U.S. Professor: I told FBI about kidney trafficking 7 years ago

[kpete]

Source: Haaretz

U.S. Professor: I told FBI about kidney trafficking 7 years ago
By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent

The alleged crimes of the Brooklyn man arrested Thursday for dealing in black-market kidneys were first reported by an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley, who learned of the man's suspected involvement through her research.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes - whose contacts in Israel define her as the world's leading authority on organ trading - says she heard reports that the suspect, 58-year-old Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, held donors at gunpoint after they changed their minds about the operation.

Such reports that she received from her sources compelled her to go to the authorities. She met with an FBI agent at a Manhattan hotel and gave him information about Rosenbaum, but she says that the Bureau acted only much later. The Berkeley scholar is said to have identified Rosenbaum to the FBI seven years ago as a major figure in a global human organ ring.

The anthropologist says that the man who led her to Rosenbaum says that he initially believed Rosenbaum was a man who saved the lives of people in need. According to Scheper-Hughes, that man told her he had changed his mind after meeting some of Rosenbaum's donors - confused and impoverished people from Eastern Europe.

Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1102799.html

[Enthusiast]

1. Would it come as

a surprise that the FBI has been compromised? Every facet of law enforcement and intelligence in this country has been compromised. Just look at the justice department we had during the last administration.

[hootinholler]

6. We've known for quite some time the FBI is compromised

Shut down investigations of terrorists and ignored other serious crimes. Read about Sibel Edmonds.

-Hoot

[redqueen]

12. They even ignore their own agents... remember Coleen Rowley? (nt)

[Enthusiast]

16. I remember her.

Why are we paying for this bullshit?

[redqueen]

17. I dunno... tradition?

What do they do besides purposefully ignore the really big stuff?

I'm sure they do some useful things when they're not ignoring stuff.

[PassingFair]

2. Where were all these transplants performed?

Here?

Israel?

:shrug:

[PassingFair]

3. Never mind....he was arranging to have them done HERE! Mt. Sinai in NY!

http://beta.app.com/article/20090724/NEWS/90724086/1401/Brooklyn+man+accused+of+buying+and+selling+kidneys

smip> "As part of the scheme, the organ donors were brought from Israel to this country, where they underwent surgery to remove the kidneys, authorities said. Prosecutors did not identify which hospitals in the U.S. received the donors and their kidneys.

"The allegations about an organ trafficking ring in the United States are appalling," said John Davis, CEO of the National Kidney Foundation." <unsnip



snip> "Scheper-Hughes said she was also told that some of the kidney transplants using sellers procured by Rosenbaum were performed at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

The hospital said it is aware Rosenbaum has been charged but that its transplant screening process is rigorous and that it assesses each donor's motivation.

"All donors are clearly advised that it is against the law to receive money or gifts for being an organ donor," spokeswoman Brenda Perez wrote in an e-mail. "... The pre-transplant evaluation may not detect premeditated and skillful attempts to subvert and defraud the evaluation process." <unsnip

[4lbs]

4. She tried to tell them, but the FBI didn't have the stomach for it. (n/t)

.

[No Elephants]

10. Maybe not, but they probably could have bought one for $10K.

[annm4peace]

5. FBI was too busy going after Peace Activists

[HamdenRice]

7. Bizarre interstate conspiracy involving Jersey politicians, rabbis, kidnapping,forced organ donation

This story is getting a lot of coverage here in the NY-NJ area, but it's so weird, large and bizarre that it's hard to get a handle on. Different media outlets are reporting it differently.

Last week, the FBI arrested something like a dozen high ranking New Jersey politicians (up to the deputy mayor level) plus several rabbis of the insular Syrian Jewish community of Brooklyn and New Jersey.

It seems to involve bribery of public officials for real estate development permits, plus organ trafficking and money laundering.

What seems to unite these different scandals is that one guy was an informant for all of them. He was a real estate developer who was going to be prosecuted for passing bad checks while his business was failing. Instead he was persuaded to wear a wire and penetrate these conspiracies.

The New Jersey side seems to be straight forward municipal corruption. The guy wearing the wire would bribe officials for permits. Then the informant approached various rabbis to launder the money through Jewish and Israeli charities.

The Brooklyn religious community side has been reported in various ways, but seems to go something like this: Some human traffickers offered to get impoverished Russians out of Russia and into Israel. They got these migrants to make a layover in New York. Once in New York, they were basically kidnapped and told that the ring would not arrange their onward trip to Israel unless they donated a kidney to pay for it. According to WNYC (public radio in NY), the kidneys were required because Jewish tradition does not favor desecration of the bodies of the dead, so no one in the orthodox community would donate kidneys or other organs, even from braid dead relatives. The hostages were then routed to two extremely prestigous hospitals -- Mount Sinai and Albert Einstein Medical College. WNYC questioned how they could not have known they were dealing with an organ trafficking ring.

Quite a bizarre story and the details are still dribbling out.

[The Stranger]

8. That was my question: How could the hospitals and doctors and organ donor organizations NOT know

that insidious and heinous crimes were being committed?

[jasi2006]

9. To begin with, this was a female scientist exposing the crimes...

and we all know what the science commuity thinks of female scientists. (I worked on the inside of a major Fed biomedical research institution where female scientsts had their work plagarized, stolen, and sabotaged and when they complained or brought charges, they and not the perps were fired or lost their funding.)

Second, look at who the criminals are in this scandal. It is any wonder they were even investigated and charged. It will be even more amazing if the system finds any of them guilty.

[aquart]

14. Excuse me? Would you like to be more explicit?

Maybe you should try. I'm sure I'm being over-sensitive. Do tell me what you really mean.

[Gormy Cuss]

15. More likely she was dismissed because she's an anthropologist, not an MD.

Scheper-Hughes is a medical anthropologist but it's still not the same to people who are degree snobs.

[Blue_Tires]

11. shit like this makes me lose faith in humanity...

[aquart]

13. Seven years???

Everything I've been reading has put the organ selling as something Rosenbaum planned to do, not that he was actively successful at. He's been getting away with this for SEVEN YEARS? And that's only the point at which it was first informed on? Holy shit.