A Mayor, A City Building Inspector & A Rabbi Walk Into A Bar...
...and they get arrested along with 40 other people.
When your average politician has to say, "Fuck! This shit's corrupt!" you know you've gone overboard.
A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to
Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.
The case began with bank fraud charges against a member
of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes
in New Jersey’s recent past.
It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of
nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.
“For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Ralph J. Marra Jr., the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said at a news conference. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.”
Mr. Marra said that average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of influence peddling the investigation had
unearthed.
Even veteran political observers were taken aback by the scope of the investigation. The mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield were among those arrested.
“This is so massive,” said Joseph Marbach, a political scientist at Seton Hall University. “It’s going to just reinforce the stereotype of New Jersey politics and corruption.”
When your average politician has to say, "Fuck! This shit's corrupt!" you know you've gone overboard.
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