NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 13, 2015
TRENTON —In his own words, Rabbi Mendel Epstein told an undercover FBI agent that he wore two hats as a religious leader – one rabbinical and one criminal.
That statement, captured in video surveillance in 2013, was played for jurors on Monday as they hear federal prosecutors’ and defense attorneys’ summations of eight weeks of testimony in a trial accusing Epstein and three others of conspiring to force husbands into granting their wives religious divorces.
“Mendel Epstein is telling you right here what he is – he’s a criminal,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Wolfe told jurors after playing a segment of video in which Epstein claimed to describe the two roles he played in his Orthodox Jewish communities in Lakewood and Brooklyn.
“Don’t confuse the defendants’ religious beliefs with criminal acts,” Wolfe said toward the beginning of her nearly four hours of closing arguments. “You’re here to judge Mendel Epstein for acts he did while wearing his criminal hat.”
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