and Hoboken, where the pace of development has been particularly intense in recent years.

Linking the two schemes was the federal informant who was not named in court papers but whom people involved with the investigation identified as Solomon Dwek, a failed real estate developer and philanthropist who was arrested in May 2006 on charges of passing a bad $25 million check at a bank in Monmouth County, N.J.

In a seemingly thorough but unflattering portrait of the Syiran Jewish - or SY - community in Brooklyn and New Jersey, Zev Chafets reported back in October 2007:

SY moguls tend to prefer the family-business model. Of course, they tend to be related to everyone else in the community. Including, it turns out, Solomon Dwek. Dwek, universally known as "the rabbi's son," is indeed the scion of a prestigious clan. His father is a highly regarded spiritual leader in the SY summer enclave in Deal, N.J. Solomon, still in his early 30s, made a name for himself as a high-stakes real estate developer in Monmouth County, N.J. Then, one memorable day in April 2006, according to an F.B.I. statement filed in federal court, he rolled up to the window of a PNC Bank branch in Eatontown, N.J., deposited a personal check for $25.2 million and later wired out by telephone $22.8 million against it. After the check bounced, Dwek was arrested by the F.B.I. for bank fraud.

In the wake of the bust, Dwek's investors naturally began wondering what happened to their money. Solomon Dwek's uncle Joseph Dwek claimed to be owed upward of $60 million. A close associate, Isaac Franco, demanded $30 million. Criminal and civil trials are pending in New Jersey. In all, the names of the allegedly defrauded investors reads like the guest list of an enclave bar mitzvah. It remains to be seen whether, under the circumstances, the SY community can once more display the unity, forgiveness and sangfroid it mustered for Crazy Eddie and Rabbi Hecht.

Chafets was perhaps on to something, though he didn't realize it at the time.