Israeli Gets Prison for Organ Trafficking
An Israeli citizen living in New York was sentenced to prison for organ trafficking.
Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, 61, of Brooklyn, was sentenced Wednesday to 2 1/2 years in prison. He had pleaded guilty last Oct. 27 to three counts of organ trafficking and one count of conspiracy in a New Jersey federal court.
Rosenbaum had faced up to 20 years in prison; he could be deported to Israel after finishing his prison term.
He was the first person to be convicted of illegal organ trafficking in the United States since a 1984 law banned the sale of human organs, according to reports.
Rosenbaum reportedly was paid $410,000 to arrange the sales of kidneys from healthy donors in Israel to three people in New Jersey. He was caught in a sting operation in July 2009 set up with government informant Solomon Dwek, a real estate speculator arrested for a $50 million bank fraud. Some 40 other people, mostly rabbis and politicians from New Jersey, were arrested in a sting assisted by Dwek.
Surgeries for the donors and recipients took place in American hospitals, which were not identified by prosecutors in the case. The kidney donors and recipients also were not identified or charged.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
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 the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
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.
