The hasidic-owned Century Coverage reportedly has fewer than 30
employees. Even so, Century’s employees and their families have given
more than $220,000 in political contributions to state and city
candidates or committees since 2000 – and much of that money may have
been looted from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty with disgraced former Met Council CEO William Rapfogel, who allegedly directed
Century’s head, Joseph “Yossi” Ross to give money in his and his
employees’ names to candidates Rapfogel selected. Rapfogel then
allegedly presented those bundled ‘contributions’ to those politicians.
Former Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty CEO William Rapfogel allegedly stole millions of dollars from the Jewish poor
The New York Times reports:
A few months ago, an anonymous letter was sent to the board of directors of one of the city’s most venerable nonprofit institutions, the Metropolitan New York Council on Jewish Poverty.
The writer, who claimed to be a former employee of the charity’s insurance broker, said money was being skimmed from payments that the charity made for health insurance. The allegation was strikingly similar to one made in a letter sent two years earlier. Nothing amiss was found then, but this time a new chief financial officer made a startling discovery.…The account of the letter is the first time it has been clear that the scandal came to light from an anonymous whistle-blower, not through any audit or government oversight. It is the latest example of the remarkable lack of oversight, both of nonprofit groups that receive grants of taxpayer money and the politicians who award those grants without competitive bidding. That process has been at the center of successful criminal prosecutions of several city politicians in recent years.
In addition to the grants, Met Council received money through many government financing streams, which further diffused oversight because it did not receive enough from any one agency to warrant a major audit.…
That startling discovery the Times refers to is that the Met Council's CEO William Rapfogel – a Modern Orthodox Jew and a "pillar" of his community – had stolen millions of dollars from the Met Council along with the Met Council's insurance broker and had funnelled a small portion of that stolen money to New York politicians in illegal campaign contributions.
Rapfogel was fired by the Met Council and is now under criminal investigation by New York State's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and, in a separate investigation, by New York State’s Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
The hasidic-owned Century Coverage reportedly has fewer than 30 employees. Even so, Century’s employees and their families have given more than $220,000 in political contributions to state and city candidates or committees since 2000 – and much of that money may have been looted from the Met Council with Rapfogel, who allegedly directed Century’s head, Joseph “Yossi” Ross to give money in his and his employees’ names to candidates Rapfogel selected. Rapfogel then allegedly presented those bundled ‘contributions’ to the politicians.
One of those Century employees was Joseph Ross’s own brother, convicted fraudster Solomon Ross, who reportedly pleaded guilty to insurance fraud in 1993. Solomon Ross was sentenced to five years of probation and no prison time.
As I first reported the day Rapfogel’s alleged thefts became public, Joseph Ross is a major player in the worldwide Breslov hasidic movement.
Ross ran the Breslov World Center out of Century’s offices.
In 2010, reportedly the last year it filed a 990 IRS tax return, the Breslov World Center spent $246,172 on its mission. But it issued only one grant for $35,000 while running up unspecified “office expenses” of $224,311 – "which would appear to be a high figure for an organization that listed no paid employees and shared its office,” the Times noted.