FBI informant admits profiting off people on their deathbeds during trial of Ridgefield mayor

Solomon Dwek, the swindler turned FBI informant, didn’t limit his machinations to bilking money from the living. He also profited off the dead.

Testifying today in the bribery trial of a Bergen County mayor, the one-time rabbinical student said he and a partner concocted a scheme to pay life insurance premiums for dying people who couldn’t afford them. When time came to collect, the family of the deceased got 10 percent. Dwek split the remaining 90 percent between his partner and his father’s religious school in Monmouth County.

"How much money did you make investing in people’s death?" Michael Critchley, a lawyer for Ridgefield Mayor Anthony R. Suarez, asked.

"The yeshiva made about $125,000," said Dwek, who wore a dark suit and matching yarmulke.

That rather macabre admission was among a string of new details about Dwek’s past that emerged today as Critchley sought to eviscerate the informant’s credibility during a cross examination on the fourth day of Suarez’s trial in federal court in Newark.

The 38-year-old admitted real estate fraudster also told of giving free rent to the Long Branch municipal prosecutor in exchange for breaks on traffic tickets. And he claimed his father, a prominent rabbi, spoke to a prodigious Republican fundraiser in hopes of arranging a pardon from President George W. Bush after Dwek was arrested in 2006 for a $50 million bank fraud.

Dwek, however, said he never filled out the pardon application. Instead, he went under cover for the FBI and spent nearly three years wearing a tiny hidden video camera as he tried to convince rabbis to launder money and public officials to take bribes. His work culminated in the largest federal sting in New Jersey history, ensnaring five rabbis, three mayors, two state legislators and one man accused of trying to sell a human kidney.

Among those arrested was Suarez, a 43-year-old Democrat accused of taking $10,000 from Dwek, who masqueraded as a developer trying to buy off politicians. Vincent Tabbachino, a former police officer from Guttenberg, is accused of delivering the bribe. They are charged with bribery and extortion conspiracy. If convicted, they face up to 20 years.

The courtroom gallery was thick Thursday with defense lawyers and prosecutors who came to see Critchley, among New Jersey’s most venerable defense lawyers, cross swords with Dwek, the wily and all-but-unflappable informant. When the lawyer brought up the life-insurance scheme, Dwek hardly flinched.

"It was kind of diabolical, right?" Critchley asked.

"Objection," said Mark J. McCarren, an assistant U.S. attorney.

"OK. I’ll use a different word — It was kind of sleazy," Critchley said.

"Yes," Dwek said, shrugging his shoulders.

The informant was equally matter-of-fact in claiming he leased free office space to Steven C. Rubin, the municipal prosecutor for Long Branch. In exchange, Dwek said Rubin fixed traffic tickets for members of the Syrian Jewish community in Deal.

"He would reduce the fines or reduce the points," Dwek said.

Rubin, who represented Dwek’s wife, Pearl, did not return multiple phone messages.

It was late afternoon when Critchley finally finished with the informant for the day. Adjusting his wire-frame glasses, Dwek stepped down from the witness box and strode past his interrogator without a word.

The questioning resumes Friday.