FBI makes arrests in sweeping mortgage, welfare fraud case in Monsey Williamsburg, Monroe, Boro-Park

One family and their associates dominated the over a dozen people arrested Thursday in a more than $20 million, long-term mortgage and welfare fraud case in the ultra-Orthodox community, according to a federal indictment.

The agents made the arrests in pre-dawn raids in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Monroe in Orange County. At least one Monsey resident was arrested.

FBI agents could be seen gathered before 6 a.m. on College Road in Ramapo near the Chase Bank. Ramapo police said they had no details, and that no one had been brought into the police station.

Those arrested were charged with fraudulently obtaining $20 million in mortgage and other types of loans from banks and financial institutions, according to a 21-count federal indictment unsealed Thursday morning.

Those charged are accused of providing false information to the lenders about their assets and liabilities involving 20 loans. The false information included documentation about employment, income, bank accounts and primary residence.

The majority of the loans went into default and millions of dollars in proceeds were not repaid.

The indictment names Yehuda Rubin as the scheme's organizer, accusing him of participating in 10 fraudulent loans. He allegedly acted as a borrower, the borrower's power of attorney, mortgage broker, distributor of the money and arranger of short sales, the indictment states.

The borrowers who fraudulently obtained loans were identified in the indictment included various family members and associates: Irving Rubin, Desiree Rubin, Abraham Rubin, Jacob Rubin, Samuel Rubin, Joel Rubin, Rachel Rubin, Joel Koppel, Rifka Rubin, and Benzion Kraus.

Attorney Martin Kofman is accused of acting as the real estate lawyer on numerous transactions with fraudulent loans and closing on sales.

Pinchus Glauber of Monsey is accused of making false appraisals.

Glauber's lawyers, Kenneth Gribetz and Deborah Wolikow-Loewenberg, said their client would plead not guilty.

"We're going to review the indictment and from talking with our client, we believe he's innocent of these charges," said Gribetz, a former Rockland County district attorney.

Six of the those arrested also were accused of bilking food stamps and Medicaid.

Yehuda and Rachel Rubin, for example, fraudulently receiving Medicaid and food stamps by claiming an income of $180 monthly and later $360 bi-weekly, it says.

Further details of the investigation are expected to be revealed at a news conference with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara at noon at U.S. District Courthouse in White Plains. George Venizelos, the FBI assistant director-in-charge, and Orange County Sheriff Carl DuBois also are expected to attend.

Epstein tortured me, says Abraham Rubin

Abraham Rubin, left, says Rabbi Mendel Epstein, right, and another rabbi beat him and stun-gunned his genitals.

The rabbis accused of pocketing piles of cash to kidnap and torture Orthodox husbands on behalf of divorce-seeking wives targeted a Brooklyn man in 1996, he claimed in a lawsuit.

Abraham Rubin said that Rabbi Mendel Epstein and Rabbi Martin Wolmark had him forced him into a van outside his synagogue before beating him and stun-gunning his genitals.

He was left bloody and half-naked on the side of the road — all to force him to agree to a religious divorce, or “get,” from his wife, he claimed in the suit.

Rubin’s 1997 lawsuit was dropped by both parties in 2000, and a Brooklyn DA probe was halted because “the victim could not identify any of his assailants,” said a spokeswoman for DA Charles Hynes.

“We were so upset that we couldn’t prosecute,” said one law enforcement source. “They did it in a place that was very dark and they were all wearing masks,” the source said.

“We wanted Epstein, but we just couldn’t prove it,” the source said. “It was all in a world we couldn’t get deep inside.”

Rubin’s allegations put Epstein and Wolmark on investigators’ radar, and on Friday he applauded the arrests.

“We are very, very grateful to the Creator that finally this happened,” Rubin said in a statement given to The Post.

“These imposters, these so-called rabbis, are a disgrace to our community,” Rubin said. “The masks have finally been taken off their faces.”

The two rabbis remain locked up in New Jersey after a federal sting caught them agreeing to take $50,000 from an agent posing as a “get”-seeking Orthodox wife.

In exchange, the rabbis promised to lure the agent’s “husband” into a warehouse and torture him into agreeing to the split, the feds said.

“We take an electric cattle prod… You put it in certain parts of his body,” Epstein was secretly recorded promising, the feds’ complaint alleged.

Borough Park-based social worker Elya Amsel, 60 — who still remembers visiting the battered Rubin at Maimonedes Hospital — said the arrests, “will raise the eyebrows of the whole gentile world.

“The Italians are nothing compared to what went on here with the Jews.”

Weberman's Victim thrown out of shul on Rosh Hashana

Victim with her husband, Boorey Deutsch

The brave Orthodox Jewish teen whose testimony helped convict the prominent Brooklyn counselor who had sexually abused her was driven out of her own synagogue on Rosh Hashana last week.

The married, 18-year-old victim was in the Williamsburg synagogue where her family has prayed for the past decade when a man yelled, “Moser, out of the shul!” the woman’s husband told The Post on Sunday.

The word “moser” refers to a Jew who informs on another Jew to secular authorities.

“They stopped the praying until she left,” said her husband, Boorey Deutsch, 26. “Some woman tried telling my wife to stay there and not leave. She shouldn’t care what they say. But my wife ended up leaving.”

“She felt horrible and mistreated. They treat survivors as if they are the abusers,” Deutsch fumed to The Post.

Deutsch and his wife have suffered harassment ever since she first accused Nechemya Weberman, 54, of sexually abusing her after she was sent to him for counseling as a 12-year-old.

“Several weeks ago, someone threw eggs at Boorey’s store,” a law-enforcement source said.

The gutsy victim testified at Weberman’s trial that she was afraid to report the abuse because he was “supposedly a god in Williamsburg” and nobody would believe her.

“Satmar would have kicked me out, and if Satmar kicks you out, nobody accepts you,” she said during the trial last year.
The pressure for her to drop the case against Weberman was at times overwhelming.

At one point, three Orthodox Jewish brothers, Jacob, Joseph and Hertzka Berger, tried to intimidate Deutsch and his then-girlfriend into dropping the case by ripping down the “kosher” certificate at his Williamsburg restaurant.

The men pleaded guilty in June in a deal that gave them no jail time.

Last month, Abraham Rubin, 49, also pleaded guilty to offering Deutsch and the victim $500,000 to leave the country so that the case against Weberman could be dropped.

Weberman — who is married with 10 children — is currently serving his 50-year sentence at the maximum-security Shawangunk Correctional Facility in upstate Wallkill.