Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Willie Rapfogel Moved to Halfway House in Manhattan

William Rapfogel, who was sentenced last year to 3 1/3 years to 10 years in prison for stealing $9 million from the Jewish nonprofit he headed, has been transferred to a minimum-security work release prison in Manhattan.

Rapfogel, the longtime CEO of New York’s Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, was transferred Tuesday from a medium-security prison in upstate New York, where he served 14 months of his sentence, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.

For 10 days Rapfogel, 60, will be restricted to the minimum-security Lincoln Correctional Facility, which is across the street from Central Park. After that he will be allowed to leave during the day to go to work, a prison spokesman told the Daily News. Rapfogel reportedly has a job offer at a real estate company.

Depending on his behavior, Rapfogel may have the opportunity later to spend some evenings at his home on the Lower East Side. He will be eligible for parole in November 2017.

Rapfogel, who headed the Met Council for more than 20 years, was involved in a kickback scheme in which the organization paid inflated insurance premiums — one portion went to Rapfogel and his co-conspirators, and another was donated to political candidates.

Rapfogel’s wife is the chief of staff for former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who is on trial in federal court for accepting bribes. Silver is still an Assembly member.

Rapfogel personally stole $3 million, using the money to “fund a lavish lifestyle,” New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a news release issued after Rapfogel’s sentencing.

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.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

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.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

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.