Matchmaker: New York Rabbi Arrested As Head of International Organ Trafficking Ring

200px-MatchmakerDVD2Rabbi Izhak Levy Rosenbaum of Brooklyn has been arrested for running an international human organ selling ring. Rosenbaum’s role was disclosed to the FBI by an anthropologist, Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley, who has been studying organ markets. She described him as the “main broker” in the international trafficking of human organs — allegedly taken from “vulnerable” people in Moldova, Israel and possibly other countries and sold to wealthy recipients in the United States. Rosenbaum called himself “the matchmaker.”

Witnesses reportedly described Rosenbaum, 58, as a “thug” to forced crying sellers to give up their organs and allegedly pulling a gun (which he was licensed to carry) on reluctant sellers and (according to one quoted source) saying, “You’re here. A deal is a deal. Now, you’ll give us a kidney or you’ll never go home.”

An undercover agent was reportedly able to get Rosenbaum to admit in a sting that he had been “doing this a long time” and had moved “quite a lot” of kidneys.

Some of the people, including some from Israel, would sell their kidneys for $10,000 and Rosenbaum would allegedly sell them for as much as $160,000.

Rosenbaum is a member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. Orthodox rabbis in New York and New Jersey have been clogging the criminal courts and blogs of late, here and here and here and here.

Rosenbaum had told neighbors that he was in the construction business while the FBI says that he told its informant that he should be called “the matchmaker.” Of course, Jewish matchmakers used to focus on marital rather than medical unions. Yenta might find you a doctor, but would normally leave your kidneys alone:

For the story, click here.

31 thoughts on “Matchmaker: New York Rabbi Arrested As Head of International Organ Trafficking Ring”

  1. Great post. I was checking constantly this blog and I am impressed! Very useful information specifically the final part 🙂 I deal with such information much. I was seeking this particular info for a long time. Thanks and best of luck.

  2. Organ trade by private gangs is only the tip of an iceberg. There is an even more sinister organ trade going on by governmental hospitals and other official health institutions.

    There is an International official network of organ exchange with official hospitals in each country as nodes in the netwerk that provide and resceive organs and tissue for transplantation, treatment and research, and with officially appointed coordinators at each site.

    These coordinators work directly together with doctors responsible for treatment in the same hospitals or cooperating hospitals.

    The function of this network is officially regulated by laws of each country. These laws genereally state that one shall only exchange organs from people having been decleared brain death.

    But the demand for organs and tissue, and especially from children of young persons as donors, are many times higher than that which can be provided by persons being brain-dead after accidenst.

    Many symptoms point to the fact that this network since long has gone corrupted due to the high demand and to the money exchanged for organs provided.

    The corruption occurs by taking out undamaged organs from patients that have been injured in accidenst and selling these through the international network. When doing so they claim to the patient himself, his parents, his wife or relatives that the organ was damaged and had to be removed.

    The corruption also occurs by declearing brain dead people that are not so, and using their organs for trade in the network. The corruption manifests itself with several symptoms any citizen can observe:

    – Organs are taken out of a person after an accident that did not seem to injure exactly the place where the organ is situated.

    – A stragely great persentage of accidents n a country or area result in removal of organs.

    – A strangely great percentage of accidents of all kind end in death,
    despite the modern technical abilities to save persons after an accident.

    – People in a given country are astounishingly often pronounced dead, even after accidents that do not involve greater part of the body.

    – One have a routine of giving up the fight for the life of a person, and declares the person brain death, after very short time, usually 4-8 hours.

    – Young persons that are supposed to have good chances of surviving an accident is surprizingly often decleared dead.

    – Persons are often decleared brain death after accidents where the body, and even the head is largerly undamaged, when the person is without consciousness after the accident.

    – Persons are routinously subjected to artificial coma after accidents, even when the person was conscious right after the accident, and after some hours decleared brain death.

    – Parents, sposes and relatives are rutinously denied access to a person after accidents.

    – Politicians in the country are actively demanding more organs from own citizens to be provided for donation.

    I have for a long time observed these particularities in my own country, Norway, and I am concerned. Norway is a member of the international organ donation network. But since this network is international, the concern is valid for several coutries, surely.

    Knut Holt
    http://www.abicana.com

    There is an international, originally legal, organ donation network that since long has gone corrupted. What happens is that people are decleared brain-dead on false premises and their organs are taken out and sold. Also organs from offers or injuries are taken out, and sold, claimning that the organs were damaged and had to be removed. Also major hosiptals in western countries seem to participate in this cheating, including my country, Norway, and countries like UK and USA.

