SAN DIEGO, US: A rabbi who was badly wounded in a deadly antisemitic attack at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Southern California was sentenced Tuesday to 14 months in federal prison for running a multimillion-dollar donation fraud, authorities said.
Yisroel Goldstein, 60, also was ordered to pay about $2.8 million in restitution. He pleaded guilty in 2020 to wire and tax fraud.
“I beg for mercy to accept my repentance and allow me to right the wrongs,” Goldstein told the judge at his sentencing, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. He asked for “the chance to do whatever I can to help others to the best of my ability.”
Prosecutors and the defense had both recommended that Goldstein receive home confinement rather than prison, citing his cooperation in the FBI’s fraud investigation and the trauma he received in the 2019 attack. Prosecutors also said Goldstein had played an exemplary role after the April 2019 shooting by speaking out for peace and religious tolerance.
However, federal Judge Cynthia Bashant said Goldstein should go to prison because he defrauded people who thought they were helping the synagogue “when in fact it was really just to benefit you,” the Union-Tribune reported.
“It was for your personal benefit and your own greed, and I can’t ignore that fact,” the judge said.
Goldstein was the longtime leader of the Chabad synagogue near San Diego, which he founded in San Diego in 1986. He lost his right index finger in the attack on the last day of Passover, which killed one congregant, Lori Gilbert-Kaye, and injured the rabbi and two others.
The rabbi received an outpouring of support, addressed the United Nations and met with President Donald Trump at the White House.
John T. Earnest, a 22-year-old white supremacist, was sentenced last week to life in federal prison, adding to the life term he received three months earlier in state court.
Before the attack, Goldstein had been under investigation by federal authorities and he stepped down as rabbi in November 2019, citing exhaustion.
He was accused of collecting $6.2 million in fake donations to the synagogue and affiliates. Prosecutors said he returned 90 percent to contributors with phony receipts, allowing them to deduct the full amount from their taxes while Goldstein kept the remaining 10 percent, or $620,000, for himself. One donor got back his contribution in the form of $1 million in gold.
The scheme and others spanned years and even decades, prosecutors said, and resulted in losses in federal taxes, to the synagogue that never received the donations and to companies that matched donations and never got back their contributions.
The rabbi also admitted taking about $185,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services by submitting fake invoices for damage related to 2007 wildfires.
At least 20 people were involved in the schemes and a half-dozen, including Goldstein, pleaded guilty to federal charges, prosecutors said.
They included Alexander Avergoon, whose real estate dealings sparked the investigation in November 2016. Avergoon was arrested in Latvia. On Monday, he was sentenced by the same judge to more than five years in prison for the Poway frauds and an unrelated, $12 million real estate scam.
California rabbi wounded in synagogue shooting sentenced for fraud
https://arab.news/47r4p
California rabbi wounded in synagogue shooting sentenced for fraud
- Yisroel Goldstein, who has pleaded guilty in 2020 to wire and tax fraud, ordered to pay $2.8 million
- Prosecutors recommend home confinement but judge says the rabbi deserves a prison term
Venezuela’s acting president calls for oil industry reforms to attract more foreign investment
- In her speech, Rodríguez said money earned from foreign oil sales would go into two funds: one dedicated to social services for workers and the public health care system, and another to economic development and infrastructure projects
CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez used her first state of the union address on Thursday to promote oil industry reforms that would attract foreign investment, an objective aggressively pushed by the Trump administration since it toppled the country’s longtime leader less than two weeks ago.
Rodríguez, who has been under pressure from the US to fall in line with its vision for the oil-rich nation, said sales of Venezuelan oil would go to bolster crisis-stricken health services, economic development and other infrastructure projects.
While she sharply criticized the Trump administration and said there was a “stain on our relations,” the former vice president also outlined a distinct vision for the future between the two historic adversaries, straying from her predecessors, who have long railed against American intervention in Venezuela.
“Let us not be afraid of diplomacy” with the US, said Rodriguez, who must now navigate competing pressures from the Trump administration and a government loyal to former President Nicolás Maduro.
The speech, which was broadcast on a delay in Venezuela, came one day after Rodríguez said her government would continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro in what she described as “a new political moment” since his ouster.
Trump on Thursday met at the White House with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose political party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections rejected by Maduro. But in endorsing Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, Trump has sidelined Machado.
In her speech, Rodríguez said money earned from foreign oil sales would go into two funds: one dedicated to social services for workers and the public health care system, and another to economic development and infrastructure projects.
Hospitals and other health care facilities across the country have long suffered. Patients are asked to provide practically all supplies needed for their care, from syringes to surgical screws. Economic turmoil, among other factors, has pushed millions of Venezuelans to migrate from the South American nation in recent years.
In moving forward, the acting president must walk a tightrope, balancing pressures from both Washington and top Venezuelan officials who hold sway over Venezuela’s security forces and strongly oppose the US Her recent public speeches reflect those tensions — vacillating from conciliatory calls for cooperation with the US, to defiant rants echoing the anti-imperialist rhetoric of her toppled predecessor.
American authorities have long railed against a government they describe as a “dictatorship,” while Venezuela’s government has built a powerful populist ethos sharply opposed to US meddling in its affairs.
For the foreseeable future, Rodríguez’s government has been effectively relieved of having to hold elections. That’s because when Venezuela’s high court granted Rodríguez presidential powers on an acting basis, it cited a provision of the constitution that allows the vice president to take over for a renewable period of 90 days.
Trump enlisted Rodríguez to help secure US control over Venezuela’s oil sales despite sanctioning her for human rights violations during his first term. To ensure she does his bidding, Trump threatened Rodríguez earlier this month with a “situation probably worse than Maduro.”
Maduro, who is being held in a Brooklyn jail, has pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges.
Before Rodríguez’s speech on Thursday, a group of government supporters was allowed into the presidential palace, where they chanted for Maduro, who the government insists remains the country’s president. “Maduro, resist, the people are rising,” they shouted.
