Arnaque à la Shoah: plus de 57 millions de dollars

Un employé de la conférence de restitution aux victimes de l’Holocauste (Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany) a été inculpé en 2013 pour une fraude de plus de 57 millions de dollars.

Semen Domnister, the former Claims Conference employee who was found guilty of leading a $57 million fraud scheme at the Holocaust restitution organization, was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Domnister, 55, was sentenced Monday in Manhattan federal court.

He was also ordered to forfeit $59,230 and pay restitution in the amount of $57.3 million.(…)

WASHINGTON, November 5 (RIA Novosti) – A former administrator at a New York non-profit that distributes reparation payments to survivors of the Holocaust has been sentenced to eight years in prison for running a $57 million scam that recruited Russian immigrants to pose as victims of the Nazis, the US Attorney’s Office said in a statement.(…)

Holocaust Claims Conference Official Sentenced to 8 Years in $57M Fraud Scheme 

Read As PDF  – Published reports indicate that he was also ordered to forfeit $59,230 and pay restitution in the amount of $57.3 million.

Since 2010, a total of 31 individuals have been charged with participating in the scheme to defraud the Article 2 Fund and Hardship Fund programs, which Domnister directed, according to the JTA.

Twenty-eight defendants pleaded guilty and three—Domnister, Luba Kramrish, and Oksana Romalis—were convicted in May after trial. Kramrishwas sentenced on September 20 to 37 months in prison, and Romalis is scheduled to be sentenced on November 26.

The fraud was discovered in 2009 and dated back to 1993. It involved falsifying applications to the Hardship Fund, an account established by the German government to provide one-time payments of approximately $3,360 to those who fled the Nazis as they moved east through Germany,

and the Article 2 Fund, through which the German government gives pension payments of approximately $411 per month to needy Nazi victims who spent significant time in a concentration camp, in a Jewish ghetto in hiding or living under a false identity to avoid the Nazis, as reported by the JTA.

As reported by The Jewish Voice in May of 2013, Claims Conference chairman Julius Berman expressed his appreciation to the U.S. Attorney’sOffice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their successful prosecutorial efforts. “Those who perpetrated this unthinkable fraud enriched themselves by abusing the historic effort to obtain a small measure of justice for Holocaust victims,” he said at the time.

In a May statement, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara emphasized,“We said we would not stop until we brought to justice those who committed these unthinkable crimes and today our objective was accomplished.”

According to the FBI and government prosecutors, the $57 million fraud scheme was masterminded by Russian-speaking Claims Conference employees and assisted by a network of runners and recruiters who submitted thousands of Holocaust restitution claims on behalf of people throughout North America who were not legally entitled to the funds.

“The web of conspirators—both former employees and many outsiders—used their knowledge of the organization’s work,” noted Berman, “in order to fabricate and approve false stories of suffering during the Holocaust for monetary gain.”

Greg Schneider, the Claims Conference’s executive vice president, said, “To have it all come to closure is extraordinarily important.

We’re obviously very happy that justice has been served, but focus on the needs of Holocaust survivors has always been our main priority.”

In the spring of 2012, 65-year-old Zlata Blavatnik was convicted of defrauding the Claims Conference out of $550,000. Blavatnik had pled guilty to the charge that she had “produced falsified documents for myself” and “helped others in the same office” to make fraudulent “reparation” payments.