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Sunday, April 17, 2011

Jailhouse Bar Mitzvah Bash That Cost Rabbi His Job Also Cost The City Thousands Of Dollars, Report Finds



















A jailhouse bar-mitzvah bash cost the city thousands of shekels, a scathing city report concluded.

New details have emerged revealing that taxpayers were on the hook for an estimated $2,800 for 56 hours of overtime that correction officers and supervisors worked while attending the lavish bash behind bars hosted by a wealthy Jewish jailbird for his son on Dec. 30, 2008.

The city also paid an extra $1,650 for inmate Tuvia Stern, 48, to linger in custody at the downtown lockup The Tombs when he should have been transferred to a state prison 11 days earlier, on April 2, 2009.

The convicted con man was minutes from getting shipped to state custody when he was bused back to the Manhattan clink after politically connected jail chaplain Leib Glanz intervened on his behalf, according to a Department of Investigation memo obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information request.

During the layover, Stern threw yet another party -- an engagement fete on April 13 for his daughter Breindy, the memo said.

In all, Stern hosted three family feasts -- one for Yom Kippur -- with the help of his jailers.

"These three events not only violated numerous DOC rules and regulations, but they also created serious breaches of security," DOI concluded.

Stern -- who went on the lam to Brazil in 1989 after he was busted for swindling $1.7 million from Jewish investors -- is now locked up in a state prison in upstate Woodbourne, serving a 2-to-7- year sentence for grand larceny. He's up for parole in April 2012.

After The Post revealed the unkosher conduct by correction bosses, red-faced city officials quietly forced out Glanz, Warden George Okada, Assistant Chief of Operations Frank Squillante and bureau chief for facility operations Peter Curcio.

Head chaplain Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil also signed off on the bar mitzvah, and twice lied about it, according to the memo. Yet he was only stripped of three weeks vacation and remains on the payroll as a $108,000-a-year assistant commissioner for ministerial services.

Abdul-Jalil -- a former drug dealer who served a 14-year prison stint upstate -- told investigators he never approved the party and didn't attend it, despite e-mail evidence to the contrary and two witnesses who saw him stay at the bash for an hour, the memo said.

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