A fake congregation and tax schemes -- California rabbi's years of fraud revealed
The Clarence S. Brooks Foundation is in a nondescript three-story building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles that also has a Wells Fargo bank branch and an urgent care center among its tenants.
From there, the small charitable foundation established in 2004 that had $5.8 million in assets at the end of 2018, makes grants primarily to Jewish educational organizations. The half-dozen or so annual awards run in the mid-to-low six figures each, records of the charity show.
So it probably was not much of a surprise when in 2013 the foundation received an application for a grant from Chabad of Poway, and its leader Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein. The grant application said the money would be used to run one of the several programs at the Poway synagogue, helping to pay for rent, remodeling costs and payroll
The application was a winner. In early 2013 the foundation made a $600,000 grant to Goldstein, distributing the money in four $150,000 increments from February through November. It was one of the largest grants it made that year.
But the money didn’t go to the synagogue for remodeling, payroll or rent.
Instead, it went to Goldstein. He put some of the money in personal bank accounts and converted much of it to cash after churning the grant funds through several bank accounts he controlled. After the final payment arrived from the foundation, Goldstein handed over the bulk of the money, about $400,000, to another person who had cooked up the scheme with him, and pocketed the balance.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/a-fake-congregation-and-tax-schemes-%e2%80%94-california-rabbis-years-of-fraud-revealed/ar-BB16VVZ2?ocid=msedgntp
