Showing posts with label Voting fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Voting fraud. Show all posts

Friday, May 26, 2017

One Pleads Guilty To Voter Fraud In Attempt To Get Approval For Townhouses For Hasidic Jews

As previously reported, the village of Bloomingburg, New York has been embroiled in a battle over whether an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community would expand into the town.  Real estate developer Kenneth Nakdimen and his associates sought to build a  396-unit townhouse development there to be marketed to Hasidic Jews.  They faced local opposition which the developers said was fueled by anti-Semitism.  As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the developers were ultimately indicted by the federal government for their voting fraud tactics in seeking to obtain approval for their project.  Yesterday the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York announced that Nakdimen has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process. The announcement describes the basis for the charges:
[B]y late 2013, the first of their real estate developments had met local opposition, and still remained under construction and uninhabitable.  When met with resistance, rather than seek to advance their real estate development project through legitimate means, NAKDIMEN and others instead decided to corrupt the democratic electoral process in Bloomingburg by falsely registering voters and paying bribes for voters who would help elect public officials favorable to their project.
....   NAKDIMEN and others took steps to cover up their scheme to register voters who did not actually live in Bloomingburg by, among other things, creating and back-dating false leases and placing items like toothbrushes and toothpaste in unoccupied apartments to make it seem as if the falsely registered voters lived there.
UPDATE: On June 6, the U.S. Attorney's office announced that a second defendant, Shalom Lamm, has now also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process.

[Thanks to Steven H. Sholk for the lead.]

Friday, December 16, 2016

Voting Fraud Indictments Are Latest In Battle Over Hasidic Development In NY Town

As reported yesterday by The Forward, since 2012 the village of Bloomingburg, New York has been embroiled in a battle over whether an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community would expand into the town:
To the Orthodox and their allies, resistance to new Jewish neighbors can look like anti-Semitism. To the non-Orthodox, the arrival of a Hasidic community, with its schools and its institutions and its rabbinic authority, can feel like an invasion.
In Bloomingburg, local governments and an Orthodox developer have faced off in court, and in raucous village meetings, amid a volley of accusations of voter fraud and hate crimes.
The Forward article traces what appeared to be the success of Satmar Hasidim in expanding into the village. (See prior Religion Clause postings on Bloomingburg.) However yesterday, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced the indictment (full text) of three men on charges of conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process in Bloomingburg in order to obtain clearance to build a housing development for members of the Satmar community:
In pursuit of millions of dollars in profits from a real estate development project, the defendants allegedly hatched a cynical ploy to corrupt the electoral process in Bloomingburg.  As alleged, to get public officials supportive of their development project elected to local government, the defendants concocted a scheme to falsely register voters who did not live in Bloomingburg, including some who had never even set foot there.  And to cover up their voter fraud scheme, the defendants allegedly back-dated fake leases and even placed toothpaste and toothbrushes in empty apartments to make them appear occupied by the falsely registered voters.  Profit-driven corruption of democracy cannot be allowed to stand no matter who does it or where it happens.
One of those indicted was developer Shalom Lamm whose father, Norman Lamm served for many years as president of Yeshiva University. The Forward reports on the indictments.

A fourth man was indicted and has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to submit false voter registrations. (Full text of Information.)