One of the leading fundraisers for the New York City mayoral campaign of
William Thompson, Jr. (right) is a Satmar hasid who is a convicted felon and who once cheated a tiny,
economically depressed Wisconsin village out of $250,000 and then later
escaped from a federal prison.
Bill Thompson
The New York Times reports:
One of the most prolific fund-raisers for the mayoral campaign of William C. Thompson Jr. is an admitted swindler who once cheated a tiny, economically depressed Wisconsin village out of $250,000 and later escaped from a federal prison.…
The fund-raiser, Jacob Brach, 55, gathered more than $30,000 in donations for the Thompson campaign this year, mainly from Satmar Hasidim and their business associates.…
All but one of the 180 contributions Mr. Brach collected were for $175 — the maximum that the city will match under its voluntary campaign financing program.…
Mr. Brach, also known as Yossi Brach, came to the attention of law enforcement officials as early as 1988, when he was accused by Union Carbide of Canada and another Canadian company of bilking them out of more than $300,000 by offering them patent rights to a disposable toilet seat cover.
Two years later, Mr. Brach, who then lived in Kiryas Joel in Orange County, posed as the millionaire owner of a knitting mill and got officials in Randolph, Wis. (which had a population of 1,600), to lend him $250,000 to relocate there. Tommy Thompson, the governor at the time, appeared with Mr. Brach at a news conference saying the move would create hundreds of jobs.
Mr. Brach pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 1990 in the Canada and Wisconsin cases. He agreed to reimburse the fraud victims, but a federal judge, Vincent L. Broderick, rejected his request for leniency and sentenced him to 27 months in prison.
“The picture I have is a man who develops schemes to enrich himself at the expense of others, schemes which are elaborate and which are drenched in fraud,” the judge said.…
A year later, Mr. Brach obtained a one-day medical pass from his minimum-security prison and did not return. Arrested in March 1992, he received an additional 10-month sentence.
In 2002, he was charged in Florida with securities and telecommunications fraud, accused of selling $25,000 in fake stock in an Internet company to a retired police chief who was dying of cancer. Prosecutors dropped the case after Mr. Brach refunded the money.…
When the Satmar schism boiled over into the secular courts, Mr. Brach [a leader of the Aroynem Faction that follows the Kiryas Joel Satmar Rebbe Rabbi Aharon Teotelbaum] was named a plaintiff in a lawsuit by the Aroynem. His criminal record was discussed during cross-examination…
The judge urged prosecutors to investigate Mr. Brach for inundating the court with what he called “false, incredible stories” accusing court officials of bribery and other improprieties…
Defying a court order, Mr. Brach repeatedly disrupted worshipers in the main Satmar synagogue and at other events, shouting invectives against the Zaloynim [Faction that follows the Williamsburg Satmar Rebbe Zalman Teitelbaum] and triggering repeated contempt-of-court citations, according to court papers. He was sentenced to 30 days.
Then in 2004, prosecutors said, Mr. Brach provoked a melee in the synagogue after he sat in a special chair reserved for the grand rabbi. Mr. Brach’s leg was broken, according to news accounts.
Mr. Brach has also been associated with Der Blatt, a [Brooklyn-based] Yiddish-language newspaper aligned with the Aroynem.…
Read it all here.
[Hat Tip: Moshe in Israel.]