Murray Huberfeld Gets Seven Months in Prison
A hedge fund founder and major donor to Orthodox Jewish causes was sentenced to a seven-month prison term for his involvement in a scheme to bribe the head of the New York City prison guard union.
Murray Huberfeld, 60, was sentenced Tuesday after having
pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy over a $60,000 payment to Norman
Seabrook, the former head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association who
also was convicted in the affair. The payment was a kickback to Seabrook for
having steered $20 million in the union members’ retirement money to
Huberfeld’s hedge fund, Platinum Partners.
In imposing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in
Manhattan said he took into account the “truly extraordinary” letters of
support for Huberfeld, Reuters reported.
“Mr. Huberfeld’s crime was a serious one,” Liman was quoted
as saying. “This was not a momentary lapse.”
Huberfeld’s arrest in 2016, and subsequent court case,
rocked parts of the Orthodox world in the New York City area because of
Huberfeld’s record of generosity. He had given away millions, especially to
synagogues linked to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and to haredi Orthodox
institutions in Brooklyn.
Huberfeld’s role as a trustee for Simon Wiesenthal Center’s
Museum of Tolerance proved controversial, and the museum lost out on $500,000
in municipal funding.
Before being sentenced, Huberfeld told the court that he had
repaid $5.5 million of the union’s money that he had lost on bad investments
and that he planned to return $1.5 million more.
“Every day I am faced with the hard fact that my actions
caused so much hurt,” Huberfeld said, according to Reuters. “What I did was
wrong.”
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