2 N.J. Mayors Arrested in Broad Inquiry on Corruption

The mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, two state assemblymen, five rabbis and dozens of others were rounded up early Thursday as the F.B.I. swept across New Jersey and Brooklyn as part of a two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation, the authorities said.

The case ranges from the Jersey Shore to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and even reaches into the State House in Trenton. It apparently began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in the seaside town of Deal, N.J. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, the case mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.

“For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Ralph J. Marra Jr., the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said at a 12:30 p.m. news conference. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.”

Mr. Marra said that average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of influence peddling the investigation had unearthed.

Weysan Dun, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Newark office, said the rabbis arrested — including the grand rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in the United States, Saul Kassin of Brooklyn — were part of a vast money-laundering conspiracy with tentacles in Israel and Switzerland. Another person, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, was accused of enticing vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 and then selling the organ for $160,000.

Mr. Dun emphasized that the case was motivated by neither religion nor politics — an important point given that the New Jersey governor’s race pits a former United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, under whom the investigation began, against the Democratic incumbent, Jon S. Corzine, whose administration was not spared in the arrests Thursday.

Agents also raided the homes of Joseph V. Doria Jr., commissioner of the state’s Department of Community Affairs and a former mayor of Bayonne, and the president of St. Peter’s College, the F.B.I. said.

Among the roughly 30 people arrested by midmorning were Mayor Peter J. Cammarano III of Hoboken and Mayor Dennis Elwell of Secaucus, both Democrats, and Assemblyman Daniel M. Van Pelt, a Republican from Forked River, Ocean County. Mr. Cammarano, who turned 32 on Wednesday, was elected mayor June 9 and sworn in July 1, after serving as councilman at large since 2005.

Mr. Corzine called a 1:30 p.m. news conference in Newark with Attorney General Anne Milgram. “Any corruption is unacceptable — anywhere, anytime, by anybody,” the governor said in a statement. “The scale of corruption we’re seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated.”

Also taken to the Newark office of the F.B.I. were the president of the City Council in Jersey City, Mariano Vega, and the city’s deputy mayor, Leona Beldini. A criminal complaint said Mr. Vega took $10,000 just before the municipal elections in May.

The mayor of Ridgefield, Bergen County, Anthony R. Suarez, was charged with accepting $10,000 in bribes.

Mr. Van Pelt, who as an assemblyman oversees the Department of Environmental Protection, was accused of accepting money to help the informant obtain environmental permits. In a meeting in Atlantic City in February, prosecutors charged, Mr. Van Pelt assured the informant that the environmental agency “worked for” him, then took $10,000 in cash and told the informant to call him “any time.”

The rabbis arrested were from enclaves of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn and in Deal and Elberon, communities along the Jersey Shore in Monmouth County.

The timing of the investigation dovetails with the timing of bank fraud charges against Solomon Dwek, son of the founders of the Deal Yeshiva, a religious school that teaches children in the Sephardic Jewish tradition. Mr. Dwek passed a $25 million bad check at a PNC Bank branch in 2006, according to The Asbury Park Press.

In the investigation that yielded the arrests Thursday, the cooperating witness posed as a real estate developer looking to build in one city after another, repeatedly engaging politicians in illegal conduct through a variety of middlemen, prosecutors said.

In Hoboken, for example, prosecutors charge in their complaint, Mr. Cammarano eagerly agreed in a meeting at a diner earlier this year to help the fake developer with his projects in exchange for cash. Prosecutors said that when the man asked for assurances that his requests would be expedited by the Hoboken City Council, Mr. Cammarano replied, “I promise you,” adding, “You’re going to be, you’re going to be treated like a friend.”

The fake developer responded that he would give a middleman $5,000 in cash for Mr. Cammarano and another $5,000 after his election as mayor.

“O.K.,” Mr. Cammarano replied, according to the complaint. “Beautiful.”

