Ramapo, NY – FBI agents cleared employees from a suburban town hall Wednesday, then began a search related to a federal investigation, a bureau spokesman said.
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Spokesman Jim Margolin would not say what the agents were looking for at Ramapo Town Hall in Suffern.
“We’re executing a search warrant,” he said. “It’s under seal and not a matter of public record.”
Town police and investigators from the Rockland County district attorney’s office were also on the scene as agents wheeled empty, flattened boxes into the building.
District Attorney Thomas Zugibe would say only, “We’re assisting the FBI in the execution of warrants at Town Hall.”
Town workers were asked to leave as agents arrived at about 3:30 p.m., Margolin said. “The search will be easier to accomplish without people milling around,” he said.
He said agents would likely be at Town Hall well into the evening.
Margolin said the warrant came from a federal court in New York but he would not say if the search was part of a new investigation or an existing case.
Mayor Noramie Jasmin and Deputy Mayor Joseph Desmaret of Spring Valley, a village within the Town of Ramapo, are among six defendants in an ongoing political corruption case at the federal courthouse in White Plains. That case centers on a plan to buy a line on New York City’s mayoral ballot for state Sen. Malcolm Smith. All the defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Herb Hadad, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, would not comment on the investigation.
All the Jews were in sure, who was “milling around”?
The Preserve Ramapo openly boosted to the media this was “their work”, as they kept bringing stuff to the Feds and DA for years. As they could not win democratic elections, they became more desperate and bitter and did it “this way”.
CSL was as smart as them and was very careful. Its no secret the FBI Monsey informant twice tried to get him into corruption, which he promptly refused. I cant see they should catch him with something big. But, hey, if you come into my office and remove my hard drives and papers, you probably are going to find “something”.
Like in the USSR; people ran to the KGB to report on their neighbors who they “suspected” of not being sworn communists, and managed to get them moved up north into Siberia for a couple of twenty years.
Nice American democracy.
The Ramapo Town Hall is not “your neighbor.” They are your elected officials sworn to have your best interests at the core of everything they do. When there’s lots of conflicts of interest and financial questions using the very same taxpayer’s money…well getting investigated shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. On the other hand, if as you say, CSL is clean, well then what are you worried about – that they will find “something”. If all they can find is “something” then he is really in luck.
CSL has proven time and again that he has our interests and those of ALL voting citizens of Ramapo at heart. It is a shame that the Preserve Ramapo folks will not let up and give up. I do not believe they will find anything.
Thank goodness for Preserve Ramapo for helping save Rockland. There are 3 illegal Yeshivas on my block with busses coming and going. 1 bathroom in each yeshivah. That’s dangerous and a hazard to the kids. St. Lawrence’s buiding inspectors do nothing about it and don’t even issue a summons.
WHO IS CSL? There was no one in the article by those initials…
” Say it the way you feel about it, that you HATE and cant stand chassidish people legally buying and applying for building and special use permits on “your” street.”
Of course you’d like the paint the issue as a bunch of anti-Semites trying to stop innocent chassidim from just going about their lives. If chassidim were acting in a neighborly and legal way, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it. But the fact is that chassidim use their voting bloc to force their will on the non chassidic community. That applies to everything from zoning to the public schools to welfare.
How would you feel if thousands of Mormons moved into your community and started building housing, schools and stores exclusively for them? How would you feel if their kids pointed at you and called you their version of “goy”? You would scream discrimination. People have just had enough.
Christopher St. Lawrence (CSL) is corrupt but the chassidim don’t care because much of what he does benefits them. So it took the FBI to come in and take action. The FBI doesn’t send in 40 people unless they are pretty sure they know something illegal is going on. Watch and wait.
The JN in their extreme hatred toward the Chassidim, likes to cover those few cases where it was done illegally. This is NOT the rule but the exception. Probably ALL multi family dwellings, and 95% of shuls and yeshivas, have been coordinated and done on a legal way. Perhaps not legal for you, but the town approved it. My son goes to a yeshiva which used to be a house, and it was carefully converted, with sprinklers, alarms, exits, with the town. I invite you for a tour.
YOU and PR pushed CSL into a cornet, in a way that he felt alienated, so he just stopped looking your way. If you dont like it, go back to the five-towns and Brooklyn where most of you came from in the past 10-15 years. We Chassidim built up Monsey from when it was a farm. We struggled for a mikvah and kosher meat.
Your accusation is similar to what most goyim believe that almost no yidden in entire Ramapo pay any taxes. I admit the tax exempt is being abused by many, but
The Rockland Journal News has been extremely even handed in their coverage and is NOT a shill for preserve ramapo by any stretch of the imagination. The fact is that chassidic leadership has no regard for the rule of law unless it can be changed to suit their needs or benefits them. There is no such thing as legal for me and legal for you. Something is legal or it’s not. Does your son go to one of those yeshivas that received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the government to install internet and fraudulently used the money for other purposes?
Do you know why the whole zoning issue is so important to people? Because when areas are downzoned into multi-family housing that changes the community. People’s property values go down. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a measurable fact. The fact that your community managed to elect politicians to make it legal doesn’t make it right. You’re willing to abide the stench of corrupt politicians like CSL as long as he does things that you like.
I’ve lived in Monsey for over twenty years. Chassidim didn’t build Monsey – they’re trying to turn it into Kiryas Yoel or New Square. And finally the FBI is stepping into stop the madness.
What happened was CSL went to the kinus in the Rockland Boulders and was so filled with hisararus that CSL made sure that there no computers in Ramapo town hall at the end of the following wk