With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Torah Fraud Earns Rabbi Prison Term

Rabbi Menachem Youlus, who was called a Jewish Indiana Jones and provided Torahs through a charity while fraudulently claiming they had been rescued after being hidden or lost during the Holocaust, was sentenced to just over four years in prison on Thursday by a judge who called his scheme sad and incomprehensible.

“As nearly as I can tell,” Judge Colleen McMahon of Federal District Court in Manhattan said, “the reason is that Mr. Youlus had a screw loose, that Mr. Youlus has this desire to be something he’s not, which is an adventurer, a hero.”

Rabbi Youlus, 51, had pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud; prosecutors said that he had fabricated accounts of finding Torahs at concentration camps like Auschwitz. The Torahs were then provided to others by a charity he had co-founded and which, prosecutors said, he defrauded by seeking reimbursement for doctored or inflated expenses or by diverting donations to himself....

Read entire article at NYT