Rabbis Charged With Laundering Funds For Drug Dealers Use Of Hiva’s Bank Account Alleged
Two Orthodox rabbis from Brooklyn, N.Y., each were released on $750,000 bond Tuesday after spending a night in federal custody following their arrest on charges they laundered money for Colombian drug dealers.
The two rabbis, Mahir Reiss, 47, and Bernard Grunfeld, 64, and 10 other suspects were formally indicted Tuesday on federal charges that they used the bank accounts of religious organizations, including a Brooklyn yeshiva, to handle the drug proceeds, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn said Tuesday.
The defendants were first charged Monday in a federal criminal complaint.
The latest eight-count indictment, including charges of conspiracy and money-laundering, was announced late Tuesday at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Roanne Mann. Reiss was released after he put up his Brooklyn home, which his lawyer estimated to be worth $3 million, as a security for the bond. Grunfeld’s son-in-law and two sons agreed to put up their homes to secure his bond.
Mann also ordered them to surrender their passports and restricted their travel to New York and New Jersey. Another defendant, Abraham Reiss, 48, of Manhattan, N.Y., a brother of Mahir Reiss, was released Monday on a $750,000 bond while two other defendants remain fugitives. The rest are in custody and await arraignment.
The two rabbis and Abraham Reiss laundered $750,000 for the drug dealers by taking their cash and depositing it into the bank accounts of a Brooklyn synagogue’s organization in 1995 and 1996. They would charge the dealers a handling fee, the indictment says.
Grunfeld, 64, was charged in an additional scheme to “structure” or conceal more than $1 million in cash deposits and withdrawals through the bank accounts of several orthodox Jewish organizations in Brooklyn’s Borough Park section, including a yeshiva. He reportedly made at least 95 transactions of amounts small enough to evade federal regulations requiring banks to report transactions of $10,000 or more.