From his office above Manhattan’s Financial District, William Rapfogel controlled a charitable empire much larger than most understood. His organization, Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, gave food to poor Jews. But it also cooked up massive real estate deals with powerful for-profit developers, throwing up new low-income housing across the city. All told, Met Council…
The stunning array of charges against William Rapfogel, the disgraced former head of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, should prompt Jewish organizations to engage in soul-searching and make governance changes to avoid similar misfortunes, say experts in non-profit management and ethics. But that, they say, isn’t happening. Charming and savvy, Rapfogel was arrested September…
The sight of William E. Rapfogel being hustled into a car by two New York City law enforcement officers September 24 after he was arraigned on charges of stealing millions from the poverty charity he ran for more than two decades was embarrassing enough. The fact that Rapfogel was wearing a yarmulke made it only…
The CEO of Jewish ambulance service Chevra Hatzalah resigned on September 28, days after the Forward reported that the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty had dumped him as a consultant. Rabbi Dovid Cohen’s ongoing consulting position with the Met Council ended on the same day the not-for-profit group fired executive director William Rapfogel, who has…
The Metropolitcan Council on Jewish Poverty ended a long-term relationship with its former executive director on the same day that it fired his successor, William Rapfogel, who has since been charged in a $5 million kickback scheme, the Forward has learned. Rabbi Dovid Cohen who ran the group in the 1980s, was dumped as a…
William Rapfogel’s scheme to steal money from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty spanned almost the entirety of his tenure as the group’s CEO, according to a felony complaint unsealed in state court today. Rapfogel, who surrendered himself to a local police precinct Tuesday morning, is accused in the newly filed felony complaint of stealing…
Needy New Yorkers may lose out on programs for seniors, emergency food aid and domestic violence prevention as a result of the financial scandal engulfing the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, documents obtained by the Forward reveal. City officials have suspended at least 30 grants to the Met Council, totaling nearly $1.6 million, or roughly…
Less than a week after firing its longtime head William Rapfogel amid a criminal probe, The Metropolitan Council announced today that David M. Frankel will take over the post as Executive Director and CEO. Frankel will leave his post as Commissioner of the Department of Finance for the city of New York, a title he…
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