    Regards Knut Holt

  3. “do you honestly believe the garbage you are spouting?
    If a company sells harmful products no one is going to buy them. And as for tort liability if a person has been harmed by a product or service then they are entitled to use the courts as an objective arbitraitor to be made whole. I disagree with frivolous law suits but I imagine you probably do too.
    Your comments are silly and you are totally uninformed on how markets work.”

    IS,
    Where have you been these last 30 years? Do you remember how Ralph Nader became famous and the Ford Pinto’s that exploded? Do you know how many issue of company’s selling unsafe products have been uncovered in the last 30 years, literally hundreds upon hundreds and those are the ones know. Are you aware that Cigarette manufacturers referred in house to cigarettes as nicotine (one of the most high addictive drugs)delivery systems. Do you know why they lost the lawsuits dealing with them having known of the danger of cigarettes, but had actively covered that information up and denied it for fifty years. Do you realize that every year for the last thirty Republican legislators have introduced so-called tort reform measures to severely limit the amount of damages recoverable and that even with this health care debate Republican Senators have claimed tort reform is needed to limit damages for malpractice.

    “Your comments are silly and you are totally uninformed on how markets work.”

    Not only am I well aware how the markets work, but I remember
    the facts of how they’ve been working for at least the last fifty years. Company’s have been selling harmful products all along and advertising and lies got people to buy them. Coca-Cola originally contained cocaine, did you know that. Do you know how much money Big Pharma pays to promote statin druga, including bounty’s to the Doctors who prescribe the most. At least twenty percent of statin users face severe crippling, that is often irreversible. American cholesterol standards have been purposely lowered to increase the need for statins. Google the drug Baycol, for its’ history and Bayer’s fight to keep it from being removed from the market.
    There are literally so many cases that deal with company’s knowingly promoting bad products that I’m at a loss to know where to begin detailing them. How could you not know this?
    Where have you been? Don’t you know that Tort Reform (meaning award limitation)is one of the Republicans most prominent crusades. Why do you think that’s so? Because those greedy lawyers and litigious clients want to make easy money, or because corporations know how culpable they are. Me silly?
    Grow up IS and look at the world we’re really living in, not your own pretend world where the entrepreneurs are supporting every one else on their backs. That’s Never-Never Land.

  4. Mike Spindell:

    do you honestly believe the garbage you are spouting?

    If a company sells harmful products no one is going to buy them. And as for tort liability if a person has been harmed by a product or service then they are entitled to use the courts as an objective arbitraitor to be made whole. I disagree with frivolous law suits but I imagine you probably do too.

    Your comments are silly and you are totally uninformed on how markets work.

  5. Buddha,
    While IS is correct about Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger,
    it is really immaterial to your point. She happened to dream up a good phrase that was very descriptive of why NAZIism rose above even Stalinist Russia, which certainly killed as many people. It was the NAZI meticulous record keeping and its’ enlisting of clerks to keep track of the most heinous crimes.
    Stalin was psychotic, but when he ordered people killed, he didn’t care what records were kept. A horror, but an evilly comprehensible one. The NAZI’s kept minute track of the shoes taken from the gas chamber victims and records of dentures removed. What makes that sicker is that behavior is so similar to the obsessions and needs of serial killers, who very often exhibit the same behavior. This is the true meaning of “the banality of evil” and in that Arendt got it right.

    Now as far as Buddha using that phrase to refer to you, there is some merit to it. In your estimation the “market place” trafficking in organs is merely sound political policy, that shouldn’t be interfered with by “evil” government. Therefore,
    in the name of such a nebulous concept as the “free market,”
    you abdicate any moral sense in any enterprise. Carried, not
    very far I must say, you would be in favor of allowing a company to sell known harmful products, without government interference and I surmise you would then want their tort liability to be erased. Putting an unproven political theory above the interests of real people is truly a banal evil

  6. scorp writes: Under this new Act, you have the right to refuse to participate in an organ harvesting procedure, but you must register your desire with a known organ registry. There is only one organ registry in operation that allows you to record your preferences, including allowing for the contingency that just compensation might become legal at some future date.

    sorry. when I’d dead I’ll be dead and if someone can benefit from having my donated organs then let them. organ donation saves lives

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