Wanna buy a human kidney? If so, you should have been talking to Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, NY. He’s been charged with conspiring to broker a kidney as part of a crackdown on “a corrupt network of public officials who were all too willing to take cash in exchange for promised official action,” according to the New Jersey AG’s office. Yes, you’re reading this correctly. It’s just really weird.

Reuters says:

Rabbis accused of money-laundering were Eliahu Ben Haim, the principal rabbi of a synagogue in Deal; Saul Kassin, chief rabbi of a synagogue in Brooklyn; Edmund Nahum, the principal rabbi of another synagogue in Deal; and Mordchai Fish, a rabbi at a synagogue in Brooklyn.

Most of the defendants were arrested early on Thursday by federal agents.

One of the many criminal complaints filed in the case also accused a Brooklyn man, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, with conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant, at a cost of $160,000 to the transplant recipient.

This guy claims to have been selling kidneys for 10 years. Yikes.

UPDATE 1-Mayors, rabbis arrested in NJ corruption probe [Reuters]
(Photo:Thirteen Of Clubs)

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