Rabbi Glanz greeted Bob Dole, the presidential candidate, in 1996
A politically connected Satmar rabbi who was forced to resign as a Correction Department chaplain after it was revealed that he had arranged a lavish six-hour bar mitzvah party in a city jail for a prisoner’s son surrendered on Wednesday to face federal theft and conspiracy charges.
The rabbi, Leib Glanz, 53, was charged along with his brother, Menashe Glanz, 49, in a two-count criminal complaint that accuses them of stealing more than $200,000 in Section 8 rent subsidies over 15 years, the largest individual case of tenant fraud ever investigated by New York City authorities.
The federal subsidies were paid for a duplex apartment at 85 Ross Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Menashe Glanz, on applications and recertifications for low-income housing benefits, falsely claimed to live with his family, according to the complaint.
But the complaint, sworn out by Mark Lintner, an investigator with the New York City Department of Investigation, says that Leib Glanz actually lived in the apartment with his family. The federal benefits were paid to the apartment’s owner, the United Talmudical Academy, which employed Menashe Glanz until 2000; he listed the academy as his employer on the documents, according to the complaint.
Indeed, Leib Glanz signed contracts for the subsidies on behalf of the landlord, the complaint said.
The charges were announced in a news release by Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, and the city’s investigation commissioner, Rose Gill Hearn, whose agencies investigated the case together.
“This kind of fraud depletes the precious taxpayer dollars available to individuals in need of housing assistance,” Ms. Gill Hearn said in the news release.
The two men were expected to appear in Federal District Court in Manhattan later Wednesday afternoon.
Leib Glanz’s lawyer, Alan Vinegrad, declined to comment on the charges. Joseph Grob, Menashe Glanz’s lawyer, was not immediately available for comment.
Leib Glanz, a rumpled man with a graying beard, has a long history of access and influence, of seeking favors and performing them, and of acting as a liaison between the insular world of the Satmars and elected officials, according to city records and interviews.
Indeed, for more than two decades, he has been something of a Satmar master of ceremonies, arranging official tours of the community — based in Williamsburg — translating Yiddish for political leaders, charming mayors and their aides with gifts and then soliciting money and support for his sect’s priorities.
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Updated: 5:45 AM, September 15, 2011
Now this ex-prison chaplain might get to throw himself a big party behind bars.
Brooklyn Rabbi Leib Glanz -- who quit as a city jail chaplain after The Post exposed how he arranged a bar mitzvah bash for an inmate behind bars -- was busted with his brother for allegedly stealing $220,000 in subsidized-housing benefits.
For 15 years, the politically connected Satmar rabbi lived in a Williamsburg duplex whose landlord was receiving up to $1,675 a month in federal Section 8 rental-housing subsidies that had been approved for Glanz’s brother, Menashe -- who actually was living in another home nearby, prosecutors charge.
Such subsidies are earmarked for low-income tenants.
The landlord was the United Talmudical Academy, a Brooklyn-based school system for Satmar Hasids -- which Leib Glanz once ran and which employed Menashe.
Menashe over the years paid UTA only about $24 to $93 per month to cover the portion of the rent at 85 Ross St. -- where Leib was living -- that wasn’t covered by the Section 8 subsidy, federal authorities said.
And Leib, “on behalf of UTA,” signed the contract with the city Housing Authority to receive rental subsidies for Menashe to live there, a criminal complaint charges.
The city’s Department of Investigation, which uncovered the alleged scam while probing Leib Glanz’s preferential treatment of Jewish inmates in a lower Manhattan jail, said it is “the largest individual case of tenant fraud investigated by DOI.”
Leib Glanz, 53, and Menashe Glanz, 49, face up to 15 years in prison, if convicted.
Both were freed on $50,000 bond after appearing in Manhattan federal court.
The Post, in a series of exclusives in 2009, revealed that then-Correction Department chaplain Leib Glanz routinely coddled Jewish inmates at the Tombs with access to special food and use of his office, where they made calls to girlfriends and bookies.
Most shockingly, Glanz had organized a catered bar mitzvah party at the downtown jail in 2008 -- complete with a band -- for the son of inmate and former fugitive swindler Tuvia Stern.
Sixty non-inmate guests attended the bash. Probers later learned that Stern also hosted his daughter’s engagement party and a holiday feast for his brood behind bars.
The stories led to the resignations of both Leib Glanz and a top Correction chief, and spurred the DOI’s probe.
An investigative source yesterday said Glanz “was on our radar screen in multiple fronts” beyond the issue of favorable treatment in 2009.
A UTA lawyer declined to comment.
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