Israeli Sentenced for Organ Trafficking

An Israeli citizen living in New York was sentenced to prison for organ trafficking.

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, 61, of Brooklyn, was sentenced Wednesday to 2 1/2 years in prison. He had pleaded guilty last Oct. 27 to three counts of organ trafficking and one count of conspiracy in a New Jersey federal court.

Rosenbaum had faced up to 20 years in prison; he could be deported to Israel after finishing his prison term.

He was the first person to be convicted of illegal organ trafficking in the United States since a 1984 law banned the sale of human organs, according to reports.

Rosenbaum reportedly was paid $410,000 to arrange the sales of kidneys from healthy donors in Israel to three people in New Jersey. He was caught in a sting operation in July 2009 set up with government informant Solomon Dwek, a real estate speculator arrested for a $50 million bank fraud. Some 40 other people, mostly rabbis and politicians from New Jersey, were arrested in a sting assisted by Dwek.

Surgeries for the donors and recipients took place in American hospitals, which were not identified by prosecutors in the case. The kidney donors and recipients also were not identified or charged.