MASSACHUSETTS
Jewish Daily Forward
Paul Berger
May 11, 2015
A 30-year-old suburban Boston man has been indicted on theft and extortion charges in relation to the abrupt resignation last year of a leading Conservative rabbi over allegations of sex with a teenage boy.
Nicholas Zemeitus, of Quincy, Massachusetts, is charged with eight counts of larceny, two counts of receiving stolen property and one count of extortion, the Norfolk district attorney’s office said..
The charges appear to be the culmination of a yearlong investigation that began shortly before last May when Rabbi Barry Starr stepped down from his pulpit at Temple Israel, in Sharon, Massachusetts. Allegations soon surfaced that over the previous two years Starr, a 64-year-old father of two, paid an extortionist between $200,000 and $480,000 not to expose Starr’s sexual relationship with a teenager.
Starr allegedly borrowed $50,000 from a congregant of Temple Israel, a Holocaust survivor, to pay part of the extortion money.
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