MASSACHUSETTS
JTA
(JTA) — A 30-year-old man was indicted on charges of extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from a prominent Boston-area rabbi who was having an affair with a male teenager.
Nicholas Zemeitus, of suburban Boston, was arrested and charged on Monday, the Boston Globe reported. He had threatened to expose the affair unless he was paid by Rabbi Barry Starr,who resigned a year ago from Temple Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Sharon, Massachusetts.
Starr allegedly paid nearly half a million dollars — taken from synagogue funds and borrowed from his congregants — to hide his two-year affair with the 16-year-old. Much of the money came from the rabbi’s discretionary fund, including checks altered by the rabbi. Starr also borrowed thousands of dollars from an elderly congregant, a Holocaust survivor.
Zemeitus claimed to be the older brother of the teen, who was 18 when the affair ended.
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