Brooklyn, NY – As speculation continues to swirl regarding the recent widespread FBI raids in Ramapo, Kiryas Joel and Brooklyn, an employee at a Williamsburg yeshiva has said that the searches may encompass a wider scope than originally thought.
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According to the Forward, the source said that officials in Williamsburg’s Central United Talmudical Academy have stated that FBI agents who visited their school on March 16th were looking for information on the National School Lunch Program, which provides free or reduced rate meals to low income students.
A spokesperson for the FBI told the Forward that the raids in Brooklyn were not connected to the raids in Ramapo and Kiryas Joel.
Spokespersons from the different divisions of the U.S. Attorney’s office that are carrying out the investigations and the New York City’s Department of Investigations all declined to comment on the raids.
The source said that investigators from the NSLP made an unannounced visit to Central UTA in Williamsburg two weeks prior to the FBI raids, prompting other area schools to be more careful with their NSLP spending over the last few weeks.
According to the Forward, the Satmar school system received $14.7 million in federal and state NSLP funds in 2011 and 2012, an amount that exceeded the allotment given to the Buffalo City School District by more than $2 million.
Satmar spokesperson Michael Tobman declined to comment on any aspects of the ongoing investigation.
Private schooling is not viable. No one can afford it. These people are not crooks, just desperate! There has never been a better time to work on changing the laws.
It’s about time! Looking forward to the mug shots of all the crooks.
Surely we all remember inspector day at yeshivah. It was great! Fresh fruits and vegetables, non spoiled milk, food that was actually identifiable. Sadly, it only lasted a day, and the next day we returned to our rotten milk and dried macaroni.
#1 , these people are crooks, a crook is someone who is crooked, and these people are as crooked as it gets.
As for your second point, there is a better time to work on changing the law – BEFORE the FBI raid.
what’s the Buffalo school district got to do with Central UTA? Do they feed as many children? The Forward l-o-v-e-s erliche yidden! Any shmutz they can print; doesn’t have to make sense.
I’m curious to know if Haredi yeshivas could survive at all if all fraud were uncovered.
Anti-Semitic FBI harassing Jews again. Defrauding honest, hard working taxpayers out of millions of dollars is not a good enough excuse for the raids.
My biggest problem with all this is not whether or not Satmar is guilty of fraud or whatever, or even how stupid they are to mess up. It’s all the other Yeshivas & girls schools who think they are invincible and the mud won’t splatter on them. Take your emergency funds, hire competent accountants & lawyers, and clean up your act! Even if you didn’t deliberately or with knowledge do anything illegal, you can’t be sure you won’t be next. Stop thinking your hands are clean – I promise you, they aren’t.
I really hope someone ends up in jail not some useless probation but jail in a jumpsuit
Not an excuse for Genayva. If they were eligible for money, that’s fine, but doesn’t allow for people to steal what isn’t there’s.
So many hateful people on a ‘yiddishe’ forum. Live and let live!
Why don’t we wait to see how this investigation works out?
I think there is another issue here: did the FBI know that this activity was going on all along but instead of preventing it in the first place preferred gaining a flashy scoop by arresting the perps after the fact?
This seems to be happening too often, I’m afraid.
I think the FBI ought to revert to its old mandate of stopping crime, not imprisoning criminals.
We have enough criminals imprisoned in America already – 2.4 million!!
The message is simple.
Vote Democrat and will stop harassing the Jews. Make no mistake about it. This is how our current government works.
In these dangerous times and with so many crimes in Washington, to have 300 FBI people on this, is not only a misalignment of justice, but is truly preposterous.