K-Lo at The Corner, quoting Bloomberg:
The mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, New Jersey, and several rabbis were among at least 30 people arrested today as part of a public corruption and money- laundering investigation by U.S. authorities.
Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, 31, and Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, both Democrats, Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega Jr., and State Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, a Republican from Ocean Township, were among those arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are scheduled to appear in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, later today.
“Approximately 30 arrests have occurred this morning in a two-track federal investigation of public corruption and a high- volume, international money-laundering conspiracy,” Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra, said in a statement.
This is why The Sopranos took place in New Jersey and not in Virginia.
Zachary Roth at TPM:
But we’ve been focusing on one of the few New Yorkers: Issac Rosenbaum, a Brooklynite who works in real estate — and has been charged with trafficking in human kidneys. It’s not clear how or whether this case is tied to the public corruption probe. But with details like these, who cares, frankly…
The complaint put together by federal prosecutors lays out how an undercover witness approached Rosenbaum, telling him the witness’s uncle urgently needed a kidney transplant. Rosenbaum then laid out a scheme by which he would procure a kidney from Israel, and explained how they would make it seem that the donor had a prior relationship with the witnesses’ uncle, as required. “It’s illegal to buy. It’s illegal to sell,” he said at one point.
According to the complaint, when the witness asked Rosenbaum whether the donor got a “good portion” of the money from the sale of his kidney, Rosenbaum replied: “Don’t worry about it.”
And at one point, Rosenbaum said he’d been in the kidney-trafficking game for ten years.
Illinois and Louisiana have been making most of the recent headlines, but New Jersey is renewing its claim to fame as a land of political corruption.
UPDATE: David Rothkopf in Foreign Policy
UPDATE #2: Zachary Roth in TPM
