Brooklyn Man Gets 4 Years in Orthodox Divorce Shakedown Scheme
A Brooklyn man was sentenced to four years in federal prison for attempting to violently coerce a recalcitrant husband into giving a religious divorce.
Moshe Goldstein, 32, was sentenced Monday in federal court in Trenton, New Jersey, NJ.com reported. He pleaded guilty last year to committing extortion and to restraining, assaulting and injuring a man in 2011 on behalf of the man’s estranged wife.
Goldstein, his brother and seven other men, including two Orthodox rabbis, were arrested in October 2013 in an FBI sting operation. He is the first of the group, which is charged with running an operation that used threats of kidnapping, beatings and stun guns to pressure recalcitrant husbands, to be sentenced.
An Orthodox woman cannot obtain a divorce without receiving a “get” from her husband. The women who are trapped in such marriages are called agunot, or “chained women.”
Rabbi Mendel Epstein was convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and Rabbi Martin Wolmark pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Both will be sentenced in December, along with three other members of the group.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
