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Comments (0)Rabbi Menachem Youlus, the 50-year-old Baltimore resident and Wheaton Jewish book store owner who billed himself as the “Jewish Indiana Jones” for his remarkable tales of Holocaust-era Torah rescues, pled guilty yesterday in a Manhattan federal court to defrauding a charity he founded of $862,000.
The announcement was made by Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
“Menachem Youlus concocted an elaborate tale of dramatic Torah rescues undertaken by a latter day movie hero that exploited the profound emotions attached to one of the most painful chapters in world history – the Holocaust – in order to make a profit. Today’s guilty plea is a fitting conclusion to his story and he will now be punished for his brazen fraud,” Bharara said in a statement.
Between 2004, when Save A Torah, Inc. was founded, and 2010, about $1.2 million came in to the organization, according to the court.
An investigation by the United States Postal Inspection Service’s Complex Frauds Unit revealed that Youlus’s accounts were contradicted by historical evidence, witness accounts, and records showing that he simply passed off used Torahs sold by local dealers who made no claims as to the Torahs’ provenance.
Records also showed that Youlus actually never left the United States during some of the years in which he claimed to be locating and rescuing Torahs from abroad.
In court, Youlus admitted to having defrauded more than 50 victims, misappropriating some of the donations and secretly depositing them into the bank account of his Wheaton store, called the Jewish Book Store.
He faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and will also be required to pay restitution to the victims of his offense and to forfeit over $862,000, representing the proceeds of his crimes. Sentencing is scheduled by Judge Colleen in federal court on June 21, 2012.
After complaints from Holocaust survivors and others, and following a January 31, 2010 Washington Post investigative piece questioning his methods, Youlus in July of that year signed an agreement with the Maryland Secretary of State instructing that he would “take all reasonable steps necessary” to authenticate the scrolls’ history as well as document their purchase from independent sources.
Rabbi Youlus’ captivating tales to children and adults alike are well-known in the region, and he has both adamant supporters and detractors. At least four local congregations—Beth El, Chevrei Tzedek, Chizuk Amuno and Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah—own Torahs purchased from Rabbi Youlus. While the Torahs have been deemed fit for use, some of those congregations no longer refer to them as Holocaust-era Torahs.
Youlus was arrested on Aug. 24, 2011 by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York on charges of mail fraud and wire fraud involving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
At the time, he paid a $100,000 bond, had to surrender travel documents and was restricted to New York state’s Southern and Eastern Districts as well as the district of Maryland.
At that point, Bharara and Ronald J. Verrochio, inspector-in-charge of the New York Office of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, contended that Youlus “fabricated detailed accounts of having found Torahs lost or hidden during the Holocaust in Europe, including in Auschwitz and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, and in other places around the world. He then used those false accounts as a platform for soliciting contributions to Save A Torah Inc., some of which he embezzled by diverting them directly into his personal bank accounts. In other instances, Rabbi Youlus allegedly submitted inflated and doctored invoices to Save A Torah to increase the amount he was reimbursed by the charity for the ‘rescued’ Torahs, which, in at least some instances, he had simply purchased from other Torah dealers.”
Menachem Rosensaft, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, who played a key role in exposing Youlus and calling for an investigation into his fraudulent activities, said, “Menachem Youlus now stands exposed as a matter of law as a charlatan who desecrated the memory of the Holocaust and the sanctity of Torah scrolls for the sole purpose of enriching himself. It remains to be seen whether his enablers at the Save-a-Torah Foundation and elsewhere who defended him long after evidence of his fraudulent scheme had become incontrovertible will offer the Jewish community and society at large a public apology.”
Among the stories in question was the claim of finding a Torah under the floorboards of a barracks at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Mr. Rosensaft’s own research revealed that occupying British troops burned the structures to the ground in May 1945 to contain a typhus epidemic.
Last summer, Save A Torah’s website, http://www.saveatorah.org, carried a cover note with a months’ old summary of the organization’s investigation into the claims. The group reported that two independent soferim, or Torah scribes—Rabbi Yitzchok Reisman and Itzhak Winer—examined 11 Torah scrolls together on Feb. 17, 2010.
Save A Torah’s Rick Zitelman wrote that the two “confirmed what we have always known: Rabbi Menachem Youlus is an expert sofer who has restored numerous Torahs to the highest of standards, often at his own expense.”
In addition, he wrote, “The soferim found no evidence to contradict any information provided by Rabbi Youlus to the purchasers of his Torahs. All of the Torahs examined by the soferim were found to be written in pre-Holocaust years in Eastern Europe, as Rabbi Youlus had determined.”
Today, the website carried this statement:
“We have been saddened to learn over the last several months that we at Save A Torah, and our donors and friends, were misled by an individual whom we trusted. We believe that the step that Rabbi Youlus took by accepting responsibility for his actions is an important step in putting this unfortunate episode behind us.
“Save A Torah was launched with the noble goal of rescuing Torahs that survived the Holocaust or were forcibly taken from Jewish communities and placing them again in Jewish communities where they could be used and treasured. We deeply appreciate the support that we continue to receive from our friends and the greater Jewish community and are evaluating how best to continue our mission.”