| http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-09-07/News_and_Views/Crime_File/a-124584.asp
Yeshiva and the Mob Feds: Gotti washed cash through B'klyn school By GREG B. SMITH Daily News Staff Writer A mob-controlled strip club used a yeshiva run by the city's biggest Hasidic sect to launder cash for crime boss John A. (Junior) Gotti, federal prosecutors have charged. The scheme orchestrated by the owners of Scores, the upscale strip club, apparently was carried out without the knowledge of the Satmars, the sect that operates Yeshiva Yetev Lev D'Jerusalem of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At least one yeshiva board member, Isack Rosenberg, served as a conduit for the cash, but says he had no idea it was going to Gotti. Details of the money laundering emerged last month in the final days of the Gold Club trial in Atlanta, where prosecutors alleged Gotti received $100,000 to settle a dispute between gangsters fighting for control of Scores. The East Side club was secretly controlled by the Gambinos in the mid-1990s. According to testimony in the Gold Club case, in June 1995 Rosenberg was asked by a lawyer connected to Scores to obtain a large sum of cash. With Rosenberg's okay, the lawyer then wrote two checks to the yeshiva from an entity called the First Avenue Nite Club Corp., which owned the now-defunct Chippendales male strip club on the East Side. The two checks totaling $100,000 were deposited in the yeshiva account, and Rosenberg says he told yeshiva board members the money was a "loan." Rosenberg says he then wrote checks totaling $100,000 to his lumber company, which then provided $95,000 in cash for the transaction. He kept a $5,000 fee for himself. Rosenberg says he delivered the cash to Scores co-owner Lyle Pfeffer at Scores' corporate office in midtown. Pfeffer — who pleaded guilty to fraud charges and cooperated with the government — said he gave the cash to Craig DePalma, a mob soldier. DePalma told the Gold Club grand jury he later handed it to Gotti at a Long Island wedding. Gotti pleaded guilty to numerous racketeering charges in 1999 and is serving a six-year sentence. His lawyer, Gerald Shargel, noted that Gotti did not admit to participation in the Scores shakedown. Rosenberg's lawyer, Samuel Burstyn, said his client deeply regrets involving the yeshiva in the transaction. "Unequivocally, I can tell you that Mr. Rosenberg never had any inkling that this transaction would lead into the Gotti crime syndicate," Burstyn said. "He was trying to help out a friend, and he was deceived about the true purpose of the loan." Officials at Yeshiva Yetev Lev D'Jerusalem did not return several calls for comment. Burstyn said Rosenberg is no longer affiliated with the yeshiva. |
