Forced divorce charge against Lakewood rabbi's son should be dismissed, defense claims

By Maryann Spoto
NJ.com
March 31, 2015

http://www.nj.com/ocean/index.ssf/2015/03/forced_divorce_charge_against_lakewood_rabbis_son.html

Rabbi Mendel Epstein arrives at the federal courthouse in Trenton for his trial on kidnapping an conspiracy charges.

Supporters of Rabbi Mendel Epstein leave the federal courthouse in Trenton after the start of his trial on kidnapping and conspiracy charges.

Supporters of Rabbi Mendel Epstein leave the federal courthouse in Trenton after the start of his trial on kidnapping and conspiracy charges.

Lakewood property owned by Rabbi Mendel Epstein. Epstein, is one of two rabbis charged in the recent scheme to force men to grant their wives religious divorces.

Shaarei Torah of Rockland in Suffern, on Oct. 10, 2013, was one of the locations named in the arrests of rabbis accused of conspiring to kidnap men to force them to grant divorces to their wives. Oct. 10, 2013

TRENTON —Attorneys in the federal conspiracy trial of a Lakewood rabbi accused of arranging forced religious divorces are clashing over whether one of the charges against his son - accused of beating husbands into compliance-- should be dismissed.

As the trial of Rabbi Mendel Epstein wound up its seventh week of testimony on Tuesday, the defense attorney for his son, David "Ari" Epstein continued to press with jurors the younger man's alibi for one of the alleged beatings.

Jurors have seen phone records, hotel records, photographs and meeting schedules indicating Epstein was in Ohio on Aug. 22, 2011. And they've heard from one of Epstein's business associates and one of his workers who claim Epstein was with them that day on a trip to Kaeser & Blair Inc. in Batavia, Ohio.

Because of that evidence, defense attorney Henry Mazurek wants one of the kidnapping charges against his client dismissed.

But federal prosecutors, who contend Epstein was in Brooklyn on Aug. 22, 2011, beating an Orthodox Jewish man who refused to give his wife a divorce, aren't giving in.

Through their questioning of defense witnesses, they are trying to convince jurors that those business colleagues and friends corroborating Epstein's alibi are lying to protect him.

By Tuesday, that challenge came down to an argument over photographs taken by Jay Soltan, one of Epstein's coworkers, on a Blackberry during the August 2011 business trip to Ohio.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Wolfe insinuated to jurors that the time stamps on the photographs were somehow manipulated to give the appearance that Epstein was in Ohio. She also tried to insinuate that Epstein's company, GMG Pens in Lakewood, manipulated company credit card records to show that Epstein was in Ohio at the time.

During an interview with an FBI agent last December, Sultan said he couldn't find the Blackberry that contained the photographs. But he found the device over the weekend, right before he was scheduled to testify in the trial.

"I found my kids playing with it," Sultan told Wolfe.

Sultan also corroborated the testimony of Greg Emmer, vice president and chief marketing officer for Kaeser & Blair, that Epstein was one of four people who met with him at his Ohio office.

Minutes earlier, Mazurek had asked Sultan, "Do you have any doubt at all that you took this trip with Mr. Epstein?"

"No doubt," Sultan said. "Not at all."

Testimony from prosecution and defense witnesses concluded on Tuesday. Closing arguments before U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson in Trenton are expected to begin April 13 after the Passover break.

Mendel Epstein, a prominent rabbi who specializes in divorce proceedings, is on trial in federal court in Trenton along with his son and two other rabbis, Binyamin Stimler and Jay Goldstein, on conspiracy and kidnapping charges that grew out of a federal undercover sting.

Stimler and Goldstein were arrested during a sting in October 2012 at an Edison warehouse where a federal undercover agent posed as a woman seeking a religious divorce. Mendel Epstein is accused of orchestrating the beatings for a fee and using his son as one of the "tough guys" to extract the gets from four husbands in the case.