American Scofflaw
JERUSALEM - A Tel Aviv court sentenced an Israeli lawyer today to 12 years in prison after finding him guilty of defrauding dozens of Holocaust survivors of German compensation money.
The court also fined Yisrael Perry 5.5 million dollars (3.5 million euros) over a string of charges, including stealing the equivalent of about 200 million dollars from survivors of Nazi concentration camps.
Perry had created an association purported to help Holocaust survivors obtain pension rights from West Germany’s social insurance institute in the early 1990s, the judge wrote in his ruling.
Perry embezzled millions in premiums his clients thought were being passed on to insurance companies.
Dozens of Holocaust survivors and their descendents fell victim to the scam.
"Perry committed a sin and acted unlawfully, to say the least, and hurt other people. He tricked, cheated and committed severe crimes for years," judge Zeharya Kaspi wrote.
Israel and West Germany signed an agreement in 1952 under which Israel and survivors of Nazi camps and persecution receive billions in reparations.
In the 1990s, tens of thousands of Jewish survivors sued Germany and other European countries for Holocaust-era insurance claims.
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