FBI informant Solomon Dwek is mentally ill, his attorney says

Solomon Dwek is mentally ill, his attorney claims, in a bid seeking leniency for the key informant behind New Jersey’s biggest-ever corruption sting.

In a federal court filing that included a clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder and chronic high anxiety — as well as letters of support from Dwek’s family and friends —attorneys for the former real estate investor are looking to minimize the prison term he faces for bank fraud under the terms of a plea deal with the government.

Both the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Dwek’s attorney declined comment on the defense motion. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Dwek is currently facing a prison term of nine-to-11 years.

Federal prosecutors are expected, however, to also move for a reduced sentence, based on Dwek’s cooperation, according to the motion.

Dwek — who just turned 40 — spent three years wearing a wire for the FBI as part of a sweeping corruption and money-laundering investigation that led to the arrests of dozens of elected officials, five Orthodox rabbis, and a black market kidney broker.

He is scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge Jose Linares in Newark on Oct. 18 to be sentenced for his role in an unrelated $50 million bank fraud that first led to his cooperation with the government. He also faces sentencing in Superior Court in Monmouth County the next day, on separate charges involving fraudulent bank loans tied to a Manhattan real estate scam that never materialized.

Now being held in the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, Dwek has been jailed since June 2011, after his bail was revoked for lying to the FBI about a rental car he did not return on time, leading to car theft charges in Maryland, where his family now lives. That case was later dropped by prosecutors there.

The 94-page filing by Dwek’s attorney, Charles Uliano of West Long Branch, filed late Friday, said Dwek had a history of serious mental disorders. Jerome Rubin, a clinical psychologist retained by Dwek’s defense attorneys, concluded that he suffered from multiple mental illnesses, with a primary diagnosis of bipolar disorder.  

"Before incarceration, his bipolar condition was characterized as having a very high energy output, mental excitement, racing thoughts, irritability, illusory thinking, efforts to engage in multiple activities at the same time, poor insight and inability to foresee consequences," Rubin wrote. "In my professional opinion, his criminal behavior was related to his chronic mental disorders."

He said Dwek had problems with high anxiety, struggling "with the rigor and intensity of his religious training, and turned to real estate as an escape.

"He began getting into the next business deal without regard to real estate costs, problems of development, rehabilitation, financing and sales," said Rubin. "For Mr. Dwek, buying and selling became the main source of psychological reward for him."

A well-known real estate investor in Monmouth and Ocean counties, Dwek was arrested in 2006 after he deposited a worthless $25 million check at a PNC Bank drive-through window in Eatontown and immediately wired out all the money. Then he tried to do it again the next day.

At first, it was thought Dwek was covering investments that had gone sour. But court documents later revealed that he had been running a wide-ranging, $400 million real estate Ponzi scheme before ultimately running out of new investors. Caught short of badly needed cash, he tried kiting the two fraudulent checks to cover his outstanding loans.

Following his arrest, Dwek secretly entered into a deal to cooperate with the U.S. attorney and became an undercover informant in a long-running corruption and money-laundering sting known as Bid Rig III that targeted politicians, candidates for office, religious figures in his Orthodox community, and ultimately a man who arranged black market kidney transplants.

The two-tier investigation, originally green-lighted by then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, saw Dwek posing as a corrupt developer, offering cash bribes to dozens of elected officials and candidates for office to expedite phony real estate projects.

At the same time, he set up former business partners, rabbis and others who helped him launder millions more through religious charities and organizations.

The sting came to light in July 2009 in a series of high-profile arrests, bringing charges against three mayors, two legislators, five Orthodox rabbis and dozens of others. Dwek’s role in the case and his cooperation deal quickly became public, and he pleaded guilty to the bank fraud and loan scam in October 2009.

In the defense filing, Rubin said that psychological testing and clinical interviews indicate that Dwek has symptoms of both bipolar and anxiety disorder.

Bipolar disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis for a mood disorder which causes disruptive mood swings, including a frenzied state known as mania and, often, symptoms of depression.

The issue could impact on appeals in other cases related to the Bid Rig investigation. Attorneys for several of those pulled into the sting complained during trial that Dwek’s non-stop patter and efforts to talk over others was nothing more than entrapment, by someone trying to buy his way out of trouble.

The psychologist, who visited Dwek in prison in August 2011, said he is now on psychotropic medication and a candidate for rehabilitation.

Included in the court filing were letters and testimonials from the few friends Dwek now seems to have, as well as from his wife, Pearl and two of his six children.
 

Several letters of support also came from his rabbi in Baltimore — who is nearly alone in the religious community in providing any sort of support to the family, which has been ostracized from the Syrian Sephardic enclave in Deal where Dwek, himself the son of a noted rabbi, once made his home.

 

Pearl Dwek, in an emotional letter to Linares, spoke to the support she once had from her husband, and the pain of being excommunicated from her Orthodox community and cut off by her parents.

"My family has been broken by his experience," she said. " I cling to my children now and wait for my husband to return to help me with raising them as we promised one another when we married.

She said Dwek’s father was forced to leave his synagogue in Deal, and she feels shunned by her own family.

"I know Solomon fell under the drug of real estate deals and gave into the pressure of trying to be a hero to so many," she wrote.

Dwek’s eldest daughter, Raizel — named for her grandmother — asked Linares to send her father back home.

"I have seen family members I love and once depended on, shun us. And the community each one of us described as home become a place where we are no longer welcome," she said. "I miss my father and I ask, for the sake of our family, that you send him back to us soon."

Rabbi Aaron Tendler, who took the family under his wing in Baltimore, also sought mercy for Dwek. He said the Jewish community in the Baltimore area has not been kind to Dwek or the family, shunning him as an informer.

"His children have been expelled from the Jewish schools they were originally accepted in," he said. "I personally have been ostracized and threatened with dismissal from my job for welcoming the Dwek family into our community."  

Tendler said Dwek and his family have already been punished and have been unable to live normal lives due to his misdeeds.

Dwek’s sentencing has been repeatedly delayed for well over a year, while other cases were resolved through the courts. Of the 46 people who have been charged in the case, 32 have pleaded guilty, four were convicted, two were acquitted, one died, and charges were dropped against four.

Dwek, as part of his separate plea with the state, was promised that prosecutors would not seek more than four years behind bars, to be served concurrently with any federal sentence.

Federal prosecutors have not indicated what they will ask, but will acknowledge his cooperation with the government and ask Linares to take note of that.

The last time Dwek was in Linares’s courtroom, the judge showed little patience for him, in the wake of unexpected disclosures that he had lied to the FBI on the eve of trial against one of those caught up in the sting, former Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell.

Revoking Dwek’s bail over the objections of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Linares called him "consummate defrauder and an extremely cunning liar."

 

By Ted Sherman NJ.com