A Brooklyn rabbi ran an unholy scam on a $16 billion hedge fund -- because he knew that its founder was "Jewish and . . . rich," a prosecutor told jurors yesterday.
Rabbi Milton Balkany demanded $4 million from SAC Capital Advisors founder Steven Cohen by threatening that a prison inmate he was counseling would go to the feds with insider-trading allegations against the firm, Manhattan federal prosecutor Jesse Furman said.
Balkany -- whose "statements were lies, pure and simple," according to Furman -- was videotaped pocketing checks from an SAC lawyer and saying "that Mr. Cohen and SAC were in the clear," Furman said in the extortion trial's opening statement.
Defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman countered that Balkany -- who won dismissal of an earlier fraud case by paying back $700,000 in misspent government grants -- had merely engaged in a "stupid plan" to help two cash-strapped Orthodox schools in Brooklyn.
He added that the feds and SAC lawyers used "scripted" conversations to "keep [Balkany] coming back and talking, so that, eventually, they'd conclude he committed a crime."
"You want to find him guilty for using bad judgment?" Brafman asked. "For that, we plead guilty today."
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