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Feds: Brooklyn Man Trafficked In Human Kidneys
There's a lot to dig into on this story about New Jersey mayors, lawmakers, and rabbis being charged in connection with a federal corruption and international money laundering probe.
But we've been focusing on one of the few New Yorkers: Issac Rosenbaum, a Brooklynite who works in real estate -- and has been charged with trafficking in human kidneys. It's not clear how or whether this case is tied to the public corruption probe. But with details like these, who cares, frankly...
The complaint put together by federal prosecutors lays out how an undercover witness approached Rosenbaum, telling him the witness's uncle urgently needed a kidney transplant. Rosenbaum then laid out a scheme by which he would procure a kidney from Israel, and explained how they would make it seem that the donor had a prior relationship with the witnesses' uncle, as required. "It's illegal to buy. It's illegal to sell," he said at one point.
According to the complaint, when the witness asked Rosenbaum whether the donor got a "good portion" of the money from the sale of his kidney, Rosenbaum replied: "Don't worry about it."
And at one point, Rosenbaum said he'd been in the kidney-trafficking game for ten years.
In one excerpt from the complaint, prosecutors write:
ROSENBAUM explained that he had an associate based in Borough Park (Brooklyn) who took blood samples on behalf of an insurance company for whom he worked. Defendant ROSENBAUM indicated that defendant ROSENBAUM paid this
individual in cash for handling blood samples of would-be recipients of organs.
And in another excerpt that can be described as particularly bad for the Jews, prosecutors write:
Defendant ROSENBAUM explained the process of finding a donor in Israel and stated that "[t]here are people over there hunting . . . One of the reasons it's so expensive is because you have to shmear (meaning pay various individuals for their assistance) all the time."
Putting cream cheese on our bagel will never be the same after this.

















Rabbis? Body parts?
Oy. Reminds me of several crude jokes I recall from my youth.
Thought: Can stem cells be extracted from foreskins?
July 23, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Checking Google...
"Catholics against circumcision" reports:
Well, how can you get more reliable than that?
Somewhat more stable looking sources (search for "Foreskin Feeder") seem to be implying that foreskins, if not sources of embryonic stem cells themselves, do contain special "feeder" cells which (at least one group of researchers argue) turn out to be invaluable in culturing stem cells, I.E., you have one embryonic stem cell and you want to grow a bunch of copies of it.
July 23, 2009 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
"There are people over there hunting"?
On which side of the West Bank Wall?
July 23, 2009 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, that's an ugly though alright...Yucck!
July 23, 2009 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jesus. I hate what's happening to the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, but are you suggesting American rabbis are now buying their kidneys? And who gets retrofitted?
July 24, 2009 1:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can you link to the complaint?
July 23, 2009 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
rabbis trafficking in human kidneys
Or as Megan McArdle would call it, free market entrepreneurs filling a need.
July 23, 2009 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
MAN! That sounds like a movie...
Can't wait to see how they are getting these Kidneys...
July 23, 2009 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
There was a movie about this type stuff. It was set in London and focused on undocumented immigrants and the various ways they were victimized. One such way was selling body parts, if I remember correctly. Don't recall the name. Sorry.
July 23, 2009 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Israel seems at first glance like an unlikely source for kidneys, but the combination of poor immigrants, a highly-skilled medical establishment and a very specialized gene pool...
July 23, 2009 7:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oy, body parts and they're Kosher!
July 23, 2009 10:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not if they come from gentiles.
July 24, 2009 8:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Does this mean that those "urban legends" of people being drugged, their kidney removed and left in bathtub with a note...might be true after all ?
C
July 24, 2009 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink