Insurance Men Get Probation in $9M Met Council Scam

Image by met council
Two employees of the insurance company that bilked a New York Jewish anti-poverty charity in a $9 million fraud scheme were sentenced to probation on Friday, the office of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said.
Solomon Ross and William Lieber, former employees of Long Island insurance broker Century Coverage Corporation, each admitted to having stolen $1.5 million from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty during the 20-year scam. They were sentenced to five years probation, will lose their insurance broker licenses, and are required to repay a total of $1.5 million each to the Met Council. Each has already repaid $1 million.
Ross and Leiber are the fifth and sixth people to plead guilty in the scheme, which was first exposed in August 2013 with the arrest of Met Council CEO William Rapfogel. Rapfogel is currently serving a 3 1/3 to 10 year prison sentence. Former Met Council CFO Herb Friedman was sentenced to four months in prison; Rapfogel’s predecessor, David Cohen, has yet to be sentenced. Joseph Ross, Solomon’s brother and a former Century Coverage executive, pled guilty in December and is also awaiting sentencing.
The fallout of the scandal, meanwhile, has wreaked havoc on the Met Council. The charity acknowledged in January that it was seeking to merge or partner with other agencies in order to preserve its services.
According to the Attorney General’s office, Cohen and Joseph Ross started ripping off Met Council in 1992. Century Coverage overcharged Met Council for its insurance plan; in return, the firm paid kickbacks to Cohen and Friedman, and later Rapfogel.
The fraud was the first in a string of Jewish charity frauds that has raised questions about governance and oversight at New York Jewish charities.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Politics Meet America’s potential first Jewish second family: Josh Shapiro, Lori, and their 4 kids
- 4
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.