Undercover in the Orthodox Underworld
By: Dan Slater
Tags: Culture, Jewish, True Crime, Gen Longreads, Power

When Rachel returned to New Jersey, she could converse comfortably about where she worshipped, socialized, and shopped in South America. She was a 43-year-old wife whose Argentinian husband refused to give her children, ran up debt, abandoned her, and withheld the get while extorting money from her wealthy brother, Jonathan Miller, played by Special Agent Jon Weiss, who looked like he was related to Jessica and happened to also be from her hometown of Newton.

Before getting to Mendel, Rachel and Jonathan had to create a paper trail showing that they’d attempted to seek a divorce peacefully. First, they went to an advocacy group called ORA, the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot, where they met with Keshet Starr, a young lawyer who believes that the get itself is a form of domestic abuse. As ORA director, Starr was in regular phone contact with Mendel to brainstorm about difficult cases. On one case, Mendel and Starr would agree: The wife is getting screwed. She’s 36. Time is running out. Then they’d turn to a new case, and Mendel would suddenly switch sides, arguing for the husband, even though the facts were similar to the previous case: She has to be patient. She’s being ridiculous about money. “I was surprised to learn that an earlier generation of women had ever considered him to be an advocate for agunot,” Starr told me. “I always thought of him as the classic shark attorney. If he was on your side, he was the best. If he wasn’t, he was the devil incarnate.”

The average ORA client was much like Rachel Marconi — aging, childless, several years into a split — and yet Rachel struck Starr as a little off. There were common Hebrew words that Rachel didn’t know, for instance. But Starr didn’t think much of it — ORA was a social-service agency after all, and she fielded calls daily from people who seemed off. Starr referred Rachel to the Beth Din of America, where she petitioned the religious court for summonses to be sent to her husband. When the summonses were sent but never responded to, the agents felt they had laid enough groundwork to approach Mendel via his go-between, Martin Wolmark.

At first, Wolmark was dismissive, but Rachel’s desperation combined with her brother’s deep pockets did the trick, and in that first phone call, Wolmark did what the agents only dreamed of: conferenced in Mendel, who listened and said, “Sounds like it’s not a call,” referring to the risk of speaking about kidnappings and assaults over the telephone.

So in August 2013 — nearly three years after Bruce Kamerman launched his investigation — Rachel and Jonathan knocked on the door of Mendel’s home in Lakewood. One of Mendel’s daughters, Batsheva, welcomed them at the door and escorted them to a study, where Mendel sat behind a large desk beneath photos of famous rabbis. Outside, in the fenced-in yard adjoining his son’s house, dozens of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren played.

He told the agents, who were both wired, “I don’t want to use any secular terms, but what we’re doing is basically kidnapping the guy for a couple of hours, beating him up, torturing him, and then getting him to give a get.” He added, “I do this cause there’s no one else who wants to do it and get it done the right way. My wife’s not too happy. She says, ‘You have a good life. What are you doing this for?’ But I feel that sometimes there’s just no solution. We try everything and it just doesn’t work.” He alternated, he explained, between his “rabbinical hat” and his “criminal hat.”

Rachel knew, of course, that husband-victims were often left with bruises and broken bones, but she wanted to elicit talk of the cattle prods, so she asked, “How do you do it without leaving a mark?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Take an electric cattle prod. If it can get a bull that weighs five tons to move, you put it in certain parts of his body, and in one minute, the guy will know.” Mendel stroked his white beard, smiling at memories of past triumphs. “Karate also works well. We’ve learned on different people how to do this. The first shot, if you land it, puts him out. Whether it’s a kick to the stomach or a bat. My guys? They don’t meet with him and say, ‘Let’s do this nicely.’ That’s not the style. A minute ago you were standing there like a normal person. Now you’re lying on your back with handcuffs and a bag around your head. Then zap! And he goes nuts!”

He said that on average he did one strong-arm case per year, and the price was $70,000.

Mendel discussed the impunity he enjoyed among secular authorities and the power wielded by the Orthodox community in Lakewood. “The blacks are mostly gone ’cause we won’t hire them to watch our kids or do anything,” he said. “We do like the Mexicans because they’re family-minded.” He bragged about his reputation among the Italian mafia and recounted how the Gambino crime family had once hired him to collect debts. He said that during meetings with the Gambinos, they would always be cleaning their guns. “Once, they asked me to become a mediator between the families. I said, ‘One question: How long did the last mediator live?’”

They all laughed, and Rachel asked, “Do your guys carry guns too?”

“Cattle prods,” Mendel said.

Through the late summer and early fall of 2013, there were more meetings and calls and emails. During one call, Rachel nearly blew her cover when her son came running into the room yelling, “Mommy!”

The final meeting was held at Wolmark’s office in Monsey, New York.

Why, he wondered, did the FBI care about Jewish divorce, about defending a woman against a bully?

Rachel and Jonathan met with Wolmark, Mendel, and another longtime Get Crew member, Jay Goldstein, the gang’s sofer, who wrote the gets and helped administer beatings. After getting through the formalities of how Alejandro would be lured to a warehouse, Rachel asked, “Is there a time period I should wait, or can I date right away?”

“You’re not allowed to get married for three months,” Mendel said.

“Just don’t kiss in public,” Goldstein added. “That’s all. If you were younger we’d give you a little more time to wait, but…”

“I know, time is not on my side.”

“But do your research on the next guy,” Mendel said.

And with that piece of relationship advice, it was agreed: Rachel’s husband would travel to New Jersey the following week, expecting to collect money from Rachel’s brother, who would lure him to a New Jersey warehouse where the Get Crew would be waiting.

While Jonathan pulled the car around, Rachel and Mendel stood outside, and Mendel said, “We probably should’ve looked into your background more. I’m kind of upset with Wolmark. I thought he’d done some vetting. … You know what? It’s too late now. I’m getting too old for this. What did you say you do for a living again?”

“I work in the tax lien industry,” she said.

“I have a friend who did that. David Farber. It’s a great business.”

Rachel froze. She put David Farber in prison on the tax-lien sting. She focused on her breath and said, “Yep, it’s a very good business.”

Two hours later, Jessica still had the black dress on when she picked her daughter up from preschool. As much as their kids knew what she and Dan did for a living, as often as they’d seen mom and dad come home from work each day and put their guns in the safe, they still didn’t really know, nor did they care: a big takedown, a serious case — it didn’t mean anything to the children. “Mom,” her daughter said, “what’s for dinner tonight?”