Hedge Fund Founder Pleads Guilty In New York Corruption Case
Image by YouTube
By Josh Nathan-Kazis May 25, 2018
Hedge fund founder Murray Huberfeld pled guilty to conspiracy charges on Friday in a bribery case that was part of a web of interconnected corruption scandals that swept New York City politics and parts of the Orthodox Jewish community two years ago.
Through his guilty plea, Huberfeld admitted to having disguised a $60,000 payment to a business partner, Jona Rechnitz, as a reimbursement for Knicks tickets. In fact, the money was really meant to reimburse Rechnitz for having paying off Norman Seabrook, the president of New York City’s corrections officers union, who had invested millions of his union’s pension fund in Huberfeld’s hedge fund.
Last year, an attempt to prosecute Huberfeld ended in a hung jury. Under the terms of the new plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend a sentence of just six to twelve months, according to the New York Post.
Rechnitz is a key player in a number of related scandals, and pled guilty last year to giving political donations in return for favors.
“Murray Huberfeld caused his former hedge fund to pay tens of thousands of dollars to a criminal partner in order to enable another crime – paying off the head of the correction officer’s union for the investment of millions of its members’ funds,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
