In Lakewood, New Jersey an Orthodox rabbi and up to 14 of his congregants have been caught scamming the welfare system for more than $700,000. By posing as indigent people, the rabbi and his followers defrauded Medicaid, SNAP (the agency that provides food stamps), HUD (housing), HEAP (home energy assistance) and SSI (Social Security) benefits between January 2009 and December 2015. Some of those arrested had businesses and assets worth more than $1 million because another clergyman was caught in a web of unethical behavior.
As the group of people arrested face both federal and state charges from the FBI, the New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller’s Medicaid Fraud Division, the US Social Security Administration, the New Jersey Department of the Treasury’s Office of Criminal Investigation, and the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office’s Economic Crimes Unit. At the center of the charges are Rabbi Zalmen Sorotzkin and his wife. I am hardly shocked.
What is Happening?
In 2012, a clergyman was arrested for conducting a $52 million “Ponzi Scheme,” in 2014 a Catholic priest who headed a clergy addiction center was arrested for fraud, and again that year, a pastor was accused of scamming his diocese for wedding and funeral fees. In 2015, a Hindu Priest was arrested for bank fraud. In 2016, an Imam pleaded guilty to tax fraud. In 2017 another priest was arrested for scamming $500,000 from a clergy retirement fund and for good measure, a pastor was arrested for impersonating a police detective. This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. It does not include cases of assault, sexual abuse, real estate fraud and other unethical behaviors by the clergy.
The “good” news, I suppose is that cases of unethical behavior by the clergy are equal opportunity crimes. Every religion, and I mean every religion, has religious leaders who violate the principles of their sacred texts and prayers to commit financial and societal crimes. Naturally, whenever crimes like this occur, responsible believers of that faith are outraged. They are forced to defend their faith and the statements they make invariably include words such as: “He (or she) does not represent the vast majority of the members of our religion and we are embarrassed by his (or her) actions.”
Or, good people say nothing – and even worse, they turn their backs on their various faiths altogether, even if their association with the faith was minimal.
The Lessons We Are Taught
Unethical clergy have a great deal to teach us about the lure of “trying to get away with something.” We must first accept what should an obvious fact about people in the clergy: they are human. They are not super-human. A religious leader should be many things, as should be a physician, a lawyer, an accountant or a banker. All have taken an ethical oath of some kind. Yet all are subject to the same temptations as anyone else.
In examining the case of the rabbi and his wife above, we can see several forces pertaining to opportunity, need and rationalization or justification.
The opportunity was the realization that if one can cover up other streams of income, and report only on a meager stipend, then that takes them out of a higher tax bracket and qualifies them for all kinds of financial assistance. Granted, a religious person should be way above such behavior. I have known fairly wealthy people in my life who have “successfully under-reported” income and I have even known of people of means who found a way to qualify for food stamps.
As for need, it is hard to get inside the mind of a man or woman who is “of the cloth” who scams the system. How many preachers in mega-churches over recent years have been accused of multiple crimes? Unfortunately, far too many. Something deep inside them created a need to commit fraud or abuse or any number of behaviors.
In the mind of a felon almost any behavior can be rationalized or justified. To an unethical rabbi, minister, priest or most anyone else, once the decision is made to commit an unethical act, the perpetrator will find a way to rationalize the behavior. Perhaps to the rabbi, he viewed the “huge government” as an unlimited well of benefits. He advised his followers (who also violated their religious principles), that the money was somehow owed to them or was there for the taking. While his followers took more of the benefits money than he did, he is still the most culpable of all. He led them astray.
The biggest issue of fraud among clergy members to my mind is that within all faiths are a certain percentage of leaders who never absorbed the concepts of being an ethical person. This should be of major concern to every faith and it must be addressed in the strongest possible terms because another clergyman was caught in a web of unethical behavior.
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