How Houses of Worship Became Hotbeds of Graft

No one wants to talk about the business of religion. But it’s time we do. On January 4, the Poway, California Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein was sentenced to fourteen months in prison, for having received at least $6.2 million in fake contributions to his synagogue and affiliated charities and secretly refunding up to 90 percent of the donations to the "donors." Those donors, in turn, used the counterfeit receipts to illegally claim huge tax deductions for their nonexistent donations; Goldstein skimmed about 10 percent of the take -- more than half a million dollars -- for himself. It was a tidy bit of graft: using the synagogue as a platform to funnel money, defrauding Fortune 500 companies by tricking them into matching fake donations, and using false information and invoices to be eligible for emergency funds and private loans.