Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Monroe man pleads guilty to voter fraud in Bloomingburg
A consultant to and co-defendant of real estate developers Shalom Lamm and Kenneth Nakdimen has pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to corrupt the electoral process, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Volvy "Zev" Smilowitz, 29, of Monroe, took the plea on Monday in U.S. District Court in White Plains, and sentencing was set for Oct. 24.
Prosecutors say the three men sought to build and sell real estate in Bloomingburg, with the hope of making "hundreds of millions of dollars." By late 2013 the Chestnut Ridge condo project, geared toward Hasidic Jewish buyers, was still under construction and mostly uninhabitable, and local opposition was growing. Prosecutors say the trio chose to co-opt the March 2014 village election instead of trying to advance their project by legitimate means.
The men developed and implemented a plan to register voters who did not actually live in the little village, with the goal of electing village board members favorably disposed toward Lamm and Nakdimen's development plans. The men conspired to falsely register voters, some of whom had never even visited Bloomingburg, and to stage apartments to create the appearance that people lived there. They backdated leases and even put furniture, toothbrushes and other furnishings in apartments.
Smilowitz and Lamm also offered "payments, subsidies and other items of value" to bribe non-residents to register to unlawfully vote in Bloomingburg prosecutors said.
"In the biggest federal voter fraud case in the modern era, Volvy Smilowitz admitted to taking part in a cynical scheme to rig an election in Bloomingburg," said Geoffrey Berman, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a news release. "Those who conspire to corrupt the electoral process must and will be held accountable."
Lamm and Nakdimen pleaded guilty last year. Nakdimen was sentenced to six months in prison and Lamm to 10 months. Each of them was also sentenced to one year of supervised release, 400 hours of community service and a $20,000 fine.
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