MASSACHUSETTS
The Jewish Daily Forward
A Boston-area rabbi pleaded not guilty to charges that he stole from his temple to pay off a man who was blackmailing him for an alleged affair with a teenage male.
Rabbi Barry Starr, 65, who resigned last year from Temple Israel in Sharon, Massachusetts, entered the plea Tuesday in Norfolk Superior Court, the Boston Globe reported. Several former congregants were in the courtroom to support him, according to the newspaper.
Starr is charged with embezzlement and larceny over $250. He is facing a maximum sentence of 15 years in state prison.
The rabbi allegedly paid a total of $458,300 between 2012 and 2014 — more than $360,000 of that from his discretionary fund — according to prosecutors.
He also is accused of altering donated checks for up to 100 times their value and borrowing thousands of dollars from an elderly congregant, a Holocaust survivor.
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