Brooklyn Man Gets 4 Years For Involvement In Religious Divorce Plot
TRENTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A Brooklyn man was sentenced to four years in prison after using violence to coerce a Jewish man to give his wife a religious divorce.
Moshe Goldstein, 32, was the first to receive a sentence after an FBI investigation which led to the arrest of 10 defendants.
Goldstein, who was arrested alongside his brother, his father and six other men, pleaded guilty last year to crossing state lines to commit extortion. He also admitted that he restrained, assaulted and injured a man in Brooklyn in an attempt to extort a divorce in 2011.
The FBI conducted an undercover investigation where an agent posed as a woman looking to obtain a religious divorce, also know as a 'get,' from her unwilling husband. Only a husband can initiate divorce by issuing the get, but a wife has the right to sue for divorce in rabbinical court, according to the initial complaint.
EXTRA: Read The Full Complaint
The men were arrested after the FBI raided several locations in October 2013, including Yeshiva Shaarei Torah in Suffern, a home in Brooklyn and at least one other location in New Jersey.
Prosecutors said the team used brutal methods and tools, including handcuffs and electric cattle prods, to torture the men into granting gets.
Rabbi Mendel Epstein, of Lakewood, New Jersey, was convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and acquitted of attempted kidnapping in April. Rabbi Martin Wolmark pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit extortion. Both will be sentenced next month.
Five other men involved in the operation will be sentenced next week.
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