Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Willie Rapfogel Gets Up to 10 Years for Scam

William Rapfogel, the former chief of New York’s Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, was sentenced to 3 1/3 to 10 years in prison for his role in a kickback scheme.

Rapfogel, the longtime executive director and CEO of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, also was ordered to pay $3 million in restitution, according to a news release issued Wednesday by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Rapfogel, 59, pleaded guilty in April to stealing $9 million from the taxpayer-funded Met Council in a grand larceny and kickback scheme spanning two decades. His co-defendants — David Cohen, Herb Friedman and Joseph Ross — also have pleaded guilty.

Rapfogel personally stole $3 million, using the money to “fund a lavish lifestyle,” according to Schneiderman.

“This sentence sends the message that there has to be one set of rules for everyone, no matter how rich or powerful, and that those who rip off the neediest New Yorkers will be prosecuted,” Schneiderman said in the news release.

Also in the statement, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli called the fraud “shocking and very damaging to an organization that has literally helped countless people.”

“Those involved in this scam have been held accountable for their wrongdoing and this should serve as an example of what happens when individuals lose their way and become more focused on filling their own pockets than doing good works,” DiNapoli said.

The Met Council, which provides services to the poor and elderly in the New York City area, receives funding from state and city government, as well as from private sources.

The conspiracy began in 1992 when Cohen and Joseph Ross of the Century Coverage Corp. had Century Coverage submit inflated invoices for insurance coverage to the Met Council. The nonprofit knowingly paid the inflated premiums, and Ross gave cash kickbacks to Cohen and Friedman, the Met Council’s chief financial officer.

Rapfogel, who took over as executive director in 1993, joined the scheme soon after and began receiving his own kickbacks. Rapfogel was receiving the largest share of the kickbacks — approximately $30,000 per month at one point — according to Schneiderman.

Last August, investigators from the state Attorney General’s Office found more than $400,000 in cash hidden in Rapfogel’s various homes. Rapfogel, widely considered a power broker in New York political circles, was earning a salary of more than $400,000 at the time and receiving subsidies for day school tuition for his sons.

As part of the scheme, Rapfogel and Cohen also directed Ross to make political donations to political candidates seen as potentially helpful to the Met Council using money obtained from the inflated insurance payments.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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 credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link 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.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.