News

Report: Rubashkin Will Receive 27-Year Sentence

By Gal Beckerman June 21, 2010

Sholom Rubashkin won’t officially receive his sentence until tomorrow, but according to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, he will be receiving 27 years in a federal penitentiary without parole. That is two years more than federal prosecutors requested.

The sentence was revealed in an order filed today by U.S. District Court Judge Linda Reade. She wrote that Rubashkin, 51, would receive 324 months in prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release. He will also be ordered to pay back $30.6 million in restitution to the banks and institutions he defrauded.

Although charges for some of his other alleged crimes – such as violations of immigration and child labor laws – have been dropped, he was found guilty of misrepresenting the financial situation of his company, Agriprocessors, so that he could continue to receive bank loans.

The Haredi community strongly supports Rubashkin, believing that the court has handled his case unfairly. Rallies are scheduled all over the country for this evening to protest the sentencing.

Gal Beckerman was a staff writer and then the Forward’s opinion editor until 2014. He was previously an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review where he wrote essays and media criticism. His book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Bookforum. His first book, “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” won the 2010 National Jewish Book Award and the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, as well as being named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post. Follow Gal on Twitter at @galbeckerman

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