Worth posting just for this awesome quote:






2 N.J. Mayors Arrested in Broad Inquiry on Corruption

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
The mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, two state assemblymen, five rabbis and dozens of others were rounded up early Thursday as the F.B.I. swept across New Jersey and Brooklyn as part of a two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation, the authorities said.

The case ranged from the Jersey Shore to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and has even reached into the State House in Trenton. It apparently began with bank fraud charges against a member of the insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered on the seaside town of Deal, N.J. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, the case mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival the most explosive and sleazy in New Jersey’s recent past.

“For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Acting United State Attorney Ralph J. Marra Jr. said at a 12:30 p.m. news conference. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.” He said that average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of influence-peddling the investigation had unearthed.

Weysan Dun, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Newark office, said the rabbis arrested — including the grand rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in the United States, Saul Kassin — were part a vast money-laundering conspiracy with tentacles in Israel and Switzerland. Another person, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, of Brooklyn, was accused of being a kidney salesman who enticed vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 and then sold the body parts for $160,000.

Mr. Dun stressed that the case was neither motivated by religion nor by politics — an important point given that the New Jersey governor’s race pits the former United States Attorney, Christopher J. Christie, under whom the investigation began, against a Democratic incumbent, Gov. Jon S. Corzine, whose administration was not spared in Thursday’s arrests.

Agents also raided the homes of Joseph V. Doria Jr., commissioner of the state’s Department of Community Affairs, who also is the former mayor of Bayonne, and the president of St. Peter’s College, the F.B.I. said.

Among the roughly 30 people arrested by midmorning were Mayor Peter J. Cammarano III of Hoboken and Mayor Dennis Elwell of Secaucus, both Democrats, and Assemblyman Daniel M. Van Pelt, a Republican from Forked River, in Ocean County. Mr. Cammarano, who turned 32 on Wednesday, was elected mayor June 9 and sworn in July 1, after serving as councilman at large since 2005.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine called a 1:30 news conference in Newark with Attorney General Anne Milgram. “Any corruption is unacceptable — anywhere, anytime, by anybody,” he said in a statement. “The scale of corruption we’re seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated.”

Also taken to the Newark office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were the president of the City Council in Jersey City, Mariano Vega, and the city’s deputy mayor, Leona Beldini. A criminal complaint said Mr. Vega took $10,000 just before the municipal elections in May.

The mayor of Ridgefield, in Bergen County, Anthony R. Suarez, was charged with accepting $10,000 in bribes.

Mr. Van Pelt, who as an Assemblyman oversees the Department of Environmental Protection, was accused of accepting money to help the informant obtain environmental permits. In a meeting in Atlantic City in February, prosecutors charge, Mr. Van Pelt assured the informant that the D.E.P. “worked for” him, then took $10,000 cash and told the informant to call him “anytime.”

The rabbis arrested were from enclaves of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn and in Deal and Elberon, communities along the Jersey Shore in Monmouth County.

The timing of the investigation dovetails with the timing of bank fraud charges against Solomon Dwek, son of the founders of the Deal Yeshiva, a religious school that teaches children in the Sephardic Jewish tradition. Mr. Dwek passed a $25 million bad check at a PNC Bank branch in 2006, according to The Asbury Park Press.

In the investigation that yielded yesterday’s arrests, a cooperating witness posed as a real estate developer looking to build in one city after another, repeatedly engaging politicians in illegal conduct through a variety of middlemen, prosecutors said.

In Hoboken, for example, prosecutors charge in their complaint, Mr. Cammarano eagerly agreed in a meeting at a diner earlier this year to help the fake developer with his projects in exchange for cash. When the man asked for assurances that his requests would be expedited by the Hoboken City Council, Mr. Cammarano replied, “I promise you,” adding, “You’re gonna be, you’re gonna be treated like a friend.”

The fake developer responded that he would give a middleman $5,000 in cash for the mayor and another $5,000 after Mr. Cammarano’s mayoral election.

“O.K.,” Mr. Cammarano replied, according to the complaint. “Beautiful.”

And Mr. Cammarano expressed confidence that he would be elected, no matter what, according to the complaint. “Right now, the Italians, the Hispanics, the seniors are locked down,” he is quoted as saying. “Nothing can change that now. ... I could be, uh, indicted, and I’m still gonna win 85 to 95 percent of those populations.”

pretty big balls on that guy

wasn't this a sopranos episode?