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Met Council’s Rapfogel Fails to Pay: Gets Jail Delayed

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William Rapfogel failed to pay the full restitution by Wednesday, July 16th deadline.
William Rapfogel failed to pay the full restitution by Wednesday, July 16th deadline.
William Rapfogel, the disgraced former head of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, is personally benefitting from being late paying off his debt.

Rapfogel, an ex-pal of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, pleaded guilty to stealing close to $9 million form charity in April. Since he has failed to pay the full $3 million in restitution, Rapfogel will remain out of jail for another week in accordance with his agreement with Manhattan prosecutors.

His deadline to pay was Wednesday, July 16th, when he was to also be sentenced to 3¹/₃ to 10 years behind bars. Sources told the Post that Rapfogel has only paid $2.4 million. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Larry Stephen has decided to allot him an extra week to gather the other $.6 million owed in restitution funds.  This was extremely generous of the judge, considering that Rapfogel’s failure to satisfy the plea agreement could have earned him 12 years in jail.

A scheme lasting over 20 years was masterminded by Rapfogel. He and his conspirators pocketed millions from the Met Council by overcharging on insurance premiums.

Joseph Ross and Herbert Friedman, two of his co-conspirators, have been sentenced already. David Cohen, Rapfogel’s predecessor as the charity’s CEO, is scheduled to be sentenced on August 14th. In January 2014, David Cohen, former Executive Director, and Herbert Friedman, Chief Financial Officer, were arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges of grand larceny, money laundering and conspiracy. They were accused of getting $7 million in kickbacks from the Met Council’s insurance broker.

In 1967, New York City leveled 20 acres, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, on the southern side of Delancy Street, and removed more than 1,800 low-income largely Puerto Rican families, with a promise that they would return to new low-income apartments when they were built, according to the Times. Silver and Rapfogel were promoting specific plans for favored developers, which would maintain the area’s Jewish identity, at the expense of other communities. They opposed affordable housing, which would have changed the demographics of the neighborhood, and brought in more Chinese and Hispanic residents. Silver instead proposed a shopping center with no housing for the site. Later, they proposed a “big box” store, like Costco, to be built by the developer Bruce Ratner. Ratner hired Rapfogel’s eldest son, Michael, in 2007. Ratner also helped raise $1 million for Met Council.

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