And Mr. Cammarano expressed confidence that he would be elected no matter what, according to the complaint. “Right now, the Italians, the Hispanics, the seniors are locked down,” he is quoted as saying. “Nothing can change that now.”

“I could be, uh, indicted,” he continued, “and I’m still going to win 85 to 95 percent of those populations.”

New Jersey Mayors Arrested

An investigation into the sale of black-market kidneys and fake Gucci handbags evolved into a sweeping probe of political corruption in New Jersey, ensnaring more than 40 people Thursday, including three mayors, two state lawmakers and several rabbis.

Even for a state with a rich history of graft, the scale of wrongdoing alleged was breathtaking. An FBI official called corruption "a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state."

Federal prosecutors said the investigation initially focused on a money laundering network that operated between Brooklyn, N.Y.; Deal, N.J.; and Israel. The network is alleged to have laundered tens of millions of dollars through Jewish charities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey.

Prosecutors then used an informant in that investigation to help them go after corrupt politicians. The informant — a real estate developer charged with bank fraud three years ago — posed as a crooked businessman and paid a string of public officials tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to get approvals for buildings and other projects in New Jersey, authorities said.

Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City's deputy mayor, and two state assemblymen. A member of the governor's cabinet resigned after agents searched his home, though he was not arrested. All but one of the officeholders are Democrats.

Also, five rabbis from New York and New Jersey — two of whom lead congregations in Deal — were accused of laundering millions of dollars, some of it from the sale of counterfeit goods and bankruptcy fraud, authorities said.

In rounding up the defendants, FBI and IRS agents raided a synagogue Thursday morning in Deal, a wealthy oceanfront city of Mediterranean-style mansions, with a large population of Syrian Jews.

Those arrested included Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who was charged with conspiring to arrange the sale of an Israeli citizen's kidney for $160,000 for a transplant for the informant's fictitious uncle. Rosenbaum was quoted as saying he had been arranging the sale of kidneys for 10 years.

The politicians arrested were not accused of any involvement in the money laundering or the trafficking in human organs and counterfeit handbags.

The number of arrests was remarkable even for New Jersey, where more than 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or have been convicted of corruption since 2001.

"New Jersey's corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation," said Ed Kahrer, who heads the FBI's white-collar and public corruption division. "Corruption is a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state."

Gov. Jon Corzine said: "The scale of corruption we're seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated."

Hours after FBI agents seized documents from his home and office, New Jersey Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria resigned. Federal officials would not say whether he would be charged. Doria did not return calls for comment.

The informant, whose name was not released, was the hinge between the two investigations. He gave prosecutors information about the money laundering operation, and later, at the direction of the FBI, drew on his background to go after politicians.

He found a particularly receptive ally in Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, according to prosecutors. The 32-year-old Cammarano, who won a runoff election last month, was accused of accepting money from the developer at a Hoboken diner.

"There's the people who were with us, and that's you guys," the complaint quotes Cammarano saying. "There's the people who climbed on board in the runoff. They can get in line. ... And then there are the people who were against us the whole way. ... They get ground into powder."

Cammarano attorney Joseph Hayden said his client is "innocent of these charges. He intends to fight them with all his strength until he proves his innocence."

Cammarano was accused of accepting $25,000 in cash bribes. Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell was charged with taking $10,000. Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez was charged with agreeing to accept an illegal $10,000.

Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini was charged with conspiracy to commit extortion by taking $20,000 in illegal campaign contributions. State Assemblymen Daniel Van Pelt and L. Harvey Smith were also accused of taking payoffs.

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy said the charges were "a little shocking."

"I have full faith in Leona," Healy said. "She's a good friend of mine — was and will be."

Mike Winnick was praying inside the Deal Synagogue when it was raided. He said four FBI agents escorted a rabbi into his office and blocked the doorway. "Everyone was looking at each other, like, `What's going on here?'" Winnick said.

Busloads carrying those arrested were brought to the FBI's Newark office. One agent slowly walked an elderly rabbi into the building as another covered his face with a felt hat.